What My Body Taught Me in My 40s

May is my birthday month, and it just happens that on the 5th, I'll be turning 50. 🤯

It feels surreal, honestly, and I'm grateful to be healthy, alive, and free, amen. 🙌🏾

This month, I'm focused on creating your physical health, meaning being intentional about how we care for, listen to, support, and live inside the body we have right now.

Because one thing my 40s taught me is that my body has been talking to me the whole time.

I just had to learn how to listen.

Black Women Are Often Trained to Live From the Neck Up

One thing I notice in coaching Black women, and in my own life, is how disconnected so many of us are from our bodies.

We live from the neck up.

We know how to intellectualize things. We know how to think our way through it, not feel. We know how to analyze and explain. We know how to push through and gather data to make it make sense.

Meanwhile, our body is down below the neck, there waving both hands like, “Sis. Heeeelloooo. I have information. 👋🏽”

Most Black women are taught to override those signals.

And it starts early. We're taught to ignore our hunger. We're taught to hold our pee. We're taught to stop crying and expressing emotion. We're taught to sit still and be quiet. We're forced to hug a family member even though our body says no. We're trained and modeled to keep going even though we are exhausted. To smile even though your stomach is flipping and your jaw is tensing. And we are told to stay, even though we know we want to go, and we cannot breathe in that room. 🫤

Woosaa, girl.

Then, over time, we learn to treat our body like an inconvenience instead of a messenger.

We learn to treat our body like an inconvenience instead of a messenger.

And then wonder why peace feels so far away. 🔎👀

My 40s taught me that my body is responding to my life, and to learn its language and start listening to it, and often listen to it first.

My Body Taught Me That Safety Has Signals

Some of the clearest lessons my body taught me in my 40s were about safety.

I learned that when I get around certain people, places, or situations, my body starts speaking before my mind can catch up. If my stomach starts flipping and my throat is tight, that means something. If my jaw clenches and my neck and shoulders tense up, that means something. If my chest feels tight and like I cannot get a full breath, that means something. And most importantly, if my body starts preparing to leave before I have admitted to myself that I want to go, THAT MEANS SOMETHING. 🧐

For years, I learned to talk myself out of those signals, but my body knew.

My body was saying, “You do not feel safe here.”

In my 40s, I started learning the language of my own body and noticing what happens when I feel unsafe, unsupported, silenced, pressured, or out of alignment. My body often tells me the truth before my mind catches up, and once I started listening, I could stop forcing myself to stay in places my body was already trying to escape.

My Body Taught Me That My Gut Knows

My body often speaks to me through my stomach.

When something is off, I feel it there. When something is not aligned, I feel it there. When someone is saying all the right words but something is not right, my gut knows. 🤨

And one of the clearest lessons of my 40s was that I have to stop talking myself out of what I already know.

Black women are often trained to distrust our own knowing, and a lot of systems benefit from Black women being disconnected from our bodies. If you cannot hear your own no, other people can keep using your yes. If you cannot feel your own exhaustion, other people can keep benefiting from your labor. If you cannot trust your own gut, other people can keep explaining your life to you.

My 40s taught me that my intuition is not something floating outside of me.

It is often somatic. It is in my body. It is in the throat, my chest, my stomach, my breath, the tension, the flinch, the ease, the peace.

My Body Taught Me That Breath Is a Tool

I used to hear people talk about breathing exercises and think, “Okaaaay, sure. I'm breathing already.”

Honestly, it sounded too simple, small, and obvious. 🤷🏽‍♀️ But you know I always say "don't knock small things you haven't tried," and this is one of the important small things at your disposal.

In my 40s, I learned that breath is one of my most powerful tools, and, ironically, I learned this during a panic response. I was participating in a coaching program that required me to do several things, one of which was to meditate. I reluctantly participated in learning how to sit and practice the breathing patterns that the instructions told me to do. Then, one day I had a panic attack and my breathing went from panic into the meditative breathing pattern automatically.

Just wow! 😱

That moment taught me something very important. Breath is a key. 🔑

Breathing helps my body come down from anxiety. It helps me relieve tension in my muscles, chest, neck, and shoulders. It helps me pause before reacting. It helps me return to myself. And I always have it available with me, for free.

For a woman who spent years pushing through, disconnecting, and surviving from the neck up, this was such a powerful lesson.

My Body Taught Me That Aging Is Not the Enemy

Listen, perimenopause is coming for everybody. 🫤

In my 40s, my hair thinned, my eyebrows disappeared, my eyesight weakened, and I began having eye-health issues; my skin changed, my stomach changed, and my knees continue to act up. 🤭 And even though my body doesn't recover the same way it used to, I generally like how I am aging. I look at myself and say, “Oh, yes, that's me, and she looks great."

