I don’t feel beautiful anymore…
Dear Ruby:
I don’t feel beautiful anymore. I’m tired of trying to meet everyone else’s standards. What does it mean to reclaim beauty for myself?”
Pam J.
Dear Beautiful Pam:
First, let me honor the courage it takes to name this. To say, “Something about beauty hurts.” You’re not alone and thank you for speaking what so many women feel but rarely voice.
To reclaim beauty is to take it out of someone else’s hands… the advertisers, the media, the critics, your partner, mother or father, and place it gently, powerfully, back into your own.
You practice remembering that beauty was never meant to be a competition, and treat it like a communion. A living pulse inside your body. And this is a practice, like developing a muscle.
You start to recognize that beauty is not an external standard, but a felt sense: a warmth that radiates from self-acceptance, pleasure, and authenticity, literally from the inside out.
Reclaiming Beauty Might Look Like
As you move from adhering and performing to an external standard of beauty to that internal feeling of it, you might notice:
Honoring your body’s wisdom: Trusting your body’s signals, needs, and desires, rather than overriding them to fit an external ideal.
Embracing change: Seeing lines, scars, softness, silver hair not as flaws, but as living history: proof of a life fully lived.
Finding pleasure in your senses: The way sunlight feels on your skin, the joy of stretching, the taste of a favorite food… beauty as embodied experience, not performance.
Redefining adornment: Choosing clothes, colors, or rituals that make you feel alive… not that make you disappear or conform.
Letting go of comparison: Refusing to measure yourself against others or against your past self. Accepting that beauty is abundant, not scarce.
So how do you know that you are shifting from the external to the internal?
The Felt Sense of Beauty vs. the Mental Picture
There is a big difference between defining beauty for yourself and letting someone else define it for you. We begin exploring this by offering a spectrum: looking at beauty through the mind or through the body. Of course, we are all both, and the mind is a part of the body. But as you begin this process, this bracketing will be helpful.
A mental picture of beauty lives in the mind’s eye with sharp edges, filtered lighting, rules borrowed from somewhere outside you. It’s cognitive. Conceptual. It asks, “How do I look?” It measures. It compares. It freezes beauty into a static image.
A felt sense of beauty, on the other hand, lives in the body. It’s not a snapshot; it’s a sensation.
A warmth spreading through the chest. A softening of the jaw. It asks, “How do I feel?” It moves. It breathes. It connects.
The mental picture is performative and it needs witnesses. The felt sense is relational and it makes you the witness of your own aliveness.
Where the mind sees an image, the body feels a frequency. A current.
This felt-sense of beauty is
A feeling of aliveness… a tingling, a lightness, a sense of being at home in your body.
Moments of confidence or ease, even in the presence of imperfection.
An ability to see yourself with kindness. To look in the mirror and greet yourself as a beloved friend, not a problem to be fixed.
At Any Age
What does this look like at different seasons of a woman’s life?
For a teen, reclaiming beauty might mean resisting the urge to shrink or apologize for taking up space.
For a woman at midlife, it might mean celebrating the ways her body has changed, survived, and carried her.
For an elder, it might mean honoring the dignity, joy, and freedom that come with time.
Somatic Ritual: The Mirror Breath
An important part of your reclamation is to feel this in your body… to know it somatically. Meaning, you don’t just think “I am beautiful.” You experience it.
You let your nervous system register safety, softness, and pleasure until your body begins to believe what your mind already knows. That’s when the healing becomes real.
Give this practice a try…
Stand before a mirror… or if that feels too tender, close your eyes and imagine your reflection.
Inhale slowly through your nose, feeling your chest rise. Exhale through your mouth with a soft sigh.
Place one hand on your heart, one on your lower belly. Whisper:
“This body has carried me.
This breath is mine.
This beauty is my birthright.”
Repeat three times, once for the woman you were, once for the woman you are, once for the woman becoming. Then smile, not because you must, but because something ancient in you remembers.
With love and breath,
Ruby
P.S. Your beauty was never lost, it was simply waiting for your permission to come home.
Ask Ruby Your Question
If there’s a question alive in your body.. about beauty, power, rest, pleasure, or reclamation, write to me below. Examples of questions that Ruby answers:
“Ruby, I don’t feel beautiful anymore. What can I do?”
“Why do I still collapse around men?”
“How do I rest when my body feels unsafe?”
Your story may become the next Letter to Ruby, offered anonymously, with reverence. We move from performance to resonance. First with ourselves and then radiating out to others. Here, women remember that their bodies hold the blueprint for liberation.
You’ll also receive the first five letters in the Reclaim Your Beauty series, written for the woman awakening from overwork, overgiving, and over-polishing, and a 19-minute walking meditation called She Walks In Beauty.
We will only use your first name and last initial. If you would like to remain completely anonymous, please let us know in the question.