Ilana Glazer is done entertaining stereotypes about women — starting with women’s sexual health post-baby. “There was this whole narrative of becoming a de-sexual grump after you have a kid and I am finding myself so much more sexually engaged and feeling hotter than I have before,” she says. This is just one of the false narratives that gets propagated as women age. “The headline is that we’ve been told women get weaker as they get older and I’m finding that the women in my life are getting so much stronger, so much bitchier, so much more powerful as we get older.”
One area in Glazer’s life where she feels more powerful is her health, specifically relating to her chronic pain. The actress and comedian has struggled with chronic pelvic pain from age four to 24, saying she felt most “powerless” when she first started becoming aware of the pain and realized it wasn’t normal. “This was the late ’90s and early 2000s so the pelvic floor was not a conversation. Women’s health? Who cares. And young women’s health? Get out of here. So, when I started looking for help from medical professionals, I experienced medical misogyny starting at age 15.”
Discovering agency and the right providers helped combat the gaslighting she experienced during this time. “I think I was most powerless with doctors who were laughing at me and didn’t care, and the most powerful I felt was when I started finding people whose life’s gift was to give tools to people for pelvic floor strength.”
Glazer became pain-free at age 24 thanks to physical therapy, talk therapy, and medication. She also says that humor was a major factor in saving her from chronic pain. “Becoming a comedian, finding my comedy community, finding the world of comedy, and finding my voice as a comedian was what made me feel so powerful and helped me then have agency over my pain.” Watch the video above to see what else Ilana Glazer has to say about her health and achieving flow state.
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