At what point did taking care of ourselves become something we're expected to organize our lives around rather than something that helps us enjoy them?
This week in 50-somethinghood, I’ve been wondering why wellness is starting to feel like a moral imperative.
Lift heavy weights.
Wear the weighted vest.
Eat enough protein.
Take creatine.
Take collagen.
Take vitamin D.
Manage cortisol.
Optimize sleep.
Don’t drink.
Don’t eat sugar.
Track your glucose.
Take care of your gut.
We know that all of these things are important—that there are valid health reasons for all of them. But taken together, the message starts to feel like: If you aren’t actively optimizing your aging, you’re aging incorrectly.
I care about my health. I care about staying strong. I care about mobility, bone density, sleep, and feeling good. But I do not want wellness to become another fucking performance metric.
So the big question on my mind: What does wellness actually mean to the 50+ woman?
Not what the wellness industry says it should mean.
Not what menopause influencers say.
Not what longevity bros have decided women should import from their protocols.
Not “how to age gracefully.”
But what we consider living well.
I started thinking about this after reading Tom Garland's The Rise of the Wellness Anarchist, where he writes about the dramatically underserved middle ground between wellness obsession and opting out entirely. His version of that middle looks a little different from mine, but it got me thinking about what that middle looks like for women my age.
Wellness for me, right now, is an inconsistent mix of physical strength, cardio, flexibility, mental, emotional, and physical health, and perhaps most importantly, happiness.
Basically, I think of my wellness as a mixtape.
Remember those? You didn’t put twelve versions of the same song on a tape. You put together a bunch of different songs because, somehow, they belonged together. Some you played constantly. Some you skipped depending on your mood. And someone else’s perfect mixtape could be absolutely unbearable.
I’m pretty sure wellness works the same way. Or should.
I want strength on mine. And sleep. And walking. And pizza. And flexibility. And friends. And probably beer. And wine, definitely wine. Sometimes I’m going to play the heavy-weights track. Sometimes I’m going to skip the walking-with-a-weighted-vest song entirely and go straight to the wine song.
The point isn’t to do all of it all of the time.
The point is to make a mix that helps me live my life.
Which makes me wonder whether the wellness industry understands us at all.
Because the wellness industry isn’t just offering us tracks. It’s trying to hand us a finished playlist and tell us this is what wellness looks like at 50+.
Maybe I don’t need a brand to define wellness for me. Maybe I just need brands that understand they can be one track on my playlist without trying to own the whole thing.
Looks like, once again, most brands are misunderstanding the life happening outside of their marketing machinery.
Thanks, but I’ll make my own fucking playlist.
