Photo by Katja Ano on Unsplash

I watched Threshold, the new documentary following Olympic cross-country skier Jessie Diggins through a relapse of her eating disorder, expecting it to be difficult for me to watch. In some ways it was, but not for the reasons I anticipated.

There is a lot the film gets right, particularly its portrayal of the inner world of anorexia. The negotiations, the rules, the constant mental calculations, and the ability to know on some level that what you are doing is harmful while another part of your brain continues to insist that it is completely rational all felt painfully familiar to me. The film also captures something that is often lost when we talk about eating disorders, which is that someone can be accomplished, funny, appearing joyful, surrounded by people who love them and extraordinarily good at what they do while also being very sick.

Jessie is incredibly generous in allowing cameras into that struggle, and I don’t want my questions about the film to diminish that. Talking publicly about having had an eating disorder is one thing; allowing people to watch you struggle with one in real time is something entirely different. There were moments when I found myself thinking about how vulnerable it must have been to know that these conversations, meals and difficult days might eventually be seen by millions of people.

But when the film ended, I realized I had been waiting for it to take me somewhere it never quite went. I understood much more about what was happening in Jessie’s mind, but I still knew surprisingly little about what was happening in her body.

I kept wondering how someone who wasn’t adequately nourishing her body could continue competing at the highest level of one of the most physically demanding sports in the world, much less continue winning. What was happening physiologically as she skied mile after mile in extreme cold? Was she cold all the time? What was happening to her heart, her hormones, her bones and her ability to recover? Did she lose her period? Did her hair change? Her hair, after all, is such a visible and joyful part of her public identity, with the braids and glitter that have become almost synonymous with Jessie Diggins. I found myself wondering whether there was another story happening inside the body we were watching race across the screen.

Those questions aren’t about wanting access to Jessie’s private medical information, and I don’t believe that being the subject of a documentary means she owes any of us those details. What I wanted was context. Eating disorders don’t just change how someone thinks about food or their body; inadequate nutrition affects virtually every system in the body, and in an endurance athlete those consequences intersect with enormous physical demands. I wanted the film to help me understand that intersection.

I felt similarly about treatment. We see that Jessie has support and we understand that she is working toward recovery, but I wanted to know more about what treating an eating disorder looks like when the person in treatment is also expected to train and compete at an elite level. How do you decide whether an athlete is medically safe to race? What happens when recovery requires something that conflicts with training? Who makes those decisions, and what happens when the eating disorder wants one thing, the athlete wants another and the body needs something else entirely? There was an opportunity to help people understand that recovery isn’t simply deciding to eat more or wanting badly enough to get better.

Maybe that wasn’t the film the filmmakers wanted to make, and that’s fair. Threshold doesn’t have an obligation to be an eating-disorder education film simply because its subject has an eating disorder, and there may be many things Jessie chose, understandably, to keep private. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that without more context about what was happening physically and what recovery actually required, the film left us with an image that could be complicated for some viewers: Jessie was struggling with anorexia, her body wasn’t getting what it needed, and she was still one of the best cross-country skiers in the world.

At first, that was the part I couldn’t understand. How could she possibly still be winning?

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that maybe my surprise was pointing toward the larger story.

We have a tendency to use functioning as evidence of health. If someone is showing up for work, getting good grades, raising their children, exercising, laughing, traveling or succeeding professionally, we assume things can’t really be that bad. In sports, that assumption may be even more powerful because performance is so visible and measurable. You can look at a finish line, a podium or a World Cup standing and see what appears to be objective evidence that a body is working exceptionally well.

But functioning isn’t the same thing as being healthy, and winning isn’t evidence of wellness. A person can accomplish extraordinary things while struggling with a serious illness, and a body can compensate for an astonishing amount before it finally can’t.

I think that’s what stayed with me most after watching Threshold. Not that Jessie Diggins could have an eating disorder and still win races, but that I was so surprised that she could.

Perhaps that tells us something about how badly we still misunderstand eating disorders. We expect illness to eventually make itself obvious enough that we can no longer ignore it, and too often we wait for that moment before deciding someone is really sick. We look for the failing body, the missed semester, the lost job, the hospitalization, the person who can no longer get out of bed or, in an athlete’s case, the moment when they can no longer perform.

Jessie Diggins shouldn’t have to stop winning for us to understand that she was struggling, just as someone with an eating disorder shouldn’t have to stop functioning before we believe that they need help. Maybe the threshold worth examining isn’t the point at which a person becomes sick enough to deserve concern, but why we require them to cross one at all.

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Have you ever been afraid of a garbage can?

