Befriend Your Body

and i said to my body. softly. ‘i want to be your friend.’ it took a long breath. and replied ‘i have been waiting my whole life for this.’" - Nayyirah Waheed

How are you treating yourself lately? Are you being gracious with your body, gentle with your self-talk. forgiving towards your heart?

...I'm trying.

Trying to not waste precious minutes, days, weeks, and years caught up in the never-quite-right-ness. Trying to lovingly embrace this body in this moment in this very breath.

It is so easy to get swept up in straining to look, speak, and behave in ways that we believe will make us appear more beautiful, intelligent, pulled together, or perfect. And so it becomes a habit to look at ourselves and pick apart the pieces that don't align with that distorted vision - to tear apart or stifle the light in the pieces of us that don't fit into the mold of this perceived ideal.

I can't help but to think that someday, we may look back and wish we had spent more time loving ourselves rather than picking ourselves apart. That in the end, perhaps, we will realize that our ideal self was there all along, just longing for us to finally acknowledge how beautiful, whole, and worthy we already are…and have always been.

Let's move with love. Let's enjoy and celebrate being in our bodies. Let's cherish each moment of sensation and breath and flow as the treasured gift that it most assuredly is.

Today I asked my body what she needed, which is a big deal considering my journey of not really asking that much.
I thought she might need more water.
Or protein.
Or greens.
Or yoga.
Or supplements.
Or movement.
But as I stood in the shower reflecting on her stretch marks, her roundness where I would like flatness, her softness where I would like firmness, all those conditioned wishes that form a bundle of never-quite-right-ness, she whispered very gently:
Could you just love me like this?"
- Hollie Holden