I’ve been thinking about my body a lot lately.

I suppose that makes sense, as I have turned the corner past 50 and am screaming down the highway of Middle Age, where apparently my hormones have mounted a mutiny and thrown my metabolism out the window like my dad used to throw his apple cores out the window of the car while hurtling down back roads. 

But I realized something: I have spent an enormous amount of time thinking about my physical body over my lifetime.

As a high school and college athlete, this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, thinking about–and taking care of–my physicality was often the point. My body was my instrument, my tool, my performance vehicle. I practiced, worked out, strengthened, rested, recovered, and fueled it. I pushed my physical body because I wanted to perform well.

There was purpose behind the obsession.

Then I graduated college, used up my eligibility, and entered the chaos known as Real Life. Suddenly, there was no team with which to train or compete. There was no coach telling me what to do. There weren’t any teammates beside me, pushing me to run harder, lift heavier, or squeeze out one more rep when every cell in my body was screaming, “Absolutely not!”

I miss those days. I miss the accountability, the camaraderie, having a designated time and place to work on my physical self. I miss feeling like my body had a job, a goal, a destination.

As bodies tend to do, mine started changing as I moved through my 20s. In my mid-20s, I began noticing the normal shifts that come with leaving adolescence behind. My body was no longer the body I had as an athlete. My exercise routine changed. My priorities changed. My life changed.

I got married, and when I reached 30, my spouse and I decided to start a family. When that didn’t go the way we hoped or planned, my relationship with my body changed again. Suddenly, my body became a project to monitor.

This Body Project included taking my temperature every morning as soon as I awoke. Charting my menstrual cycle. Tracking my physical symptoms. I learned more about cervical mucus than any human being should reasonably be expected to know. There were tests, appointments, doctors. There were so many doctors. I have often joked that every physician within a 50-mile radius has seen me without pants. It’s sort of like having the mechanic looking under your hood every 5,000 miles, but only if you drive 5,000 every 2 weeks.  Honestly, I should have been able to earn loyalty points. Or at least earned a 10th visit free. Monitoring my body was more a science experiment than a love story.

This Body Project changed directions in my mid-30s as I birthed one baby, had another round of fertility drugs–more doctors!–and then birthed a second baby just after I turned 40. While my 30s felt like a science experiment, my 40s were filled with nursing, changing diapers, chasing toddlers, and launching young children into elementary school. It was a decade of sleepless nights and the extraordinary physical demands of nurturing another human being.

And now?

Now, in my 50s, I’m in perimenopause, staring down the on-ramp of menopause where chaos reigns supreme because there are no driving instructions. There isn’t even an owner’s manual to help you know how to take care of your vehicle. Meanwhile, I have two daughters in puberty.

So yes, I’ve been thinking a lot about my physical body.  

Puberty. Periods. Hormones. Acne. Body hair. Bras. Breast development. Weight. Food. Exercise. Sex. Birth control. Self-image. Bodies, bodies, bodies.

Along the way, as I navigated how I view and care for my body while also helping my daughters navigate their own similar journey, I started wondering: Who actually gets to have a say over my body? Who gets to make decisions about it? Who gets to be the expert on how I feel, what I’m experiencing, what I need, and what choices I should make? And perhaps most importantly, what happens when my body isn’t functioning “like it’s supposed to”? 

Because women spend an extraordinary amount of time being told that our bodies are somehow both incredibly important and deeply inconvenient. Our bodies are celebrated when they are young, thin, fertile, beautiful, athletic, sexual, productive, and appropriately maternal. Yet, our bodies are not our own. Our bodies are owned and controlled by men, whether those men are family members, classmates, work colleagues, or politicians. Men need women’s bodies to create life, but we are also blamed for tempting men beyond their control and being punished for those times when men can’t control themselves. (For more on this, read anything by Kristin Kobes Du Mez or Jen Hatmaker.)

I’m tired of it.

I’m tired of constantly monitoring my own physicality while at the same time remaining hypervigilant about my daughters’ physicality. I’m trying hard not to shrink myself–to take up space where my voice is needed–while teaching my daughters to do the same. 

And all the while, we are expected to be grateful for what our bodies can do while simultaneously apologizing for what our bodies can do. 

I’m done apologizing.

My body has carried me through sports, marriage, infertility, IVF, pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood, sleepless nights, aging, and approximately seven billion hormonal plot twists and direction changes. It has done some pretty remarkable things.

And now it is changing again. That doesn’t mean it is broken. It doesn’t mean it has failed. It doesn’t mean I need to surrender ownership of it to every doctor, cultural expectation, advertisement, stranger, politician, or well-meaning person with an opinion. It also doesn’t mean that I’m constantly, continually in love with my body. 

It does mean that I am learning to listen to it. Really listen. 

I’m learning that my body isn’t a problem to solve, but is something to be cherished, nourished, and respected. 

So, I’m going to stop apologizing for my body. I’m going to stop letting my body be a scientific experiment or a medical mystery to be solved. I’m going to stop allowing others to treat my body like it’s a problem because it’s a female body.

And I’m going to keep teaching my daughters how to do the same.