Is It Okay to Be Angry at Your Body? Yes — and Here’s How to Start Healing

What if your anger toward your body isn’t something to hide — but a sign that it’s finally time to start healing?

If you’ve ever felt angry at your body — for not doing what you hoped it would, for betraying your trust, or for making something as natural as motherhood feel impossibly hard — this episode is for you.

In this solo episode, Jacqueline opens up about the unspoken emotion so many women carry after infertility, loss, or complicated pregnancies: anger. She shares why that anger is valid, what it’s really trying to tell you, and how to start rebuilding trust with your body again. You’ll walk away feeling seen, understood, and reminded that healing doesn’t mean ignoring your pain — it means allowing yourself to feel it with compassion.

Key Takeaways:

💔 You’re not wrong for feeling angry. Anger toward your body isn’t shameful — it’s a natural response to loss, grief, and unmet expectations.

🌿 Anger can be a messenger. Beneath it often lies pain, fear, or sadness that needs acknowledgment and care.

🕊️ Healing starts with honesty. Rebuilding trust with your body begins when you allow yourself to feel everything — not just gratitude or positivity.

💪 You can hold both. It’s possible to love your body and be angry with it. You can be grateful and still wish things were easier.

🌻 You’re not alone. Inside Your Fertility Village, women are having these real, healing conversations every day — because no one should walk this journey alone.

Resources & Links:

💛 Join Your Fertility Village — a safe, supportive space for women navigating infertility, loss, and motherhood after trauma. Become a founding member: your-fertility-village.mn.co

👉 Follow @motherhood_intended on Instagram for daily encouragement, connection, and all podcast and village updates.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Why This Matters
• 0:42 The Luminous Project Experience
• 2:07 Naming Anger At Your Body
• 4:40 Grief Beneath The Anger
• 6:15 Gentle Ways To Rebuild Trust
• 9:53 Your Fertility Village Invitation
• 12:33 Capture Yourself In Every Season
• 13:20 Closing Reminders And Resources

