“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.”
– Jim Rohn
A SURPRISING CONVERSATION WITH MY BODY
The assignment on our Zoom call two weeks ago seemed simple enough: draw an outline of a body, then reflect on where we feel grief or what part of our body we grieve. The next step? Write an apology to that part.
We had already spent an hour talking about hangups we have with our bodies and how to make peace with them, to go along with our theme for March, “My Body.” (This month we’re also reading Returning Home to Our Bodies for a book club; it’s excellent so far!)
I sketched a rough figure and drew arrows pointing to my stomach. It has always been a source of frustration for me—even in my youth, when it really wasn’t a problem, but I still believed it was.
But before I could apologize to my stomach, my stomach threw an accusation back at me:
“You realize this is the best I can do with what you give me.”
Okay, fair point. While I try to eat fairly healthy, I do still feed junk to my stomach more often than I’d like to admit.
THIS WORD FEELS WRONG
The next step of the body exercise was to reduce our previous statement down to three words. I knocked off all the words except:
“This is best”
even though nothing felt best about this exercise so far.
Then, from those three words, we had to choose just one word.
I circled:
“Best”
But really? Best? It felt disingenuous. It’s a word I never use in talking about my body.
As the days passed, however, I continued thinking about it. And started seeing some truth in it. My body has always done its best for me—protecting me, caring for me, moving me through the world wherever I’ve wanted to go.
No matter how I’ve treated her, she has always shown up for me and stayed with me, even through injuries and pain.
A TOUCHSTONE FOR GRATITUDE
To complete the homework assignment after the call, we were asked to create a Body Touchstone—something meaningful to hold onto, marked with the word we chose.
This part was easy. I picked a small seashell from a past beach trip. It serves a dual purpose: it reminds me of my One Word for the year, Ripple, since it’s from the water and has ripples on it, and it once housed another living creature—just as my body is home to me.
I wrote Best on the inside of the shell.
I know my body and I will continue our ongoing discussions and arguments (and sometimes shaming battles) about her flaws. We’ve done it for years. I hope one day we’ll stop—and we do better now than we have in the past—but I’m also realistic that an aging body can be even harder to accept.
Yet I’m still grateful for my body’s persistence and resilience to stay with me until the day I take my final breath. She and I are together in a tight relationship of ripples. Some things I do will affect her more than other things, and vice versa. But either way, we’re inseparable.
I put the shell my pocket each morning. Several times a day I reach down and touch it, each time reminding me to speak to my body with gratitude instead of criticism.
She’s not perfect. But my body is the place I began, and the place I start anew each morning. She is the best place for me to be.
Share your thoughts in the comments.
Read more:
- How Present Are You in Your Happy Place?
I was literally in my happy place. Yet my mind wandered off. Was my body still keeping the score anyway, in a good way? - Body, I Forgive You
Our flesh won’t always cooperate with our spirit. We can either resent the limitations or find a way to work within them. Body, I forgive you. - When Compassion for Others Takes a Sharp Turn: A Lesson in Vulnerability
Our mother/daughter experience donating blood took an unexpected turn, reminding me of the value of vulnerability and the importance of compassion.
