Body, Mind...Soul

August 10, 2017

"I've been thinking a lot about feeling comfortable in one's body and what a luxury that must be. Does anyone feel comfortable in their bodies? [...] I know I don't feel comfortable in my body, but I want to and that's what I'm working toward. I am working toward abandoning the damaging cultural messages that tell me my worth is strictly tied up in my body. I am trying to undo all the hateful things I tell myself."
--Roxane Gay, Hunger

Sometimes I see someone, at a restaurant or an event or an actress in a movie, and she seems so comfortable in her own skin.  I try to remind myself to not judge my insides against someone's outsides.  I have no idea if those women struggle with weight or body issues, perhaps even suffer from an eating disorder.  All I know if I want something they appear to have. 

I've had that comfort before, felt the relief and contentment and sigh of it in my bones.  I've had the knowledge that clothes fit and looked good on me, that I could easily move, that I was treating my body kindly and it was responding.  Even now, I'm not far from that on a present-moment basis.  My clothes fit and are as flattering as possible.  I'm eating healthy and moving my body some.  But then I stop and think and am no longer comfortable, so I worry that I'm just going numb to my body issues some of the time. And I know one thing, I can no longer afford to go numb for any length of time. 
 
But I do believe I'm taking first steps toward feeling comfortable in my body even now, moving toward, as Roxane wrote, "abandoning the damaging cultural messages that tell me my worth is strictly tied up in my body."  I know this on an intellectual basis.  I even worry that I know it too much and focus on my mind almost exclusively, ignoring my body until something happens and I no longer can.

The goal for now is to integrate my mind and my body, and I'm starting to think that the path to that is through tender care and through my soul.  I'm going to ponder that for a while.