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I have—though not the ordinary kind under your kitchen sink, or the big plastic one you drag to the curb. I mean those elaborate waste stations in cafeterias, airports, and food courts: the ones with three or four openings labeled trash, recycling, and compost, accompanied by tiny pictures meant to make the whole process easier, but that somehow make me feel like I’m taking a test I didn’t study for.

I’ll stand there holding a dirty paper bowl or a plastic fork, turning the container over in my hands to search for some tiny symbol on the bottom that will tell me where it belongs. I study circles and arrows and numbers as though deciphering hieroglyphics on a cave wall—all while becoming hyper-aware of the people behind me who apparently know exactly what to do with their garbage.

And I don’t mean simply putting a recyclable in the compost. I mean the strange, persistent feeling that everyone will know I’ve made a mistake—as though there’s an alarm waiting to go off the second the fork drops into the wrong hole.

Of course, I know there is no alarm. But apparently, some part of me has spent a lifetime listening for one.

There are so many rules we absorb over the years without ever deciding to adopt them, until eventually nobody has to tell us what to do because we’ve gotten so good at telling ourselves: don’t embarrass yourself, don’t make a scene, you should know the answer by now, you should be able to figure this out without asking for help.

Put that way, my fear of setting off an alarm with a compostable fork sounds ridiculous. But the fear of getting something wrong when I should have known better feels intimately familiar.

Garbage, at least, should be easy because there are signs and pictures and, theoretically, a correct answer - life is much less accommodating.

There are no little pictures telling us which career belongs in which opening, when to stay in a relationship and when to leave, whether saying yes makes us generous or saying no makes us brave, or whether we should keep trying or finally walk away. Yet we approach so many of these decisions as though there is a correct answer hovering just out of view—one that everyone else has managed to figure out while we’re still standing there holding the proverbial fork.

So we look around and wonder what a good mother would do, what a successful person would do, and, perhaps most persistently, what we are supposed to do.

Eventually, we don’t even need anyone standing nearby to judge us because we can do that perfectly well ourselves, which makes me wonder how much of my life I’ve spent trying to avoid alarms that were never actually going to sound. How many times have I said yes because saying no felt like doing something wrong? How many decisions have I tortured myself over because I believed there was one right choice, and that making the wrong one would say something fundamental about who I am?

There are real alarms in life, of course. There are choices that hurt people, consequences we need to take seriously, and responsibilities we shouldn’t shrug off. I don’t want to move through the world as though nothing matters, I just don’t want to keep confusing this matters with I must get this exactly right.

I wonder if that’s the distinction I’m still learning, because sometimes there is a right bin and sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes you can read every sign, examine every picture, look around at what everyone else is doing, and still have absolutely no idea where the thing in your hand belongs.

At some point, the person behind you is waiting, you

have to choose one, and you have to let go.

And maybe the surprise is that when you get it wrong, most of the time, no alarm sounds.

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Dinner was winding down when my then-17-year-old son, Max, started telling us about something he'd learned that day in his medical program. Around the table were Max, my 10-year-old daughter Amelia, my husband David, and me.

“Did you know STDs are called STIs now?”

“What?” I asked. “What’s an STI?”

He looked at me with genuine disbelief.

“Mom... don’t you have a master’s in public health?”

“I do. But ever since the inauguration, I’ve been on a news holiday.”

He shook his head. “STIs are sexually transmitted infections. We also learned about penises and... ginas.”

I paused.

“I’m sorry... what was the second one?”

He sighed. “Ginas.”

“Ginas? I’ve never heard of a body part called a gina.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I really don’t.”

“Mom...”

“No, seriously. Is that a new anatomical term? Because I have an MPH and I don’t remember learning about a gina.”

He sighed deeply.

“You KNOW!” he yelled.

“I know lots of things, Max. I know about hearts, livers and pancreases...”

“Mom...”

“...but I have never, in all my years of education, encountered a gina.”

He closed his eyes.

“OH! You mean VAGINA!

That’s the word! Why are people so uncomfortable saying vagina? It’s just a body part?! VAGINA, VAGINA, VAGINA!” I asked-screamed.

“Mom...” he groaned, making the kind of inconsistent eye contact only a teenager can make when they’re desperate for a conversation to end.

“No, seriously,” I continued. “We don’t hesitate to say elbow. We don’t whisper shoulder. We don’t invent nicknames for our spleens. So why does vagina still make perfectly intelligent people squirm?”

At this point, I was fully committed.

“For centuries we’ve wrapped women’s bodies in euphemisms and embarrassment. We call them ‘private parts’ before we teach girls the correct names for them. We lower our voices. We spell the word instead of saying it. We laugh nervously. We apologize. And somewhere along the way, we teach that this perfectly ordinary body part is somehow... not to be named.”

