Lessons From a Month Without Mirrors

How not seeing myself helped me see more clearly

Towels, pillows, bedframe, laundry basket, cleaning supplies, cookware…

These were the first things to make the priority list earlier this summer as my boyfriend and I settled into our new home. Starting with a blank slate was both exciting and overwhelming. Where do you begin when you need…everything? What is essential, and what can wait?

It wasn’t until last week, when my family planned a visit, that we realized we might need to add a few more things to the list. Extra sheets, more towels… and oh, right, some bathroom mirrors.

We warned them that the house was still pretty bare-bones but figured they may not want to perfect their mirrorless skincare routines the way I did. Some people might’ve put mirrors higher on their list, but they just kept dropping lower on ours. Partly because I hadn’t found any I liked at HomeSense, partly because couches, hardware, and other things felt more important.

Eventually, I got used to it. If I needed to fix my hair or check an outfit, I just opened my front camera. It started to feel… kind of normal not constantly seeing my reflection.

As soon as we got the mirrors, I slipped back into regular usage. But this time, I was significantly more aware of how I engaged with them. The constant body checks, the close-up scans of new breakouts on my jaw and fine lines around my eyes.

The days that followed began with an extra bout of negative self talk, a weight that hadn’t felt so heavy in those months without mirrors.

It got me thinking about what we see…and what we don’t. Not just on our skin or in our reflections, but beneath them. My month without mirrors offered an unexpected reprieve from the constant visual feedback loop that often tells me how I should feel.

But it also illuminated just how much I’ve come to rely on my reflection not just for vanity, but for validation… of my health, my worth, my pain. Especially as someone navigating chronic illness, the relationship between what’s visible and what’s real is…complicated.

The visibility paradox

There were points in my journey where I welcomed any external “proof” of what I was going through. When I was in the thick of it, everyday felt like a battle with symptoms no one could see.

Bone-deep fatigue didn’t always show its face. Neither did the dizzy spells, the brain fog, the nerve pain, or the strange, hard-to-explain sensations that made me feel like a stranger in my own body.

But my very visible bloating? The butterfly rash across my cheeks? The dark pooling in my feet? The welting skin from a histamine flare? Photo evidence of these moments went straight into my “flare” album, ready to be referenced at my next rushed appointment… a way to say “See? It’s real!”

I relied on this “proof” as a sheet of armor against the familiar slew of “you’re too young for this” and “but you don’t look sick” commentary.

I remember a time when I would flare up, see something physical emerge, and instead of tending to it, I would rush to schedule an appointment first. As an active, high-achieving, “healthy”-looking girl in her early-20s, I was desperate to be taken seriously. Sometimes it felt like my visible signs of illness had a ticking clock attached and I just wanted to be witnessed in my pain.

Anyone with an invisible illness knows this feeling all too well.

Oftentimes, the visible symptoms weren’t even the most debilitating, but they did help with getting the test, obtaining the referral, being prescribed the thing, doing something to look under the hood.

But, as I’ve continued to learn, what we lean on to find treatment vs. what we do to actually heal can sometimes be at odds.

What starts as an innocent survey for visible proof of how we feel can quicky turn on its head.

We start to rely on how we look to determine how we feel.

This is the trap so many of us fall into, especially when living with chronic illness - in a healthcare system that doesn’t always take us seriously and in a culture obsessed with appearance. We are constantly auditing ourselves. We scan our reflection for beauty, but also for affirmation. For signs of progress and proof of decline.

When you layer that onto the complexities of body image (with chronic conditions and simply being a woman in this world), it becomes a loop that is really hard to step out of.

(Trust me - I’m right there with you!)

Appearance as a feedback loop

External appearance can become a proxy for internal validation.

I can only speak to my own experience, but I imagine others can relate to the times where you shift from a state of neutrality to activation - all because you noticed something in the mirror.

Without checking in with how I’m actually feeling, I’ve caught glimpses of inflammation in my face or bloating in my abdomen and used that visual feedback to decide I must be unwell. And the reverse can be just as misleading: I look fine, so I should feel fine.

This logic can be dangerous. Physical symptoms, visible or not, can be powerful messengers. But when we outsource our inner knowing to only what we can see on the surface, the message can get lost in translation.

