Her Gentle Gut

I had been quietly rearranging my closet around my stomach for two years before I noticed I had been doing it. My name is Patricia. I have been Pat to everyone in my life since I was three. I am fifty-eight. I live in Tucson, Arizona, with my husband, David. David is sixty. We moved here twelve years ago, from Minneapolis, the year I turned forty-six. We had spent thirty years in winters. We have spent twelve years in the desert. We are not going back. We have two sons, both grown, both in the Midwest, who visit twice a year and bring our four grandchildren with them. I retired about three years ago, after thirty-four years as a registered nurse. The last twenty of those years were in oncology at the big hospital here. The work was hard. The hours were harder. I retired the year I turned fifty-five and we have not regretted it. I want to tell you about my closet. My closet is a walk-in closet in a small ranch house in central Tucson. It is divided into sections. The left wall is jeans and casual pants. The back wall is dresses and skirts. The right wall is work blouses and the cardigans that go with them. There is a chest of drawers in the middle for the t-shirts and the lighter things. I knew that closet, when David and I moved in twelve years ago, the way you know a room you have set up yourself, from the depth of every shelf to the order of every section. For most of those twelve years, the closet stayed the same. Around fifty-six, the closet started moving. I did not move it on purpose. It moved a little at a time. I am going to tell you what I mean. It looked like the jeans. I have owned the same five pairs of jeans for years. Two darker, two medium wash, one black for going out. For the first nine years in this house, I wore those five jeans on rotation without thinking about them. Around fifty-six, I started reaching past the dark Levi's for the medium wash. The medium wash had a slightly more forgiving cut at the waist. By fifty-seven, I was reaching past the medium wash for the black ones, which sat slightly lower. By the spring before this past one, I had stopped reaching for any of them. The five pairs of jeans were sitting on the rod in the same order I had hung them up nine years earlier. I had not worn them in months. I had not realized I had not worn them in months. It looked like the work pants. I have a section in the closet for what I think of as in-between pants. Not jeans, not dressy. The pants I would wear if we were going to a friend's house for dinner, or to a slightly nicer restaurant. Around fifty-six, I bought a pair of elastic-waist pants from a catalog. I told myself they were for the airplane. They were not for the airplane. I had started wearing them on Friday evenings when David and I were going to Bill and Sandra's house down the street for dinner. By the spring, I had bought a second pair from the same catalog. I had two pairs of elastic-waist pants hanging in the in-between section, in front of the in-between pants I had been wearing for the previous decade. The catalog pants were the first thing my hand went to in that section. The other pants had moved without my moving them. It looked like the dressier pants in the back of the closet. I have a section at the very back, behind the dresses and the skirts, where I keep the dressier pants I wear maybe four or five times a year. For nieces' weddings. For graduations. For the one nicer dinner we go to at New Year's. About a year and a half ago, I went to put on a pair of black dressier pants for a cousin's vow renewal in Phoenix. I sat on the edge of the bed. I could not get them closed at the waist. Not by an inch. By a quarter of an inch. I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time. I went back into the closet and I found a pair of darker, looser dress pants from the year before. I wore those instead. When we got home that night I put the black dressier pants back on the hanger and I put them at the very back of the very back section, behind everything else. I did not throw them out. I did not want to throw them out. I also did not want to look at them. It looked like the drawers. The chest of drawers in the middle of my closet has six drawers. The bottom drawer is for camisoles and the layering things that go under everything else. About two years ago I had started buying camisoles a half size larger than I used to. By a year ago, I had quietly thrown away the older smaller ones because seeing them in the drawer was confusing my mornings. The drawer had been quietly rearranging itself around what fit. None of it was alarming. I had been in to see Dr. Costa — my doctor for the last seven years here in Tucson — the previous October. Bloodwork in the ranges she wanted them in. She had said: you are doing well, Pat. Keep doing what you are doing. I had not told her about the closet. I had not known the closet was a thing yet. It had been moving in such small increments for so long that it had become the new shape of itself without my noticing. I garden. I have been gardening since we moved to Tucson, mostly because the desert garden is a different kind of garden and I wanted to learn it. I have a small succulent garden on the side of our house and a small herb garden by the back door and a few yucca and agave that I have been growing for ten years. There is a small nursery about a mile and a half from our house. I have been going there for twelve years. There is a woman who works there named Susan. Susan is sixty-three. She is the daughter-in-law of the original owner. She has been running the nursery