How to age gracefully and gratefully with Melissa Joan Hart and Amanda Lee

I bet it doesn’t take long for your critical mind’s eye to conjure up a time when you felt insecure in your body. Maybe it’s that first day changing for P.E. in fifth grade. Maybe the last time being intimate with your spouse when you desperately wanted to turn off the lights. Maybe it’s something life-changing like rebounding post-partum or simply day-ruining like catching your double chin in the mirror on the way out the door.

Whatever the memory, whatever the scale or the season, all of us are haunted at points by the “not ______ enough’s” or the “too _________’s” about our bodies. As my girl Miranda Lambert sings, “gravity is a b****.” She ain’t wrong. No one gets out unsagged, unwrinkled, or unscathed. Not much joy here, huh? Ok, hang on, there’s hope (and lots of laughter) here, I promise!
 

This week’s guests know what it’s like to have all eyes – and cameras – on you. As a child star – beginning acting at 4 years old – whose TV/film career skyrocketed in her teens and early twenties (e.g. Clarissa Explains It All & Sabrina the Teenage Witch), Melissa Joan Hart has decades of experience resisting the snares of comparison and insecurity. But even as a young actress, Melissa says she didn’t feel as much pressure to live up to unrealistic physical standards then as she has this past decade of aging after having her three children. And her bestie and co-host, Amanda Lee (former beauty pageant queen, also mom of 3), doubles down on the crucial intentionality it takes to stay grateful for the body we have, rather than obsessing about the one we don’t.

These two get real and spur us on in the struggle:
-It takes faith and adoring community pouring into your self-worth to build up confidence (it’s hard to maintain on your own).
-“Health/fitness” should look more like what our bodies are able to do than just how our bodies look.
-There’s no better antidote for toxic comparison than gratitude (and Botox 😉)

 
As Melissa so simply and profoundly reminds us, “the goal is to get older.” The goal is to live another day, another year, another decade in a body and mind that serves you best for the time you’re in. Sure, it doesn’t always look or feel sexy, but they’re calling us not the miss the beauty in the process just because we don’t always like the picture. None of us stay 21 forever – why not learn to age gracefully and gratefully (and with no shortage of humor!)?