Ep 143 Midlife and the MIRROR: What Your Changing Reflection Is Really Telling You

Content note: this episode gently touches on restrictive and disordered eating. Nothing graphic, and held with care  but please look after yourself and come back another time if that feels kinder today.

This week I had a photo taken that, completely by chance, mirrored one from my very first photoshoot five years ago. Same pose. Same kind of setting. Two very different women; or rather, the same woman, with far more of herself available to bring to the moment.

This episode is about what our reflection really shows us, and why, especially in midlife, the changing face in the mirror often isn't a problem to fix but an inner self asking to be met. I share the story of freezing in front of a camera in 2021, an idea about why we were never meant to scrutinise ourselves the way we do now, and what genuinely shifted in the years between those two photographs.

If you want support navigating midlife shifts like these, get in touch at carlykillen.com

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Thanks for listening to Rooted In Presence

If you’d like to get in touch with a question about today’s episode or find out how I can support you with coaching, here’s how to reach me:
📧 Email: carlykillenpt@gmail.com
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Transcript

0:46

Hello, and welcome to Rooted in Presence. I'm Carly, your host and your guide/breathwork facilitator, strength coach, midlife guide, all those things. And, founder of Still Space Hull. So we are on episode number 143, and you're very welcome if you are joining us back this week. And if you are new, hello. You can say hello to me, either on my socials or via my email. I'll put links in the show notes. Anyway, this episode is coming with just a little heads-up, before we get fully into this. I am gonna lightly touch on some different ways that I've related to my body over the years, so gentle content/trigger warning here. There'll be some mention of restrictive eating, perhaps disordered eating. I'm not gonna be going into deep detours, and I'll be holding it all with care and gentle reflection, a lot of compassion. But if that is a tender area for you right now, I want you to feel completely free to skip this episode or perhaps return to it another time when it feels right. You knowing what you need is exactly the kind of thing this whole podcast is about, so take care of yourself first, always. Okay. Now, for those of you still here, let me share with you what's going on for me right now, what is present. So I have a bit of a tale of two photographs, so perhaps I will... I'll begin there. So just over a week ago now, I had a photo shoot for my business, something I do relatively regularly over the years. It was an outdoor one this time. But I discovered something that We were taking a photo that pretty much mirrored a photo I'd had taken back on my very first photo shoot in 2021. A similar pose, kind of a similar setting, but five years apart. And when I realized this, something in me just became very still. I had to just take a moment there, because so much has changed between those two images. Not necessarily the things you'd see first with your eyes, although yeah, five years have passed, I look quite different. The real changes are the ones that have happened underneath. And I've been sitting with what those two photos have to say to each other ever since. So, I thought I'd bring it here and see what might be useful for you, too. So I'll take you back to that first photo in 2021. Crouched down in front of a puddle, kind of catching a reflection, this sort of, you know, above the low world kind of vibe. And I remember it really clearly. I was hardly breathing. Holding a pose that I'd been kindly and helpfully guided by the photographer. Coordination and posing is not a strength for me. And yeah, he was very good at what he did. But I was gripping and forcing... Just try my best to just be there. It wasn't easy. And this shoot came after weeks of dieting, weeks of, you know, particular kind of preparation to appear more leaner. The whole focus had been on my appearance, on how I would look, on presenting a certain version of myself to the world. I'd brought my social media followers along for the journey, reporting my progress each week. Weight, steps, things I was doing, how I was feeling. It was, uh, quite a run-up. I think about 12 weeks So this day was highly anticipated, and I was anticipating reporting back as to what a wonderful experience it was and, uh, maybe why everyone should do it. Or although even back then I wasn't really into telling people what to do. But there was a point in that session where the photographer said something that, well, all photographers say, I'm pretty sure. And he said, "Well, just be yourself." And perhaps there's nothing, there's nothing wrong with that. Of course, we want people to be themselves. I've probably said it to plenty of my clients in various scenarios. But in that instance, I completely froze because a question rose up in me that I couldn't answer. And they said, "Just be yourself." My response was, "Who is that? Who am I?" And that creeping realization that I didn't know. I didn't know who I wanted to bring forward at that point. And yeah, I wanna be honest about a layer of this That I've only