The Body is an Ally

I remember studying my body as a teenager, picking fault with my changing body as it grew curves. Not feeling as slim or as toned as my peers. I wasted so much time doing this. I couldn’t see what my body really was.

I was a teenager in the nineties.. when skinny was in. As a strong hockey playing girl, I was far from the trend of being skinny. But when I look back I was neither what I thought I was when I looked in the mirror. I couldn’t see who I really was.

I remember, after the birth of my first daughter, grieving over my changing body. I was unprepared for the loose skin, the darker nipples, the stretch marks, the rounder hips, the larger thighs. I was a teenage mum and again I compared my body to my peers and I wept over the body that I had lost.

When I look back at my relationship with my body as I grew up, I feel so sad. I wasted so much time finding fault with my body and not loving her.

The change came when my first daughter was born.

At six months old we discovered she had Cerebral Palsy and as she grew it became evident that an aspect of this that would impact her and our family through life was her physical disability.

It opened my eyes to the necessity to confront my relationship with my body with a deep determination to help my daughter love and appreciate her body.

I confronted where the hate for my body came from; the societal stories we are told of how we ‘should’ look, how we ‘should’ move, how we ‘should’ behave. I was pretty disgusted that I had fussed about such ridiculous things when my daughter was facing life with a physical disability. It was a huge reality check and put it all into perspective, to really love what you have.

But those feelings I had about my body didn’t suddenly disappear … old habits die hard! And the social conditioning and long held stories held about how women’s should be, were hard to shake off. So I invited softness. I invited boundaries. I decided to never speak negatively about my body, especially in front of my children. I never talked about how other women’s bodies looked to others and over time I stopped noticing, it became irrelevant. If I had negative thoughts about my body, I would lean in and explore if it really was my body that I was feeling negative about or something else. 99% of the time it was something completely unrelated, but I had developed a habit of controlling the negative thought by projecting it onto my body, doing something with my body to try and make me feel better about it.

Slowly over time I spoke more gently and lovingly about my body and my relationship changed. I did things that took me out of my comfort zone, making me face fears and see my body as my friend rather than the enemy.

I stopped reading magazines, stopped following social media accounts that weren’t aligned with the soft, gentle approach to loving our bodies.

But most of all, I observed and really learned from my daughter. I watched as she grew older, how she had such freedom in her body as she danced, how she loved moving in her body; how she had such fun in her body and how she loved how she looked. Her physical disability has never been a negative thing, it just been another glorious aspect of her. Another element of her that makes her who she is. She is the most incredible woman, one of my greatest teachers and I’m so truly grateful to her, for being the catalyst that has helped me to feel at home in my body.

Feeling good in my body and trusting my body.

Knowing that the body is our greatest ally.