Bodies are weird. Simply being born into a body is brave. Incarnating and being inside of a body is hard. It hurts, people send you psychic attacks but smile to your face, people touch you when you don't want them to, the world tells you that you are supposed to look like this. I mean, it is the only vessel that you get to be inside but in many situations it can feel like a prison, like you are trapped in your body. All because you don't know how to be okay with using your voice. I have been scared to be myself in many situations, scared of hurting other people's feelings and my body has been distorted in these instances. I have held tightly to my wrist, or kept certain parts of my body tight for way too long. I have smiled when I felt like screaming and I have stopped breathing without realizing it for years.
I am learning how to trust that my body is a safe space. I work on picking at myself less and learn to love my body for how weird it is. I stare at other people's bodies and think how interesting and beautiful and yet it is hard to feel this way about my own body. Even when people say they like their body, I have a hard time believing them.
I have been going to the river naked because it feels better and doing photo shoots naked with me and my baby seems poetic and necessary, but the truth is, I feel uncomfortable in my body and around people in my body whether I am naked or not. It is intimacy that feels weird. I am either too fat or too skinny, too full of myself or too insecure. What is the point? My baby's body is a miracle. I grew a baby in my body which is a miracle. Seeing her helps me to see my own pain differently. We carry trauma in our bodies, so it makes sense. When I gave birth, I couldn't stop shaking and I realized that my feeling of brokenness has always been with me. I am letting it go as I feel the physical pain of childbirth that extends long after the actual birth. I am still healing. Healing is so much slower and harder than we give each other credit for. Everyone is processing something in their body. We each came into this life with hurt. We are working it out by being honest about how weird we feel all of the time. Humans are weird. I love you for being here to experience this with me.