with her husband for about fifteen years. I had been talking to her for ten minutes at a time, once or twice a month, for twelve years. The Saturday morning in April that I want to tell you about, I was looking at a small barrel cactus near the front of the nursery. I had bent down to look at it. I had felt a small uncomfortable pressure at my waistband. I had given the waistband a small quiet tug as I stood back up. I had not realized Susan was a few feet behind me. She had been watering a tray of small succulents. She set the can down. She said: Pat. I have wanted to ask you for about six months. Is everything alright? I had not been asked that by anyone outside of David in a long time. I sat with that for a moment. I looked at the cactus. I said: I am not unwell. My doctor said I am fine. But my closet has been moving for two years. I do not wear my jeans anymore. I have two pairs of elastic-waist pants I bought from a catalog. I have a pair of dressier black pants in the back of the closet I could not zip a year ago in May at my cousin's vow renewal and I have not tried to zip them since. I have been buying my camisoles a half size larger. I think I am rearranging my closet around my body and I have only just realized that is what I have been doing. Susan was quiet for a long time. She picked up the watering can and she set it down again. She said: I had been moving my own closet for about three years before I started noticing what I was doing. I had a pair of jeans I had bought in 1998 that I had not put on since I was about fifty-five. I had been telling myself they were just out of style. She told me about her three years. She told me about the catalog pants. She told me about the dressier pants in the very back of her closet. She told me she had added one small daily thing about three years ago, after a conversation with a friend. She told me she had read about it for several weeks before she added it. She told me she had called her doctor before she added it. She told me, plainly, the way Susan says everything: I am not telling you the closet went back to what it used to be. I am telling you it stopped moving. And then, slowly, some of it started moving back. She told me she was back in the catalog pants once a week instead of three times. She told me she was back in two of the older pairs of jeans on the weekends. She told me she had not tried the 1998 jeans. She told me she did not need to try the 1998 jeans. She told me she was content with the closet not moving away from her anymore. I asked her what she had added. She told me. It was Her Gentle Gut Daily Restore Probiotic. She said she had picked it because the bottle did not promise her any kind of transformation. The bottle said it was a daily probiotic that supported gut wellness in women who needed gentle, consistent help. She said: gentle and consistent were the two words that mattered to me. I was tired of products yelling at me. I put the cactus down without buying it. I bought a small jade plant and a pot for it. Susan rang me up at the front register. She put her hand on the back of mine as I was paying. She said: please ask your doctor before you add anything new. Especially if you are on any prescription medication. That is the one thing I am going to be careful about. I promised her. I drove home with the jade plant in the passenger seat. I read for two weeks. I am, by temperament, a careful person. A registered nurse for thirty-four years, twenty of them in oncology, is not a person who adds something to a routine without reading about it first. I read about probiotics. I read about multi-strain blends, and I read about the difference between the supermarket-shelf brands and the brands that put thirteen strains and twenty billion CFU into a vegetarian capsule with brown rice flour as the carrier and called it a day. I read about the language used in the careful gut wellness conversation. Supports a balanced gut microbiome. Supports daily regularity. Supports the everyday digestive comfort of women in midlife. Not cures. Not fixes. Not eliminates. Just supports. That was the shape of the language I had been looking for. I called Dr. Costa's office on a Monday. I am on a small dose of a thyroid medication and on a vitamin D. I asked her nurse whether adding a daily probiotic was a problem. The nurse called me back the next morning. She said Dr. Costa had no concerns at the dose on the label. She said to take the thyroid medication on its usual empty-stomach morning schedule and to take the probiotic with a glass of water and breakfast. She said if I ever went on an antibiotic, to separate the antibiotic and the probiotic by a few hours during the day. I thanked her. I want to say something plainly. If you are on any prescription medication of any kind, call your doctor's office or your pharmacist before you add anything new. I called. It takes two minutes. I am a retired nurse in Tucson. I am not the person to ask. The people who have your chart are. I started on a Monday in May. I put the bottle on the counter next to the coffee maker. I took one capsule with a glass of water in the morning after my thyroid pill. I did not say anything to David. The first three weeks I felt nothing in particular. I was prepared for that. What I noticed, I noticed slowly. The first thing I noticed, around month two, was a Saturday morning in late June. I went into the closet and I reached past the elastic-waist catalog pants and I put on a pair of the medium-wash jeans. I sat on the edge of the bed to put on my sandals. I noticed I was sitting in the