The Night I Got Permission to Take Up Space (And Finally Took It)
October 2018. Portland, Oregon. I’m lying on a yoga mat in the dark, candles flickering, trying to “get present” or whatever the instructor is having us do.
Just a few weeks earlier, I’d packed up my VW Beetle with everything I could fit (which, if you know a VW Beetle… isn’t much 😂) and hauled ass cross country, with one of my best friends keeping me company for the ride, from Northern Michigan to “start over” in Vancouver, Washington. New city. New life. Newish relationship (had been long-distance dating for a year…hence, why I made the move lol).
I’d found this fat friendly plus-size yoga class because let’s be real, after decades of feeling like my body was a problem that needed solving, I was desperate for a space where I could just… breathe without someone side-eyeing my fat body or suggesting I try yet another diet.
So there I am, lying in the dark, and the teacher says something that literally changed pretty much the entire trajectory of my life:
“I feel like someone needs to hear this…. You have permission to take up space just as you are, fat and all.”
The Moment Everything Changed
I’m not talking a little misty-eyed moment. I’m talking full-on tears streaming down my face 😭, soaking into that borrowed yoga mat, my whole body shaking with sobs I’d been holding in since FIFTH FUCKING GRADE when I was put on my first diet.
Fifth grade… let that shit sink in!
That was the beginning of years (DECADES) of body shame, food policing, an eating disorder, hating myself so much I wouldn’t even look in a full-length mirror. I spent my entire life trying to shrink, to fix myself, to become acceptable, to finally be small enough to deserve to exist.
And in one sentence, this yoga teacher I’d never met before (until this night) told me I didn’t need permission anymore. That I was okay. That my fat body wasn’t a problem that needed fixing.
She was like the Fairy Godmother I used to cry myself to sleep begging for as a child and young woman, wishing on every star “please make me skinny.”
Except instead of granting that wish, she gave me permission to let it go. To stop begging to be smaller. To finally, finally, be enough. 💫
That night? That was the night I said fuck it to diet culture. I walked out of there with my head held high for the first time in my adult life. I threw out my scale. I started stepping into my own authentic self. I started embracing my fat body instead of going to war with it every single day.
From Yoga Mat to Runway
But here’s the thing that really gets me…
Fast forward to 2019. I’m backstage at a runway show 💃, about to walk out there in a BATHING SUIT as a plus-size model. IN MY 40s. Me. The woman who wouldn’t look in full-length mirrors for years. The woman who spent decades believing she needed to disappear.
I was absolutely terrified.
But the second I stepped onto that runway and heard people APPLAUDING and CELEBRATING my body, my fat body, my 40-something body in a damn bathing suit… I smiled the biggest smile 😁, felt my eyes sparkling ✨, and silently said to myself: “Fuck you world, this is my body and if you have a problem with it, that’s a YOU problem not a ME problem.”
I walked three times that day in three different outfits – the bathing suit, a casual office outfit and then a cocktail dress.
And at the end of the show, a middle-aged plus-size woman pulled me aside with tears in her eyes and said, “Thank you. Seeing you out there gave me permission to show up in my plus-size body. Thank you.” 💗
PERMISSION.
There’s that word again.
You Don’t Need Permission (But Here It Is Anyway)
if there’s one thing I want you to take away from this post today, it’s this:
You don’t need to wait until you lose the weight, get organized, have your shit together, or become some ‘perfect’, polished version of yourself to do the thing. Whatever your thing is….
Because I believe in Unapologetic Midlife: Screw the rules. Wear the thing. Do the damn thing. 🔥
You don’t need permission from anyone to take up space in your own damn life. Not from society. Not from diet culture. Not from that voice in your head that sounds suspiciously like every asshole who ever made you feel less than.
You’re not too old. It’s not too late. Midlife doesn’t mean we’re supposed to sit on the sidelines fading into the background, biding our time until… well, until we die! 💀
Fuck that noise.
You, exactly as you are right now, are worthy of wearing the thing, doing the thing, saying the thing, being seen, taking up space, and living OUT LOUD. 🔥
