Welcome to BodyLoyalty.com. This is the work of me – Tresa Edmunds: writer, activist, performer, rabble-rouser – but also, the work of community.Here we will discuss how to nurture a relationship with your body based in acceptance and care and reflective of the holistic contributions made to that relationship. Bodies are for so much more than appearance, and so our relationships with them should value so much more than liking how we look.
Body Loyalty is a framework for developing a relationship with your body. It is trauma informed and disability informed to be reflective of the full range of experience with bodies.
In the disability community, we have been known to joke about our non-disabled counterparts being “temporarily abled.” Every human lucky enough to not meet a sudden tragic end will find themselves disabled at some point. Every human will experience trauma of some kind, even if it’s just at the very end of life. These are common, mundane, regular parts of living with a body but our fear of that reality makes us deny it and fuels our self hate. We are taught to feel disgust toward any sign of physical weakness, and we punish ourselves when we can’t hide our humanity.
Bodies do not betray us by aging or getting sick. That is a built in part of their function. Humans come with a planned obsolescence. Most of us do not accept that reality with grace, however. Instead we constrict our choices, live with fear, and deny and reject reality. We punish anyone who demonstrates that reality, and we hate every sign of it on our bodies.We cannot see the ways we are speeding towards destruction through our fears, denying the very signals that could push us to seek medical care, get a cancer screening, change food choices, reduce stress. We are so superstitious and afraid that it prevents us from doing the things required to actually fight for life.
We are taught that the only bodies that deserve love are the perfect bodies. But then we are also living in a world where bodies can never be perfect. It is a double bind that creates suffering of every kind. We are fed a belief system where no one can deserve love, in order to keep us working harder and buying more, desperate for some kind of security in the place of love. Our self hate benefits people who make money on it.
I found this path through deeply hard won experience living with trauma and disability. It is grounded in science and in spirituality, a combination of what science recommends, and what it feels like to make it happen in your life. There are no prescriptions, no advice on what choices to make, no input about what you choose for yourself. Just support in you determining that for yourself, and fighting the barriers that prevent it.
Body Loyalty is not a trendy quick fix vitamin you slap on top of a privileged life. It asks you to reexamine every system you engage with, and join a fight with every other person striving to meet the needs of their bodies. It is informed by critical race theory, critical disability theory, worker’s rights movements, queer theory and intersectional feminist theory.To be loyal to the needs of your individual body, you must be loyal to the concept of bodies. All bodies. It means you respect pronouns, you fight for immigration rights and unions, and you believe in the dignity of every other human as you believe in your own. Body Loyalty is a solidarity movement.