BlogHer - Letter to My Body: Looking in the Mirror - Comments

I finally wrote mine too...

missbeth5281 — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:11:04 -0500

I finally decided to get real with myself and just write it. If you'd like to see it, its on my couch confessional here: The Couch Confessional

Your post was an inspiration. THank you for writing it.

Beth

http://couchconfessional.blogspot.com

http://my2monsters.blogspot.com

http://losintogether.blogspot.com

Body Image Crisis

charrette — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:15:08 -0500

Thank you for reminding me of all the things I love about residing in this body I call Home. I too am an artist and can relate to your sensory imagery and lovely specifics. I just returned from vacation where I suffered a mild body image crisis (which prompted some lively dialogue from my friends). It was so good to be reminded here of the more basic joys of living in my skin. My "letter" is not in letter form, but includes a kind of praise of the joy of taking care of myself, based on another "body image crisis" I experienced about a month ago. You can read it here.

Thanks again for reminding me what real body-beauty is and where to find it: The sun on my back, a warm embrace, the taste of a cucumber, seeing patterns of light and shadow as I move through time and space, the softness of the womb where my children grew before they met the world.

body letter

laurie toby edison — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 02:15:43 -0500

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your thoughts

Learning to Love Me...

RebeccasBlog — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:12:13 -0500

Laurie, that was BEAUTIFUL. You can tell you are an artist just by reading your words as you are able to see beauty in every detail of what your eyes behold.

When I read the title of your post, I was pleased to see that other people who are sensitive to their body image realized what I realized not that long ago. I was at a loss of words on my "weigh-in day" report, sad that I wasn't able to meet my goal, but instead of putting myself down I spoke to myself as I would my own daughter.

You can read my letter here: http://rebecca.smokebrush.com/index.php/2008/05/29/rocky-week/

Letter to My Body: Looking in the Mirror

Laurie Toby Edison - Body Impolitic — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:49:19 -0500

It's hard for me to think about writing a letter to my body because I don't feel that any separation exists. So I decided to visualize talking to myself in the mirror. I think out loud a lot, so that's not hard.

I'm going to talk about "being present in my body" even though that phrase still feels a little separate, because I don't have better words. I didn't start out this way. Learning to be present in my body most of the time was a mixture of joy and hard work that happened after I grew up. And since I'm sixty-six, it's been going on for a long time.

I'm grateful for the physicality of my life, both in its intensity and all its subtleties. Feeling the air on my skin on a warm day, seeing the world as I walk through it. I like the patterns in the cement, the leaves on the trees, I like the faces as I go by. I experience vision physically, perhaps because I’m an artist.

I'm not necessarily grateful for the fact that being present is about pain as well as joy. And when I hurt, I feel the interruptive intrusiveness of quite small pains as well as the sometimes overwhelming power of strong pain.

I'm grateful for the pleasures of taste, for the repleteness sensation of eating, for orgasm and the more subtle pleasures of sex.

I'm an artist and I work with my hands. I appreciate the physical sensation of making something with them, something that didn't exist before. And the passion of dance - whether it's just me dancing or when I'm teaching belly dance to kids and experiencing their intensity along with my own.

Then there's my face in the mirror looking back with all the lines that tell the story of my life so far. I like that too.

~~Visit Guest Editor Laurie Toby Edison at Body Impolitic.