Life Story: The Early History of My Body II



Yesterday was interesting for a lot of us, I think.

I heard from more people yesterday than I have in quite sometime. We're not mad at our mothers or our grandmothers or our great grandmothers for perpetuating lies about our bodies. These lies started long before them, and it's easy to believe they didn't know better. They didn't know what we know, hurtful, terrible things that we will never tell our daughters. And someday, our daughters just might say the same about us.

Here's some thoughts on what I will tell my daughters, what I will shout from the rooftops, what I will whisper in their ears:


Your body houses a spirit.


The spirit changes constantly with intelligence and progression.


Your body will change with your spirit, constantly.


On days where you will feel heavy, emotionally, so will your body.


On days where you feel energetic, emotionally, so will your body.


Your body will change like the earth changes, and if you are quiet you will feel the earth's changes in your own body. And like the earth, your body is cyclic. This system of cycles is very important for your body and spirit, it will pull out dark, deep-seated emotions that might hurt you --even if you're not conscious of them-- and flush them out, literally out of your body and out of your mind. 

This cycle that will occur in your body is Grace.


Allow yourself to be cyclic. And feel cyclic.


You will be tempted to coerce your body into staying the same. You might hear about unhealthy perimeters to keep your body within; numbers and measurements. You might feel a need to restore your body to a certain age where you think your body belongs--even though you would never will your spirit backwards to that same place. You will hear lies that unless your body stays the same you are not good enough.


These are the worst lies ever told since the beginning of time. The worst lies always involve a woman's body. They always involve a woman's body and her inabilities. And these lies, they've hurt a lot of people. You don't have to believe them. In fact, you can believe more than the sum of all these lies.

Your body is not about what you have too much of. Your body is not about what you wish you had more of. Your body isn't even about an appearance, it's more intelligent than that. It's about truth; the physical manifestation of what you know inside. 

It's not about what days you will take it to the gym. It's not about what you foods you will refuse it. It's not about how you can pluck it, paint it, or shape it with plastic. It's about how you feel about its worth--and your spirit's worth--and those sentiments will be your guide on how you treat it. 


Your body has been changing since the day you were born, let it continue to change. Let it fatten, let it thin, let it bloom, let it blossom, let it shrink, let it wrinkle, let it die.


And celebrate it all.  

This is where I will start when I teach my daughters, because these are the things I wish I would've heard, or what my mother had heard, or her mother as well. I will tell my son too, and charge him with a responsibility to never believe the lies he will be told about a woman's body.


Yesterday was especially interesting for me. A new girl was born into our family. As I looked at her over, her celestial state of newly-birthed, her body wiggling and stretching in my arms, I wondered what truths she will uncover beneath the lies we tell, the truths we cannot discover fast enough, the truths I cannot wait to hear.


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