Finally, Max looked up, determined to end the conversation once and for all.

“I just say pussy.”

Silence. I nearly spit out my water.

Here we were debating whether vagina was too uncomfortable to say, only to discover my teenage son had skipped right over the anatomically correct term and landed on the slang version.

And that’s what stayed with me. How does a generation raised with better sex education, greater access to information, and more openness about bodies still become more comfortable using slang than the actual name? Somewhere along the way, the correct word became the awkward one.

That isn’t accidental. It’s cultural.

The words we use—and the ones we avoid—tell stories. Long before girls understand anatomy, they learn which body parts adults whisper about. Which words make people uncomfortable. Which parts deserve nicknames instead of names.

Language doesn’t just describe culture, it shapes it. When we hesitate to say vagina, we’re not just avoiding a word. We’re passing along a message that this part of the body is somehow different, embarrassing, unspeakable.

Maybe changing culture doesn’t always begin with sweeping reforms or viral campaigns. What if it begins around a kitchen table with parents willing to say the words out loud? Would kids learn that body parts aren’t shameful if families had conversations awkward enough to matter?

And, occasionally... With a teenage son who accidentally proves your entire point. As parents, we don’t get everything right, but we do get to decide which messages we pass on.

I want my children to know that every part of their body has a name, every question deserves an honest answer, and no body part should carry more shame than an elbow.

If you’re looking for a way to start those conversations at home, I can’t recommend Dr. Charlotte Markey’s books enough. The Body Image Book for Girls and The Body Image Book for Boys are thoughtful, evidence-based, and refreshingly free of shame. They help kids build a healthier relationship with their bodies long before culture has a chance to write the story for them.

Because maybe changing culture doesn’t begin on social media; maybe it begins around a kitchen table, one anatomically correct conversation at a time.

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This isn’t another opinion piece about GLP-1 medications. Whether someone takes them is entirely between them and their doctor. But I keep coming back to a different question...

What does it do to someone in eating disorder recovery when the culture around them collectively decides to celebrate weight loss all over again?

Living in recovery from anorexia today is the psychological equivalent of trying to stay sober while living inside a distillery. As someone who developed restrictive anorexia at eight years old, I recognize this celebration. We’ve heard this language before:

o Compliments that arrive the moment someone becomes smaller.

o Admiration disguised as concern.

o Discipline confused with deprivation.

o The quiet assumption that less is somehow more.

Recovery teaches you to question those messages. Culture teaches you to believe them.

So what happens when you’re doing the hard work of recovery while the culture around you begins applauding the very thing your illness once convinced you would make you worthy?

People sometimes imagine recovery as a finish line—a place where comments about weight no longer sting and before-and-after photos become invisible.

That hasn’t been my experience.

Recovery didn’t make me immune to culture. If anything, it heightened my awareness of it.

It’s a little like buying a red Bronco. The moment you drive it off the lot, suddenly they’re everywhere. They were always there—you just hadn’t noticed them before.

Recovery has felt the same way.

I can’t unsee the messages about bodies, food, worth, and thinness. They’re everywhere: advertisements, headlines, social media feeds, doctor’s offices, casual conversations, and even compliments that are meant to be kind.

There isn’t a vaccine against culture, instead, recovery has taught me something else.

Curiosity.

Or, as I prefer to say, discovery is recovery.

Recovery isn’t about pretending I don’t notice the messages. It’s about discovering them before they become my own. That’s why this cultural moment feels so unsettling.

Recovery asks me to believe that food is nourishment, appetite is a healthy biological signal, and my worth has never been determined by the size of my body.

Meanwhile, the culture around me increasingly celebrates appetite suppression as progress and weight loss as transformation. For someone with a history of anorexia, those aren’t abstract ideas. They’re familiar invitations but what’s different this time is the language.

The heroin chic era didn’t pretend to be anything other than a pursuit of thinness. Today’s obsession is often wrapped in the language of wellness, longevity, optimization, and metabolic health and for someone in recovery, that distinction matters… It allows the eating disorder voice to put on a lab coat and can become harder to recognize because it no longer sounds like vanity; it sounds like truth.

That’s what unsettles me - not that people make deeply personal healthcare decisions or that these “treatments” exist, but that our culture is once again so quick to equate becoming smaller with becoming better.

GLP-1 medications didn’t invent that story but our cultural response to them has become a powerful amplifier of it. And yes... I am triggered. There. I said it.

