A woman I knew who cared for older people for many years once told me that she marked the beginning of old age as the point at which an individual’s concern for beauty and appearance became instead, a preoccupation with health.

In the young, beauty is the visible expression of optimal physical health. Our culture values youthfulness above all so we’re less sure about what beauty means for the old though so often it’s about maintaining an illusion of youth in defiance of chronological age.

Beauty 

Just lately, I have marvelled at the way younger family members engage with today’s beauty regimes. Their artistry in making up is consummate. And given the dewy flawlessness of their youthful faces, their efforts only accentuate characteristics that ooze good health: smooth skin, plump lips, sparkly eyes. Attraction may be a complex phenomenon, but I guess for the young, at least on one level, it all comes down to, as evolutionary psychologists might argue, signalling reproductive suitability.

While I’m in awe of their transformation into earthly gods, I know too that my young relatives are often anxious about image and appearance. No matter how much I tell them that they are beautiful both inside and out, how much I celebrate their uniqueness, they dismiss my reassurances. They are embarked upon a ferocious race to find a mate, so my warm words won’t wash. Skin-deep beauty is their principal resource in the elaborate game of self-marketing that is today’s dating game.

I really don’t envy the pressures of the matching and hatching stages in life: from my vantage point, it looks so exhausting. But I remember with a little satisfaction, a time when I felt effortless confidence in my body to do as I bid, whether it was to dance the night away, look fabulous in skinny jeans, scale a mountain, give birth, or pull an all-nighter and still wake with a fresh face for the world.

Until my 60th birthday, I was the careless custodian of my body. I never showed it the slightest gratitude for propelling me through life with such energy, rarely troubling the doctor. This good health was mine by right, something I would enjoy well into old age, the result of good genes and sound upbringing. Or so I thought.

And then, as we were planning to celebrate my milestone birthday, I was diagnosed with lung cancer. My indifference towards my body turned to hatred for it. As I write those words, I shudder at the destabilising power of that feeling. Hating the body I could not escape created a terrible prison.

Since that first diagnosis, I have experienced an alienation from my own body, a belief that ‘it’ has betrayed me, that I have failed ‘it’ – and as an ex-smoker, I have only myself to blame. Whether my cancer is down to genes or bad choices (or a blend of both) I have come to believe that I have been colonised by some cellular ‘squatter’ from which I will never be free and whose sole objective is to flourish at the expense of my survival.

But just lately, I’ve noticed a softening in my attitude to my body. Since my recovery from my first cancer in 2018, which involved a pneumonectomy (the removal of my left lung), I’ve started to appreciate the way my body has adapted to the most drastic surgery. Over many months, my remaining lung gradually took up the slack and, with conscious effort on my part – box breathing, singing, playing the recorder – achieved enough capacity for me to enjoy an active life of running a business, enjoying walking holidays and regularly caring for children.Tr

Trauma 

The extraordinary ability of my body to thrive following my first cancer has become for me something I now more readily acknowledge. And lately, I have begun in a quiet way to celebrate it too as symbolic of growth and healing that can arise from the most radical trauma. There is beauty of quite a different kind in this, the sort that owes more to courage through suffering than propitious biology.

Those of us who live with cancer will probably experience a complex and sometimes troubling relationship with our body. But it’s a relationship I’m determined to rehabilitate. I guess I’ll do this by appreciating, loving even, both its adaptiveness and its vulnerability – and treating it with all the tenderness it needs to get me through each precious day.

*How has your experience of cancer or illness changed your relationship with your body? I always welcome comments on living with cancer. Drop me an email at [email protected]