From Body Disconnection To Celebrating My Body
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So why do I display such a ‘hideous’ photo of me in my home? I hadn’t seen that photo for years, keeping it hidden out of sight, not wishing to risk the shame of someone else also witnessing the repulsiveness of my body. Last year, when I moved countries, I sorted through my whole house and came across this photo in a box. What surprised me as I lifted that photo out was just how completely normal my body was. How just like my brother and sister I looked, in size and proportion. I had nothing more than the soft squish of puppy fat that was pretty normal at such a young and innocent age.
It really hit me at that moment about body perception. How the continuous shaming I gave myself for my flawed body was just that… A perception. It also hit me in that moment about how, if I can hold that one perception, I am equally able hold to an alternative one. So I decided to actively change how I see my body. Now, I choose to see my beauty and I display that image with love and compassion in my home. Every day, it reminds me of how truly beautiful I am.
From Body Disconnection To Body Acceptance
Body Disconnection
The path to body love was a long one for me. I think that I have been disconnected from my body before I even really knew I had one. I was diagnosed with diabetes before I was eighteen months old. The medical treatment I underwent left me wholly disconnected from my body. It felt like an enemy in a battle I couldn’t win.
Starting A Relationship With My Body
I felt great shame about having a body that was ‘broken’, ‘flawed’ and just not like ‘normal people’s’ (whatever I thought a ‘normal’ person might be…!!). I just knew that my body wasn’t like others’…. It unpredictably would collapse in the middle of sports day. It needed doctors’ appointments and long prescription refills and syringes and blood tests and glucose top-ups and all kinds of others things to persuade it to even just appear to act like other people’s naturally did. I remember apologising to people on multiple occasions when my body just failed to cooperate yet again.
I think there were several important steps I took to get me towards body acceptance. The first thing that really helped me was psychotherapy. Actually having a place to talk about the pain, the shame, the frustration, and the embarrassment that my body gave me. I was able to own for the first time how I genuinely felt about being diabetic and living a life with this condition. Only once I had felt and honoured and processed my own feelings, could I actually even open myself up to the idea of relating to my body.
By the time I completed the Hoffman Process, I had accepted my body as a part of me. I appreciated its functional aspects. For example, I appreciated being able-bodied and my body’s ability to get me from A to B. I appreciated my body’s ability to digest my food or sense the world around me. But I couldn’t yet say I loved it. At this point, it was almost like having a family member who I knew would be in my life but that I wouldn’t have chosen to be one of my best friends.
From Body Acceptance To Body Love
The Spirituality Of My Body
It was my spiritual work that got me from body acceptance to body love. I undertook a spiritual process called ‘Active Imagination’ for an intensive eighteen-month period [see this book for a detailed understanding of the process].
Body Confidence
Although at peace with my body, I still didn’t feel proud of it. I still felt I was overweight and unattractive. A few things then took place in my life to change my mind.
Firstly, a friend came to visit me. She sat down and gave me a good talking to!! She told me about how beautiful I actually am. How I was wasting my life by berating myself for my perceived imperfections. How I might think of myself as unattractive but other people would define me as beautiful. How I am choosing the label I give myself. [It was a loooooonnnnng lecture….!!] Whilst this conversation on its own wasn’t enough to transform my attitude, it was enough for me to start asking some more questions. So I took to Google…
The first thing I tripped across was the body confidence community. I came across stories of so many women who were proud of the bodies they had, whatever size that may be. I was (and still am!) particularly inspired by the goddesses that are… Kate Wasley, Bree Kish, Samara Terese, Ashley Graham, Krychele Valenzuela and all the beautiful women who posted on #effyourbeautystandards. Thank you for giving me the nudge I needed to give myself permission to see myself as beautiful just the way I am!
For those of you that might need a little more help getting across the ‘I love my body’ finish line, I also found Megan Jayne Crabbe’s book ‘Body Positive Power‘ incredibly informative. I particularly liked when Megan outlined a well-funded and highly respected research study that showed that obese people actually live longer…!!
Celebrating My Body
To celebrat my new body confidence, I went shopping! To be precise… I bought all the clothes that I used to feel this body should not wear. I bought ripped jeans (two pairs!), a bikini, an above-knee dress, high heels, shorts… With every purchase, I realised that I was healing something inside. I was telling my body that I was okay, just as I was. I was telling my body that I am loved and honoured being the size I am. And the love I felt for myself flowed even more.
As I started wearing my new clothes, I realised how I am doing something that is bigger than myself. I am giving other women, of all ages, the permission to be themselves too. I am showing that it is okay to be in a bikini no matter what size you are. Through what I wear, I am telling women in the high street that they too are entitled to honour their body as it is now. And, importantly for me, my actions are telling those same things to my daughter and her friends so that they can grow up loving their bodies too. If that isn’t healing in action, then tell me what is!
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Natalie is a blogger with Type 1 Diabetes. Natalie's special gifts are questioning the status quo and being a rebel. She is using these gifts to question medical 'knowledge' and find a true cure for Type 1 Diabetes.
