My Body Is Amazing and So Is Yours

This post was originally written as part of a blog series over at An Emergent Life as a way to bring awareness to body image and eating disorder awareness in general and to Body Image and Eating Disorder Awareness Week in Australia.  This is such an important topic for me to write about not only in my own healing journey but because it is my hope that one day all women and men with truly cherish, love, nurture and nourish their bodies and find freedom in their own individual beauty. 

My body is amazing.

On the very basic level, my body shows up every day working it’s magic just to keep me alive. It knows when to take a breath, it doesn’t need to be told to pump blood through my veins, and it has an amazing ability to eliminate things that it no longer uses.

My body is incredible.

This body of mine has fought illness, disease and life-threatening infection and in a moment when I thought I might breathe my last breath, it worked even harder to make sure that didn’t happen. My body, this body that I was given, is a real gift.

On a deeper level my body is a vessel where I take up residency and live my purpose serving the world. It’s a divine and gracious vessel, home to a soul that’s craving to send out love and compassion, a soul that is ready and yearning to make a difference in this big world of ours.

However, it took me a really long time to realize how lucky I am to have this body.

I had an eating disorder for almost 15 years that consumed me and in all honesty, not many people even know about it. It varied in severity but at my worst it was bad and at my best it was manageable. Some days I wondered if I would think about anything other then what my body looked like, how much I was eating or whether or not I got to work out enough to burn what I had eaten.

I longed for the day that I would just be happy with what I was given. I was desperate to find freedom but I didn’t know how.

I spent so many years fighting with this incredibly resilient body I have. I’ve abused it in ways that I’m not proud of. I’ve berated it, cursed it, called out its flaws and used it to gain inappropriate attention from men. I’ve pushed it when it was tired and weak and needed rest and I’ve whittled it down to nothing all in the name of vanity.

I spent so much time longing for something different that I missed the amazing things my body was capable of doing. I felt like a prisoner, longing for freedom, bound by shackles wrapped tightly around me ankles holding me where I was. I couldn’t see this gift for what it truly was.

And then it happened. The day I finally realized I was free.

It was almost three years ago and I was busy working on one of my home projects, a newfound passion of mine, when it occurred to me that I hadn’t obsessed about food, exercise or my weight in what felt like a long time.

I stood there in disbelief and wondered what had changed? What was so different now from the days where it was all I could think about, when it was my whole world?

I continued to mull this over for a while when it hit me. It was me, I had changed.

I had started living my life instead of standing on the sidelines waiting for someone to tell me how to live it.

Slowly I began discovering interests and passions I never knew I had which consumed me in ways I’d never experienced. I had this newfound burning desire inside to be creative and explore the world differently. I had other things to take care of, to think about and slowly, these things began to take place of my obsession with my body.

For the first time I was fully immersed in doing something I loved. I was using my given gifts, getting creative, feeling passionate and alive.

I’ll be the first one to acknowledge that this isn’t as easy as it sounds in every case. There are a lot of severe cases of eating disorders that require professional attention. However, for me, my disorder stemmed from the fact that I wasn’t fully living in my life. I wasn’t heeding the call from within and instead I placed my energy and attention on my body.

What I’ve found in myself and witnessed in others is when we put a lot of emphasis on the exterior (how we look, what we have, who we are seen with, etc.) it’s a good indication that it’s time to look inside and see what is missing in our lives.

When we aren’t truly happy in our lives and with what we are doing, when we feel like we have no control over our lives, it’s easy to get caught up in the things we can control, like our body.

Once we begin to see that we are the co-creators of our lives, everything can change.

What do you want for your life? How do you want to feel? What are you interests, your passions and hopes and dreams?

Start here. Slowly begin to unravel what it is you truly want.

If this is something you struggle with this is a wonderful time to turn inward and ask yourself what are you truly hungry for?

Give yourself permission to dive into the dreams, to try new things, fall in love with you life and see what shifts elsewhere.

Your body is a gift. It’s a vessel for you to share your passion and light with the world.

Your body is amazing and so are you.

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If you struggle with issue surrounding your body and eating I encourage you to reach out to me. You really are not in this fight alone. 

I Am Beautiful

I was taking a yoga class last week with one of my favorite yoga teachers. She my favorite because she radiates authenticity to me. She radiates love, happiness, and a deep understand that taking life too seriously is for the birds.

As I was lying there, we started class on our backs, she read something powerful to us. She read about accepting those things about ourselves that to us, seem like flaws, as our uniqueness. As I rested on my back and she spoke the words, something resonated deep within me and I had a moment where I got the biggest smile on my face and quietly to myself I said 'yes!'

I am beautiful.

All those things I've picked apart for years, they are what make me who I am. When we embrace them, our truest self can totally shine and illuminate the world.

Later that week as I was reading in my book, You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay, I came across this very passage.  It says:

"Often what we think of as the things "wrong" with us are only our expressions of our own individuality. This is our uniqueness and what is special about us. Nature never repeats itself. Since time began on this planet, there have never been two snowflakes alike or two rain-drops the same. And every daisy is different from every other daisy. Our fingerprints are different, and we are different. We are meant to be different. When we can accept this, then there is no competition and no comparison. To Try to be like another is to shrivel our soul. We have come to this planet to express who we are.

I've spent so many moments in my life picking apart all the things that are different, all the 'flaws' that I thought made me less than.

I use to sit in front of a mirror at the age of 4 and try to scratch off my freckles, already at such a young age trying to rid myself of my so-called imperfections, my so-called differences.

When I hit my teens and my frizzy, curly hair was so different then all my friends perfectly straight long locks, I would rise at the wee hours of the morning to begin a long and tedious task of straightening out my kinks.

These things today make me who I am. They are what sets me apart from everyone else and I've learned to not only embrace them but truly love them.

Lately I've been having a hard time with the fact that I, truth be told, am aging. My perfectly wrinkle free skin is starting to show the wear and tear of the years of basking in the sun without sun screen and abusing my body, pumping it full of bad foods, too much alcohol and the occasional harder substance.  Instead of looking in the mirror and noticing how gracefully I am aging, how life has been good to me, I've been focused on the new lines around my eyes.

However, as I was lying in my yoga class listening to my teacher I felt a knot in my throat and tears start to well in my eyes.

I am beautiful...just how I am.

It was a powerful moment for me. For the first time I realized that every single last thing about me is perfect. I don't have to be a certain size, my hair can be what ever texture it naturally is, and the wrinkles around my eyes are a sign of living life and growing wiser.

Sure, I may struggle every now and then in the future with those thoughts but I know I have the power within me to make sure they are only fleeting, passing by and leaving again with the breeze.

I encourage you, my dear ones to look in the mirror and instead of seeing your so-called flaws, see all of the amazing things that make you you. One of my favorite quotes is by Dr. Suess:

Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer then you!

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