Not because I begrudge anyone the right to make decisions about their own body. I don’t. I’m triggered because every headline, every before-and-after photo, every compliment about becoming smaller reminds my eating disorder of a language it once spoke fluently.

But being triggered isn’t the end of my story anymore. It’s the beginning of my curiosity. Instead of accepting the message, I stop and ask:

o Who wrote this story?

o Who benefits from my believing it?

o And is it a story I still want to live?

That’s the work of recovery. Not learning to ignore the messages. Learning to question them. Because curiosity creates discovery and for me...

That’s also why I’ve partnered with Align33 Media. These conversations are too important—and too nuanced—to have alone. In the coming weeks, we’ll be bringing together clinicians, researchers, people with lived experience, athletes, parents, and storytellers for a panel podcast exploring the cultural messages we inherit about bodies, food, identity, and belonging.

Not to tell you what to think, but to invite all of us to think more deeply about the stories we’ve inherited...and whether they’re still worth believing.

I hope you’ll join us.

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Before we begin, take a look at the illustration below and complete the one-question quiz.

Results

If you checked even one box, congratulations, you’ve officially been appointed Head of the Department of Nobody’s Business.

Your responsibilities include:

• Explaining why bananas have too much sugar.

Casually mentioning the glycemic index whenever watermelon appears.

• Beginning sentences with, “Actually...”

• Sharing fascinating facts that absolutely nobody requested.

It was one of those perfect Adirondack summer days.

Volunteers were gathering to prepare for an evening fundraiser, and I walked in carrying a giant bowl of watermelon.

“I have watermelon for everyone!” I announced. “It’s my favorite food! I ate it with bacon the entire summer I was pregnant!”

Then, from somewhere nearby:

“It’s high in calories.”

And from another:

“And it’s high on the glycemic index.”

I smiled, picked up another slice, and said, “I don’t care.”

I wasn’t looking for commentary, just looking to share a bite of summer.

The exchange stayed with me the rest of the day. There was no malice. I genuinely think they believed they were being helpful. People love to let other people know what they know and that is fascinating to me.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve started believing that if we know something—or think we know something—we should say it. Immediately.

Someone says they’re tired.

“You should take magnesium.”

Someone orders dessert.

“Sugar is addictive.”

Someone says they’re going for a run.

“You know, strength training burns more calories.”

Someone offers watermelon.

“It’s high in calories.”

We’ve become a culture of commentators. Not just about food. About everything. Parenting, politics, relationships, LED light therapy, travel….

Someone shares an experience and, before they’ve even finished speaking, we’re already searching our mental files for the article, podcast, statistic, or story that proves we know something useful.

I think most people genuinely want to help but somewhere along the way, we’ve confused contributing with connecting.

Contributing says,

“I have something to add.”

Connecting says,

“I’m here with you.”

One offers information.

The other offers presence.

Maybe we’ve forgotten that not every conversation is an invitation for commentary.

Knowledge and curiosity are is valuable as is sharing what we know. Wisdom however is knowing when not to share it. Or at least pausing to ask:

Was anyone asking?

Food conversations are especially tricky because we never know who’s listening.

A child who hears, “I can’t eat that.”

“That’s way too many calories.”

“I’ll have to work this off later.”

is learning how adults think about food long before they understand nutrition.

What if you just told someone recovering from an eating disorder that watermelon is “highly caloric”?

Or interrupted someone who’s already doing the best they can to navigate a new diabetes diagnosis? Or the chemotherapy patient who’s had severe mouth sores and can eat birthday cake for the first time in months.

We rarely know what someone else is carrying.

After decades o being in recovery from anorexia, I’ve discovered something I never thought I’d say: calories are no longer the most interesting thing about a slice of watermelon. The most interesting thing is that it tastes like summer and elicits memories of boat rides, picnics, concerts and long evenings that don’t end until after nine.

Living in the Adirondacks, where winters are long and grueling, I have an extra-special appreciation for these fleeting months and I don’t want to spend them calculating the nutritional profile of watermelon.

Maybe the next time someone offers us a slice of watermelon, we don’t need to respond with what we know. Maybe we can simply say, “Thank you,” and enjoy the watermelon.

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Resources

If you or someone you love is struggling with an eating disorder, help is available. Contact

1. ANAD (National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders) at 888-375-7767 or visit their website to find free peer support groups and recovery resources.

2. National Alliance for Eating Disorders at 866-662-1235 (Monday–Friday, 9 a.m.–7 p.m. ET). Their licensed clinicians provide free, confidential treatment referrals.

3. 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline

   Languages: English, Spanish

   Hours: 24/7

RECOVERY

It’s a word we use all the time, but I think we’ve misunderstood it.

