Today was a hard day. My body and I did not see eye to eye. Today I felt betrayed by my body and when I looked at my reflection I cried. I haven’t done that in a while and it was gut-wrenching. I know better than to believe that over forty years of pain, trauma, and hatred of my body will go away after a few years. I do get that. but when you have a streak of a few good months and then today you look in the mirror and you see yourself and it brings tears to your eyes, that’s rough. Even writing a book about doing the work and learning to love my body after all these years it is humbling to know that this may never completely heal. That is so sad in all honestly because my entire day-to-day life has been consumed with thoughts about how my body looks, or how my body feels, how my clothes fit, how my face looks on camera, how I’m not this or that how I will never be naturally thin. I’m saddened to say it still makes me angry and still makes tears fill my eyes and pain fill my heart.
Today my body hurt me, today my body was mean and unkind. It gave me a momentary feeling of hopelessness. Knowing that these days are bound to happen in my quest to have a life of peace and happiness, in reference to my body, no matter how it looks and how it feels.
Let’s talk about that, the day-to-day feelings. My body sometimes feels fat and big and it gets in my way. Do you know that feeling? I know you do, all too well. We have to remember that loving our bodies every single day takes works and unfortunately it’s very easy to fall back into the tornado of self-hatred and thinking if we go back to doing what we’ve always done!! Go back to DIETING our bodies will get smaller and we will be ok. But I know what that really means. Forgoing having a social life, counting calories, eating only a few times per day no matter what my hunger signals are really telling me. Being all consumed with food and what I can and can’t eat. When I remember those feelings I had every single DAY OF MY LIFE!! I opt to have a fifteen-minute meltdown and cry because my waistline is hanging over the side of my pants with so much gusto, or my chin looks enormous while face timing with my besties knowing that is temporary and I won’t feel like this forever. That is the most powerful lesson I’ve learned since ditching the dieting and restricting, that feeling fat in this moment doesn’t mean it will be in the next moment and I can breathe a sigh of relief and go back to loving my body.
Oh man does this take a lot of work, not just deciding to heal from a lifetime of trauma but to sit in it. Dealing with the pain of our emotions and beliefs that our bodies are all wrong! The people in our lives who may have hurt our feelings because they had things to say about our bodies. All those terrible things we’ve done to our bodies take such a long time to heal. To really forgive ourselves and arm ourselves with the confidence, self-love and acceptance that my body looks different from her body or his body takes a different kind of strength.
I’m telling you this because I know that I’m not alone but somebody reading this might feel like they are. I promise you that you are not alone and you are worthy of love. Just like I am. Even on days where this is my reality, I still believe this to be true and I know tomorrow is a new day to love myself and appreciate my body and everything that it does for me. My body is beautiful and it moves me through this life with ease and grace and when I’m ninety those are the thoughts I want coursing through my mind and my heart. Not that I or my body wasn’t good enough.