What I find amazing is that the statement, “She let herself go” is considered an insult, instead of a cause for celebration. True, it is what is said about (mostly women) who have gained weight or stopped caring about their appearance in the way that ‘they’ think you ought to care. It is a statement of judgement. Of lowering your standards. It implies that ‘she’ once had it together, and now she longer does.

My work life is reawakening from Covid and my travel and ‘in-person’ work is resuming again. This past week I was in Fairbanks, Alaska to work with a team and had planned in 2 extras days before the work started as a buffer against flight delays which have become the norm. One of my Alaskan colleagues asked if I had ever been Denali National Park and I said no. I’ve been working in Alaska for a decade now but had yet to go. It always seemed like a too big of trip to add on to an already busy work schedule, and I often wasn’t there in the summer. But here I was with two extra days in the height of summer, and she generously offered me her car for the weekend so I drove the two hours down to Denali.  

The second day of hiking I walked for four hours in wilderness on a trail that went to three different lakes. I had the trail entirely to myself. Just wind and birdsong. Wildflowers blooming everywhere: fireweed, delphinium, bluebells, bunchberry. And as I was hiking along the trail, that old refrain, “she let herself go” came back to me. It came first from the feeling of having ‘let myself go’ on this adventure to Denali. “I let myself go.” And the statement jiggled in my brain because it’s a statement that is supposed to make you feel bad about yourself, yet what I actually felt was exhilaration—and freedom.  I began thinking of how often this refrain is used. All the times as a kid I heard the adults say it about people they met at the store or who had come for dinner. Said in whispers as they left. How it was said to me by a less-than-caring relative when my marriage ended: “well, you did let yourself go.”

I thought of being back at work in person and having to wear pants after gaining weight during Covid. How I hadn’t gotten new work clothes in two years because all of my work was on Zoom and how in some ways we had all ‘let ourselves go.’  We let ourselves go in ways we hadn’t imagined we could. We let go of our dress codes and our old routines. We let go of the ways we thought we could work together and found new ways. We let go of the priorities we once had and are now in the transition to figure out what they are again.

I found myself hiking to a rhythm of ‘let…go…let….go…let….go…’

And as I hiked, with each footfall, I began to wonder what it would really mean own this statement ‘to let yourself go.’  If you really let yourself go, what would do or what would you stop doing? What would you stop caring about? What would you care more about?

If feels like the life equivalent of that moment at the end of a long evening of wearing really uncomfortable shoes—where you kick them off and stand in your bare feet. Where you feel relief not only in your sore feet, but your whole body—in your whole self. All the ways we hold ourselves back. All the ways we hide the parts of ourselves we aren’t sure about. All the ways we constrict our emotions, our words, our voice.

So rather than fearing the statement: she let herself go. Let’s seek it out—let yourself go. And if we hear someone saying “she let herself go’ about someone else, let’s smile and reply: good for her.

 © 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

*And in this spirit of ‘she let herself go’ I am going to be posting more frequently, and perhaps less eloquently. I have found that over time I had a higher and higher standard to write this blog to the point that I wasn’t writing at all. It is my intention to write once or twice a week now with pieces less polished and perhaps with more questions than answers. I understand that this may be more frequent emails than you wish—and you are welcome to unsubscribe and check in on the website when you wish.