My anorexia began when I was eight years old. I have no memory of a life before it. When people talk about “getting yourself back,” I still find myself wondering... back to who?

For me, recovery isn’t getting back to an earlier version of myself.

It’s meeting myself.

Recovery is the lifelong practice of no longer being your own worst enemy.

It’s speaking to yourself with compassion instead of criticism. It’s redirecting your discipline toward living instead of shrinking. It’s pursuing purpose over perfection.

People are sometimes surprised when I say this, but part of my recovery is structure. I thrive on routine and purpose. Color-coded calendars make me weirdly happy. Sue me.

Structure gets a bad reputation because people often confuse it with rigidity. They’re not the same thing.

Eating disorders thrive on rigid rules. Healthy structure isn’t rigidity. It’s the scaffolding that allows my life to stand.

Rigidity hijacks my life.

Structure helps me live it.

Recovery doesn’t ask me to abandon those qualities. It asks me to reclaim them.

I still move my body most days. I lift weights because I’m 52 and want strong bones and to age well. I want to carry groceries, sleep well, think clearly, and feel capable in my own body.

Today, I move because I want to care for the body that carries me through my life.

Movement is an act of respect instead of punishment.

In the past, I exercised to punish myself. If I felt like I might throw up, I considered that a successful workout.

The behavior may look similar from the outside.

The relationship underneath is completely different.

Recovery teaches me grace.

Instead of asking, What’s wrong with me? I ask, What do I need today?

For a long time, I was known as “the girl with anorexia.” I worried that if I became strong in recovery, I’d lose my identity.

“If I’m not the girl with anorexia... who am I?” I wondered.

Today, people know me for entirely different things.

Storyteller.

Teacher.

Thinker.

Listener.

Mother.

Community member.

Collaborator.

Spoiler alert: anorexia wasn’t my most interesting quality.

The eating disorder is part of my story.

It is no longer the title.

As I said in my TEDx talk, life is full of vicissitudes, volumes, and variations—and that’s a good thing. When a patient’s heart-rate monitor in the ICU no longer has ups and downs, they flatline.

For me, that’s what recovery really is.

Not perfection.

Not arriving.

Not the absence of struggle.

Recovery is moving through the vicissitudes, volumes, and variations of life without abandoning yourself.

It’s becoming your own ally.

Maybe we’ve been defining recovery too narrowly.

For me, recovery isn’t returning to who I was before anorexia.

I mean, can you remember who you were at eight?

It’s discovering the parts of me that existed all along.

So, what’s my recipe for recovery?

There isn’t one.

Recovery isn’t a recipe you follow.

Believe me, I would’ve loved one.

It’s one you write.

And just like any good recipe, it changes.

Some days it calls for more grace.

Other days, more courage.

More rest.

More structure.

More connection.

More curiosity.

You taste.

You adjust.

You keep going.

Maybe that’s the closest thing I have to a recipe.

Discovery.

A pinch of grace.

A generous helping of curiosity.

Plenty of purpose.

And enough self-compassion to keep beginning again.

What’s your recipe for recovery?

Discovery is recovery.

#DiscoveryIsRecovery

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When we first started talking about this piece, we assumed we’d find more differences than similarities.

After all, Robyn is 52 and Morgan is 33.

Twenty years is a long time.

Entire technologies have come and gone. Media has transformed itself ten times over.

Surely the messages women receive about their bodies, their value, and their place in the world had evolved too.

Turns out, not as much as we’d hoped.

What struck us most wasn’t the differences between our generations.

It was how quickly we recognized each other’s stories.

Robyn remembered magazine covers promising women they could lose five pounds before summer.

Morgan remembered “What I Eat in a Day” videos and influencers documenting every bite.

Different decades.

Same assignment.

Women were being evaluated.

Constantly.

Not for what they built.

Not for what they created.

Not for what they contributed.

For how they looked.

Robyn: One thing younger women may not fully appreciate is how openly we discussed women’s bodies in public.

Morgan: That’s true.

People often talk about the 90s and early 2000s with nostalgia.

The music was great.

The fashion is somehow back.

But culturally?

We were pretty ruthless.

A woman could win an Oscar on Sunday and by Wednesday people were debating whether she’d gained weight.

Robyn: And at the time, we didn’t find that strange.

Morgan: That’s the part that gets me.

Nobody thought it was strange.

That’s what culture does.

It normalizes itself.

Most people don’t notice they’re breathing air until somebody points it out.

The messages become so common that they stop looking like messages.

They start looking like reality.

Robyn: Monica Lewinsky is the example I keep coming back to.

