On tour for Hijas, with two great friends from high school
I was asked the other day how I feel about my body. What a good, direct question to ask; perhaps, especially of someone who does body image work. And I’ll answer that question, right after I tell a story.
My family, originally from Puerto Rico, moved to the United States, specifically South Carolina, when I was two years old. There were times when I wanted “my life” to be easier then our status as immigrants and all the layers that come with that allowed. And, then, one day I had this epiphany that many of the parts of who I was and of my family that I loved most were wholly informed by our history. Without the immigration, without our Puerto Rican culture, without our military background, without all those things, I couldn’t be who I was. I couldn’t wish away half of it– the hard parts of it, let’s say– and still enjoy the richness that came with the other half. Because it was the whole of my background that allowed me to become who I had. The tough stuff- the being spit at, the condescension, the considering away that all came because of my ethnicity- had really allowed for the other stuff, too. There are no parts of our existence. There is our whole. We are a collection of lenses that make up our whole. Without the lens of my immigrant experience, the artist in me, the activist in me, those other parts of me, wouldn’t have been informed in the same way, wouldn’t have resulted in the same person.
So, when I was asked how I felt about my body, I was reminded of the reality of how I felt about my experience– how I couldn’t just have affection for the easy or rich part of my experience without also having a heart for the tough part, the trying part, the part that made me tougher and kinder, more outspoken and more compassionate. It’s like that with my body, too. I am not a traditional beauty. I likely don’t have a body that anyone envies. But I love my body because it has been the vehicle of my expression- it is the thing that allows me to hug warmly, play with my boy, express joy, give love, feel the difficulty of the run- both literally and metaphorically- and do it anyway. It would be impossible for me to fully appreciate it if I was always wishing for it to yield or bend or change in some dramtic way and so, instead, I choose to be kind, to appreciate it, to refine the way that I treat it over and over again so that I move towards ever more goodness to it- that I return to it the kindess that it has offered me.
In honor of Beautiful You’s launch, I pose this question to you, too. Maybe you answer it here. Maybe you answer it as a bonus in your BY journal.
How do you feel about your body? How would you like to feel about your body? How can you treat your body with the kindness it deserves? What advice do you have for others who are trying to treat their bodies with goodness?
