*cover photo by Juairia Islam Shefa on Unsplash*
Today’s essay is for my entire community, but if you’re interested in gaining access to my full archive and more quality writing each month, consider upgrading your subscription for $7/month to become a paid babe. Plus, your support directly contributes to my writing practice as a Black woman creative. For my paid babes—thank you!
Pro tip: You can listen to me read this full essay by pressing play on the article voiceover. Don’t forget to hit the ♥ icon if you’re feeling this post to let the algorithm know you rock with me!
I don’t know what I want from my body.
I guess, mainly, I want it to work. I want it to not be pulled down by the presence of past trauma and grief. I want it to know it’s safe to relax so my nervous system can stop working in overdrive. This must be what it feels like to run on fumes. To ask your body to perform at a level it currently can’t reach. To ask your body to bend just a wee bit more, though you’re sure it may already be broken. To ask this vessel to forgive you for forgetting its value. For fighting to quiet its whispers, telling you something was wrong before they turned into screams incapable of being ignored. This must be what it feels like to know that you are only human, no matter how much you pretend to be otherwise.
We’re raised up to see our bodies as no more than a performance tool. We demand that it grows smaller. Stronger. Shorter. Taller. More sculpted. More shapely. More or less of anything. So long as it’s not what we already are. We become disconnected from our bodies, even though that’s a tie never wholly severed. And suddenly, something happens. An accident. An illness. Plain old-fashioned aging. Our body becomes a burden. It becomes a barrier to a satisfying sense of well-being. It becomes something we must refamiliarize ourselves with, like an ancient text that we long ago discarded and no longer comprehend. Suddenly, our bodies aren’t just our bodies. Suddenly, our bodies become our life’s work. Something to learn, study, and bow down to. Will we honor it? Or will we just write it off as another thing unworthy of our care?
I’m at odds with myself often, especially my body. For most of my life, it was simply vanity. My body never looked the way I wanted it to look. Mainly like the bodies that belonged to others. The bodies that were praised. The bodies that sat upon a high pedestal. The bodies that were on television or in the magazines I constantly read that in more ways than one showed me my body was not enough. But there were quick diets, expensive creams, and bizarre practices that could fix all that. Or so they said. No matter how much they try to sell a natural resource back to us neatly wrapped in packaging that promises “instant results”, confidence isn’t something to be bought. While I’m no longer the 13-year-old girl cursing the unfairness of puberty and feeling particularly unpretty with my pizza face acne, I still tend to fight with my body. Though the battles look different. Now, with chronic conditions that have proved themselves to be in control, I’m figuring out what it looks like to be an ally in this war rather than a sworn enemy.
However, changing sides is hard.
It’s a day later, and I’m sitting in my yellow armchair attempting to eat the rest of this sweet potato oatmeal that I’ve been chopping away at since 10:41am. It’s now 11:16. When I just reached towards my table to place my light seafoam green bowl down, my face twisted with the recognition of a pain in my back. Particularly what feels like a piece of my spine. It’s rather impressive how quickly this pain jumps from my spine to my spirit. My memory takes me back to the times when, like now, a small but significant pain would be only a friendly preview of what was to come. I push those thoughts to the side. When I linger on them even a millisecond too long, the sadness can settle in like an early morning fog. Everything becomes distorted.
I think of the recent past and how my body has required more of my care these past three years than my entire life. Care that goes deeper than surface level. Beyond the discolored skin on my hips where the seatbelt clung to me and saved my life. Beyond the stretchmarks I sport everywhere from the curves of my shoulders to the soft skin of my stomach. Beyond the wide nose they wanted me to hate, but I luckily learned to love. Beyond the scars and scrapes that tell the tales of my yesteryears. I now must care for myself in a way that says, “Even if you did nothing else, you’ve already done enough. Let me show you my gratitude for all the many things you’ve already given me.”
other essays written with my body in mind:
—Is My Love Enough?
—for this body, i give thanks
—coming home to myself
—blurry reflections
✨Never want to miss a new piece? Become a free or paid subscriber today!
Whew, the relationship I have with my body is a difficult one sometimes but I'm glad it no longer feels like a love-hate one. I'm also glad that ageing has caused me to be less stubborn about listening to my body and its needs when it is telling me to. Thank you for sharing!
What a tender testament that our bodies, exactly as they are, are worthy. They already hold everything we could have hoped for. We just need to trust ourselves :)