I have spent all morning today thinking about my body. How it has changed over time and how I feel about it.

Here’s a photo of me from five years ago, at a 5k race I ran in that was a library fundraiser. (You were supposed to dress up as your favorite literary character; as I am easily annoyed by anything extra while I’m running, I kept my costume extremely simple. I’m Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, right? Two braids, blue dress, sparkly red shoes.) Not necessarily my favorite literary character, but those are hard to represent in costume anyway.)

Kendell and I were looking at this picture last night and I started thinking about all of the ways my body has changed in the five years since it was taken.

My perimenopausal body has finally decided to grow some boobs. Seriously, I’ve been waiting for this to happen since I was 13 or so. Unfortunately the message got muddled and the boobs are in the wrong place. SIDE boobs? That’s not really what I meant, body.

My belly is so much softer and rounder now.

My back looks like I used to weigh about 100 pounds more, and I lost the weight, and now the skin won’t smooth back. Except that didn’t happen. If it had, I would understand what was happening back there on my back (like I understand why my belly will never be flat). If I understood the source of my back fat and wobbly skin, I might feel a little less bugged by it.

The skin around my knees is saggy and wrinkled.

My batwings—and my maternal line has never been known for having resilient triceps skin—are a million times flappier.

I have side chunkies and a muffin top.

AND I have crepe-y skin on the fold of my arm at my shoulder.

My face has more wrinkles.

My eye asymmetry is far worse.

My grey has gotten greyer and more pervasive.

Do I wish I had the body back of my 42-year-old self? Sort of. Well, yes, of course. If wishing actually worked then I would wish for the body I had before I started having babies. But wishing doesn’t work. Sometimes it feels like nothing works, because I exercise and I eat as healthily as I can but the weight is still creeping on.

But this post really isn’t meant to be a listing of all of the ways I perceive my body is faulty.

Instead, it is about the ways that bodies change over time and how to accept those changes.

Yes: in the eyes of the world, my body is less attractive than it was five years ago. It is FAR less attractive than it was 25 years ago.

But the eyes of the world (which is sometimes much, much smaller than it seems) (which means that by “the world” I mean the critical voices that influence my thinking about myself, and the actual words they have said—“heavy,” “chubby,” “soft,” “old”—and how those words grow more cruel as I replay them) are always going to be critical.

My body is not perfect. Right now, I feel betrayed by my body in many ways.

But it is the same thing I say to people—to women—who refuse to be in photos because they’re “too” something (too fat, too grey, too wrinkled): it is only going to get worse.

The Amy in that photo 5 years ago had the same critical voices as the Amy in this photo:

Actually, 42-year-old Amy had more critical thoughts about herself, because I was still equating “runner” to “fast runner” then. Not only was I too chubby, too soft, too flat-chested, I was also (in my mind) too slow.

It is always only ever going to get worse.

In five more years, when I am in my early fifties, what will I think when I look back on that photo of me today? (What I thought of it when I saw it: my calves look enormous, I should’ve sucked in my stomach more, my body proportions are all wrong, my nasolabial folds are getting worse, that dress is so unflattering, I have man shoulders, there's that embarrassing forehead...) What will I wish I had back?

And not just my body, but my life.

Because how much has changed since that photo of me as Dorothy? I went through some big traumas with my husband’s health issues, my mom died, I had some pretty severe depression, my relationship with my religion changed utterly, I had to come to peace with how things really ARE vs how I hoped they would be in almost every aspect of my life.

As I looked at that Dorothy photo last night, as I thought all morning about my “conversation” with Kendell about it—he is far more blunt than I am and maybe I am too sensitive, I don’t know—as I thought about what was fueling this swirl of despair, anger, body shame, and frustration, this is where I arrived:

I want to be seen not for my body but for who I am.

I want the people in my life to love me whether or not I am “heavy.”

I want to be more than the sum of my not-quite-good-enough body parts.

But I can’t force anyone to feel that way about me. I can’t make our society see my middle-aged body as anything else but pathetic. I can’t control any of that.

All I get to control is me—and clearly, right now I am learning that that doesn’t include controlling my body.

Maybe what my body wants me to learn is something different. Not how to run longer, stronger, faster. Not the newest body sculpting techniques. Not even how to deal with my joint issues.

Maybe my body wants me to learn how to see myself not for my body but for who I am, to love myself no matter my weight or side-boob measurements, to stop the arithmetic of shame, disgust, and self-doubt.

And if I am honest, I will say: I don’t know how to do that. I want others to give that grace to me, but I don’t know how to do it for myself.

I grew up in a house with a mother who was very concerned with bodies and thinness. I participated in a sport that was all about being small enough (gymnastics). I married a perfectionist with his own body issues. Those aren’t excuses but just the facts, the things that have influenced my thinking about my body.

I am 47 years old and I have thought about my body in negative ways for as long as I can remember.  Maybe body shame is as much a part of my identity as loving books and thin hair and my talent of standing on my toe knuckles is.

Maybe.

But maybe that is the yellow brick road I need to follow. Maybe that is the journey I need to take, a path that will help me finally figure out how to put down all the weight I am carrying. Not the twenty extra pounds, but the shame over the extra pounds.

I don’t know how to do this. But—and maybe this is a cliché, maybe this is banal and obvious and silly, but so be it—at least knowing where to start: at least that. Maybe knowing that I have to start with me. Maybe that is enough to be the first step.