our own beautiful, unique skin
Wouldn't it be wonderful to be so free, so comfortable...for us all to love our bodies with the revenant passion of a lover? What a revolutionary idea.
I’ve been thinking about bodies. The skin and bones that carry us from place to place, but also the ethereal alchemy of our animation, the snowflake blueprint that makes me me and you you. I love the brine of green olives and detest the rot of blue cheese. I’m a fan of pink and glitter but suspect of most sitcoms. Rub the sharp angles of my hands and feet and I will soften. Birds fascinate me, flight a fantasy I feel was once truth in some past life of my sinews, and I am sure I was once a mother, the echo of little heartbeats felted into my fascia.
What do you know to be true about you?
In the early days of this newsletter, I wrote about bodies, about listening to them, and reflected on the ways in which we often ignore their innate wisdom. I am sometimes disconnected from my physical form, my mind a time machine, a hot air balloon on the distracted wind, a tornado of insatiable rumination. Pick your metaphor and I bet you can relate.
The first time I remember being outside of my body, I was very small. I was pinned to the floor beneath a giant. There were hands around my neck, my own wrapped around wrists wider than my palms. My knees curled into my chest, like a pill bug - always the same image whenever I remember and one I see from a short distance away. There I am, flailing. There is my mother, trying to set me free.
What comes before and after is blank. Sometimes I wonder if it really happened.
Our minds are infinitely brilliant, foxier than Poppins’ carpet bag. You cannot protect yourself, says the mind, so I will do it for you. It is the body left behind to bear the brutality.
I have spent years picking my way back through time, shifting through debris to pick out this piece, pocket that one, so that I may stitch myself back together. I am creating an inner quilt, welcoming everyone home.
2023 has been a year of this process accelerated. Endo/adeno followed by hysterectomy, the loss of my beloved paternal aunt and darling cats, the realities of a sometimes sick mom and geographic distance. I’ve begun to ponder returning home, and while this is unlikely, it presents great evidence of the healing process. Seventeen years after my escape, I can imagine returning to Texas. I feel strong enough to do so.
The year was full of joy, too. It was the year of Swift, magical and soul-nourishing. (A few days after I wrote this, this happened.) It was the year we gained a sister. We traveled to Santa Fe where my affection for the desert deepened, and soon it will be the year of Penelope. I feel the universe tapping me on the shoulder, reminding me of my place in the world. Love comes in all forms. Here’s a puppy!
We haven’t even brought her home yet and already I love her beyond measure. That tiny body pressed against my heart is homecoming.
There have been many times in my life when I thought I had no more love to give. I was full to the brim - another drop would obliterate - only it’s never been true. Love’s boundaries are not stone, rather they are living tissues, cells eager to divide. The making of that space, like the growth of bone, can be painful. It reminds me of when my legs expanded so rapidly the doctor thought my spine would curl. I writhed in bed in the middle of the night, and for about two years I was Giant Girl. But then one day I no longer looked down at everyone. The boys caught up, surpassed me, followed by some of the girls. So too did I once despise heartache, but I have learned to lean into discomfort, for on the other side is sweetness.
Surgery did not cure me. I am ok with this. Endo is a lifelong disease, but now, when I am gripped by a flare, I understand and knowledge is key. I still have the habit of running myself ragged, but I am more keen at recognizing and heeding the signs. Slow down. Take a nap. Skip the glass of wine. Say no to the party. Eat more protein.
I am learning to not expect perfection of myself, to like myself even when I mess up, and to refrain from measuring my value based on productivity. Work to live, my father used to say. Do not live to work.
Easier said than done, I know.
One of my favorite podcasts talks about womb wisdom, which on more than one occasion has sent me into a panic spiral. Have I cut away some crucial source of innate knowledge? Allowed it to be bagged as waste and tossed into an incinerator? But then I think about all the bodies born without a womb. What of their wisdom? I think it’s just the witchy, earth mother parts of me that lean toward this idea, and we are learning to lean in a new direction, into the divine, a spiritual understanding. No mortal organ necessary.
Nearly a year later I find myself in a place of acceptance, like the ghost of that cutaway piece has taken up residence in the empty space so that I may carry her and her love with me.
I’ve thought a lot about Britney’s memoir. Hearing her tell her story, asking the reader to see what we think we know through her eyes, challenged me more than once to question my assumptions.
When I watched the NYT documentary, I was enraged by the blatant male gaze and pop industry capitalization of teenage bodies as evidenced in the Baby One More Time video. To hear Britney claim the school girl image as her idea hit me differently. She wanted to dance in the hallways à la Grease and the video was shot in the same Venice high school where the musical was filmed. She had an autonomous desire to engage with and display her youth, the high noon of her sexuality in a universal setting that would resonate with her peers. I had to watch the video again, to see it through the lens of her reclaimed narrative.
I remember dressing as a schoolgirl for college parties, sporting Mary Jane’s and knee highs with plaid miniskirts. The image is somewhat horrifying to me now, only I love being viscerally reminded of what it felt like to live in that version of my body - young, aching to be seen, admired. I wanted to be loved and everywhere I looked I was met with the idea that this was the way to get there. My body.
These were the years I worked as a sign painter and florist at Tom Thumb, a grocery that at the time felt very upscale. I remember dancing to Oops I Did It Again while dethorning roses. When I expressed liking the song my boyfriend’s smile dissolved.
Don’t, he said.
Don’t what? I asked.
Do that to me.
Confused, my lips parted to inquire. I felt bashful, a little coy. When I started to smile, thinking that maybe it was all a joke, he stood up, the lines of his body bending into serious shapes.
I mean it, he said. Don’t.
He no longer had to clarify. I understood within the marrow of my bones, and in that moment I wasn’t repulsed by the threat. I was put demurely back in place. I allowed myself to be manhandled. Around this same time a boy with a pudgy middle told me that if I pierced my belly button I’d go from a 9 to a 10. Like Britney! he said. I sat on a bed in a cheap hotel on that school trip, flanked by three guys from another college who fed me vodka from red plastic cups. A friend pulled me from the room just in time.
The boyfriend’s frown hit me. To this day I can recall the way my body felt, the electric terror of being caught doing something bad. Men were not to be toyed with. It wasn’t cute to flaunt, not my will or desire, and definitely not my body. We teach girls the powers of their bodies only to punish them for exploring those powers.
A moment later the boyfriend said something else, trailed off with…if you do that to me…
I haven’t thought about this in a long time.
I do see the video differently, almost as though I can step back in time to view it through my own 16-year-old eyes. I would have loved it. I would have relished watching girls take up and own space. I too wanted the confidence to dance down the halls!
I see Britney’s kooky Instagram posts differently now, too. She calls it an outlet for play, a space to be herself, however weird, and have a relationship with her body that brings her joy, that makes her feel sexy - in charge of her own image - and gives her a sense of freedom after 13 years of lockdown and a lifetime of being told what to do with her body and how to do it. We should all be so free, so comfortable in our own beautiful, unique skin. Not for an audience, but for ourselves. We should all love our bodies with the revenant passion of a lover.
What a revolutionary idea.
Give yourself a hug. Hug someone else if they’re amenable. Our bodies are a precious resource, incredibly resilient and strong, and also not infallible. Take a moment for gratitude. And if no one is there to hug you, consider yourself squeezed by me.
Thanks for reading, friends, and for listening if you chose to do so. Like the voiceover? Let me know! Please share and forward if you think someone else might enjoy. Have a beautiful holiday season and a happy winter solstice…we will soon be moving toward the light. Here’s to 2024! xo - e