The values I was raised with got me here: so ashamed of my body that the thought of someone seeing it filled me with actual terror. Convinced that my body did not deserve rest, or food, or kindness; that it was base and crass and needed to be overcome. Desperately trying to master its needs by enduring them, denying them, and neglecting them. Being rewarded for perfect attendance, being a team player, staying late, coming in early, being the one who didn’t need anything, being the one who tended to everyone else. Refusing to prioritize care as if doing so demonstrated good character.
When Body Loyalty found me, I had to question just about everything I thought about how things in this world worked. It required examining what I really believed and why I believed that, if I wanted to keep believing it, and who benefitted from me believing. I came up with a different set of values about my body than what I had inherited, and those values – some that govern how I treat myself, and some that govern how I treat others – inform the Body Loyalty philosophy.
Our society does not support our health. Learning to advocate for your own health requires swimming upstream against tremendous systemic pressure. You have to abandon the belief that your worth comes from your work and find something else to value about yourself. You have to problem solve and find solutions against tremendous barriers to care. You have to believe you are entitled to that care, and you have to refuse to listen to anyone or anything that says different. But that can feel impossible from a place of body hate. How are you supposed to defend something you hate?
I don’t know that you can. I think the only thing to do is to find some productive feeling instead. We get one body on this earth, and we’re stuck with it. There is no getting around it, there’s only getting through it. We can work really hard to mitigate our body’s limitations, but we can’t make them disappear. Our body is like a snotty co-worker or a lazy lab partner – we didn’t choose them, but we have to find a way to productively work together for the sake of the job.
Relationships are dynamic and are co-created one day at a time.
Like other relationships, how I feel about my body isn’t static. I’m not always feeling positively about my body. I’m not always feeling neutral about my body. And sometimes my body doesn’t seem to feel positively about me. Heartburn, insomnia, digestive issues, headaches, my body will communicate right back when I’ve been mistreating it. Relationships take work. It requires investing time and seeing things from your partner’s perspective. There are times when I’m able to put a lot of energy there and times when I’m not, and that will affect my relationship with my body. In a world that demands so much of us and pays us back with so little, it is not a personal failing to be sick.
An embodied approach is essential to learning.
A lot of old fashioned religion and philosophy that built the world we’re inhabiting is no longer as true as it once seemed, but we’re taught as if it was, and living with the consequences. Guided by unexamined tradition, it’s easy to lose track of the origins of something to see if it still applies. 10,000 steps is from an old pedometer marketing campaign, no science at all. “Cleanliness is next to godliness” was proto-germ theory, not about organized pantries. Your body will help you sort out what skills and interventions are necessary for the problems you have NOW. Not the problems our grandparents and above were dealing with. If the habits you are choosing aren’t sustainable, you are just setting yourself up for another round on the shame and failure cycle. That habit won’t take unless you account for your body’s needs, with the resources and strengths available to you, today.
Self acceptance is the key to change.
“The only way to beat that system is by giving ourselves something the system never will – compassion.”
Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body is Not an Apology
This may seem counterintuitive, but I think the reason it works is about abandoning denial and taking an accurate self assessment of your skills, limitations, resources, and needs. It’s accepting that you *have* needs and that all humans do, and advocating for them instead of minimizing them. Until we accept who we really are and the lives we’re really leading, attempting our healthy choices will also require us to swim through the molasses of shame, and perpetuate harm we aren’t conscious to. Finding a shameless way to learn and problem solve is what will actually enable you to enact change. Meet yourself where you are.
Joy is an act of resistance and healing.
This is very very different than toxic positivity. Joy is not the absence of trouble, it is defiant exuberance in the face of trouble. It is a choice to fill your time with things that bring you to life in order to thrive in the face of forces of oppression. Joy uses our senses as the language of our bodies to celebrate the experience of being alive. It is in culture, music, food, color, nature, relationship, community. And fighting for it is noble. It is what will sustain you and make your life worth living, even as you face hardship.
The values I highlighted here are all about how I treat my own body, but I think most of the horrible things we do to each other are just a projection of our own self hate. So if you have some resistance to feeling selfish, know that every bit of healing and compassion you offer to yourself will result in a kinder and more generous you to bring to the world.