The body I was given

May 29, 2018

For most of my life, I have kept careful track of my body. It’s been a lifetime of examining it, eyeing it, measuring it, paying attention to my weight, sizes of clothing, how things fit, bra sizes. You name it, I’ve kept track. I saw my body and it’s appearance as a measure of how well someone should accept me and that other’s thoughts about me were the truth. I remember as young as seven years old being told I was fat and believing it, seeing one sister a competitive gymnast at a young age and my older sister a ballerina. I was an average kid, probably pretty strong and athletic, but I heard things that damaged my perception of my body.

It’s easy for me to rip apart this picture of me; this body, my face.

I see a tummy with stretch marks from babies I carried, weight gained and lost, freckles on my face that the beauty industry will try to tell me I should fade out to have a clear face, breasts that have lost their shape from nourishing and growing four babies, eyes that speak volumes of lives lived and lost, love, loss and hope, strength unknown and yet, it all comes down to that tummy. If only it was flat and had no wrinkles; if only I didn’t have to sit a certain way to make it look alright. I visited cosmetic surgeons for tummy tuck consultations and breasts lifts.

But, I grew four healthy babies in this body! My body has survived rape, abuse, a horrible pregnancy that I lost at 16 weeks that caused me to lose 44 pounds in three weeks, my kidneys to begin to fail. I starved this body to try to make it what I thought would be better. I beat it up by working out too much, in ways my body didn’t totally respond well to, enduring relentless pain that would not go away, and not always feeding it well.

And finally, after over 30 years of fighting and shaming my body, I’m done. I am learning to love this body I was given for all it has done. It continues to do so many amazing things and is on a path of healing, and gives me the strength I have to continue growing physically, emotionally and mentally. Giving into myself, listening to how my body responds to different work outs and only doing those that leave me feeling well, eating nourishing foods, listening to myself when I need rest instead of pushing on. It’s not easy to to feel confident in a body that always received messages of unworthiness.

Much of my life has felt out of control and that I was living for others. I thought my body was a reflection of me. I’m a perfectionist and struggle with anxiety, so I consistently put myself after so many others and thought if I just did this or that or my body was different in whatever way (there was always some thing I thought could be different), maybe I’d be beautiful. Maybe that dress would look better on me. I compared myself to my sisters. And, maybe men would stay. Maybe they wouldn’t go or cheat or leave or lie. It was all a lie; but me in this body, I could control that, so I tried. The irony? Nothing else changed. Men still left. They cheated. They lied. They went away. The only consistent along the way was that they always tried see what I/my body could offer them. I still wondered if that dress or those jeans would look better IF something was different. It became obsessive and an unending struggle. I felt like everything else I was good at wasn’t enough because physically things didn’t match up.

This weekend I had a really hot summer day to myself and decided to go to my mom’s pool. When I saw my reflection in a mirror in my bikini, I wasn’t grossed out. I actually felt proud of what I saw. The days and days of yoga I’m doing, the gentleness I treat myself with when it comes to food, the love I’m giving myself; it’s paying off. I refuse to keep beating myself up and to continue the years of harm it’s already endured. As I tune into myself more and honor what I know I need, my body is changing in the ways I always wanted it to. I see the strength in this body, how it’s gotten me to where I’m at now. I remembered that day I was rushing to my car when I was 20 years old, with a baby on my hip, I stepped on a rock and fell. I instinctively fell in such a way to protect my baby and was able to get up and keep going. My body knew how to protect him and me. I always get up and keep going.

It’s funny how for years I’ve been searching for answers and guidance and for help with a whole lot of self-love, always looking outward for those answers, but when I started to pay attention, the answers have been right there, where they probably were all along, waiting for me to be ready to listen.