Respect Your Earthsuit
SWIPE THROUGH
Perhaps your body experience is like that of so many others.
Always wishing for the updated version, & often wishing that the updated version was a past version of you. I hear this all the time. From folks who look at photographs of their younger selves, adoringly. Wondering why they didn’t see what they can see so clearly, now. From folks who went through normal developmental stages & were made to feel shame for the ways their bodies completed these processes.
Perhaps the humans who raised you, the people who witnessed your development & aging, never normalized the process. Perhaps they never spoke about their own experiences, or, made you feel as though you & your body we’re going through a stage incorrectly.
Perhaps you are substantially influenced by what you see reflected in the media. And you remain perplexed because you never see you.
You take that on as though it is a YOU problem.
How many of us have spent time wishing for our younger bodies? Elevating them in our minds as though if we could re-experience life in them, we would do it so very differently. I appreciate the human call for a do-over.
Because that is not how life or bodies work, I wonder what it might be like to look at your body, right now, today, & welcome it, in whatever stage it is in.
Your body is good. It is resilient, it has been shaped by your experiences, it has brought you to today. I am grateful for your body. Because that Earthsuit? That’s your carrying case.
That is what brought you here, today, to read this. I have endless respect for you & your Earthsuit.
Writing prompts:
1. What are the factors that influenced the way I experienced my body as it went through life stages? If I could do it again, what would I like more of? Less of?
2. What would it be like to practice accepting the body I live in today? Not loving it or hating it, but accepting it in the same way that we accept gravity as the reason that we are not floating.
3. How might my experience of being in this body change if I were to have compassion for its history, and curiosity about its future?
4. Make a list of five things that make your body uniquely yours.
