Softening the Gaze

Finding grace in the journey of aging

A message from Lee:

I’m so delighted to share this beautiful guest essay by my friend Paige Michele Sargent. Paige is a gifted writer, musician, and artist whose Substack, H E A R T S O N G, explores the rich terrain of creative expression, self-love, healing, transformation, and what it means to be human. Paige is also a songwriter, and under her moniker The Deepness, she shares original music that weaves together themes of spiritual awakening, ancestral remembrance, and liberation. You can learn more and listen through her website.

Paige’s work is deeply soulful, and she has a rare ability to name what lives in the unseen spaces of the heart. I know her words will resonate deeply with many of you here. It’s an honor to welcome her voice to Radiant Wise Women.

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A message from Paige: This piece is written with a deep bow of gratitude for Lee and this community of Radiant Wise Women. The medicine of Lee’s wisdom - of embracing the fullness of our lives at any age - has inspired me to reflect on my own journey towards deeper levels of self-love. Thank you for reading and for being here - I’m so grateful to be bringing these thoughts to you today

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Middle age is upon me, more swiftly and abruptly than I had ever imagined.

And yet, when I was younger, I was never someone who feared aging. Maybe it was due to having been immersed in the depths of my own youthfulness that I hadn’t considered what it truly meant to grow older. But it wasn’t always that way. This journey of accepting myself for who I am - for truly loving myself regardless of the where, what, when or why - has been a long and winding path.

There was so much that shaped who I was in my formative years - so much that impacted my worldview and my inherent beliefs about myself. Even as I write in the past tense, I acknowledge that some of these beliefs are still lingering; still being gently untangled as I continue to heal.

Like many women, my early introduction to body image came through the lens of inherited beliefs. My sincere and well-intentioned mother, a product of the diet culture of her generation, did her very best with what she knew. And yet, the messages she absorbed - about beauty, worth, and the ideal female form - found their way into me, too. These patterns were passed down, not out of malice, but out of survival and conditioning.

And of course there was (is) the persistent messaging from the media and culture at large: multi-billion dollar campaigns, carefully orchestrated to make women feel bad about themselves and to make them think that they are not enough as they are - that they must contort themselves into someone smaller, someone thinner, someone more polished, presentable, acceptable.

I inevitably absorbed these programs, as did my mother before me, and her mother before her.

My mama, doing her very best with the skills and knowledge that she had, and with every genuine well-intention to raise me well, unknowingly passed along her own harmful views about herself and her body.

In my pre-pubescent years when my body was first starting to change and take shape, when I gained some weight and began awkwardly carrying it, my mother’s immediate reaction was to “fix” me by taking me to a child psychologist specializing in weight loss. So there I was at age 12, filling out food diaries, tracking my meals and ingredients, weighing myself and counting calories - all before I even understood what any of that meant.

But I internalized one glaring message: That my body was unacceptable.

And so I became increasingly uncomfortable with myself and who I was at that young and tender age. I understood that being thin was good, and that being overweight was bad - and that my inherent worth and value was contingent upon my body size.

And so that is the undercurrent that set the stage for the next few decades of my life, always running in the background, informing how I would attempt to care for myself as I grew into an adult woman.

The Damage Done

I won’t belabor the details - chances are, many of you will recognize this story: the relentless pursuit of thinness and youth wrapped in the guise of “health.” Fasting, juicing, over-exercising, chasing fad diets and wellness trends, endlessly tracking and restricting.

For me, this played out in every way imaginable. I tried it all. The Cabbage Soup Diet, The Master Cleanse, the Medical Medium diet, fasting through my already overtaxed adrenals, thousands of dollars wasted on juicers and gadgets and cleanses and powders, and seven years of veganism (which ultimately degraded my body, health, and metabolism - a longer story for another day). These “casual” dieting behaviors eventually turned to more serious ones like laxative abuse, starvation, and endless cycles of restricting that always led to prolonged bouts of painful and destructive bingeing.

Every step has led me here.

Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I am unrecognizable to myself. In photographs I can see how large I have become, how different I appear. I am sixty pounds overweight - the largest I have ever been.

Most of the time, I’m alright. After gaining this weight, I made a decision that I would still let myself be seen, despite the powerful inclination to hide under the covers and never come out.

I carry my new body size with confidence, and I attempt to engage with the world in the same way I did in the past. But not all days feel easy. It’s incredible that even after years of being on a path of healing, I still have moments that feel devastatingly difficult. Some days I can’t leave the house. Some days I spend hours trying on every outfit I own, only to resign to cancelling my plans last minute and staying in. Back under the covers I go.

On those days that are extra hard, I observe myself with as much softness as I can muster. In the mirror, my eyes glance over this new manifestation of me: the graying hair; my soft, puffy face. New shapes. New curves and rolls of skin. A stomach twice the size it used to be. The lines etching my face, once unfamiliar, now making their home on the contours of my skin.

I acknowledge that this experience I am having in my body is not indicative to how most women my age are feeling. My story is my own, and that who I am today is a reflection of my upbringing, my experiences, my traumas, my joys, and the choices I’ve made. I recognize the impact of every moment leading up to where I find myself: the drug and alcohol addiction of my younger years, the chain smoking through my twenties, the extreme dieting habits and food behaviors of my adulthood…all of which have eroded my health in their own way - slowly, and steadily - over time.

