Can I Love and Not Love My Body at the Same Time?

Rachel is an incredible artist, chef, newly-engaged and a general all-around delight in the purest sense. Today she talks about the story of loving, and unloving, her body. Thank you for your honestly, candor and being Honestly, Relatable, Rachel.

I love my body, and I don’t love my body.

Can those things exist at the same time? It seems contrary to say that they could, and yet…they do. Since puberty,  I have hovered at or around a size 14. I hit womanhood early. At the age of eleven or twelve I looked much the same as I do now; so much so that I was constantly mistaken for my youngest siblings’ teen mother. Exactly what a twelve year-old girl in sudden possessions of hips and breasts wants to hear. I have now spent seventeen more years in this womanly body, and though I was at times uncomfortable with its size,  I eventually made my peace.

I like my soft curves, the absence of angles in my body from crown to foot. I like the way my personality meshes with my soft body until we are one; my softness becoming my signature, like the touch of cashmere. I like the tiger-stripe stretch marks racing up my stomach, and the shape of my silver-green eyes; the bouncy curve of my bottom, my rich brown hair, the silky smoothness of my under-toned arms. I like the softest skin at the small of my back, my quick hands, my smile: lips a little too thin, but irrepressibly happy. I like the Renaissance way my breasts curve to waist, curve to hips, curve to calves.

But still, at times and in places,  I wish for a different-looking body. The things I wish were different are not always wrong, not always a senseless criticism, and learning to discern between the two is a long and winding road for me; a road I often fall off with weariness. I often think I should be kinder to my body in the way I eat,  so that she can find her perfect balance; the softness and the strength in harmony with each other. My body tells me that she isn’t fully happy with the way I am treating her, expressing the fact in off-kilter hormones and their attendant side effects. Side-effects which cause me to feel ashamed, as if they are rooted in some inherent flaw in my body, not in my behaviors. And it is hard for me to know how to say, “I want to change” without also looking at my innocent body and saying, “I want to change you.”

My body has little to do with these vacillations between contentment and discontentment. She ebbs and flows with times and seasons when my soul has been doing well, or not well. Sometimes her curves gain distinction, and sometimes they gain more curves. I am quick to heap blame or guilt, praise or satisfaction on my body for responding to the way I am nourishing her, the way I am nourishing my soul. Because this is one truth: the way I nourish my soul is revealed (among other things) in my body. In times of flourishing inwardly, my body looks happiest. In times of turmoil, it looks most foreign to me.

We cannot expect our bodies to divorce themselves from the knowledge that we are not thriving in our souls. Body image issues are rooted in identity issues, always. Who am I? Whose am I? Do I have answers for these questions? If I don’t, it is time to seek them. When we know our identity, our bodies are no longer the scapegoat for our feelings of inadequacy. When our identity is secure, we no longer rely on our body to achieve for us; no longer hammer her with harsh words when she fails at things even our souls found too heavy. It’s all very good to talk about these things, but I am working hard to find out what this looks like in reality. How to set aside the things that do not serve my body well, and pick up the things that do…while always, always leaving out direct hate-speak about this body that houses me.

On a dismal day several months ago I wrote about my perceived ugliness: elegant cursive handwriting in a moleskin journal. I was no uglier that day than any other day of my life, but I felt ugly, and the feeling so jaded my mentality that I could not see any beauty in my body. The words I wrote in that flowing handwriting are harsh and graceless. I spared no criticism, and I flinch even now reading them, because of their meanness.

However,  I did not rip out those pages. I left them sitting there unfinished, when I’d spent my fury against my body and hadn’t the heart to write anymore. I wanted to remember – on a better day – how unnecessary those words were. Same body as always, different emotions in the mirror of my heart. Today, those pages stand as a reminder to me that my body is not at fault for my interpretation of it. And sometimes I agree with those awful words, and sometimes I laugh at them, and still it is my body: no more or less a part of me, no more or less valuable because of how I feel about her.

What does it mean to love my body like this? I don’t have the answer to that. I don’t think loving one’s body is a static achievement, but a daily choice. I think about the way I describe the people I love, and the words I would use. I hold my body at arms’ length and consider her: how would I describe her to someone who had never seen her, if I truly loved her? If my body was the body of a friend I loved, a character I meant for my readers to love, what descriptions would I use? And maybe that’s what it means to love my body: to speak about her to myself and to others gently and softly…as softly as her curves.