Hi! I'm Jill!
Welcome to this space!
I'm finding that life in my 50's is both exhilarating and exhausting.
I've created this space to help guide me toward discovering and accepting who it is I am meant to be. I am sharing it with others, in hopes that women, who are in their middle years, can see that it is never too late to become who we are meant to be. I wanted to create the community that I have been longing for and I hope that this blog can be such a space. Embracing my own voice is proving to be one way that I have been able to begin to liberate myself from the mental illness stigma, fatphobia and ageism that have been keeping me invisible. It is my hope that I can amplify my message to other women, so that we can all see that we are in this together. We all have parts of our lives that can not be wished away or ignored. By embracing our voices, we can all be liberated from these things that keep us trapped.
Embrace Your Voice With Me
Age Acceptance
Ageism. What is it? The definition of ageism is "prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of a person's age". My lived experience with ageism is the feeling of being out in the world, but essentially being invisible. My own internalized ageism is something that I recognize. There are so many things that I want to do with my life at this time, but I keep hearing my inner voice saying "you are too old to do that now. It's too late for you."
As I begin to allow my voice to be amplified, I acknowledge that accepting the fact that I am aging is essential. There is a need in this world to fight for the rights of aging people. Nobody should feel like their voices don't matter and that they should shrink and let youth be the driving force in the world.
Body Liberation
Body liberation, fat activism and Health At Every Size are three things that I have been digging into for over a year now. My experience with body hate and intentional weight loss has been very disordered. Although I have never attempted to be "diagnosed" with an eating disorder, I definitely fall into the diagnostic criteria of two eating disorders. I have only fallen for the diet trap twice in my lifetime. Both times I lost substantial weight only to gain it all back later. Both times I was obsessed with my weight loss and felt nothing but fear and anxiety on how I was going to keep the weight off. Both times the hopes of finally being happy and having the life I dreamed of after weight loss never came to be. The "skinny girl" that was allegedly living inside of me was an absolute hot mess.
The diet/wellness industry is diabolical. This industry knows exactly how to take advantage of our desire to have the ideal body size that is set by society. Fatphobia is what keeps the industry in business. My passion with dismantling fatphobia is strong. I have kept myself relatively silent on this until now. I know that I will make people feel uncomfortable as I unpack the crap we are fed everyday from this $70+ billion industry.
As I embrace my voice on this, it is my hope that I can lead other women to see that we should not be oppressed because of the size of our bodies. Shrinking our bodies should not be the goal. Giving ourselves permission to live life in the body we possess should be.
Living With Mental Illness
My lived experience with mental illness is by far the hardest thing for me to talk about. Mental health stigma plays a huge role in keeping me silent and unable to fully embrace my voice about its affect on my life. It is my hope that this blog will be the space for me to be able to finally break free from the shame and guilt that I live with because of depression and anxiety.
This can be the space for me to be candid and vulnerable about this part of me that holds me back the most. I hope that I can use my voice so that others like me can see that hiding behind our mental illness can only keep us from being our truest selves. Mental illness conversations can be messy and I'm sure that I won't do it perfectly, but I have to embrace this part of who I am.