The First Love Letter to My Body
At dinner my children were telling a story about someone who had been hurt.
As they described the accident, I noticed something strange.
My body reacted as though it had happened to me.
My chest tightened.
My stomach sank.
For a moment, my nervous system couldn’t tell the difference between witnessing pain and imagining it.
Then I remembered something I had once read:
The body is always listening.
That thought stayed with me.
If my body listens when I imagine someone else’s pain…
How many years had she been listening while I spoke cruelly about her?
I had spent so much of my life taking care of everyone else’s bodies that I had forgotten about my own.
If I’m honest… I don’t think I’ve ever had a good relationship with my body.
When I was a little girl, I got into sand fleas at school.
I was covered from head to toe with bites that left scars.
I remember looking at my skin and feeling ashamed.
Around that same season of my life, I experienced sexual abuse.
As a child, I asked one of the people who hurt me,
“Why me?”
The answer I received was,
“Because you’re pretty.”
A child cannot make sense of something like that.
In my little mind, I didn’t blame the person who chose to harm me nearly as much as I blamed the body I lived in.
It felt like my own body had betrayed me.
So I began betraying her first.
Years later came the eating disorder.
Then motherhood.
Then stretch marks.
Then weight gain.
Then mirror after mirror where I reminded my own body that she wasn’t enough.
I criticized the very body that had carried me through every single day of my life.
The body that had carried three healthy babies.
The body that kept breathing while my heart was breaking.
The body that kept walking when I wanted to collapse.
The body that held me while I learned how to become whole.
She never stopped loving me.
Even while I was withholding love from her.
Today… Oh, today.
I undressed slowly before my shower.
I stood in front of the mirror.
For once… I wasn’t looking for flaws.
I was looking at her.
I took her in.
And I smiled.
She’s beautiful.
She’s wonderful.
I love her.
Not because she suddenly changed.
Because I finally did.
For the first time in my life, I realized something that made me cry.
My body was never my enemy.
She was the most loyal friend I have ever had.
She carried wounds she never deserved.
She absorbed stress she never asked for.
She held memories she never chose.
She protected me in every way she knew how.
And through all of it…
She never abandoned me.
I was the one who abandoned her.
Not anymore.
Now I want to love her the way she has always loved me.
I want to nourish her.
I want to move her.
I want to strengthen her.
I want to stretch her through yoga.
I want to thank her instead of criticize her.
I want to stop asking her to become worthy of my love.
She already is.
Maybe healing isn’t learning to love your body because she finally became beautiful.
Maybe healing is realizing…
She was beautiful the entire time.
She was simply waiting for you to notice.
A Moment to Reflect:
Before you continue wandering through the garden, pause here for just a moment.
What is one thing your body has faithfully carried you through and you never stopped to thank her for?
Perhaps today is the day she finally hears those words.
Thank you for spending a few quiet moments in the garden with me.
Until next time,