Morgan: Same.

Because looking at that story through today’s lens is almost disorienting.

A 24-year-old intern became one of the most publicly humiliated women in America.

And so much of the conversation wasn’t about power.

It wasn’t about workplace dynamics.

It wasn’t about the President.

It was about her.

How she looked.

What she wore.

Whether she was attractive enough.

Whether she was worthy of sympathy.

Robyn: And nobody thought that was weird.

Women have always been remarkably adaptable.

Which may explain why every generation thinks it’s making different choices while often responding to remarkably similar pressures.

Robyn: We were told women could have it all.

Morgan: We were told women could do it all.

Robyn: That’s actually worse.

Morgan: I know.

Somewhere along the way “having it all” became “managing it all.”

Career.

Family.

Relationships.

Friendships.

Physical health.

Mental health.

Financial health.

Skin care.

Gut health.

Sleep hygiene.

Hydration.

Apparently modern womanhood is just maintaining seventeen dashboards simultaneously.

Robyn: While pretending you’re not overwhelmed.

Morgan: That’s the most important part.

If you’re overwhelmed, you’re supposed to optimize that too.

Robyn: I miss the days when my biggest concern was whether my scrunchie matched my Swatch watch.

Morgan: I can’t relate, but I can tell you there was a time I believed the right water bottle and a matching set from Lululemon might somehow bring inner peace.

Robyn: Did it?

Morgan: Surprisingly, no.

Robyn: Huh.

Turns out self-actualization wasn’t hiding in accessories after all.

Morgan: Disappointing, really.

Both: We had such high hopes.

What we’ve both come to realize is that women are often handed an endless self-improvement project and then congratulated for participating in it.

Be better.

Do more.

Fix yourself.

Improve yourself.

Reinvent yourself.

The finish line keeps moving, but somehow we’re expected to keep running.

Women, apparently, are never supposed to arrive.

Robyn: Which makes me think about our mothers.

Because I don’t believe they intentionally gave us these messages.

Morgan: Neither do I.

Most mothers were passing along what they themselves had inherited.

Not because they wanted their daughters to feel inadequate.

Because they wanted them to survive.

To belong.

To succeed.

To be accepted.

Robyn: Women who loved us.

Women who were doing the best they could.

Women who were also trying to be enough.

Every generation hands the next generation a collection of stories.

Some are useful.

Some aren’t.

Morgan: The challenge is figuring out which stories still deserve a place at the table.

Robyn: Maybe that’s the real work.

Not becoming enough.

Questioning who convinced us we weren’t enough in the first place.

Because messages can be inherited.

But they can also be rewritten.

And perhaps the most hopeful thing about conversations like this is realizing that rewriting has already begun.

We’d love to hear from you.

What messages did you inherit about what it means to be a woman?

And which ones are you are ready to leave behind?

Xo,

The ship docked in Nassau and Max and I wandered through the shops, which appeared to have been designed by someone who thought, “What if Tiffany & Co. and a beachside gas station had a baby?” Jewelry sparkled in glass cases while racks of “Bahamas” shirts swayed in the breeze. There were perfumes, magnets, keychains, straw bags, and enough duty-free liquor to tranquilize a small village.

In one store with jewelry cases alongside the typical tourist tchotchkes, I spotted a pink sapphire. A pink sapphire had been on my “to-live” list for years. Same concept as a bucket list, but with a more optimistic branding strategy.

It was gorgeous.

A princess cut surrounded by tiny white diamonds. A real gem.

I hemmed and hawed while Max encouraged me to buy it.

“You’ll always remember this trip when you look at it,” he reasoned.

He wasn’t wrong.

I made the mistake of trying it on.

After a “bit” of negotiating the price by nearly 50%, I walked out with my prize, complete with papers of authenticity and a swagger in my step from the savings.

I always wondered whether it was real, but I loved it and that’s what mattered, right?

Fast forward a few years.

My daughter Amelia came home from daycare with an invitation to a Disney princess party. Both “i”s on the invitation were dotted with little pink gems. My friend Erin happened to be over, and somehow the conversation turned to my ring.

Curious, I slipped it off my finger and held it next to the invitation.

The pinks were...similar.

A little too similar.

Within moments we had transformed into forensic scientists. We held the invitation under the kitchen light. Then we held the ring under the kitchen light. We tilted both objects at forty-five-degree angles and squinted. We moved to the window for natural light. We took turns examining them from various distances like ophthalmologists.

Erin held the invitation next to the ring.

I held the ring next to the invitation.

“Do you think mine is a little darker?” I asked hopefully.

“I think the invitation has more depth,” she answered.