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Are you tired of scrolling your feed only to see the highlight reel version of motherhood? If so, then you're in the right place. Welcome to the Motherhood Intended podcast. I'm your host, Jacqueline Baird, and I'm a passionate mom here to support women like you in their unique journeys to and through motherhood. I have been through it all. We're gonna be talking about things like trying to conceive, infertility, IVF, surrogacy, mom life, and more. It's time to get real about what it takes to be a mom and come together in the fact that things don't always go as planned. So here we go. Hey friends, it's Jacqueline. Welcome back. Today's episode is one that definitely comes straight from the heart. This topic has been top of mind for me because I recently had the opportunity to participate with a local photographer in this project that she's doing. It's called the Luminous Project. And this project was an incredible like portrait experience for women of all backgrounds and life stages. There were 50 of us that participated in this project. It was amazing. I mean, I got to spend time in the studio. I got to have my hair done, my makeup done, but it wasn't about, you know, glamming me up or turning me into someone else. It wasn't for people who love being in front of the camera. It was especially for women who are always behind it, right? The ones who haven't had a moment to simply exist and just be seen. It was such an honor to be a part of this luminous project. And I can't wait to share the photos that I had taken. In a couple months, there's going to be this big event to showcase the 50 women who participated, including their photos and stories. And I'm just so proud to be a part of it all. This project really had me thinking because things like this matter. You know, women are holding so much families, careers, emotions, stories, expectations. And like Emily, the photographer I worked with, said, you know, most of the time we're doing it quietly. We don't often get credit for the things we carry, and even less often do we pause to acknowledge them ourselves. So this experience that I was a part of was meant to do just that. And Emily really created a space where you felt safe, celebrated, and reminded of the light that you've always had. And it really had me reflecting on the last decade of my life through the ups and downs of infertility and becoming a mom and just, you know, the first seven years of motherhood and while still trying to build my family in all sorts of crazy ways and navigating grief and loss and just so many things, right? And this was an important milestone for me. Um, you know, after 10 years, our family is complete and I finally feel like I can breathe again and look ahead to the next chapter with hope and excitement and and not so many question marks, right? Which is is what I hope for you. But I want you to know that like you don't need a reason to be photographed. Okay. You don't need a reason to feel pretty. You are the reason. But for so long, going through infertility really had me feeling really lousy about myself, um, about my body, you know, it's hard to love a body that isn't doing what it's supposed to, you know? So today I want to talk about something that a lot of us don't like to admit out loud. And that's being angry at our own bodies. So if you've struggled with infertility, experienced lost, had a difficult pregnancy, or felt betrayed by your body in any way, chances are you felt that quiet, painful anger too. It's that moment when you think, Why me? Why can other people get pregnant easily? Why does my body keep failing me? And then almost immediately guilt rushes in, right? Because we feel like we shouldn't be mad at ourselves. We should be grateful, we should be patient, we should be positive. But here's the truth: you are allowed to be angry. You're allowed to feel every bit of that frustration and disappointment because your body has carried you through so much. And sometimes the way it's had to do that hurts. So I just want you to know that it's important, just name that anger, right? Don't pretend it's not there. I went through this. I was so angry at my body. You know, it was hard to take. I look back at even, you know, pictures I was in during that difficult time, and I can see it in my eyes. I was just, there's no pride, there's no confidence, just this heaviness of medications and anger and feeling like I'm crawling out of my own skin because I don't recognize myself anymore. And I don't just mean physically, I just mean like internally, like I didn't feel like who I was for such a long time. But it's okay to be angry. Anger isn't the opposite of acceptance. Okay, it's actually part of the process of getting there. So when we don't let ourselves feel angry, it doesn't disappear. It just turns inward. And that becomes shame, resentment, self-blame. It makes us question our worth, our womanhood, our ability to trust ourselves again. So today I want to give you permission, full unconditional permission to be angry at your body without apology. Because when we name it, we start to release it. That anger doesn't come from weakness either. Okay, it comes from grief. Grief for what your body has lost, grief for what you expected to happen and didn't, grief for the version of you that believed your body would always cooperate. I was always a pretty confident person. I was proud of who I was inside and out. And when you were knocked down by infertility, which truly feels like a rug is being pulled from underneath you, especially when it's a long journey and things just one thing after another, right? You can't get pregnant, then you get pregnant, then you lose a pregnancy, then you have an early. I mean, it was a lot. And maybe your story includes endless negative pregnancy tests, miscarriage, IVF cycles that didn't work, or a pregnancy that didn't end the way you hoped. Or maybe you can relate to part of my story in surrogacy where your body just couldn't. Just couldn't. You were at the end of the line and your body cannot carry a pregnancy yourself. Each of those moments just chips away at trust. And when trust is broken, even with our own bodies, it takes time to rebuild. But here's the thing anger isn't the villain, okay? It's a messenger. It's your body saying, Hey, I'm hurting. I need to be seen. Instead of suppressing that anger, try listening to it. You can ask yourself, like, what is this anger trying to protect me from? What pain is it pointing to that I haven't fully acknowledged? What part of me needs compassion right now? Because beneath anger, there's always something tender, something that still needs healing. And I know