Commusings: On Strength & Being Human

Dear Commune Community,

It’s Schuyler, stepping in again for Jeff with this question:
What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger, right?

The very first life forms on earth figured this out a few billion years before science decided to call it “hormesis.” This is the process by which exposure to a low dose of a chemical agent or environmental factor – which would be damaging at higher doses – induces an adaptive, beneficial effect on an organism. Basically under the right amount of stress living things (from cells to plants to mammals) grow stronger in their attempt to return to homeostasis.

A stressed vine, for example, makes a better-tasting wine. And thanks to xenohormesis, it also leads to a better-for-you wine. (Though you might have to drink even more wine than I do to actually accrue the purported benefits of the polyphenol resveratrol. I am deeply invested in this n-of-1 experiment.)

Jeff untangles these concepts at length in his upcoming book GOOD STRESS, in which he investigates the benefits of doing hard things, such as cold plunging and fasting. These are beneficial stressors anyone can leverage to upgrade their physiology.

But women are the natural ninjas of hormesis. We practice physical pain management from the onset of puberty, managing hormonal fluctuations and uterine contractions on a monthly basis for years (decades!) — whether we put that low-grade stressor to use in childbirth eventually or not. I also see the women around me continually applying these principles (consciously and unconsciously) in their emotional and spiritual lives. We ‘feel’ more – and we suffer greater rates of anxiety and depression – but we also forge deeper personal connections and largely create the social web that undergirds functioning societies.

Swiss-German physician Paracelsus penned an early definition of hormesis in the 16th century: “All things are poison, and nothing is without poison. Only the dose permits something not to be poisonous.”

In our three-part series of queries to the luminaries of Luminescence, we asked them to reflect on our strengths as women and how we can artfully embrace imperfection. As with part one – 5 Letters to Our Younger Selves – they delivered. Perfect little poison pills for your edification.

With love,
Schuyler

 • • •

On Strength & Being Human

Reflections from speakers at our upcoming Luminescence: Women’s Health & Longevity Summit

DR. SARA SZAL

When I feel into my body and notice what arises with the prompt “embracing imperfection,” I immediately notice my heart stirred by my own difficulty with higher weight and overeating. Women, food, and eating is such a complex, entangled enterprise.

I believe women are shamed out of their bodies at an early age. Women experience more violence in our culture than men, and I think it’s this violence turned inward that may be a key factor in disordered eating, overeating, and craving carbs, ultimately leading to many health issues (from depression and higher weight to insulin resistance and Alzheimer’s). Let’s look at how the harm travels from outside to inside, from incident to PTSD to autoimmune disease.

Refinery29 performed a survey of one thousand women and found that 65 percent were criticized about their bodies by age fourteen, and 41 percent were criticized between ages ten and thirteen. Women are told they are not right—too thick, too thin, too hairy, too short, too brown, too big, too aggressive, too much. The trauma of being female in a patriarchal society leads to private suffering and shame. We dissociate from our interior world and stop speaking the truth about our external world. We doubt ourselves and our inner guidance about right and wrong, then we beat ourselves up for not measuring up to impossible standards.

New York Times bestselling author and poet Cole Arthur Riley recently said on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast that we as women get shamed out of our bodies young, and then dissociation makes us stay out of our bodies, almost like a defense mechanism.

Then we wonder, “Am I in here?”

We don’t inhabit our bodies, our own homes, and it gets managed in the best way we can manage in childhood, that is, dissociating and eating to self soothe.

Cole describes a common response to trauma – dissociation – as a mercy, not a bad thing. I agree. She then turned against her body in disdain, in annihilation, in how she fed herself. Psychiatrist Stephen Porges, MD, frames the development of eating disorders like bulimia within his polyvagal theory; that is, an eating disorder can occur when eating behavior replaces social behavior as a regulator of the nervous system.

That feels right and relevant to my own disordered eating and also potentially relevant to the central role in endometriosis, adenomysosis, fibromyalgia, and other forms of autoimmunity — all examples of turning against oneself.

