body acceptance
Why tuning into your body cultivates body acceptance.
For a long time, I had a very disassociated relationship from my body. I viewed it through frosted glass, barley recognising or registering my connection to it. In my mind all I had to do was the bare minimum to keep it functioning so that it could do what I needed or wanted to do. I didn’t view it with any sense of love or affection, in fact when I looked at the bodies celebrated around me and then reflected on my own, it only solidified that I was correct in treating my body in the way that I was. As a means to an end.
It didn’t matter who said anything positive or celebratory about my body or the things it accomplished; it was never good enough for me.
My body and I were at war and I was only occasionally aware of the skirmishes, and I refused to even acknowledge the battles because I refused to acknowledge my body full stop.
I viewed my body as an enemy. Why couldn’t it just do what that other bodies could do? Why couldn’t it just look the way that other bodies looked?
My body and I made a terrible couple, and our relationship was even worse.
Then, when I started my training as an actor the frosty window in which I was viewing my body was smashed, without any real warning. I was suddenly faced with myself and my body because as actors, our bodies are our tools. They’re the thing that we utilise to get our jobs done.
I had never even considered that my body would play a part in my career choice as I was suddenly faced with having to see myself in myriads of mirrors or on a screen. But in this career where your body and your face are very much your currency, it meant finally coming to a place where I was ready to get to know it.
And so, I began to tentatively get to know it and I stumbled across a movement called body positivity.
Fast forward to a decade later, the discovery of endometriosis, and entering my 30s later, the relationship I have with my body now is not the relationship I had then.
Life, and all the things it brings, carried me to a place where tuning into my body was of the utmost importance. Advocating for it, caring for it, showing it tenderness and respect after a lifetime of indifference and self-loathing.
When the chronic pain that I had always lived with but ignored, began to progress it was up to me to listen to what my body was trying to tell me. What was it trying to communicate? What was the root of the problem?
It meant investigating and in order to do that, you must tune into your body.
Suddenly I found myself keeping notes on myself, on body. How it was feeling, what was physically happening. I was body scanning and asking this body that had endured so much, what it was feeling, what it needed. How I could help it.
It forced me to pull myself into the present. Each day I had to navigate my own body. I had to recognise the signs and I had to adapt. I had to offer it solutions. And not with frustration and impatience, but with kindness and attentiveness.
I had to allow myself to feel fully in my body and recognise the choices that I was making that were supportive but also recognise the choices that were causing self-harm. The ones that were rooted in self destructive learned behaviours that had become so second nature I was barely even aware of them any longer.
I had to honour what I found and what my body told me. I couldn’t go back to pretending everything was fine. I couldn’t go back to bullishly trying to steer my body into obeying my every command. I couldn’t ask it to live up to unrealistic standards. I couldn’t push it beyond its limit for the sake of feeling like my body could be the same as someone else’s.
All of the myths I had about my body that I took as truth, slowly, began to come undone. I was having to learn about my body all over again. I was having to treat my body with the kindness and respect it had always longed for.
And so, the evolution of the relationship I have with my body over this last decade has been immense and whether I recognise it or not the time I’ve spent getting to know this body simply to keep it functioning has in actuality been a love letter to it.
It’s been an exploration of how to love it, how to accept it, how to treat it with respect. How to not constantly be at war with myself.
It’s been reclaiming time, not necessarily wasted, but time lost to trying to achieve something that this body was never meant to in the first place, because this body can only live out the story that its meant to.
It was never meant to be like anyone else’s body, it was never meant to do the same things as other people’s bodies. It was meant to do what it was meant to, which was be part of me and my story and the path that I am walking which will never be the same as someone else’s.
There was a point, when I was following the body positive movement, that I thought body acceptance was being able to wear a certain piece of clothing I never imagined my kind of body could wear. I thought it was being able to look at my body in the mirror or go to certain places or be seen as being in the same league as other bodies, but its nothing like that.
It’s not just external achievements and aesthetic. It was always about the internal healing that had to happen. It was always about the deeper discovery. It was always about unpacking and processing all of the lies that we’ve been conditioned to believe from childhood.
It was always about being set free from all the political, social, financial, constraints weaponised to keep us disassociated from our bodies.
And when I reflect on the journey that has brought me to where I am right now with my body and the lessons it keeps teaching me and the support it provides even when I forget to be grateful, I am in awe of this creation that helps walk me through my journey and I know I will always commit to accepting, no, celebrating the partnership my body and I have.
Imperfectly perfect and worth it.
Every moment.
Michelle Hopewell