really just found the language for and been able to share for myself. But as I was heading out to that photo shoot, waiting for the photographer to arrive, seeing him approaching with the camera, stood there in my gym gear, clothes that I would normally feel fine training in, something seriously shifted, and suddenly I felt incredibly exposed. A moment of old fear surfaced, and I just wasn't ready to meet that yet. Certainly wasn't ready to show it to the outside world. And so, yeah, I had to pull back right inside myself, push down all those feelings of fear and panic, 'cause I'd spent weeks talking about how much confidence my journey had brought me, and that was true. It really was. But something I've been learning over the years that I didn't quite know back then is that two things can absolutely be true at once. I had built real confidence, and there was a deeper layer underneath that I didn't have the words for or the safety to meet, and seeing that camera just revealed it in that instant, in real time, before I was ready. And yeah, we got through the rest of the shoot. It was fine. I managed to pull out the smiles. Some of them are genuine, some, yes, I was very much bracing my way through, and this isn't the photographer's fault. But as I got into the car, I spent the next two hours crying. The confidence I thought I had, this point that I feel like I'd arrived at, it wasn't quite what I believed it to be. It was a bit of a rude awakening, to be fair, and well, let me be clear that that wasn't actually a failure, although at the time I wasn't feeling too clever and I think I felt like a bit of a fraud. But looking back that afternoon in the car, it was really just a bit of a crack of light allowing something in that was gonna become part of Part of a much deeper journey to actually get to know myself. Not the version I could pose as, not the version that I thought people needed to see so that they would believe I was a good coach, that they would work with me, that I was a worthwhile person. But yeah, the real me. So there's an idea I want to share with you, that I've been reflecting on that's showed up quite powerfully around all this, and well, I haven't been able to shake it. And it's not something that I've heard for the first time, but it's just landed that more deeply since this recent experience. And it's the idea that we were never really meant to look at ourselves the way that we do now. So if you think about it, for almost all of human history, I think it's only the last 2,000, 3,000 years, but before that, our ancestors didn't have mirrors. They didn't have front-facing cameras. I mean, that's only been around in, what, the last 10 years? Just they didn't have full-length glass or ring lights or any kind of accurate mirror. If they saw their own reflection at all, they saw it in water, in a puddle, a pond, a still stretch of river, or I've also read in obsidian. So yeah, maybe they looked at themselves in crystals. I think that's pretty cool. But a reflection in the water, it's soft, it ripples, it moves, it's impermanence. They would just capture a glimpse of themselves, and then it would be gone. They would never stand and scrutinize every detail, every perceived flaw the way that we can and do many times a day now, especially not under harsh, unforgiving light. So there's something in that I find really moving because the mirror invites a kind of scrutiny that I'm not sure we were ever built to withstand. It invites us to freeze the image and always pick it apart, to appraise ourselves more like an object. Whereas I believe water only ever offered a glance, a, a soft moving, living glance, and then back to life. And I'll come back to my second photo in a moment, which was also quite fittingly taken near water. But I wonder what might soften in us if we met our own reflection a little more like our ancestors did. Not something to fix, but something that's just a passing glimpse of a living being in motion on their way to just do their next little bit of life So I'd like to move us on to another part of this reflection. I don't know if this is jumping about or if it's flowing for you, so bear with This is called Rooted in Presence after all. Sometimes I'm just gonna share what is present. But I wanna go a little more deeply now, and gently, because it just sits right at the heart of this in some way. But as I've reflected on that 2021 photo, all the years around it, I've come to see something interesting about myself, and perhaps you might relate to. There've been many times in my life where I've asked my body to speak for me, to carry a message I didn't have the language for, or the courage, or the safety to say out loud. And these are just viewpoints along a journey, by the way, not my full autobiography. And there's a lot more that could be said about each of these another time. Maybe one day, maybe not. Maybe that's a chapter just for me. But for now, those few honest glimpses or these little bits of sharing are just illustrating a bit of a point. Because there was a time I maintained a body that was so much smaller than what was natural for me, partly as a way of seeking validation, a way of trying to find my own worth in how I looked, in the approval that a certain kind of body seemed to bring, one that's perhaps considered closer to the social beauty standards of today that keep