A Love Letter to My Body

Previously posted on TinyLetter

A Love Letter to My Body

I think I learned very young to be ashamed of you. Of how you didn’t grow the boob size I hoped for, how my butt didn’t look like what was actually desired, and how late I “bloomed” for puberty. I hated the hair on my arms and face, and the way it made me feel less girlish. In fact, at such a young age, what I wanted was to be wanted. None of these outward features led me to believe I was. In turn, this made me reject you and the invitation you gave me to love myself.

I moved on to using you as a tool. Like a bobby pin, I would wiggle myself into places I shouldn’t have been. Or really, with those I shouldn’t have been with. It was a futile, sad attempt to try to find my footing in a world that measured my body against what the media showed me to be It. Though, Body, what I didn’t know and continue to recognize, is that media is run by men who set those very standards for desire. It’s not real. It’s not real.

And, Body, it is the same when it came to Church. When I finally cut myself off from what were considered sins of this world, I found myself tied to the sins of self. This meant I was to deny you, my body, and its desires. I was to believe that a Good man would only want me if you were pure enough for him. I learned this lesson when I told a guy I cared for about what I did to you. His response was to ignore me for days because he was “distracted by what I did.” I knew you felt shame and I let you absorb that; it was only right to feel the sins I brought against you. I denied you and shamed you. I was wrong. I was wrong.

At 24, I will never forget the moment my therapist asked me where I felt a certain feeling in you. As if you were concealing it. Confused but knowing, I placed a hand on my chest. It was then I knew I had been separating myself from you. You held onto everything as I floated on in the world. I can’t even say right then I knew the answer was to embrace you. That came with time and maturity, yoga, contemplative practices, birthing a child, traumatic election years, and anti-bodily autonomy policies written into law.

Irish poet John O’ Donohue writes:

Your mind can deceive you and put all kinds of barriers between you and your nature; but your body does not lie. Your body tells you, if you attend to it, how your life is and if you are living from your soul or from the labyrinths of your negativity. . . . The human body is the most complex, refined, and harmonious totality.

Your body is, in essence, a crowd of different members who work in harmony to make your belonging in the world possible. . . . The soul is not simply within the body, hidden somewhere within its recesses. The truth is rather the converse. Your body is in the soul. And the soul suffuses you completely.

Today, at 33, I sit here today to apologize to you. In some regard, it can be easy to forgive knowing I marched alongside societal norms and expectations. But I want to be intentional, sincere, and adamant – as real as the hand to my chest – as I apologize for not loving you wholly. For not accepting what you have given me. For pretending like I have had to be anyone else or look like everyone else. Whatever law and policy come against us, I want you to know that You are good and perfect and strong. And it’s OK to still be sad when policy wants to dictate otherwise. You are still good, perfect, and strong.

Body, the word “suffuse” as it relates to the poem above is perfect. Suffuse means to permeate or cover or bathe. What a gift to be covered by the soul with you. To walk in the tenderness and strength of your knowledge and to listen to your invitation of pleasure and love. To be unashamed.

I cannot help but think: What if the root of violence is the hate or separation of self and body? Had I never acknowledged the hate or separation, would I work to be against you? Without acknowledgment of this coverage in Soul, would I lack the awareness of connectedness to others? There is such great harm when we do not accept our goodness, Body.

To all my friends and the Body they inhabit, I hope this translates to your own souls now. As a blanket of letting you know of your inherent goodness and strength. I not only write this for myself but for you, too. Please accept this invitation.

xo B