Does Your Body Love You?

Full disclosure. I originally wrote this post in January. Each weekend, I look at it, think about posting it, decide against posting it, and write something new. This has been going on for several months now. Why? Good question. I don’t think it’s a bad post. But something has been stopping me from sharing it with you all. This past weekend, I went through my normal routine. But this time, I opened this post and reread it. I changed a few things, but it’s basically the same post I’ve been avoiding for months now. Why it took me so long to actually press the “post” button, I’m not sure...but without further ado, here it is:

I’ve been thinking a lot about my body lately. Speaking from the perspective of someone who recently left eating disorder treatment, thinking about my body can very well be a slippery slope. It is part of what got me into trouble in the first place. Although eating disorders are about much more than just your body, a general dislike of one’s body seems to be one common denominator of almost everyone I’ve met with an eating disorder. Sadly, I would venture a guess that a general dislike of one’s body is very common in all women, whether they have an eating disorder or not.

In our society, we are conditioned to believe that our bodies are never good enough. Because of popular media, we are constantly seeing images of bodies that are unattainable because they aren’t even real. A large majority are photoshopped. I could go on forever with this tangent, maybe it will be a future blog post, but for now, I’ll focus on what I know most: me.

While in treatment, we were challenged to think about our relationship with our bodies. We were challenged to see all the positive parts of our bodies and recognize what they do for us on a daily basis. In fact, at least once a day after a meal, we had to share. Part of that sharing was a body positive affirmation. We would share an “I love (or ‘like’ on those days we just couldn’t get there) my ____” and everyone at the table would respond, “So do we.” I don’t know, maybe a body positive affirmation is easy to come up with for some of you, but man, was it hard for me. Every single day it was a struggle for me to think of just one thing that I liked (it wasn’t even on my radar to say that other “L word). As I sat and listened to all of my friends, I realized that it was hard for all of us. We liked our tattoos, and the hair ties on our wrists, our 2nd fingernails on our right hand or our third toenail on our left foot, our left shoulder blade or right ankle. Rarely did anyone love anything, and genuine body parts were few and far between. My go-to answers on good days were my eyes and my hair, and on bad days were my tattoos and piercings. It was SO hard to find something that I liked.

As I was sitting at the table after dinner one night during processing, I started looking around the table. I looked around the table at these women who had become my best friends, my family. I looked at them and all I could see was beauty. Beautiful smiles, expressive eyes. Distinctive personalities and endless understanding. Empathetic hearts and selfless attitudes. Women who were fiercely loved by their family and friends. Everyone so perfectly different and beautifully unique. I could not find one thing “wrong” with any of these women. Yet in their thoughts, most struggled to find one thing that WASN’T wrong with them. Including me.

I realized that in our society, it isn’t always acceptable for us to like or God forbid, love, our bodies. When we get compliments, we are conditioned to point out something negative about ourselves in response. “Cassie, I love your hair!” “Oh, yeah, thanks, but I’m really needing to get it cut and highlighted again…” Why can’t we just say, “thank you?” Well, we feel like we can’t do that because when someone actually does say thank you, then it is sometimes seen as conceited. Why is our society like this? Why can’t we just accept our bodies as they are and love them like they love us every second of every day?

This was a new concept for me. The concept that my body loves me. But the more I think about it, the more I think it’s true. I think it’s true for everyone’s body. Our bodies keep us breathing and keep our hearts beating. Our bodies allow us to experience the world around us through our senses. Our bodies allow us to move around freely, wherever we may decide to go. Our bodies allow us to express our thoughts and emotions. And our bodies do all these things, whether we consciously think about it or not. Whether we thank them, or not. Our bodies fight through adversity and keep working for us even when we don’t take care of them as well as we should. Our bodies love us, even when we don’t love them back.

Our bodies love us, even when we don’t love them back. This thought popped into my head the morning before my 28th birthday. I was reflecting on the past ten years or so of my life and how amazing it was that I was even alive to see this birthday. In the spirit of reflection and nostalgia, I sat down and wrote my body a letter. I could practice being vulnerable and post that letter on here. And maybe someday I will. But for now, I will play it safe and just pull the big thoughts and realizations from it. Baby steps.