coming back around, the thinness. And there was a period of restrictive eating that, looking back with a lot of compassion for that version of me, was in part an attempt to signal a need for care and support that I couldn't yet find the words to ask for directly. My body was trying to say something my voice couldn't. And later, there was that strong, lean, muscular image of myself, and there was real joy and real strength in that, genuinely. That journey was amazing, something I still maintain on some level. But if I'm honest, some of that was also armor, a way of showing how strong I was, perhaps, somewhere underneath, a way of feeling I could withstand danger, that I was too solid to be hurt. A way of saying, "Don't mess with me." And more recently, in my burnout recovery, carrying more weight, which in part was almost a... maybe not almost, an actual protest, a refusal to be that slender gym body as proof of my coaching ability. The idea that my worth as a coach, especially as a, a woman in the fitness industry- The worth that was placed on my physique. And what I'm noticing now, um, this feels, mm, a little new and tender, but I'm okay to share it. It feels important. And it's that my body doesn't need to carry any of these messages for me anymore. Not the smallness, not the armor, not the protest, 'cause I'm actually learning to say these things out loud, to speak for myself And I guess that's sort of what this podcast is about too. So that to me is what it really means to bring the inner world outside. For years, my body was my inner world made visible, but more unconsciously. A signal I couldn't read properly myself, let alone voice. But now I'm slowly managing to bring my inner world out on purpose with actual words, with language, choice, and that feels completely different So let's go back to this last couple of weeks though, the most recent photo shoot I had. So I went to this shoot with a completely different intention. I had no intentions to look a certain way, not to present a version of myself I thought would be acceptable. But just to show up as me, to share the things I love, to invite people into my world, to bring my inner world outside willingly this time. Which is, if you think about it, the exact thing that the photographer back in 2021 was trying to draw out of me when he said, "Just be yourself." But he could see that there was something there to be shared, which was really nice. I just didn't feel safe enough to let it out yet. I didn't have access to it, but now I do. And I'd like to name what made that difference, because it wasn't that I finally look right. It wasn't a body thing at all, well, not in that kind of way. It was that I finally feel safe enough to be seen, or at least more of myself to be seen. Not saying I'm some kind of finished endpoint, it's not really a thing, but there's a real subtle difference here because there are two parts to it in my mind. There's feeling seen so that you can be met, like really met as you are, and there's also that feeling safe enough to be seen in the first place. They're not quite the same thing, but you kind of need both. And it's complex, but then so is all the work I do. Human beings are wonderfully complex. That's why I love working with them. And there's many ways that we can create safety, that we can build that into our lives. But for me, more than anything else, not solely, but mostly, it was my breathwork journey. Now, I discovered the kind of breathwork I do now in 2024. Of course, all those years prior I was breathing. I had some focus on my diaphragm. I wasn't too bad on the breath awareness actually because of my years of struggling with asthma. But finding this different way to relate to myself in the last couple of years Has certainly made me reflect on the last five years or so, 'cause when I think about it, all of this since that photo, the years of twists and turns that came before I discovered it. There is a small rueful part of me that thinks, "Oh, if I'd had this in 2021 instead of 2024, I might have taken a much more direct route to feeling as I do now." Fewer detours, perhaps less pain. But I guess that's not how it really works. I needed the detours to know what I know now, to feel a value in it. And I guess that's why I share breathwork the way I do now, trying to save people some of the years and some of the pain that I went through. But what breathwork gave me, it wasn't a quick fix. There was never a two-minute practice that sorted everything out. It was much slower and deeper than that. It gave me, probably for the first time, a language for my own nervous system. A way to understand what was happening in my body, the freezing, the bracing, the old fear, and not treating it as a flaw or a symptom, but finally being able to treat it as genuine information. And it built my confidence to hold space, not just for other people, which I've been doing for years, but really hold space for myself, to be my own safe space, my own safe person. And that's the thing that let me walk up to the camera in this last week or so and just be there as me. So now I want to be really clear about something, 'cause it does matter to me, and I don't want to be misunderstood where possible. None of this is me being against any physical change, so please hear that. There are genuine health needs. There are times when a change in body composition is genuinely good for our health, and I say that as someone with a clinical background as a dietician. I take that very seriously. And beyond health, there is choice. Your body is yours. I am never here to tell you what you should or shouldn't do with it. That's not my place, and it never will be. But the invitation I'm offering isn't about what you do. It's perhaps about the lens you look through. 