Ten Years With My Ostomy: What Life Actually Looks Like at 55
This post is a companion piece to the latest episode of the Beautifully Whole podcast. You can listen to the full episode here if you would rather hear the conversation in my voice.
On January 15 of this year, I passed the ten-year mark of living with my ostomy. Ten years since the surgery that changed the shape of my body forever. Ten years since I woke up scared, holding on to my faith with both hands, wondering what life was going to look like on the other side.
And you know what I did on January 15 of this year? Coffee. Bible reading. The gym. Work. A regular Wednesday. I did not stop to acknowledge the anniversary. It came and went, and later that evening I realized what had happened. The milestone that once felt like the entire fabric of my life had quietly become one anniversary among many. I did not mark it because I did not need to. It has become a piece of me and it no longer runs my life.
That felt like something worth sitting with. So today I want to tell you what ten years with my ostomy has actually looked like. Not the surgery story. I have told that story before. This is the story of the ten years since. What I was afraid of at the beginning. What I got wrong. What I got right. And what daily life at 55, ten years in with a permanent ostomy, actually looks like when the story stops being about survival and starts being about a life you love.
The First Year
I want to start with the first year, because if you are reading this early in your own journey, I want you to feel less alone. That first year, I was scared. Not every day, and not all day, but underneath everything, I was scared. My faith was strong, and it carried me. But there was still a version of me that would wake up in the morning and not know what the day was going to feel like inside this new body.
There were days I laid on the floor of my closet crying because I could not fit into the clothes I used to wear. My body was still adjusting to its new normal, and I did not yet know that a year from then I would be back in most of my clothes, and that ten years from then I would have a whole new relationship with what my body wears. I was learning what foods worked. What foods I could no longer have. Broccoli, for the record, is not on my list and never will be again. I was learning what to wear over a pouch. I was learning how to trust that my body would hold. Slowly, the confidence came back. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but it came.
The World Got Louder About This, in a Good Way
Ten years ago, only a handful of people were talking about ostomies publicly. Now the algorithm shows me women changing their pouches on video. Women posting pregnancy stories with a pouch. Women in bathing suits at the beach with a pouch visible. Yes, some of them get hateful comments, and I want to name that clearly. Anyone who tells a woman she should not be in a swimming pool because she has a medical device attached to her body does not understand how the device works. There is no scenario in which the pool causes it to fail. There never was. And every time a woman posts anyway, she makes it easier for the next one.
There is a harder truth alongside this good one, which is that Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are on the rise. More people are needing this surgery than they used to. I did not have either of those diagnoses. Mine came from cancer. But if you are living with pain from Crohn’s or colitis and you have been told that you might eventually need an ostomy, I want you to hear from a woman ten years in on the other side. You do not have to live in pain forever. And life on the other side of the surgery is not the end of anything. It is very often the beginning of a life that finally feels like yours.
What My Body Looks Like Now
I want to be direct about the body I have now, because I think the real version helps. I am up 25 pounds from where I was in my competition days. Some of that is menopause. Some of that is age. Some of that is a decade of a life that got fuller in every direction. I am not the same shape I was at 45 and I am not going to be. I have made peace with that. What I have not made peace with is the idea that a body has to earn its own approval by being smaller. I have earned my body every day for ten years. That is enough.
I still lift weights four days a week. Two upper body days, two lower body days. I do cardio, whether that is a Peloton ride, a spin class, or a long walk. I do yin yoga on Sunday mornings, where I walk down to the studio and lay on the floor hugging a pillow for an hour, and it is the best hour of my week. I stay in the gym because I love how I feel when I am strong, and also because muscle is one of the quiet longevity levers no one talks about enough. Every pound of muscle you keep past 50 is protection. Connective tissue. Bone density. Blood sugar. Balance. The version of me at 75 needs the version of me at 55 to be in the gym now, and that is enough of a reason.