Yes, I am a product of a culture that has failed women on a deep level. But staying in victimhood is not the medicine required for moving me forward. I am not at fault for how I was raised or for what happened to me as a child, or the conditioning I received. But it is my responsibility to integrate what I’ve learned since so that I can tend to myself now, as an adult.

And so I return to myself with compassion. With steadiness. With a willingness to begin where I am, and to meet what’s here with care.

This journey of loving ourselves is a ceremony that never ends.

And as I write to you from this place - I am taking a deep breath in, a pause, and a slow release. I am sinking into myself, closing my eyes. Finding softness. I am remembering why I am sharing all of this with you today, and what has prompted me to express my story.

To think how long I have been focused on healing, and to see that I am still learning how to accept myself fully for who I am - is deeply humbling. I know I’m not alone in this.

But even so, I reflect now from this place, and realize in hindsight that it was easy to love myself when I was thin; when I was radiating the eternal glow of youth. It was easy to proclaim, “I love myself!!” With exuberant, bright eyes - when I was living in a body that had not yet been affected by time, or the drastic hormone shifts that would come later.

In hindsight, I can see how easy it was for me to hide behind the facade of the new-age affirmations and self-love proclamations I adopted while I was being enthusiastically validated by a culture and society that inherently celebrates the season of the Maiden, while ignoring the Mother and casting out the Crone.

So the question living inside of me today is,

Can I love myself even when things get hard?

This is my greatest invitation.

And so the journey continues - like a perennial flower that cascades open and blooms, year after year, in a perpetual dance of renewal.

I, too, am invited into my own dance with time. Both messy and graceful. The ebb and flow of forgetting and remembering. The experience of finding myself off-path on a hard day - one where my reflection is too much to bear - and then coming back to myself. Coming home to the physical, inhabiting this full body. Shifting my critical eye to a soft, loving gaze. Whispering gentle words of love and encouragement. Holding my belly with these swollen hands.

Allowing myself to feel it all.

I used to think that loving ourselves was a singular event. Now I understand it to be a life’s work.

As I step back for a widened perspective, I am remembering the woman I was at age 27, freshly sober, seeing life with clear eyes for the first time since I had started drinking at age 15. I feel a twinge of tenderness as I recall that I had never even said the words, “I love myself,” or, “I love my life,” until after that pivotal moment in my story. I had never even thought the words. In fact, in the throes of the darkest days of my addiction, my mantra was, “I hate my life.”

It’s amazing how cutting those words are - even to type them, to simply hold them now in my awareness. It’s a miracle that I was able to transcend and transmute that frequency to what my mantra is today:

I trust my life.

And so no matter what is happening, everything comes from that place.

I trust this trajectory. I trust my path, I trust my purpose. I trust every occurrence, every moment. I trust the uncertainty. The friction. The challenges. The redirection. I trust what I’m guided towards.

And I trust my body.

I trust her deep and fathomless wisdom. I trust that she knows what she needs, and that in every moment, she is operating as and within nature’s perfect design. I trust that whatever is happening in my body is being divinely orchestrated - and that every “symptom,” regardless of its manifestation, is a healing response.

It’s no small thing to make this shift in awareness, but there is also relief and surrender in it. I wouldn’t describe the current experience of being in my body as easy - no, the discomfort is ongoing. But as I actively welcome in more ease, I acknowledge that the discomfort serves a purpose, too.

Crossing the threshold

And so my body - strong, enduring - ushers me into the next chapters of my life. As I sit with her, I turn to face my coming days with a sense of quiet peace. There is grief, too - to be sure. Grief in growing older, in letting go of the young woman I used to be. But there is also the relief of acceptance - a deep exhale in fully welcoming a new stage of life.

I know that my body and I are walking together, hand in hand, towards what’s next. I know that I can meet whatever is asked of me with grace. Yes, the pace is slower. But the scope is widening in a way I couldn’t have previously imagined.

A few months ago, I read Lee’s powerful essay, Becoming a Better Elder: Lessons in Wonder, Compost, and Freedom. I was struck by the beauty of her message - that conscious aging is a choice we can make at any time, at any stage of life. That vitality doesn’t belong only to the young. That ripeness, depth, and meaning are not behind us, but ahead. And what I had shared in response in that comment section comes to mind now:

“Thank you for the invitation to step into my later years with confidence and grace, and to welcome in the juicy and potent wisdom of my life’s fullness as I age. It’s deeply heartening to receive this perspective, that my life could be just beginning, as I sit here on the brink of 40.”

This is the threshold I now find myself standing on.

I will continue to navigate my health journey with humility. And I will keep trust as my compass.

In strength and honesty,

Paige Michele Sargent

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Lee Sumner Irwin is a teacher, visionary, author, artist, intuitive guide, and grandmother who has spent the last few decades discovering a multitude of ways to uplift, inspire, and connect with women who feel called to her work. Over the years she has led retreats worldwide, coached women as they birthed their unique gifts and creative energy, and facilitated healing journeys. Her award-winning first book is Radiant Wise Woman: Breaking Free from the Myths of Menopause and Aging. She currently resides in Alabama with her husband where she enjoys dancing, exploring the wonders of nature, building community, nurturing her family, and finding ever-new ways to express her creativity.

Here at RADIANT WISE WOMEN, you’ll only find soul-filled, honest, and authentic content. No artificial intelligence — just pure human consciousness + creativity.