“That would be embarrassing.”

“I mean, Disney has a reputation to uphold.”

At one point I think we may have licked our fingers and polished both gems.

Neither of us had any actual expertise in gemstones, but that didn’t stop us from confidently discussing facets and brilliance as though we had spent years at the Gemological Institute of America.

Eventually, Erin suggested we take the ring to her Uncle Frank’s jewelry store and settle the question once and for all.

Real pink sapphire or Disney princess stone?

I was too scared to go inside, so Erin volunteered.

It didn’t take long for her to return to the car.

Her eyes—already notably large—were somehow even bigger and a little glassy.

I raised one eyebrow, silently asking for the verdict.

Then she flashed her familiar smile and said,

“I’m so sorry, Shumie, it’s a Disney princess diamond.”

I felt disappointment.

Not because I had spent the money, because I had been duped. Someone had knowingly handed me “papers of authenticity,” negotiated with me like we were dealing in rare treasures, and happily sent me home believing I’d scored the bargain of the century.

And then, eventually, I started laughing so hard I was crying. It was delightful!

Because the truth was, for years I had absolutely adored that ring.

I admired it.

I wore it proudly.

I showed it off.

And never once did I think,

“This ring would be so much prettier if only I knew for certain it were genuine.”

In fact, the pink stone fell out of the setting years later and a member of the Executive Committee at Johnson & Johnson got on her hands and knees with me in a bathroom searching for the missing gem.

Which, if we’re being honest, was probably worth less than the gum stuck under the sink.

Over the years I’ve come to realize that Uncle Frank wasn’t wrong.

The ring wasn’t worth what I thought.

But he was appraising the wrong thing.

He was looking at a stone.

Meanwhile, I was thinking about:

• a cruise with my son where we ate ice cream multiple times a day, enjoyed water slides and snorkeling. I was thinking about Max’s excitement when he convinced me to buy it.

• the years I spent admiring that ridiculous ring.

• laughing so hard in the parking lot when Erin broke the news that I’d apparently been sporting a Disney princess diamond.

• two grown women crawling around a convention center bathroom floor trying to rescue a rhinestone.

Those memories, it turns out, were priceless.

And unlike the ring, they’ve only become more valuable with time.

As usual, my son was wiser than me.

“You’ll always remember this trip when you look at it,” he said.

He wasn’t wrong.

Life’s greatest treasures often come disguised as disappointments.

And perhaps growing older is, in part, the slow and beautiful process of learning to appraise the right things.

Question for you: What memory, object, disappointment, or detour has become more valuable with time?

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“You’re gross.”

“Your thighs touch because you’re fat and need to lose weight.”

“You cannot eat anything except carrots today.”

“How will you ever find someone to marry?”

These are some of the relentless conversations my brain had with itself—in one form or another—most days until my forties.

An antagonist.

A sadomasochist.

A thief of peace.

When I wrote my memoir, Bones, I reread thirty years of journals. Oddly, that was harder than living through the years in which I had written them.

As a woman living strong in recovery, I was heartbroken for the teenager and young woman patiently penning her pain. Page after page, I saw someone desperately trying to earn her worth, believing that if she could only become smaller—physically, emotionally, even socially—she might finally be enough.

I’m saddened that so much of my life was hijacked by an eating disorder. I could have been learning to play the guitar or speak Italian. I could have multiple PhDs. Instead, I was a prisoner in my own mind.

Here’s what I know now.

That voice wasn’t me.

It was an unwelcome narrator.

And like many unwelcome narrators, it spoke with such authority that I mistook it for truth.

If your best friend said,

“I’m ugly.”

“Nobody likes me.”

“I don’t fit in.”

Would you agree with them?

Probably not.

You’d say, “Of course not.”

You’d be kind.

Strangely, many of us save our cruelest words for ourselves—words we'd never say to our worst enemy and would never dream of saying to someone we love.

We deserve that same kindness.

One exercise I’ve found helpful is to step outside myself and write in the third person.

Set a timer for two minutes.

First, write about yourself.

Then imagine you’re writing about someone else.

Here’s what that looked like for me.

Writing about myself:

I’m a lot.

I take up too much space with my big personality and don’t have a filter.

I have to be involved in everything.

Writing about Robyn:

Robyn brings energy to everything she does.

She’s the person you call when you need an ear, a helping hand, or a thought partner.

She’s charismatic and funny.

She cares deeply.

She makes people feel seen.

Funny, isn’t it- how easily compassion flows when we believe we’re talking about someone else…

Maybe the challenge isn’t learning how to be kinder.

Maybe it’s learning to recognize that we are just as deserving of the kindness we so freely offer others.

