Do you love your body?All of it? I didn’t used to. There was a time in my life where I couldn’t think of a single thing I loved about my body.
Three months before my wedding date, I was diagnosed with endometriosis, placed in drug-induced menopause and told I would never bear children. I was 21. My soon-to-be-husband and I were devastated at this news. We hoped for a few years that my condition would improve, but after 5 surgeries in as many years and 3 rounds of drug-induced menopause, my body entered natural menopause when I was 26.
That’s when I began to hate my body. I felt that my body was a traitor, a betrayer, that it had unfairly taken my God-given right to bear children away from me. So I began to punish it – subconsciously, but punish it the same. I became the epitome of good health by exercising regularly and eating healthily. I was on a mission to prove to my doctors – and my body – that I could be ‘normal’ and ‘healthy.’ Unfortunately, my Inner Mean Girl is a perfectionist and my “health kick” soon turned into an eating disorder; my exercise routine became a minimum two-hour-a-day obsession and my list of ‘bad foods’ became so restrictive that I was barely eating enough to keep a bird alive.
Fast forward 9 years.
When I was 35, my father was diagnosed with cancer. He quickly deteriorated and I made the decision to spend the summer helping my mother take care of him. Two things happened that summer that forever changed my life. First, I had the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of a dying man. I began to understand that all the things that I stressed over were really insignificant. Life is precious and we should be grateful for each day.
Second, after being in menopause for 9 years, I got my period. My doctors told me it was impossible, a fluke. You can’t cure yourself of menopause, they told me. 28 days later, it happened again.
That summer my mindset began to shift. As I watched my father die, my own body came back to life. And I was grateful. Having been raised to think my menstrual cycle was “The Curse,” I never dreamed I would be so happy to have it back. I began to see my menstrual cycle for the gift it is – my body’s ability to renew itself each month, my ability to create and give birth to life.
I’d love to be able to tell you that healing myself out of menopause was the catalyst I needed to heal my relationship with my body. But, I am a nothing if not a slow learner.
After my father died, my husband and I decided to try to have a child. After 3 rounds of in vitro fertilization, I realized that while my menstrual cycles might have come back on line, my endometriosis was still preventing pregnancy from happening. Feeling betrayed by my body once again, I gave up, gave in, and let my eating disorder take over – punishing myself and my body for my inability to bear a child once again.
Yet, I still had learned something from my father’s death. I was still grateful – maybe not for my body at that time, but for other things. I was still grateful my menstrual cycles had come back; still grateful for things I loved, and still kept my nightly gratitude practice. And the day my husband and I finalized our divorce, I was grateful for that too.
No longer worried about not being able to bear him a child, I allowed myself to let go of the dream of having children. I stopped punishing my body. I stopped exercising obsessively and started eating foods I hadn’t allowed myself to eat in over a decade. I allowed myself and my body time to grieve, time to heal.
One day I took a long, hard look in the mirror and I realized that while my nightly gratitude practice was an excellent place to start, I needed something more. To heal my relationship with food, my body, and myself, I had to learn to not just be grateful for my menstrual cycles, but I needed to be grateful for my wrinkles, scars, cellulite, adult-onset cystic acne, and muffin top. I needed to be grateful for my body – not just the parts I liked, but all of it. I needed to be grateful for myself.
So I took a vow and I wrote a love letter to my body, letting it know all the things I was grateful for – cellulite, muffin top, wrinkles, scars, adult-onset acne and all. I made myself read that vow and that love letter to myself every day for a month. You know what happened? It started to sink in. I began to actually be grateful for things I once loathed. I began to see myself as beautiful, my body as a work of art, a sacred temple of Divine crafting.
If you don’t have a good relationship with your body, I encourage you to start a daily gratitude practice. Then write your own vow, your own love letter. Read them daily to yourself – preferably out loud, while looking at yourself naked in a mirror, but if that’s too much, just read them to yourself silently, fully clothed, in a place of your choosing. Consistency is more important than the specifics of how it’s done.
I can’t promise you that you will heal your relationship with yourself overnight, but I can promise you that if you do this daily gratitude practice for your body, you will begin to see yourself in a different light. You will heal your relationship with your body and with yourself. You too will learn to love your body and the woman you see in the mirror.
I leave you today with my vow in the hopes that it inspires you to write your own. Blessings and Body Love.
Hello beautiful!
I know I haven’t been treating you as well as I should.
I know I haven’t been listening to you.
I’ve been ignoring your wants and needs.
I’ve been ignoring YOU.
But I vow to you today that is going to change.
From this moment forward, I promise you I will put you first.
I will take care of you.
Be there for you.
Be the best friend you ever had.
I will show you such Love, Honor, and Respect you’ll be astounded.
Because you matter, you truly do.
In fact, nothing matters more than you and your happiness.
You deserve it, Beautiful.
You deserve to have your wants and needs met.
And I’m going to make sure it happens.
So what do you want right now, in this moment?
What can I do to show you how much I love you?
Listen and wait for an answer to bubble up.
I promise I will get you _______ [whatever the answer was] _______ [give a time frame – preferably right now; if not, then ASAP!]
You’re worth it.
I love you.
