Naked ladies at the YMCA

Lessons from the locker room you can't find on Instagram

My favorite part of swimming these days isn’t the swimming.

It’s the boiling hot shower I take immediately after.

The second I pull myself out of the pool — still dripping, still gasping a little from that final push — I scamper straight to the women’s locker room, throw off my cap and goggles, and dive under a scalding stream of water.

And then I just stand there.
Head tilted back.
Breath slowing.
Body humming.

It’s this small, sacred pause between effort and everything else. No phone, no checklist, no noise. Just me, standing still, feeling the heat seep into my bones after giving everything I had.

It wasn’t until recently that I noticed something about these post-swim moments: I'm always surrounded by naked ladies.

Not women my age.
Not the filtered, airbrushed versions of bodies we’re used to seeing.
No — these are 75-year-old, saggy-skinned, faded-tattooed, been-through-some-sh*t bodies.

And today, it hit me.

One of the women shuffled past me — hair wrapped in a towel, laughing with a friend — and I realized:
This is the point.

We spend so much time trying to control, perfect, and polish our bodies — fighting time like it’s something we can out-train. But these women? They’ve already lived through the wars we’re still fighting. They’re not hiding. They’re not hurrying. They’re just being.

Soft, strong, unbothered.

There’s something special about realizing that if we’re lucky, our bodies will change, wrinkle, sag, and stretch. They will carry us through love, heartbreak, marathons, stillness, and everything in between.

If the final form is a naked lady laughing by the showers with zero f*cks left to give… I think I’m training for the right finish line :)