Friends, I want to share with you again the miracle youve performed in me. I have had a lot of baggage. I had a family that didnt treat my identity very well, and although my childhood was very charmed in many ways, I had parents who, though they loved us, scarred myself and my brother in ways that are deeper than words. To make matters worse, I was raised in a society that treats my identity, my body type, and my physical weaknesses especially as barriers to full personhood, and thus, self-acceptance. This is a big part of the core of my narrative. But its only my history. I realized recently that I have more work to do with loving myself, and my immediate reaction was frustration. When will this ever end? When will I be truly healed? I think for myself, this is the wrong line of thinking. Of course I go through this. Of course I do. Its only natural, only human, to be partially a product of your upbringing. But thats where the story begins, not where it ends. And mine is a story of salvation. Some people look for salvation in religion or in nature. Goodness knows I have. I still do. I still practice the Zen breathing that brought my body and mind so close together, and I still surround myself with places of natural beauty. It is easy to let my mind rest on a particularly lovely smell or an old tree whose gnarled wisdom--survive--is written in its lovely contortions. A picture of my mom still sits in my bedroom, just in front of my sitting cushions. I dont believe that Mom is floating out there, smiling beatifically when I venerate her--but I do think shes in here, guiding me on a cellular level, and through her, I pay homage to my ancestors, who live through me, though their names are lost to time. It is not religion per se, and it is not spiritual, exactly, but it is evocative and sacred all the same. So in some ways, when I tell my story, Im sharing her story. My present is her epilogue. My mom struggled with her weight her whole life. She was on crazy diets farther back than I remember, and though her self-esteem was not necessarily tied to her waistlne, her self-image was. She bought into every compliment about her weight loss, fretted at every pound gained. She loved cooking and loved food, but hated looking like she loved them. Mores the pity--I loved her shape. Her hugs were warm and soft and full of love and smelled of home and Cliniques Happy. But even as I acknowledged that in my youth, I struggled with my own weight, my bodys shape. I had bought into the lie that there is a normative body, that that normative body is beauty and that deviations are ugly or at least unfortunate. It has taken, partially, nearly three years of daily affirmations and sensitization to the bodys easy power and grace to unlearn the worst of it. Sometimes I still struggle, but on the whole, I love my form now. The body is whole. I say, partially, because of you. You, friends, have performed a daily miracle in me. You, by loving me so tenderly, by letting me cry on your shoulders, by never commenting on my waistline, by appreciating my form just-as-it-is, have given me constant permission and encouragement to see me as you do. You have helped me liberate myself from my mothers curse, and in doing so, I would like to believe that you have saved her-in-me from sharing her fate, too. When I think about that, I can reach back in my memory and tell her, Its okay. You dont have to feel this way. You dont have to hate yourself anymore. Weve taken away that burden forever. I can reach further back and hand Gram the two-piece bathing suit I know she would have wanted to wear had she been able to embrace her figure and her mastectomy scars, those badges of survival against a disease that, statistically, should have killed her twice. Its okay. Im here now. Ive survived. Whats left of you in me is whole. Friends, in saving me, you have ended a family cycle older than memory. You have reconciled, at last, the body and mind. And as Mom has a degree of immortailty in me, I know that I have that in you. We are becoming a part of one anothers sacred history. Cant you feel it? The powers that be are less than shadows before us, and, as a dear friend said, they are right to be afraid. We are radiant; just existing as we are makes the unjust structures of society shudder like wooden buildings in an earthquake. Do you know who you are? You cant imagine the worlds we could create merely by looking at this one with clarity and sensitivity. Let this be said: Never doubt your power to affect lasting change for the better, though it may seem small, or even insignificant in the great scheme of human affairs. To me, you have been food and drink. My teachers and confidants. My lovers, in whatever form that affection takes. You are the deities I pray to and the souls I pray for, when I find myself in that mindspace, wordless and directionless, unable to tell up from down but for your grace. In a single motion, you have taken away both innocence and shame and left me naked in the glory of how you see me, which is becoming how I am, and shaping how I see our world. Supplication could never be enough. I love you worshipfully.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 10:43:24 +0000
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