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When Suzanne introduced BlogHer's Letter to My Body project I was very excited to participate. Excited but nervous and scared, as well.
For so long I've struggled with body image and my very unrealistic expectations of how I should look and what I should weigh, and I didn't know how I would put my feelings into words.
So many amazing women have written beautiful letters to their bodies.
I've felt similar feelings about my body as Angella has about hers:
You have never made it easy for me.
For as long as I can remember, I was referred to as a Big Girl. I was bigger than all of my friends. Taller, wider, thicker.
I was a regular kid who liked candy and Pop Shoppe pop. My Mom loved me to a fault. She did not want to deny me anything, for fear that I would choose my Dad over her. Any food, any treat, was mine to be had. I was never denied anything.
I had friends who were skinny. They could eat candy and drink pop and still retain those pencil-thin thighs. I was beyond envious.
My thighs were never pencil-thin. I had that inner thigh that swayed in the breeze and reminded me that I was not in the same class as the Pencils. I would pound my pillow while chanting, "It's NOT FAIR!" and hope that you would hear me. That you would ramp up my metabolism and let me be like the other girls. Candy and pop, and pencil-thin thighs.
You did not listen.
This made me so very, very sad. I would cry myself to sleep and wonder why my body hated me so.
Lady Beams is amazed at how reliable her body is:
Here we are after spending a half a century together, and I figure I know you pretty well. We've pretty much come full circle, the baby with her belly hanging out over her diaper, the little girl who was taller than almost everyone in her class, the blossoming young woman who quickly turned into "full figured", and the older woman who has once again turned into a body with her belly hanging over her underwear. You've taken me from being a kid to having 3, and I must say we got along pretty well thru all of them. We've gone thru menopause together and it was easy. No matter what I've done to you, you have always bounced back and been strong and reliable.
But it's Sepha's letter that moved me to tears (please read it's entirety at her blog, Undone):
I used to revel in my body; it looked pretty fancy without much effort, it brought me pleasure, allowed me to feel good. The breasts came in a little early and I could have done without nasty people pinging my brand new brastraps. But perhaps it's good that they did because it gave me a little more time with a full pair before the mastectomy at age 28.
Didn't you know body, that you weren't supposed to let cancer in? That it was a baddie who you ought to have fought? I know I didn't go in for playing cops and robbers when I was a child, was that what you needed to teach you to fight baddies?
You did bad, you let me down, you're responsible for the lopsided mess that is now my bosom and yet you still didn't learn because you let Mr Cancer come back and set up residence in my bones and lung. How did he sweet-talk his way back in? Was a year's worth of hideous treatments not enough to teach you to attack Mr Cancer?
It's so hard to hate you, body, because you are me and hating you means hating me - but I do. I can't really bear to be with myself a lot of the time. I look away from the bathroom mirror when getting into the bath. I struggle over what to wear that won't show off a non-existent cleavage. You've cheated me - because the world out there thinks that women have *two* breasts - it's in the magazines, on the Television, in films, in fashion, it's instilled into every baby being breast-fed; it's on every woman I see walking down the street. You've turned me into the Non-Woman.
I had over a month to write my own letter to my body, but I hesitated and worried about what I should say. Each time I started
