dear body

Dear body,

I have written to you so many times, but this letter is overdue.  I love you unconditionally and will do whatever I can for you.  The world tells me you’re wrong, but I know you’re right.  You are unconditionally beautiful, and I honor you.  It doesn’t matter what anyone else says.

Lately I can have a hard time trusting you–trusting you will keep living for a while.  I doubt my heart and obsess about my lymph nodes, blood cells, lung health.  But I want to trust you because I know you’re doing your best.  Our fates are one and the same.

You’ve worked hard these 45 years, and I hope we live another 40.  I’m taking care of you as well as I can.  Thank you for being patient with me.

apologies

I’m sorry we lived by the toxic waste dump when I was a child.  I know that stressed you more than a body should endure.  I eat blueberries and nuts, hoping the antioxidants will heal you.  Nature feels healing.  I want to go to rivers and streams, and riverbeds to pray.  I hope that helps.

Also I put you through impossible emotional stressors as a young person, for so many years.  I make better choices now, and Ming helps care for me skillfully.  It’s important to me to keep learning about freedom and rest.  I keep life as low-stress as I can, but some stress can’t be avoided.  Please know that I’m trying.

I’m sorry I smoked cigarettes as a young person.  I’m very grateful we stopped doing that.  It wasn’t right for me to put all that yuck carcinogen into you, and deprive you of good oxygen to all the cells–I apologize.  I’ll never smoke cigarettes again.  I was looking for comfort in the wrong places, as you know.  Now I can make better choices.

thank you

Thank you for enduring the medications I’ve swallowed, and you’ve had to figure out how to process.  That’s hard work.

Thank you for enduring changes, especially when I was on that powerful acid reducer after I was in the hospital.  It’s hard to understand how to mitigate harms, hard to know if medication is causing more harm…

I’m sorry for the sedating bipolar cocktail also.  I know that was a ton of process, for 11 years straight.  Thank you for enduring the experiments.  Sometimes I wish I never took a pill in my life.  But I know some saved me long ago.

I wanted to blame you for the ulcer, but I know you never would have chosen that.  You were doing your best with the circumstances.  Thank you for healing after the ulcer and replenishing all that lost blood, for accepting four units of strangers’ blood into you.

Now I do my best to listen to you, feed you foods that will give you strength and not upset you, and move in the ways you like.

It can be hard to understand what you need since you don’t have language, but I take the time to try.  Also I listen when my intuition that tells me I need exercise every day to keep the blood flowing to all of my tissues so the healing can continue.  Singing feels helpful too.

trust

I want to trust you, dear body.  I don’t want to feel anxious all the time, worried that you’ll fail unexpectedly.  True–bodies are risky and can fail at any time.  But anxiety isn’t helping.  I’m working on lowering my stress and trying new ways to be kind to you and support you.

We were born to die.  All animals die.  I want to trust you that when it’s time, we’ll die however we need to, and not a moment before.

A lot of factors are working against us.

• clueless medical care
• scammy health insurance fuckery
• being shamed for being fat
• a culture that’s emotionally dysfunctional
• lack of support
• poverty

Many things that would help cost a lot of money.  I wish you could get all you need and more, every day.

• massage
• trips to the ocean
• qigong and yoga classes
• super soft clothes
• organic foods
• somatic therapy
• strength training
• healing retreats

A lot of factors are working for us also.

• willingness to feel
• self-knowledge
• honesty
• intelligent paying attention
• patience
• being married to a nurse
• making the time to listen

I respect you unconditionally, no matter what.

Lots of people don’t have that respect–they hate their bodies, hate parts of their bodies, or their self-emotions are based on the number on a scale or whether they worked out at a gym that day.

Aren’t you glad we don’t behave that way?  It’s so much work to overcome what our culture taught us about our worth, and to avoid media that reinforces it.  But happiness is worth it.

promise

I promise to let you stim, and to find more freedom to stim when I’m stressed in public and need comfort the most.  I promise to stand up for you and object to the messages I hear saying you’re worthless for being fat, crazy, disabled, or otherwise different.

Any gender you need to perform, I will perform.  Any movements you need to do, I will try to understand and do those movements.

Caring for you is a joy.  I promise to breathe, smile, and be as responsible as I can for the benefit of everyone.  I love you.

You’ll always be my darling.  It’s an honor to care for you, dear body.  I admire you every day.

Thank you for growing such pretty hair, breasts, smile.  Thank you for my senses.  You are sacred to me.

I promise to give you flowers to smell, gentle sunshine, delicious foods to eat, touch pleasure, and all the attention you ask for.  It’s the least I can do.  I love you so much.

I love you always, dear body.

Laura-Marie