The Stage in Vegas
In November of 2017, less than two years after the surgery, I walked across a stage in Las Vegas at a fitness competition with my ostomy visible. I did it with my whole heart, and the audience gave me a standing ovation, and I did not walk that stage to prove I was brave. I walked it to prove that a body can be beautiful in the exact shape it is in right now, with all of its scars and pouches and stretch marks and stories. That was almost eight years ago. It is hard to believe it has been that long.
I have not competed since. In 2019 I trained for and completed a Hyrox event, which if you have never heard of it is a competition of running mixed with functional stations. Sled pushes, sled pulls, kettlebells, wall balls, rowing, skis. I do not know why I decided I needed to prove that to myself, but I am glad I did. Now I lift because I like being strong, and I move because my body was built to move, and I do not need a stage to make either one of those things count.
What My Days Actually Look Like Now
Here is what a normal day looks like. Coffee first. Then Bible reading and prayer. Then the gym or yoga or a walk. Home to work. Done by four in the afternoon most days. Sometimes an event or a call at night. Three days a week I am puppy-sitting for one of my kids, and once in a while I have the grandchildren. That is it. If someone posted my life on social media, they would probably tell me it is boring. I would tell them I have earned the right to a quieter season.
The other piece of my life is travel. I have been to Italy four times in the last five years. I have been to Greece. I have done mission trips to Honduras and to Nicaragua. I was just in Nashville last week. I do not think a life that includes all of that is boring. It is just a life I no longer feel the need to perform on the internet. I take the trips. I come home. I go back to the gym. I go back to my quiet days. Both are true at the same time.
Twenty-Five Years With John
John and I have been together for 25 years and married for 19 of them. He has been beside me through every single piece of the last decade. The surgery. The recovery. The days on the closet floor. The Vegas stage. The trips. The quiet days. The years when the ostomy ruled everything, and the years when it faded into the background of a full life.
Marriage, in my experience, is the hardest job I have ever had aside from raising children. Two people who love each other in year one keep growing and changing every year after that, and staying married means learning how to grow together instead of apart. We have not done it perfectly. Nobody does. But we have done it long enough to know what we are doing, and I would not trade the years we have had together for anything. He is the reason a lot of the fear from year one softened. Not because he fixed anything, but because he stayed.
The First Lunch After Surgery, and What It Taught Me
Here is a small story that has stayed with me. A few weeks after surgery, I was cleared to drive a car and go out into the world. I decided to meet friends for lunch. On the way there, out of nowhere, I got scared. I was afraid that if someone bumped into me at the restaurant, something would happen to my ostomy. It did not make logical sense. The stitches were healed. The pouch was secure. Nobody was going to bump me in a Nashville-style bar mosh pit at a lunch spot. But the fear was there anyway.
I had to talk myself out of the conversation in my own head. That is not going to happen. You are okay. Go enjoy your friends. Try it. See how it feels. And that has become the way I approach almost every new thing that has come after the surgery. Baby steps. Try it on. See how it feels. Learn that you can. Then move forward from there. That is not just how you live well with an ostomy. That is how you live well with a body that keeps changing on you as you age. Which is another way of saying that is how you live well as a woman.
Where I Am Now, Ten Years In
Ten years in, my ostomy has become a piece of me. It is not the story of me. It is one line on a long list of things that shape who I am. In the beginning it ruled everything. Now it does not run any of it. I would not undo the surgery even if I could. It saved my life, and the life it gave me back has been better than the life I had before. Different, yes. Sometimes harder. But better.
If you are early in your own ostomy journey and you are reading this, hear me clearly. The fear softens. The confidence comes back. The clothes fit again. The travel is still possible. The pool is still yours. The marriage still works. The life you were hoping to still have is still there for you. It just takes some time and some baby steps and some grace.
If you love someone who has an ostomy, this is what life on the other side can look like. If you are just here for the story of a life reshaping itself around something that once felt impossible, welcome. I am glad you are here. Ten years in, I would not change a thing.
If This Speaks to You
If you are living with an ostomy and you are looking for a community where the real version of this life is the norm and not the exception, come join me. My private email community is where I share the stuff that does not make it to Instagram. The updates. The stories. The tips. The people.
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