Body Language

I am not my body. And neither are you. I am a soul. Who lives in a body.

But the relationship with our bodies is a sacred one. This is the vessel that will carry you through the experience of life, the only way that your soul gets to interact with the world. And it’s good for exactly one lifetime.

My body has carried me through this world for 36 years and it bears the marks of this journey.

The mole on my cheek is mirrored on my father’s. I look down and see my mother’s hands as I type, and her face is echoed in my smile. There’s the gray scar on my knee from where I fell on the cinder track at the high school when I was 12. And the brown spot on my left palm that marks a bad fall from my bike. Now there are the series of stretch marks across my low belly where I grew my daughter, and which feel really cool when I rub my hand across them.

It’s so easy to be upset with my body for being different than it was at 16. But I am different than I was at 16, why wouldn’t my body be?

I am so grateful to this body for our 36 years together. May it carry me through so many more.