Conversations With Our Aging Bodies

Our mental and physical selves now enter a new phase of negotiations about what's possible and what's not.

Not my hand now…but is this where it’s going?

My right hand sometimes goes numb. Especially after a long session journaling with pen and paper.

I can’t imagine my beloved journaling experience happening via keyboard. I’ve tried a few times, typing it out rather than writing it out, but it just doesn’t feel the same.

So, I push through that numbness as long as I can to keep writing the words on paper as they keep pouring out of my mind.

But I usually end my sesh before I’m truly done with my writing monologue. Usually because I can’t feel the pen in my right hand.

Is it just a matter of time before this numbness progresses into something more frequent and thus limits me in what I can do with my right hand? Or can I continue to negotiate with my body for more time to do this activity I enjoy (and really need in my life)?

I ask myself this often. For now, it feels like my body is still willing to compromise with me to let me journal. In exchange, all it asks is that I lay off the scrolling every day.

That works for me- I’ll dial back the scrolling to sometimes if I can keep on putting pen to paper often.

I sense that with each passing year, though, my physical self is getting more of the upper hand in these negotiations. I will do all I can to proactively work on a positive exchange between my “want to” mind and my “can do” body.

But, realistically, how much can any of us expect to control what happens with our bodies as we age?

No One Likes To Be Told No

I may not have spent so much time this week talking to my body about what I can and can’t do if I hadn’t experienced a close call with a conversation-ending injury.

About a week ago, I was playing in my weekly pickleball game. Anyone who’s played with me knows I’m not going to do any heroic leaps or lunges to make a shot.

My motto is “I’d rather walk than win.” I like to compete, but I really like preserving all of my joints and their related limbs for use for decades to come.

But cautious though I may be, last weekend I was playing at my average best when a searing thread of pain shot up from my left ankle.

As I fell to the ground on the indoor court, my thoughts immediately raced to an image of myself in a walking boot, sitting on my couch for the next two months.

Within that first minute, I wondered if I’d just ended an ongoing conversation my thoughts have had for months with my body about a future half-marathon walk.

I considered that our negotiations were still open and friendly, despite a painful right hip and knee trying to complicate the conversation. I’ve participated in several of the 13.1-mile events since I was in my late 50s- which I’m very proud of having accomplished.

I’m not ready to be turned away from the negotiating table.

But now, after this split-second move, had I over-estimated my power and shut down negotiations for distance walking? Would I now be told what I could do with no ability to counter-offer?

I’m not a person who easily accepts no as an answer when I really want something. But I know I’m facing a pretty big force when it comes to my body’s power over me.

My Left Foot: not the 1989 film but my reality in the past week.

As I write this, it appears that I twisted my ankle and severely sprained but didn’t tear my ankle ligaments. Following the RICE (rest, ice, compression, elevation) routine, it’s on the mend and I’m walking fairly well.

I’m very relieved that I haven’t completely closed off the deal with my body about participating in sports and half-marathons in the future. The option remains on the table, but I’ve got to step back and let some healing happen for a while now.

These past few days of losing the freedom of mobility and control over what I do, when I do it, and- hugely important to me- being able to do it on my own, really got me thinking. I’ve been very lucky that now well into my 60s, my mind has been able to make deals with my body to offer changes or tweaks in exchange for allowing me to do pretty much what I want.

But there will come a time when I’ll face more closed doors from my body- I know that. I’m working now to open my thoughts to see when fighting back and arguing for more time just won’t work anymore.

I’m visualizing a time in perhaps many or possibly a few years that I’ll need to accept physical changes that happen to me and learn to turn the negotiations from fighting back to finding the way forward.

Shared Stories from the Substack Community

I’m tremendously grateful that my minor injury hasn’t derailed me, yet it has prompted me to think about some “what ifs” and ponder how I’ll find my way forward when my body starts limiting what I can do.

Perhaps it was a nudge I needed now to think more broadly about the future. And coincidentally, or by the design of the universe (sometimes it’s hard to tell which!), my down time this week led me to find these inspiring stories from others in the Substack community who have faced the breakdown of support from their physical selves.

Their stories of working through unforeseen physical limitations are far more powerful and inspiring than any theory I can share.

My friend

Amy Brown

writes the wonderful Substack newsletter, Living in 3D about the many obstacles, changes, and new discoveries in her life in these 50+ prime- time years. She writes movingly in this installment below about dealing with the sudden and debilitating back injury that has made her 2025 reroute itself and look nothing like what she planned:

Pain as my teacher, injury as a portal

I also got so much from two stories that come from the Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age newsletter (publisher

Nancy Peckenham

is so generous in sharing some of my weekly newsletters there, too.)

This story from

Barb Besteni

is about her own experience with a much more serious injury than mine:

When the Body Breaks, The Soul Speaks

And Randall Duckett writes this very moving piece about navigating life with chronic pain:

Accepting Aging

I hope you’ll share your own negotiations with your body in the comments. What compromises have you made? What insight can you provide others on how you found your way forward when your body stopped negotiating with you?

---