We are expected to be perfect, thin, and to overfunction. We cannot internalize these messages anymore. They are killing us. They are internalized violence. They make us tractable. What we need is wholeness, to learn how to function without a focus on fixing ourselves or working harder.

KAYLA BARNES

As a young woman in business, I felt the need to look perfect, think perfectly, and always make the right call so I wouldn't be judged by my male colleagues. That pressure made me who I am today, but I have come to understand that all I need to be is myself; that doesn't mean looking perfect or saying what the group thinks is right, I need to feel comfortable and say what I believe to be right.

I have enough experience making the right (and wrong) decisions to trust my intuition. We are all imperfect, and that is OK. This life is you vs. you, not you vs. anyone else. As long as you can sleep well at night with the decisions that you have made that day and you've done your best to operate with high standards, that is all that matters. What to some may be seen as a flaw could be seen as a strength by someone else; you just have to find people who appreciate your unique traits.

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON

Every time you go through something, you have to build the musculature of coping and survival. And the next time something happens, you're stronger for having been through it.

At a certain point, there is an existential decision to be made. Will I allow this to defeat me or will I rise above it and grow? And once you make that decision – to rise above, to learn from a situation, and grow from it – then you're headed in the right direction.

There's only one person who can decide whether or not you will be strong and victorious in your life, and that is you. The only real failure in life is failure to learn from something.

I've had many experiences in my life. I've had successes, and I've had failures – and I have learned from both. I also realized that the form of our successes and the form of our failures is not as important as recognizing the love that heals them all.

Taking responsibility for our own mistakes, forgiving ourselves, and forgiving others, is the only way to heal from any difficult situation. To allow yourself to grieve when it's appropriate to grieve. Then to get up and get back to the business of living when it's time to get up.

Those are the life skills that will get us through anything.

JILLIAN MICHAELS

At 17, I found myself out on my own, scared and uncertain about the future. I was sleeping on a friend’s couch, scraping together change just to eat and put gas in my car. The weight of uncertainty felt overwhelming, and I wasn’t sure if I had what it took to make it. But then something inside me shifted. I buckled down, got a job, and worked relentlessly, determined to build something for myself. It wasn’t easy—long hours, constant struggle—but it was in that grind that I discovered my inner strength. I realized that I had the power to shape my own path, no matter how difficult the circumstances. Every step forward, no matter how small, was a testament to my resilience and work ethic.

After fracturing my spine, I hit a point in my life where everything felt broken—not just physically, but mentally and spiritually, too. I was always the strong one, the one who could handle anything life threw my way. But being bedridden for nearly six months, unable to do the simplest things on my own, I felt helpless for the first time. The pain was intense, but the hardest part was accepting that I couldn’t fix everything by sheer force of will. That’s when I started to learn the real meaning of healing—not just mending my body, but repairing the way I approached life. Through rehab, I found strength I didn’t know I had, but I also discovered the power of leaning on others. My wife, kids, friends, even strangers became part of my healing journey, and I realized I didn’t have to carry everything on my shoulders. I didn’t always have to be the hero. That experience taught me to embrace vulnerability, to trust in community, and to redefine what strength really means.

Those tough times forced me to grow up fast, but they also made me the woman I am today—strong, resourceful, and unafraid to face life’s challenges head-on.

I’ve come to also realize that it’s often our imperfections that shape us in the most meaningful ways. For a long time, I struggled with the fact that I might not be able to get pregnant due to PCOS. It felt like a flaw, something broken within me that I couldn’t fix. But over time, I learned to see this challenge differently. Instead of focusing on what I couldn’t have, I began to understand that my path was simply meant to look different. My fertility issues weren't a limitation—it was a redirection, guiding me toward something greater. I was meant to adopt, to provide a loving home to a child who needed one. This realization showed me that what we often see as imperfections or shortcomings are actually where our unique gifts lie. It’s through these perceived "flaws" that we find our true purpose and the contributions we are meant to make in the world. What once felt like a loss has become one of the greatest blessings in my life, and it’s a reminder that our uniqueness holds the key to our deepest calling.