My body attacks its self but I refuse to attack my body

I recently read a really great blog post from Vincci Tsui (http://vinccitsui.com/blog/#.W7zQGS8ZN-U) during her series on Intuitive Eating with Chronic disease. This particular post was about Principle #8- Respect your Body. I replied to it on Twitter saying “My body may attack its self but I refuse to attack my body”. What was interesting to me was that I have never actually said that sentence before but it resonated within me. My body attacks its self….I have said that before but never acknowledged the trauma of that. If there was something/someone else attacking my body daily it would accepted for me to feel fear, hatred and anger towards that thing or person. Yet we are told often to love our bodies. Now don’t get me wrong. I think we need to work on our relationships with our bodies, for sure. But maybe at times love is too far away or doesn’t feel realistic. Maybe we need to respect. Maybe we need to refuse to attack our own bodies.

There are many ways we may see friends/love-ones/clients attack their bodies...and things we may do ourselves They may restrict food, overexercise, call names, pick and prod, shame or a host of other things. This daily attack will wear people down. Make them believe all that they say to be true. All of that, on top of living with a chronic disease that can be exhausting in of its self. Individuals with diabetes never get to walk away from having it, they need to test and administer insulin at all times of the day. People with GI diseases have to plan eating and bathroom breaks every single time they leave the house. And the list goes on. How do we start to respect the body that is not behaving in the way “it is meant to”.

For me (and this is me only so I am not sure if it would work for anyone else) it was finding joy. In Bréne Brown’s work on vulnerability she takes about joy coming from vulnerability. And she talks about how we are programmed to shut down joy. As humans we will often catastrophise our joy. I think with Chron’s disease it was really easy to do this. I was tired, in pain, feeling different, angry at the body and easily turned to shame. Shame is “ I am bad” talk vs “this was a bad choice”. I lived in a shame sprial with this disease for a long time. And then after major surgery I chose to find joy. It was not an easy task. It came in very tiny steps. There were big markers for me to find joy in this body that so easily attacks its self. I grew humans!! This was something that I so wanted to do but was told by medical professionals it was not likely. I won’t lie that it was easy but my body fought hard to give those tiny humans what they needed. I respected what my body was doing. I did not have control (I think this is when I realized I never had control of my body) of what my body would do but I needed to respect that it knew what was going on even if it didn’t the pregnancy blogs that I was kinda obsessively reading. I also had to respect that my body was not well after having both babies and I needed a lot of support. I also needed to bottle feed. I remember being angry for a brief moment that my body couldn’t feed my babies. It is always put on us that this is such an important part of development and bonding. It is natural and “breast is best”. But once again my body attacked its self. Did I need to go on attacking myself because I couldn’t do that or could I find the joy in the fact I had a tiny little life in front of me that still needed me to feed it. My little e’s needed food and I could still provide it. It is that simple. So I found joy in those quiet moments at 3am when the world is asleep and you really just want to be asleep but you have profound conversations with humans that can’t talk yet. And I found that joy even using a bottle.

My body has taught me more lessons than I can count. It has taught me that it will signal when I need rest and that I need to listen. It will tell me when I am hungry and full. It will feel better when I provide the foods that it needs to stay strong- irregardless of whatever else some tells me will “cure” me. It reminds me when it wants to move in a joyful way and it signals when I am pushing too hard. And it will give me about a 4 minute warning when I need to desperately find a bathroom….( I do wish it would give a 40min warning as apparently my body has yet to understand rush hour traffic in Toronto)

Our bodies are amazing, AMAZING things. We need to respect them even if we can’t love them. This is why the banishment of diet culture is so important. How can we take care of something we hate. How can we listen to the stories it holds and the signals it gives if our internal brain dialogue is overriding it all. How can give our body what it needs if we are constantly listening to the noise outside telling us our bodies are not good enough. They are…..because let’s be honest, it is the only body you are going to have while you are here, you actually can not trade it in for a new model or upgrade to the next version. This is it…your longest relationship is with yourself and it can only improve if you stop attacking you.

Until next time be Unapologetically you while I be Unapologetically me…