that's hard to see when you are in the thick of it and trying to create a family. But I want you to always remember that like you have to take care of yourself first. And healing your relationship with your body isn't about pretending everything's fine. It's about learning to say, I see you and I'm still here. Start small. Notice what your body can do. Not in like a toxic positivity way, but in a gentle recognition of the ways it's still showing up for you. You know, your body carried you through appointments, injections, surgery, loss, heartbreak. It's carried your tears, your hope, your exhaustion, your resilience. It might not have given you everything you wanted on your timeline, but it's still yours and it's still worthy of love. So if you're listening right now and you feel like your body betrayed you, I want you to know, as always, you're not alone. Every woman who's walked through infertility or loss has felt that same mix of anger, sadness, and guilt. I'll be the first to tell you that it takes time to heal. And it's not a linear path either. You know, you will go through seasons of really caring for yourself and building yourself up, and then you will just fall and you might feel that anger creeping up again at your own body, but there is light at the end of the tunnel and your body is yours. And I want you to remember all the good things that it can do for you. Again, might not be what you expected, might not be in your own timeline, but you are worthy of loving yourself, and that includes your body. So you don't have to push it down anymore. You can hold both truths at once. You can love your body and still be angry with it. You can be grateful for your journey and still wish it had been easier. You can be healing and still have hard days. That's what real self-compassion looks like. I know myself, I used to have a hard time when people would say, Oh my gosh, you're so strong. You're so strong. And I'm like, I don't always feel that way. I don't feel that way inside. And even on the days that I did feel strong and like an infertility warrior, I'm not a fan of that phrase, to be honest. Yes, we are strong. Um, we are put through a lot, but none of us chose that. It's not something I was like, you know what? I'm a badass and I'm gonna just rock infertility. That's not it at all. You know, I just felt like I had to be strong because I had to be strong. But what I wish I would have done more of along the way is not try to be so strong all the time. You know, I just wish sometimes I would take a pause and just love myself for who I am, love my body for what it is outside of what it does for me in relation to fertility. So if this episode resonated with you, or if you're in a season of learning to reconnect with your body, I want to remind you that you don't have to do it alone. I say this every week, but it's because it's so important. I don't want you to feel isolated in these experiences because there are so many women walking the same path that you are. And even when you feel really down on yourself and you're you're angry at your body and you're you don't know what's next, there is someone there that can help pick you up, someone that really gets it. And inside your fertility village, we talk about this kind of healing all the time. The messy, beautiful, emotional parts of the journey that most people don't understand. It's not often you're scrolling Instagram and seeing a reel about, you know, being angry at your own body. That's the highlight reel. And that's not what we're doing inside your fertility village. We're having real, honest conversations. We're taking the things that I share on the podcast and giving you the people who are living them, walking these paths alongside you, and then providing you the resources to dive in deep and truly make your journey a beautiful journey that you can be proud of. You don't have to feel alone or depressed or stuck in this season of life. You can gracefully walk through it with women by your side. Right now, I'm accepting founding members. It's an honor to welcome in the first members of this village. You will be on the ground floor helping me build this community, giving input as to what you need. And the best part is your membership fee is just$7 a month. And that's something that you lock in for life. We were always going to be adding resources. The community is going to be growing, adding so many women, so many events. And the best part is, is regardless of the value that is added, you will always only pay$7 a month. Now we're accepting founding members from now until the end of the year. In the new year, the price will increase and there will no longer be founding member badges given out. So take this opportunity. And I hope you know that this community means so much to me and the vision I have for it is big. And I want it to be a space that grows with you. So even when you bring home that baby, even when you are past that stage of IVF or loss or fertility and the smoke has cleared and you're in motherhood, you will still have a village of people that get what you've been through. Because I can say firsthand that being a mom after infertility and loss and trauma and so much that goes along with the whole experience, it's different. It's different than being a mom who hasn't gone through that. So I want to make sure that in every stage, you have your people, you have your village. So click the link in the show notes to join as a founding member. You can also follow along on Instagram at motherhood underscore intended, and that's where I will be updating all things, podcast and village, and everything is linked there as well. Thank you for listening, for showing up, and for giving yourself permission to feel everything that motherhood in all its form brings. I hope this was a gentle reminder too that you should get in front of the camera, even in the hard seasons. It was such a joyful experience being a part of the Luminous Project, and I can't wait to share those photos with you soon. You know, capturing yourself in every season is just a beautiful thing. And when you are a mom or when you are on the other side of infertility, you will cherish these moments of when you felt seen, you felt beautiful, regardless of what's going on in your life right now. So that's your reminder. Get in front of the camera. And if you're local to the Chicagoland area, definitely check out Emily Cummings. She is doing another round of the Luminous Project for next year, and she's already accepting people on the wait list for that. So check it out. It was an amazing experience, and you'll see photos from that soon. Remember, you deserve gentleness, healing, and peace with your body again.