A consistent theme in my journey, and a core pillar of The Wellery, is learning to notice what pulls you further away from yourself. In what ways are we distorting our connection to our bodies? How can we pause, notice, and choose to come back to ourselves?

I had a clear example of this feedback loop recently. We were about to take the boat out with friends. I was mid-menstrual cycle - a time when a lot of my symptoms are typically heightened and my “endo belly” tends to be more prominent. Moments before they arrived, I threw on a bathing suit and stood in front of the mirror. The bloating was intense. It was right there, unavoidable. I could feel it, of course, but the sight of it hit harder than the sensation. The reflection launched me into a spiral.

It felt like there was no hiding the physical proof of my illness. Proof that once felt validating in a doctor’s office now felt exposed and overwhelming.

And this is where it gets complicated. The very things that make an invisible illness visible can distort the way we see ourselves. The reflection becomes not just evidence of a symptom, but a threat to our sense of self.

During my spiral, I remember telling my boyfriend that when I get bloated like that, I don’t feel like a whole person. My brain space becomes overrun with how to help it or hide it, and it feels like there is no room leftover to just be Alex.

When we begin to conflate how we look with who we are… or how sick we appear with how sick we’re allowed to feel… we lose access to our inner compass.

It’s a slippery slope into body dysmorphia, where the reflection becomes a distorted mirror of everything we fear, and nothing we actually are.

For those living with invisible illness, this feedback loop can be especially disorienting. We’re caught between wanting our pain to be seen and not wanting our body to become the battleground for that visibility.

Identity gets tangled with appearance, and healing becomes less about fixing what’s wrong and more about reclaiming how we relate to ourselves - with or without a mirror.

The mirrors are everywhere

My month without mirrors made me more aware of how often I turn to my reflection to answer questions I could just ask myself directly:

How do I look? becomes How do I feel? which turns into Who am I today?

When I stopped seeing myself in a mirror everyday, something interesting happened. Other mirrors started to come into focus.

The mirror that shows up in my closest relationships. The one that appears in my morning walks through the woods. In the quiet moments, deep in meditation. In the way I speak about others.

Without mirrors in my home… I started to notice that the mirrors were truly everywhere.

As I begin to orient towards those mirrors - the ones within me and all around me - the ones in my bathroom become a little less piercing… a little less defining.

And let me be clear - the physical mirrors are not the villain. While it’s true that we likely see ourselves much more than we were ever meant to, the mirrors are not inherently harmful.

But they are powerful. And like anything powerful… it’s worth asking ourselves how we’re using them.

Are they helping us feel more at home in our bodies… or pulling us further away?

My month without mirrors didn’t cure my body image issues. But it gave me space to realize how often I let my reflection tell me how I’m doing…before I ever ask myself.

Takeaway: Reclaim the first look

The answer doesn’t have to be removing all the mirrors in our homes.

But before rushing to the mirror in the morning… before we notice dark circles, a new breakout, a bloated belly…

What if we paused?

What if we took just three deep breaths? What if we did a quick body scan before we rose from bed?

What if we asked ourselves:

How am I feeling today? What’s coming up for me right now?

What if this was the first mirror we met each morning?

What if we reclaimed the first look?

When we take a moment, just a moment, to check in with ourselves first, we open our internal dialogue… before the mirror has a chance to write the script for us.

Final reflection

We live in a world that trains us to look outside of ourselves first. We check the mirror, the photo, the symptom, the diagnosis…before we ever check in with ourselves.

And for those of us navigating chronic illness, the pull can be even stronger. We want to be seen. We want to be believed. And sometimes, we want proof - for others and for ourselves, that what we’re carrying is real.

A mirror can’t tell us the whole story. Sometimes, it distorts it. But when we widen our gaze, we remember that reflection can come from all around us - from breath, presence, relationship, everywhere.

We don’t need to see ourselves to see ourselves.

Healing often begins in the places no one else can witness. In the small moments when we choose to return to ourselves. When we pause to ask our bodies how they’re doing, rather than assume based on what we see.

We are not just bodies to be managed or appearances to be corrected.

There is a difference between looking at ourselves and being with ourselves.

This has been a reminder to myself, and hopefully an invitation to you:

To soften your gaze. To move from surveillance into relationship. To use the mirror as a moment of connection, not critique. And to remember that reflection is so much more than what we see.

“As you live deeper in the heart, the mirror gets clearer and cleaner” - Rumi