About two and a half months ago I decided to start eating right and exercising again. I wanted it to be a lifestyle change this time. My mind, body, and spirit are optimized when my diet is right, and am exercising the way I should. As a start to this new lifestyle, I wanted to write a letter to my body. I was inspired by a Facebook post written by a mother who has several children and wrote a thank you/promise letter to her body. Included in the letter were promises of how she would begin to take better care of it as well as a reflection of appreciation for what it had done for her so far. As I listened to a friend of mine read this post out loud, I was super excited about writing a letter to my body filled with my wonderful plans for it!
Well, when I sat and began to write this letter the spoken word you just listened to is what came out.
I certainly was not ready for what surfaced when I attempted to write my letter. I couldn’t say the things I had hoped to say to myself. I did not want to say anything to my body, and the strongest feeling I had towards it was anger. I avoided these feelings with silence and treated my body as if it was simply along for the ride rather than the train in which I traveled. This shocked me, frustrated me, and made me weep. Sitting in the parking lot of the grocery store I had to decide: Was I going to go in and get the fruits and vegetables that it needed or was I going to continue to abuse it with indifference?
My body has RARELY done what I thought it should do. I am sure many of you reading this can relate. Women especially, but men, you as well. Some of you are trying to build big muscles to cement the fallacy of masculinity into your reality. Others of us are starving our ancestral curves to compete with critics that spend millions of dollars to obtain our figures. We are all confused and struggling for this ideal look, weight, and size. Many of the weight assessment tables treat our ancestry with disdain and leave our demographic packages out of consideration. I can barely scratch the surface of the discriminatory malpractice within modern medicine that ripples into our perspectives of self. However, that’s only one guest at the table of people facilitating health disillusions and scourging our self-esteem. Family members will talk about how big you got behind your back and when you lose weight, they’ll tell you you’re too skinny. Oh, and my church folk who criticize others for not eating the unhealthy choices at every Sunday repast. Now, what about the fashion industry that thinks they solved the problem of imbalance with their plus-size models. For them, you must be a 2 with no fat or a 28 with fat in all the right places. That ratio between your butt and your waist better be at least 5:10 otherwise you’re not plus size you’re just BIG. Then, for the men, you should be lean with sparkling eyes or so ripped it looks like someone chiseled you from stone.
I know I called some industries and people groups to the carpet. However, the last and most important person I am calling out is ME. Childhood, society, medical personnel, fashion industry, movies, family, mentors, etc. have all influenced my view of self. Now that I am all grown up, I have the power to fix it. I am evolving out of blaming everything and everyone for how I view my body and deciding right now at this moment that I own the mirror. I choose to see my reflection and not my comparison. I make that decision each time I look at myself, and my image is becoming clearer with every peak. There are things I cannot change and could never have prevented. What has happened in my past and what I will lack in my future because of it is out of my control. However, I have decided to stop looking for someone to blame for my physical misfortunes and love all that remains.
I focused a lot on outward appearance in this post, but there are internal things that also cause us to hate our bodies. I would have a hard time trying to cover them all, but I want you to know that the power of self-love is in your hands. It does not mean that it isn’t hard, and it does not mean that you won’t hate the situation. However, your perspective is the one thing you truly can fight to change. I am realizing that the more my thoughts change; the more my behaviors do as well.
I share this vulnerable transparency with you as an invitation to search yourself. I did not write the letter because I am choosing to live my letter instead. Every dark leafy green is a stroke of my pen and every day packed with better choices is a period at the end of each statement. I don’t know what your letter looks like, but it is my hope that you will begin to write out loud!
Comments