From My Body to Yours

I recently visited my girlfriend who had given birth to a beautiful baby girl three months ago. In between fixing dinner, arranging play dates, and getting her two other children ready for Karate lessons, she kept mentioning that she needed to lose weight.

I was deeply aggravated that she saw herself as anything other than a beautiful, healthy, voluptuous woman who was still breast feeding for crying out loud! Not only had she grown another human being inside of her, she was still nourishing this human being.

The sad truth is that this deep, persistent, nagging voice resides in all of us. It’s like the ticker tape at the bottom of the CNN channel. The main news takes up 90% of the screen, ‘Go to work, pay bills, do laundry.’ But the dirty insidious thoughts always clip clop along the bottom, “Ugh how can I make my stomach flatter? Where does arm fat go to die? Why can’t I look a little thinner?”

But our bodies are not two dimensional pictures meant to be judged and degraded. They are walking, flowing, works of art and engineering. Every part of us has a function and an artistry that can’t be replicated by anything else on this earth.

Our arms are meant to hold our babies close. The grooves of our inner elbows carry our grocery bags. Our lips help blow the steam off our coffee before taking that first delicious (and oh so necessary) sip. Our laps are the places where nieces and nephews can go in for a cuddle, and our fingers can wipe away the tears of a friend who is having a bad day. Even our nose hairs have a purpose! (Filtering out foreign particles from entering the nasal cavity, in case you didn’t know). Our bodies carry and convey the love we have for one another. Isn’t it time to start appreciating yours a bit more?