'Cause there's something I see so often, particularly for those of us in mid-life, and especially as you're noticing that your reflection might be changing as you're navigating your perimenopause and menopause phase of life. When we notice our reflection changing, It can be genuinely disorienting. You look in the mirror and someone slightly different is looking back, and the very first instinct all too often is to read that as a physical problem to be solved, to reach immediately for the fix, the diet, the regime, to reverse it, to go back. And sometimes, yes, a physical change is exactly what's wanted, and it's completely valid. But sometimes, and quite often, what's actually shifting isn't really about the body at all. It's the changing reflection. It's our inner self changing, and it's asking to be met. Reaching straight for a physical fix can, without us realizing, be a way of avoiding that deeper invitation. Maybe I'll let you sit with that one for a bit. 'Cause the reflection is changing because you are changing, and that might not be too much of a bad thing. Perhaps it's just another threshold to cross. So the question I gently offer you isn't a, "How do I fix what I see?" But perhaps it's more like, "What if what I'm seeing is my inner world asking to be seen?" And while we're here, let me say something about photo shoots themselves, because again, I don't like being misunderstood, but I do change my mind. I'm not anti photo shoot, not even slightly. I mean, this whole reflection came from my most recent photo shoot. I still have photos taken for my business quite regularly, and I love that I get to do that now from a different place. And I've had clients do photo shoots who've benefited hugely. I've watched women see themselves in a completely new light. I've seen them learn how to open up their body in a way that meant that months later, they actually loved the holiday snaps instead of hiding from the camera, which is not a small thing. But the real gift, pretty much every time, wasn't the photos at all. It was that the journey to the shoot taught them about themselves and their lives. The showing up, the being seen. And let's be super clear here, I'm not the kind of coach that uses heavy dieting. Some were a little leaner, yeah, for sure. That's what they wanted, so that's what I supported them with. But that was never the full point, and it was never the source of the transformation. The biggest changes were internal. It was what they came to understand about who they were along the way. So it's the same lesson, really. A photo shoot, just like a physical change, can be a genuinely beautiful thing, and it's often not that shoot, uh, itself that matters, but what's driving it and what we allow it to mean. The very same event can be an act of self-abandonment or an act of self-expression, depending entirely on the lens. Those two photos I have are an example of that. Similar pose, another puddle- Camera lens five years apart, and the thing I really want to say here is that I haven't become someone else. I've certainly discovered more of me. Same woman, both photos. One just had far more of herself available to bring to the moment So to close, thinking about those two photos, the pose, the five years apart, the water. That first photo where I'm holding my breath, performing a self I didn't yet know with whole inner worlds locked away because it wasn't safe to be seen. And the second, breathing fully, fully there, fully present. I was bringing that inner world outside on purpose. Um, not because I'd fixed anything about who I am or how I looked, but because I finally became a safe enough place for myself to be seen And if there's an invitation in all of this, perhaps it's this one. Next time you capture reflection, a mirror, a window, a photo, a puddle on a walk, perhaps you might try to meet it a little more like water. Soft, moving glance at a living being on your way somewhere. Nothing to fix, just you in motion, changing as you're meant to. And by all means, go and have a photo shoot, enjoy the camera, celebrate yourself, if it comes from a place of expression, not from a place of proving. The lens you bring to it means everything. And if you'd love some support in doing this deeper work, in feeling safe enough to be seen and bringing your own inner world outside, that's exactly what I hold space for, through breathwork, coaching, through the community I'm building at Still Space Hull. It's becoming a lovely place to land, somewhere online and in person to be met gently as you are while you do this tender work of coming home to yourself. You are so welcome, and there is space for you here. If you wanna go and check any of that out, head over to stillspacehull.com or for the coaching aspect, head over to carlykillen.com and I will leave those detours in the show notes. So until next time, may you meet yourself with compassion, walk with presence and remember you already have everything you need.