A Love Letter From Your Body

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My dearest companion,

This is to tell you what you often forget: I’m on your side.

As long as our heart is beating, I’m here with you and for you.

I know we’ve shared dark times together. Perhaps you believed I turned against you, through disease or addiction or depression. I was not sabotaging you, but speaking to you.

I know your greatest potential, the highest expression of who you are. Through hard times I was telling you, You’re not there yet! Don’t stop here.

I teach you how to take care of yourself.

You tell yourself you know best. You tell yourself you can eat gluten, or go on only six hours of sleep. So I must remind you: No, you can’t. I love you so much I will not let you do that to yourself.

I am the voice of your soul, or at least its vocal chords. In times of turmoil, I help you discover who you are.

You may tell yourself that you can settle for an unfulfilling relationship, continue the corporate job, or withhold the forgiveness. Again, I raise my voice to say: No, you can’t. Because I love you, and I have your best interest at heart.

I loved you even when you didn’t love me.

I remember the times you tried to hurt me, when you took a pry bar to my heart to excavate the pain. Perhaps it was an eating disorder or cutting or substances.

Even if you were letting the life out of me with a blade, or preventing its entrance by withholding nourishment, I was holding on to life for you. I was holding on until you gathered the courage to hold on for yourself.

Drowning pain with pain is so human, and therefore so unshameful. I do not blame you for the self harm. I never stopped loving you.

Your thighs and belly have a message for you, too:

They would like to say,

“We are not obligated to be beautiful to your culture. Why do you expect us to conform to a shape for which we were never intended?”

“You accuse us as being stubborn and untamable, with a mind of our own. Well, thank you for the compliment. We do not give a damn about being acceptable to your culture’s perverse standard of beauty. We refuse to sacrifice our independence and intelligence to a society that has neither of these traits.”

You listen to the voices of culture, the voices which chant incessantly, You are not enough, and you never will be. If you listen long enough, you will forget your mother tongue, the language I speak to you. The language through which I say, You are enough, you always were.

More than anything, I want to speak to you.

If only you knew the wisdom and love in this well of yourself! It is all the wisdom and love you will need to make it through life.

Perhaps you think I’ve lost my wisdom, because you lack health. It may be mild insomnia, or it may be a chronic illness. These symptoms arise because you’ve forgotten how to listen to me, and not because I’ve forgotten how to be a healthy human body.

I know how to be a human body, for I came from the Earth and she taught me well.

She taught me how to grow with the rhythms of Nature: look at the four seasons. She taught me how to unfold my own beauty: look at the flowers. She taught me how to be delighted: look at the fox pups.

I know how to be happy, peaceful, relaxed, creative. But you must trust me. Listen to the Earth pulsing in your blood, and not the Machines buzzing in your ear.

The work of your life is learning how to listen to me. When you can hear me, you’ll know you are always loved and you are never alone. You’ll know that we can get through anything.

So please, get off the treadmill you’ve made of your life. If you are tired, rest. If you are really tired, really rest.

Perhaps you are afraid to feel your fatigue. How will I ever keep up if I slow down?

If you treat me like a machine, overworking and silencing me, I will burn out. But if you trust me, and you ask me, “What do you need right now?” I will take care of you. I am more powerful than a machine, for I know how to heal myself.