Trigger warnings: body image, body dysmorphia, mental health, alluding to suicide
As always, this is inspired by a conversation.
When it comes to our bodies, especially the historically picked apart, Black and bodies of the global majority.
We are often plagued by several forms of body dysmorphia, unhappiness, or distaste, down to the very hatred of our bodies.
Usually, these projections are rooted in oppression and racist standards.
We go home, exist, or over the holidays visit family and y’all know the first thing that tends to come out of somebody’s mouth. It don’t matter which spectrum you land on it is always a spectrum that leads to criticism, harm, & projected insecurities.
To be thin is seemingly the healthiest way to exist in this world but not too thin, which, in my opinion, and recognizing patterns is rooted in pedophilia (which we can point right back to history).
As someone who has always been Mid or Plus size, The conversation has always been around how large and how big I am.
How many of us walk around regretting we didn’t love our body is when we were younger? Even a few years ago.
No one told me how our bodies change, especially as a woman at 25 then at 30 and so on. There is so little research around folks who have a uterus and hormones, which also is intentional and causes so much death and harm. It is an ongoing intentional practice that especially affects the Black community. Black women / uterus havers usually experience the hardest and most dangerous conditions, and are under diagnosed and supported.
Add all of the systemic oppression and suffering that we may experience in our lifetime and it is only a wonder that illness isn’t more connected to how we feel and exist in our bodies—unless it is not western medicine.
Life, especially when it is orchestrated in such a way to be difficult for us, affects how our bodies exist, and the response when being resilient.
In the last few years, there have been very high highs and very low lows, and even I or perhaps we don’t necessarily look like what we’ve been through: the inflammation that we experience, the hormonal imbalances that we experience are inability to sleep, our discomfort and guilt around the rest, are telltale signs.
A lot of times and I will speak mostly for myself who has been on the heavier side most of my life and can compare not eating well and not eating enough has led me to a larger body. It puts the body in survival mode holding on for dear life, even when intentionally or passively I have not held back onto it.
I do think that the ways that our bodies are constantly taken apart and how we do or dont navigate it can lead us to a form of self harm that can be very dangerous—when I eat more and well I have been at my healthiest.
I have reached a point in my life at my heaviest weight To not hate or despise the very altar that has kept me going.
It has taken its own toll on me, but I wish to really invite those who are in any part of their spiritual process and journey to reconsider what it means to be an embodiment.
The very fact that our bodies overrun our brain. [The very minds that lie and can be our own enemy.] The body ensures, that regardless of what is going on, we are still here shows me and reveals to me that this body is a living altar.
It listens to us, it reflects what is possible, it can heal, even when there has been an ailment.
My body has chosen to expand when the world asked me to be smaller, when things in my life have asked for my invisibility, instead of becoming weaker it became expansive.
To me, this is a testament of how our ancestors, our spirit teams, and the closest we get to being one with the universe and God. My body, despite of how it is received by others is still one of the most perfect compositions of magic, and I get to exist in it. It tells me what I need in my job is to listen. It informs what is going well and what is going wrong in my job is to fight like hell for me to get what I need from doctors and practitioners.
I look at my face, and I can see the lifetime of those who have existed before me and with me. I can see great grandmothers in my face, I can see my father in my body composition. I can see my grandmother and my mother in so many lineages that came together and made me possible.
This body is a composition of the photos on the Coqueta. The gallery wall that holds so many family members. It is the dresser filled with bottles and trinkets and jewelry and perfumes. It is all of the answered prayers of my grandmothers. And it continues to listen to my petitions, either silent or aloud.
May we have the audacity to listen, respect, honor, protect, take care, and appreciate and strengthen the body not as punishment, but as devotion.
Let us eat well as well as we can, find the most gentleness of movement, Play an engaged in pleasure, Decorate your altar often, And may you be a light like the matches that hit that candle on our dressers.
Always be present & keep restarting and reconnecting with this living altar that is us experiencing this body that is capable of beautiful things, and it’s deserving of honoring, respect, defending, and admiration everyone in the spiritual room in my eyes is rooting for all of us from the other side.
I invite you—just like I will invite myself—to give them one hell of a show while treating life as a ceremony.
