We only get one body, so why are we at war with it?

She contains multitudes 🌺 layered, blooming, and impossible to reduce to just one version of herself. Collage: Yurani Cubillos

We have been sold the idea that the goal is to arrive at the right weight, the right size, the right version of ourselves. But what if the goal was never arrival? What if it were something quieter, slower, and far more radical, to actually enjoy living in your body, all the way to the end?

I'm in the middle of two journeys at once. I'm training to become a death doula, learning how to sit with people at the end of their lives. And I'm healing my relationship with my own body. I didn't expect these two things to have so much to say to each other.

Everywhere I look, there's messaging about getting fit and losing the extra weight, hundreds of diets that leave us with minimal options. A life of restrictions and shame is what's on the menu. And as someone healing her relationship with her body and with food, I've realized that more important than having the "dream body," the body that is digestible to Eurocentric beauty standards, I think I'll be leaning into becoming the healthiest version of myself, inside and out.

From that lens, when I look around, I find my own models of what it means to live well in a body. The older women in my restorative yoga class, who show up week after week not to shrink themselves but to stay mobile, to breathe, to move with intention and grace. My grandmother, who tends a coffee farm, cooks what she wants, drinks what she wants, sleeps whenever she pleases, and who radiates the kind of vitality that no diet program has ever promised me. These women are not performing wellness. They are simply living, fully and on their own terms. They are who I am becoming.

Handle with care — especially yourself. Collage: Yurani Cubillos

Because when I think about the end of my life, I want to be able to take care of myself. I want to have wine, bread, and butter with my friends. I want to continue my yoga practice. I want to care for my garden and my pets, take daily strolls, and also many, many naps. I want the end of my life to be a reflection of the love and care I poured into myself when I was younger. I want wrinkles that show I lived a life full of joy and constant laughter. I want my tattoos to tell my stories. I want to keep being curious and creative.

And I find it hard to believe I can get there if I fill my life now with restrictions and eliminate the things that bring me joy, rather than finding a balance that works for me. A life nourished not just by food, but by experience, by deep care and connection.

My body is no one's but my own. And it gets to evolve and grow and move, just as I do.

Every body is a universe worth dreaming in. Ilustration: Yurani Cubillos

I'll leave you with this, and I mean it as a genuine question, not a challenge. In 10, 20, 30 years, what do you want to still be able to do? To taste, to feel, to tend to? Sit with that for a moment. Your answer might tell you everything about how you want to live right now.

This sounds beautiful in theory, but isn't taking care of your health important? Isn't there a point where "balance" becomes an excuse?

Yes, health absolutely matters, and I want to be clear that this piece isn't arguing against caring for your body. It's arguing against the shame and restriction that get dressed up as health advice. There is a real difference between nourishing yourself because you love your life and want to keep living it fully, and punishing yourself into a smaller shape because the world told you to. One comes from care. The other comes from fear. I'm interested in the one that comes from care, and I think when we're honest with ourselves, we know which one we're operating from.

You mention Eurocentric beauty standards, but isn't the desire to be healthy universal, regardless of culture?

The desire to feel good in your body is absolutely universal. But the specific ideals we're handed, what size, what shape, what level of visibility a body should have, those are not neutral. They have a history. They have been used to tell certain bodies that they are too much, too loud, too present. So yes, let's talk about health. But let's also be honest about who gets to define it, and whose bodies have historically been treated as the default for what "healthy" looks like. Untangling those two things is part of the work.

How does your training as a death doula connect to how you think about your body? Isn't death a separate conversation from body image?

It might seem that way, but sitting with the reality of death, even in training, has a way of making the present feel very clarifying. When you start to genuinely reckon with the fact that your time in this body is finite, the question stops being "how do I make my body acceptable?" and starts being "how do I actually want to live in it?" Those are completely different questions. One is about performing. The other is about inhabiting. Death has a way of cutting through the noise and returning you to what actually matters,  and for me, what matters is being able to taste, move, rest, tend, and connect for as long as I possibly can.