If The Body is a Gift, I Must Admit, I Didn’t Like Mine
Ever since I could remember I was hyper aware of my body and would study it in front of the mirror. I was a very insecure little girl always listening to my family call me “gorda” which is an endearing term in the Latino culture for “big-boned” . Once in the fifth grade, my teacher made all of the students write down what we didn’t like about ourselves in little pieces of paper. She put the trashcan in the middle of the classroom and one by one we walked toward it to throw away these negative ideas of ourselves.
I didn’t let go of everything apparently, because I carried plenty of negative self-image with me as I got older, especially of my body. Naturally, I tried to navigate these waters by doing a variety of things–doing what the magazines would tell me to do, used beautifying camera filters, looked for praise in all the wrong places, exercised like heck and unfortunately developed an eating disorder.
Through the years I learned we as humans are meant to be a gift to others. We are created to make a sincere gift of ourselves. Wait, what? How was I, a woman who hated her body, suppose to make a gift of it? How do you give away the gift (of who you are/your body), if you don’t like the gift?
We are doing a disservice to ourselves and to others if we think we can lead with our personalities, with our successful career or even our bodies as a facade of who we are. You are not any of that. You are an embodied person.
A wise friend once told me the wrong thing to do is to will it. Forcibly willing yourself to like your body only causes more disintegration. As embodied persons we are not just souls inhabiting a body. Our bodies actually reveal the person; it’s a sign of the person, it is the person.
This helped me understand I give away a gift of myself, body and all, by more fully integrating my person. How do I do that you might ask? Here we go…
- Ask yourself what makes you come to life? What activities make you feel alive? Carve out time for those things. Make them a priority. By entering into those activities, you are more fully yourself, hence making a sincere gift of yourself to others.
- Click unfollow. Let’s be real for a second. How many people fill their social media profiles with photos of their altered bodies? They post photos of poses that are most physically flattering all of the time; drawing attention to their bodies. To grow a positive relationship with my own body I had to stop filling my mind and comparing myself with profiles that were inundated with physically revealing photos.
- Ask God : Lord, let me see myself the way You see me. God doesn’t want to keep who you are for Himself. He has created your body good. He has created your body in His image and His likeness and He wants you to believe this so ask. I dare you.
