Self Love

A video recently came across my social media feed by a fellow somatic coach, Maggie Hayes. In it she spoke of this tendency to pathologize our bodies, and how this stance of constantly scanning for what’s wrong can become the norm.

My mind circled back to a recent hospital trip I’d had, the tests and treatments I’d put my body through, and the way I still was holding my body up to a microscope trying to “fix it.” Just that morning I’d disected my own emotional state in my journal, trying to figure out if unprocessed emotions were linked to physical symptoms and maybe I just needed to feel my anger more.

I’d come at my body with every tool in my toolbox, even though I know as well as anyone these tools were never meant to be used against my body. The body keeps the score, it’s what we always say. In the field of somatic coaching, we’re working with the body as well as the mind to unravel stories. I work in medical fields and with the nervous system and with grief that is literally stored in the body, and I tell people to listen to their bodies so much I sound like a broken record. I teach classes on helping people be in their bodies.

And I became so caught up in fixing my body that I forgot to be in my body, to listen to my body, to be her friend.

There’s this song called My Body is My Buddy by Tessa Violet and I turned it on after this realization. I sat in front of the mirror, cradling my face in my hands.

From my birth to my grave every step I’ve taken my body came. Through the joy and the pain, we dance in the river we sing in the rain

My body is my buddy. Both through me and of me. oh god what an honour to see her, to know her, to love her.

I live in the awkward intersection of knowing there are a lot of things about my physical body that don’t work according to norms, that my body has faced disease, and trying so hard to not be the person who throws the next stone. A lot of people will use this as reasoning for why I shouldn't love my body, or be proud of where my body has been.

It can be easy in the face of symptoms and struggles to bemoan all the ways my body isn’t as she should be, forgetting the immense honour it is to be in my body. I love my body. I love being in a body. My body is resilient and strong and brave and soft.

Loving my body doesn’t make my health symptoms go away. Not pathologizing my body doesn’t mean I get a free pass and don’t have to take anything seriously.

It’s locking eyes with myself in the mirror, hands on my skin, whispering “I see you. I’m listening. Show me what I need to know. I trust your wisdom”