Beaches and Swimsuits.

I just got back from a beach vacation.  Translation, the nightmare swimsuits!  Open up the inner dialogue of comparing my body to everyone around me and criticizing my own imperfections.

I am chubby.  I told my husband before we married that I would always be a little bit fat and if was not able to accept my fluffy body he probably should not marry me.  While I joked about my fluff, my internal voice was downright hateful.  I hated my rolls, muffin top, and cottage cheese thighs.  The dialogue in my head was verbally and emotionally abusive.  I punished my body with diets, starvation, and restrictions only to begin a cycle of binging, stuffing, and carb frenzies.  I punished myself by refusing to buy new clothes until I lost that 20 pounds and could buy the size I thought I should be.     

In a healing session, I was asked to breathe in compassion.  I felt my body tense completely up and fight with all its might to keep said compassion far away.  I did not, do not deserve compassion.  I sat with this over the next few weeks.  Why was I pushing out goodness from my life?  Why had I become my own worst abuser?  As a therapist, I used to use humor with people who said they could not be loved, "Oh, so you are that special?  You are the exception to God's love for the entire world?  The whole world means everyone BUT you?"  And now, here I was making myself the one exception to the rule. 

As I sat with this, something started moving.  Compassion started moving in despite my best efforts to push it far away.  I questioned my negative thinking and then refused to abuse myself.  I was going to wear a bathing suit on the beach and not be embarrassed or hide behind people.  I was going to love my body.

I started thinking more about my body – this house that carried my core being.  My body has been through a lot.  It took abuse from others.  It took abuse from me.  I ate to manage anger, rage, grief, sadness.  I ate to cope with deep emotions.  As a result, I carried extra fluff.  I had to choose to accept that I used food to cope because that is what was available to me.  I had to accept that I continued to fall back to old habits of carb frenzies to manage my emotions, and while this was not the best option, it was what it was.  There are times when I use all my appropriate and healthy coping skills and times when I am too tired or foggy to access what is best.  The question became, can I forgive my body, forgive myself when my coping is not what it should be?  I decided, yes I would forgive.  I would love.  I would let compassion enter and heal.

This body of mine, with all its imperfections has been through a lot. It housed and birthed three children.  It has changed diapers, washed bottles, cooked meals, washed clothes.  It has played football with my son.  It has lied next to my children as I tuck them in at night.  It has done chest compressions and brought back the dead.  It has held the hand of a frightened cancer patient and hugged.  It has hiked mountains and climbed waterfalls.  This body of mine has done great things, is doing great things despite its fluffy imperfections.  It is time to honor and treat it with the tenderness I can so readily give to others. 

I will report I walked the beach with pride and no shame.  This was the freedom I had longed for!  Now it is time to go shopping.