I could make a list of all the ways I’ve treated my body badly. In my letter, I did just that. I outlined every injury I played through, all the sprints and agility drills I’ve run, every weight I’ve lifted, all the times I ignored my body’s signals that it needed to rest. This “no pain, no gain” idea is popular in athletics, and the people that can play through injuries and pain and push their bodies to the limit are deeply admired in the athletic community.

Yes, following this “no pain, no gain” principle helped me to be successful, but it also gave me permission to ignore my body and to deny giving it what it needed. Then, when life started getting hard, and the emotions I was feeling started to get overwhelming, I used my body to numb them out. I abused my body in many ways, in an effort to not have to feel anything at all. Those types of abuse were the most heinous, yes, but in reality, I have never treated my body very well. I’ve pushed it through jam-packed days following nights of little sleep, I’ve filled it with unhealthy food, too much food, or too little food. I have gone to school and to work sick instead of resting and recuperating. I’ve consistently ignored its signals to slow down and instead, went faster. Throughout my letter writing, I quickly realized that in addition to the serious offenses I’ve made against my body the past few years, I haven’t truly taken good care of my body for much of my life.

As I started considering all of these things, it became easier to see all that my body has done for me. All the good times and the bad times that my body and I have been through, together. I was able to feel a little compassion and maybe even a little guilt for how I’d been treating it. Most of all I realized, my body had been loving me for all these years, even when I didn’t love it back.

Later that day, I told my therapist about the letter I had written, and man, was she excited. I’m pretty sure it’s every therapist’s dream at an eating disorder treatment center for a patient to willingly write a letter to their body without it being assigned. All jokes aside though, we talked about what I had realized throughout the letter writing process. She explained that creating a positive relationship with your body is one of the most important things you can do in eating disorder recovery. Of course, in response, I had to quickly make it clear that I didn’t love my body, I didn’t even like it. However, I went on to explain that even though I still didn’t like my body, I could appreciate everything it had done for me. I could respect it. It’s like that person in your life that you just don’t like, but you respect them and the work that they do each day. It’s exactly like that. A begrudging acknowledgement of the capabilities it has.

Ironically, four days after writing my letter to my body thanking it for taking such good care of me, I broke my back. Laying in the desert sand, staring up at the blue, cloudless sky, I knew in my gut that something was very wrong. As the EMT’s strapped me to the backboard, and lifted me into the ambulance, that feeling of dread and panic inside me grew. I soon began grappling with the reality that life as I knew it, may not be the same again. For around three hours on November 27, I was unsure of my future. After cutting off my clothes and doing multiple tests, no doctors were giving me answers, and no one was letting me move. My mind immediately went to what I thought was the worst possible scenario: paralysis. Although this obviously was not the case, there were several hours that I laid, unmoving, on an ER gurney, alone in Arizona, over a thousand miles away from my family imagining the worst. Through the excruciating pain, and the agonizing anticipation of the bad news I had talked myself into thinking that I was going to get, I randomly thought of the letter to my body that I written just a few days before. In that moment, I made God (and my body) a deal. If I came out of this ok, if I would be able to walk and run and move freely again, I would never take my body for granted again.

God, and my body, came through for me that day. I walked out of Wickenburg Community Hospital under my own power (with the fashion statement of the century I might add--hospital gown, hair sticking up in all directions, barefoot, and holding my cowboy boots). After the initial shock of the situation and the painkillers they gave me in the hospital had worn off, I soon forgot my deal I made with my body. Instead of treating it with care and resting to help it heal, I dove right back into the Ranch’s program and did not miss a single group except for when I was in the ER. I was stubbornly going to prove to them that I deserved to be there, and that they did not need to send me home. In my stubbornness, I pushed my body to its limits, again, and miraculously, it came through for me as it has for my whole life. In the weeks and months following my injury, I bounced between being thankful I could move to being angry that my body was not healing fast enough. When I caught myself being angry however, I would summon the memory of laying on that gurney, thinking I was paralyzed, and (try) to remind myself that I’m lucky.

Entering treatment, I had to come to the realization of just how hard I had pushed my body in the months and weeks leading up to walking in the door at Mariposa House at the Meadows Ranch. In the last two weeks of treatment, I was again was reminded of how tough my body truly is.

My body is resilient and it has been relentlessly loving me, even when I have not loved it back. I may not love my body just yet, but I do love how resilient and tough it has been in the wake of everything that I’ve put it through over the years. I feel like this is a good step. A small step, maybe, but a step in the right direction. I’ll take it.