This decade continues to strip away a lot of the performance. The need to be palatable started fading away. The idea that I had to force myself into somebody else’s version of womanhood, beauty, faith, marriage, success, communication, or respectability started fading away, too.

My vision may be blurrier, but my vision is clearer, amen. 👁️👁️

I see myself more clearly than I ever have, and I'm excited for the 50s I ✨ create ✨ with this new vision.

My Body Reminded Me That Movement Is My First Language

Before I talked this much, I danced. 💃🏾

Dance has always been one of my clearest forms of communication. I grew up studying ballet, modern, jazz, and tap. I danced in college, I danced in church, I choreographed, I led movement spaces, I once was a whole entire Zumba menace lol.

Movement is not just exercise for me, it's expression, and joy and release. It's a prayer, and a memory, it's a returning to myself.

And yet, I have not been dancing lately. 😔

And I miss that.

So my 40s taught me that me and these fickle knees must return to dance. I must honor the necessity to move because expression is the opposite of depression, and I have not been expressing myself in my first language.

So I will honor the desire to move without pretending that my body is the same as it was in my teens and 20s. I will bring back my dance and rebuild my strength and stamina so I can move the way I want to move, move the way I need to move, move the way I deserve to move ... and maybe even get back to being a Zumba menace once more. 👯‍♀️

My Body Taught Me That Stress Accumulates

This is a lesson from my 40s that feels the most urgent.

My body taught me that stress accumulates. 🫠

No exaggeration, there is a person in my life that in my 30s and 40s I often thought that being around this person was gonna shorten my life. 🫤🙃 I unfortunately learned that this sense that I had is actually a real thing.

Stress accumulates in the mind, the spirit, and the body. Silence accumulates, too. Unsafe spaces accumulate. Self-betrayal accumulates. Overgiving accumulates. Pushing through accumulates. The body keeps the score amen.

What I could push through in my teens and 20s started breaking me down literally in my 30s. By my 40s, my body was no longer whispering; it was screaming at me, and I am grateful that I learned to listen. I stopped normalizing inflammation, exhaustion, tension, fear, feeling unsupported, disconnected, and tense.

Chronic stress is not “being strong,” it was killing me.

In my 40s, I learned that my body is wise and is trying to protect me. It is speaking to me, and I do not have to survive environments that are slowly taking time off my life.

As I leave my 40s, I can name more clearly what my body needs.

My body needs rest and a slower pace. It needs boundaries and to be in safe environments. My body needs to be surrounded by emotionally mature people and wrapped in comfortable clothes. My body needs movement, sunshine, laughter, and naps. My body needs support and to be listened to first and often.

And I will move forward into my 50s responding to my body with more intention, grace, and deep care.

What Is Your Body Trying to Tell You?

Where do you feel tension? Where do you feel ease? What happens in your body when you are around certain people? What happens in your body when you are in certain places? What does your breath do? What does your stomach do? What does your jaw do? What does your chest do? What have you been explaining away that your body has already made clear?

Your body may have been telling the truth for a long time, it's never too late to learn to listen.

Want Support Learning How to Listen to Yourself Again?

If your body has been signaling stress, exhaustion, resentment, burnout, or misalignment, you do not have to keep pushing through it alone.

In 1:1 coaching, we look at what your life is asking of you, what your body is telling you, and what small, honest changes would help you feel more supported.

👉🏽 Learn more at glamazini.com/coaching.

Create a Life That Honors Your Body

If you are ready to build a life that honors your body, your capacity, your identity, your desires, and your peace, I invite you into Create Your Life™.

Create Your Life™ is my Virtual Planning Retreat + 10-Month Coaching Incubator for Black women who are ready to create lives they love that love them back.

Inside, we plan from identity, not pressure, and build from enoughness, not exhaustion. We help you create rhythms that support your real life and the woman you are becoming.

👉🏽 Learn more and join the next cohort at bit.ly/VirtualPlanningRetreat.

New Here?

Start with the free Who Am I? Identity Workbook and join my free coaching community.

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Try This Today

✨ Pause for 30 seconds & place one hand on your chest or stomach.

✨ Take a slow breath in, and let the exhale be longer than the inhale.

✨ Then ask yourself: “What is my body trying to tell me today?”

✨ Don't judge or argue with the answer. Just listen.

Be well. Be encouraged. Keep creating.

Here’s a pineapple. 🍍