medium-wash jeans for the first time in over a year. I did not say anything to David. I went into the kitchen to make coffee. He looked at me and he raised an eyebrow. I said: I just felt like the jeans today. He said: alright. That was the whole conversation. The second thing I noticed, around month three, was an old skirt. It was a Saturday in July, the night of an outdoor dinner at our neighbors' for someone's birthday. I went into the back of the closet and I tried on a long blue skirt I had bought in Greece nine years ago. I had not worn it for at least two years. I put it on. It closed without effort. I wore it to the dinner. David, who had walked through the bedroom while I was looking in the mirror, did not say anything in the moment. In the car on the way to the neighbors' he said: that skirt has been waiting for you. I did not say anything back. I held his hand on the gear shift instead. The third thing I noticed, around month four, was the back of the closet. I want to be specific about this one. I did not go into the back of the closet and try on the black dressier pants from a year and a half ago. I have not tried them on. I do not need to try them on. What I noticed, in the fourth month, was that I had stopped thinking about them. For a year and a half, every time I had opened the closet, my eye had gone to the very back, to where I knew they were hanging, and a small private wince had happened. Around month four, I noticed that the wince had stopped. I was opening the closet and seeing the closet, instead of seeing what was hiding behind the back of the closet. That was the change that mattered to me. The closet had stopped moving away from me. I want to be careful with what I am telling you. I am not telling you Her Gentle Gut did any of those three things on its own. I had also, in the months after my morning with Susan, started gardening for an hour at a time in the cooler part of the morning, three or four mornings a week. I had also started drinking water more deliberately throughout the day, the way you should in this desert. There were several things I had been changing at once. All I am telling you is that I added one small daily habit to a list of small careful things, and the closet that had been moving for two years stopped moving. That is the honest version. I see Susan at the nursery once a month. She does not bring it up. She and I look at plants together for ten minutes most months and then I buy something and I go home. I am telling you this because you might be the woman who has been quietly rearranging her own closet around her stomach for two or three years. If you have been reaching past the jeans for the medium wash, and reaching past the medium wash for the elastic-waist pants from the catalog, and not opening the back of your closet because you do not want to know — you are not imagining it. The closet has been moving. The closet is not the problem. The closet is one of the small ways your body has been quietly telling you what is happening. Her Gentle Gut is one small daily thing you can add to whatever else you are already doing. A thirteen-strain, twenty billion CFU probiotic in one vegetarian capsule a day, made with women 45+ in mind. It is not a cure for anything. It is not a fix for anything. It is a daily habit that gently supports the gut conversation. Please call your doctor or your pharmacist before you add it. I called. It takes two minutes. The company has a satisfaction guarantee. If you are not satisfied, you can return it. The policy is on the site. The capsules come thirty to a bottle. One month. The kind of size that fits on the counter without becoming its own project. That is all I have. I hope, somewhere today, your own Susan is at her watering can in a small nursery in your town, waiting for you to bend down to look at a barrel cactus and say something honest about your closet. — Pat P.S. The thirteen strains are not a marketing flourish. Five of them are Bifidobacterium species. The genus the wellness community keeps circling back to when the conversation is about midlife. I noticed that when I read the bottle. I noticed that the company seemed to actually understand who they were making the bottle for. P.P.S. One capsule. In the morning. With a glass of water. That is the whole protocol. The bottle lives next to the coffee maker. David makes the coffee. I take the capsule. We have earned a simple morning at this point. P.P.P.S. Call your doctor or your pharmacist before you add anything new to what you are taking, especially if you are on a prescription medication. It takes two minutes. P.P.P.P.S. The guarantee is real. If you are not satisfied, you can return it. Read the policy on the site. P.P.P.P.P.S. The sentence Susan said to me at the front of the nursery — I had been moving my own closet for about three years before I started noticing what I was doing — has been with me every day since. I had been doing the exact thing for two years. I had not known I was doing it. If you have been rearranging your own closet for a year, or two, or three — you are not vain. You are not failing. You have been having a body conversation in private because you have not had the words for it out loud. I hope you find your own Susan at your own corner of your own town. I hope you say the closet thing out loud. I hope, in a year from now, you are sitting on the edge of your own bed putting on a pair of jeans you had not put on in over a year, and the man you love is in the kitchen making coffee, and the morning is simple. That is the whole reason I wrote this. — P.