I’ll admit, I was afraid to share openly about these very personal topics for years. It still feels edgy. And yet, I’ve long yearned to let these experiences breathe and be known. Today, I want to claim my own story.
My Body and I
When I was about thirteen, I noticed that my belly had grown a visible smattering of dark hair. I was horrified, and felt like a freak. “Girls aren’t supposed to grow hair there”, I thought. “There’s something wrong with me.”
After finally getting permission from my mom to shave my legs, I started going wild removing hair from other areas of my body where I felt it did not belong. “Those blonde girls and their cute peach fuzz”, I thought. “They have no idea how lucky they are”. Later, I’d realize that everyone has their own body-related hangups, their own ways of wishing their skin/ hair/ butt/ you-name-it was more like someone else’s. At the time, I loathed how quickly my thick, dark hair would grow, and how prickly it’d be when it came in.
In high school and college, I coveted others’ more “feminine”-looking bodies and the way they seemed to be able to make any outfit look good. Thinking about how flat my chest was pained me, and I hated that a skin condition I had caused the pigmentation on my back to look spotty. It didn’t matter that the skin condition was benign. My physical appearance disappointed me. I avoided the beach for years, so I wouldn’t have to be seen in a swimsuit.
Conflicted Feelings
I was hyper focused on my flaws, and spent so much time and energy trying to correct what I thought was wrong with my body. At one point, I decided that sharing a home with a future partner would be impossible. I couldn’t tolerate the idea of allowing someone, especially a lover, to get close enough to see my flaws revealed. I needed to be able to hide my flaws, to keep secret the great lengths I went through to look normal.
I didn’t believe it when I heard that one of the heartthrobs of my high school had a crush on me. In true high-school fashion, he sent a friend to deliver this message—while he was sitting 20 feet away, too shy to tell me himself. I couldn’t even consider the possibility that someone like him would be attracted to me when I felt so imperfect. I rejected the invitation without thinking.
I can see how I had a habit of denying myself the opportunity for connection, and pushing away people who didn’t reflect my view of myself—someone unworthy of love and acceptance.
Early Adult Life
Later, as an adult, I found myself treating my body like a machine. I made it do what I wanted, typically spending long hours on my computer—both in the office, and after returning home. Self-care, or my attempts at such, consisted primarily of treating myself to good eats, sleeping in on weekends, online education and shopping. I bought and returned so many items in my first few years of being a working professional, I was a burgeoning retail therapy addict.
My sense of self-worth and my identity were tied up in the job I had as an engineer. I struggled with feelings of inadequacy, in more ways than one. While it wasn’t all work and no play—I took myself on occasional backpacking trips in beautiful places like Yosemite—I’d push myself a little too intensely on these outdoor excursions, trying to show myself I had a life outside of work, one that was balanced. All the hard work I did was an effort to prove myself.
Though I was no longer an embarrassed teen, I was still disconnected from my body. The ignorance I had about my body’s needs when I was younger had not been overcome; I was still largely unaware. At the same time, some part of me knew where I might be headed if I continued down this path—I had a nagging fear of calcifying as I aged, hardening into a stony mass of muscle and tissue that could no longer move.
In 2014, when my bodily aches and pains became chronic, I could no longer ignore them, and I was forced to confront the truth: I was not healthy. Not physically, not mentally or emotionally. “I can’t do this anymore”, I thought. “How did it get so bad?”
Looking Back
What seemed like a health crisis was really part of a larger spiritual crisis for me. I didn’t know how to break out of the painful existence I had bought into and helped create for myself. When I looked within, the message echoing inside was “I’m deeply unhappy. Where’s the meaning in my life?”, and my body was at the intersection of it all.
Choosing New Ways
It was on the dance floor that I noticed my knee really hurt when I moved from the floor to a standing position. Previously, I would have brushed this off as a fleeting annoyance. But because dancing helped me be more “in my body”, more in touch with myself, I had the capacity to recognize that this was a serious issue I needed to address—I couldn’t ignore it anymore, especially if I wanted to continue dancing without pain.
Just as ignoring my body lead to a vicious cycle of isolation and poor health, taking care of my body lead to a positive cycle: I signed myself up for massage therapy training and learned my body was something to be kind to and enjoy; making a habit of daily exercise gave me a reliable way to feel good and stay connected with my body; my relationship with Toby has helped me internalize the fact that there is nothing wrong with me and I am lovable, just as I am.
Resourcing the Body
One day in 2016, I found myself standing nude in front of a crowd of fifty-some other people. I was baring it all at a workshop for helping people embrace their bodies, and when a volunteer was requested, I knew it needed to be me. As I slowly turned and allowed myself to make eye contact with the many onlookers, something in me broke open; what came rushing out was a flood of tears, a lifetime of pent-up emotions, and overwhelming relief.
Where before I had isolated myself in order to hide my insecurities and flaws, I now felt I could connect with others from a place of vulnerability, by revealing myself and my experience in all honesty. As I felt more and more accepted by my fellow humans, I realized that this was only possible because I had begun to accept my own self more fully, and allow myself to show up and be seen. It was never about being flawless.
Becoming aware of my body, and building a tight-knit relationship with it, has been the most impactful act of my life thus far. I’m not perfect and I still experience challenges with my body, but what I’ve learned about allowing the body to be a guide, ally, and resource is too good to keep to myself. I know that many of us have wounds around body image, or they way we treat ourselves, and now I feel that this is part of my calling—to help others connect more deeply to themselves and their communities through caring for their bodies.
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