Well, ladies
I picked up a book last week called More Than a Body by Lindsay and Lexie Kite, and one sentence made me put it down on the couch and just sit there.
The idea that stopped me was simple. Your body is not something to judge or fix, but something to use. I have read lines like that before and nodded and moved on, but this one followed me around the house for two days.
My face gets the whole sequence every night. Cleanser, serum, moisturizer, the eye cream I convinced myself was worth it. Below the jaw, nothing. I just stop, like my body ends at my chin.
Clare mentioned once that she puts sunscreen on her neck every morning, same as her face. I remember thinking I should do that, and then I never did.
There was a photo from last month, a dinner out, and I saw my neck before I saw anything else. In my mind I still carry the version of myself from ten years ago, and photographs are where that version meets the real one.
Every day I sit at my desk and write, and my head drifts forward without me noticing. Your head weighs something like ten pounds, apparently, and when it tilts forward the neck muscles hold all of that under immense strain, for hours.
The skin on your neck is thinner than your face, I read, with fewer oil glands and less collagen to hold it together. Women lose a significant amount of that collagen around menopause, and the neck shows it first because it started with less.
Last week I texted Dani the instrument line from the book. She wrote back in seconds. I have been saying that to clients for three years, Sonia. 😌 She has never read a single book I recommended, but she always knows whatever was in it.
So I tried a stretch. Tilt your ear toward your shoulder, slowly, and hold it there for fifteen seconds. Switch sides. Three rounds on each side, seated or standing, no equipment, nothing to buy.
Something released on the second day that I had not known I was carrying. My neck had been holding a low hum of tension, the kind you stop noticing until it stops, and when it stopped I sat up differently without deciding to.
Three days in and it became a small ritual at my desk, something I do between paragraphs of whatever I am writing. 🤍 Ear toward shoulder, hold and breathe, then switch.
Whether it has changed anything someone else would notice, I cannot say. But something shifted in how I hold myself, or maybe in how I feel about holding myself, and I am not sure those are different things.
The book is still on my end table. My neck does not look different yet. But it feels like mine again, and that part might matter more. 🌿
