The Body Keeps the Mileage (On Mortality & Wellness Panic)

The Body Keeps the Mileage (On Mortality & Wellness Panic)

From back from the borderline by mollie adler

May 26, 2026 · 1h 1m

About this episode

Mollie Adler reflects on the relationship between her body, mortality, and the pressures of modern wellness culture.

The inspiration for this episode came to me after looking at a small scar under my daughter’s eye and realizing that our bodies really do keep the f*cking score.  That thought sent me down a bit of an existential rabbit hole. Back to my millennial-era belly button piercing, my breast implants, and all the various little decisions I made when my body still felt endlessly recoverable to me and when “forever” sounded dramatic and way too far away to really care about.  Now I’m 36, raising a toddler, exhausted as hell, building things, trying to stay healthy without becoming a total psycho about it, and now my body feels way less like a sexy little accessory to my current “identity,” and instead the whole ass reality of it. It’s the one thing I have that has to carry everything for me. Work, grief, love, stress, aging, pleasure, fear… all of it.  This is a really vulnerable one. I cried more times recording it than I’d like to admit. Some of it I edited out but most of it, I didn't. This one's about mortality, wellness panic, microplastics, biohacking, cosmetic procedures, spiritual disembodiment, motherhood, and the weird and dystopian modern feeling that everything…

People in this episode

Host: Mollie Adler

Topics covered

  • mortality
  • wellness panic
  • body image
  • motherhood
  • spirituality
  • aging

Keywords

  • mortality
  • wellness
  • body image
  • motherhood
  • spirituality
  • aging
  • biohacking
  • cosmetic procedures

More episodes of back from the borderline

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the back from the borderline podcast page.