So I’m curious:

What welcome—or unwelcome—narrator has been living rent-free in your mind?

And if that voice isn’t telling the truth…

What story might you choose instead?

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What stories have shaped you?

What welcome—or unwelcome—narrator has been living rent-free in your mind, molding how you experience yourself in the world? What story has shaped the way you see yourself, much like a ceramic artist shaping their next masterpiece?

It’s the six-year anniversary of giving my TEDx talk, What’s Your Story?, in which I invited the audience to “not be afraid to share the stories that shaped them.”

Why?

Because stories connect us as humans, and they have since the beginning of time.

As I said in that talk:

“We can find truth and understanding through storytelling, and unlike technology that changes every five minutes, it’s a timeless skill.”

What I didn’t know when I stepped onto the stage and into the red circle at 9:14 am was that I would walk off that stage a different person.

And I certainly didn’t know that the red circle beneath my feet would become symbolic of something much bigger.

On the TEDx stage, 2018. I thought I was giving a talk. I didn't realize I was opening a door.

Watch my TEDx

I’ve always loved The Red Tent by Anita Diamant. Not because I remember every detail of Dinah’s story, but because I remember how I felt reading it.

In the novel, women gathered together during menstruation. What society viewed as something that made them unclean or separate became, in Diamant’s telling, a place of connection.

The red tent became a place where women shared stories, laughter, heartbreak, wisdom, and the ordinary moments that make up a life. A place where no one had to pretend and where stories were not only told, but witnessed.

Looking back, I realize that stepping into that red circle was the beginning of the red tent I would spend the next six years creating.

After my TEDx talk, I had the privilege of helping people around the world uncover the stories that shaped them and find the courage to share them.

Why?

Because storytelling transformed my life, and that kind of magic was too good to keep to myself.

And today, on the six-year anniversary of that talk, it feels fitting to begin something new.

Welcome to Stories That Shape Us.

I believed those words when I said them:

Don’t be afraid to share the stories that shaped you.

But I couldn’t have known how much I would come to rely on them.

Since that day, life has continued to shape me.

I’ve experienced joy and heartbreak, grateful for the opportunity to love and be loved.

I’ve watched my children grow up, lucky to be a “bird launcher.”

I’ve faced career changes and become a shaper of the current working version of me.

I’ve discovered that recovery isn’t a destination but a practice and that some days are stronger than others.

And perhaps most importantly, I’ve learned that the stories we are most tempted to hide are often the stories that connect us most deeply to one another.

This is a place for stories.

Stories about recovery.

About parenting and marriage.

About identity and reinvention.

About being human.

About the impossible standards women and men inherit and are bombarded with.

About aging.

About leadership.

About humor.

About preferring walks around lakes to climbing mountains despite living in the Adirondacks.

About whatever else I’m finally brave enough to say out loud.

Some stories will be funny.

Some will be painful.

Some will be deeply personal (I’m not afraid, as you know if you’ve read my memoir, Bones).

And some will involve ex-boyfriends, giant poppy seeds, and the consequences of dating someone with excellent eyesight and questionable restraint in spandex.

But those are stories for another day.

I’ve learned that one of my superpowers is observation.

I notice—and will write about—the things people miss:

• Has anyone else noticed the Volvo logo is the universal symbol for man?

• The impossible standards and how literally nothing has changed regarding the messaging women receive about meeting an unattainable ideal standard of beauty—and how young men are targets of the “wellness” industry, too.

• The things many of us are thinking but few of us are willing to say out loud.

For better or worse, I have never been particularly gifted at keeping those observations to myself.

So, from time to time, I’ll shine a light on those things too.

Why?

Because I’ve learned that one of my gifts is noticing things and having the courage—or perhaps the lack of a filter—to say the thing many of us are thinking but few of us are willing to say out loud.

Stories matter.

Stories shape us.

And I believe that when we share them, we give others permission to share theirs.

So, pull up a chair.

There’s room in the circle.

I’m glad you’re here.

And wherever you are in your own story, I hope you won’t be afraid to share the stories that shaped you.

One of my hopes for this space is to create a curated collection of stories—not just my own, but yours as well.

Over time, I hope Stories That Shape Us becomes a place where we bear witness to one another’s lives and discover that we are far less alone than we imagine.

A Question for You

What story has shaped who you are? Please consider sharing in the comments.

If this story resonated with you, consider sharing it with someone who might need it.

And if you’d like to continue this journey with me, subscribe for free to receive future editions of Stories That Shape Us in your inbox.

Don’t be afraid to share the stories that shaped you.

With gratitude,

Robyn