For the last ten years I built my entire identity around clothes. I ran a boutique. I did live selling. I photographed outfits and told you what I was wearing and tried to be the relatable mom who also cared about herself. And underneath all of it, every single day, was this quiet and exhausting mission: to be seen just enough, but not too much. To look put together enough that nobody looked too closely.
I wanted people to think she’s a cute mom who takes care of herself. But I never actually believed I was that. Not really. I always believed — on some level I couldn’t quite shake — that people were looking at my body and thinking it didn’t look how it was supposed to look. That I didn’t look how I was supposed to look. So I hid. Not dramatically. Just enough. Relatable but not remarkable. Present but not exposed.
The last three years were the hardest.
I was the heaviest I had ever been. Physically I was at an all-time low — in how I felt, in how I looked, in how much energy I had to give to any of it. Oscar was really sick. Then Olsen was diagnosed with EoE and Celiac on top of everything else we were already navigating. I was trying to be everything for everyone and I had stopped saying no to anything and I was running completely on empty in a way I didn’t even fully recognize until I looked up one day and couldn’t find myself anymore.
And every single morning I had to get dressed and photograph myself and tell you how much I loved what I was wearing. When I hated how I looked. When nothing fit the way I thought it should. When getting dressed felt less like self-expression and more like proof that I was failing at something I was supposed to be good at. It was a mental clusterfuck. It was a dark place. And I was in it for longer than I’ve admitted out loud until right now.
I think what made it so complicated is that I genuinely believed getting dressed was about impressing people. That the way you looked determined how people perceived you, and how people perceived you determined whether they liked you, and whether they liked you determined whether you were okay. I always felt like I could never quite get it right. Like there was a version of put-together that everyone else had figured out and I was always just slightly missing it.
So I kept trying. I kept buying. I kept photographing. And I kept feeling like none of it was working because the problem was never the clothes.
Losing twenty pounds this year has started to change something in me that goes much deeper than a number. My body is going back to a place where I can see the beauty in what it’s actually done — four boys, four c-sections, six shoulder surgeries, a gallbladder removal. This body has been through things. It has carried and survived and kept going in ways I haven’t always given it credit for. And I’m starting to be able to look at it and feel something other than frustration.
There wasn’t one single moment when everything shifted. It’s been more gradual than that — a slow turning toward myself instead of away. But the Mel Robbins podcast with Erin Walsh cracked something open. The idea that before you get dressed you ask yourself how you want to feel — not how you want to look, not what the room expects, not what photographs well. How do YOU want to feel. It sounds so simple. It changed everything.
Because here’s what I realized: I don’t feel good in leggings and an oversized sweatshirt. I know that’s not what you’re supposed to say — leggings are comfort, leggings are ease, leggings are the uniform of motherhood and I’m supposed to embrace that. But the truth is when I wear them all day I feel invisible. And I’ve spent enough of my life trying to be invisible that I don’t want to do it to myself anymore.
So I’m cleaning out my closet. I’m getting honest about what’s in there — the things I bought to sell, the things that belong to a version of me I’ve already closed the door on, the things that fit who I was when I was trying to disappear. I’m letting all of it go. And from here on out, every single piece that earns a place in my closet has to answer yes to one question: does this make me feel bold, beautiful, confident, and strong? If the answer isn’t a clear yes, it doesn’t belong on the hanger.
Not a maybe. Not ten pounds from now. A hell yes, right now, for the woman I already am.
40 year old Lauren is a fucking boss. She is confident and she gets dressed every morning with a smile on her face. She loves her closet and she only buys clothes that are a hell yes.
I’m becoming her. I’m already her, a little bit. And I’m just getting started.