Lessons from Hibernation

I have been hibernating. Lost in space. Hangin' solo. I don't know if it was the moon, the earth's shift into some other level of consciousness, or what (let's be honest I think it was both), but I have been navigating some seriously heavy feelings of late. It's not too dramatic, but I've been extremely introspective. And haven't really wanted to DO anything with people, haha. I haven't even really wanted to talk to anybody. And it's funny, actually, because I remember a time in my early-to-mid 20s where I just could. not. be. alone. But now... it's like I'm making up for all that lost time with myself. All I want to do is curl up with a journal or a meditation or a spotify playlist and chill with myself. I want to dive deeper into my psyche and explore whatever the heck needs exploring. It feels good to get to know myself on this level. But it also feels... heavy. It's hard not to feel guilty for taking so long to get here. It's hard to uncover old wounds that I *thought* I'd healed, but that haven't gone away. But it's also freeing. Duality, am I right? Have I fed your curiosity over what I've been fighting through? Skip this next part if not. Otherwise, I'll try to make it quick.

Oh haiiiii, body stuff!

Basically I've unearthed that while I have come a LONG way in accepting my body and sending it love and being kind to it... I still link 'worth' with 'body image.' I had this breakthrough during a visualization exercise. I was summoning up some 'fears' to get to the bottom of the stories that hold me back—and there it was. This horrible feeling of complete and total unworthiness, coupled with a desire to hide. In this visualization, I did not want anyone to physically look at or touch me. I was so ashamed by my physical self, it kept me small. When I finished the exercise, I was sad, and I was shocked. "But I've come so far to accept my body! To send it love! I thought I was over this!"

And then I realized my CRITICAL error in the self-love sphere:

While I HAD finally accepted that it's OKAY to live in a body that doesn't 100% personify my ideal, I was, by extension, ACKNOWLEDGING THAT MY BODY WAS INHERENTLY FLAWED. I was trying to love myself in spite of that. And because I was still tying my 'worth' to how I felt in my body, which was so clear in this visualization... it stood to reason that if my image was flawed, so must be my worth.

No matter how much I "sent myself love," my worthiness was still chipped, still defective, because I didn't believe a flawed body had as much value as an ideal body.

And this was causing all kinds of subconscious problems that were infiltrating my everyday life. It created emotional distance in my relationships, it kept me from putting myself out there and trying new things, and it made my aura feel small and weak and worthless when I needed it to feel big and strong and powerful. That's no way to live. And it's hard for me to swallow, especially because I thought I'd been through it all before. I thought I'd taken all the steps to tackle it. But I'd only really peeled off a layer.

"Be kind to yourself" comes first.

The harder, stickier layer is the reconditioning: re-training yourself to believe that IMAGE DOES NOT EQUAL VALUE.

And that's a tough layer to remove because our culture pushes this on us again and again and again and again. And we see it everywhere: in movies, in books, and on our social media feeds. We are attracted to what we are attracted to—AND WE ASSIGN WORTHINESS TO WHAT WE ARE ATTRACTED TO. And that's a whole lotta messed up, but it's what we've been trained to do.

Consciously unpacking this behavior and applying it to yourself is hard. I don't have a 6-pack right now, but there's still a part of me that believes, "if I GET that 6-pack, I'll have the confidence to do anything!" But will I? Shouldn't the confidence come first? Shouldn't the 6-pack be a 'perk' of a body that's loved, not the other way around? Isn't this what expert healers have been preaching for years—and isn't this the logic I BOUGHT INTO all those years ago? And yet here I am. Realizing that to break this pattern I have to do more than send my body love and acceptance.

I have to DECLARE its VALUE.

As it is. Not based upon what it will be one day. Or could be. Or should be. So that's what I've been working on over the past week—assigning value to my body just for BEING. Not in terms of what I've eaten or how I've moved. Just allowing myself to love where it's at with zero conditions.

It's not that easy, but I'm noticing improvements.

I had a birthday party last weekend and I wore shorts. I've been increasingly conscious of my legs recently, which is weird and sad because I once treated them as my best feature. (How depressing to see myself type that). But it was hot outside, and I decided to wear shorts because fuck it. I told myself that I wasn't going to let my body define my value that day—I was going to let my AURA define my value that day. And aside from a remark or two about how white I felt (I'm real white RN, ya'll), I didn't think about my body at all. And you know what's messed up? One of my friends told me she thought my legs looked good. I was shocked, but grateful that she said something—because most women still don't really compliment each other, so kudos when we do. And then I had another friend take some photos with me. And—granted—angles are everything, but I saw those pictures and felt surprised. I expected to see a different body. The woman I was standing next to is so slim—I thought I'd look like a balloon in comparison. But I didn't. Even though I'm, like, for sure heavier than I was 6 months ago. And I was surprised? That I looked okay? It made me think about our perceptions of ourselves. And how they can change so dramatically overnight.

I'm not out of the dark.

Over the past six months I've had a couple of friends ask me, lovingly, if I think I have body dysmorphia. I said no. I've always said no—even though this has been brought up many times over the course of many years. But Saturday, after my birthday, I had to ask myself that question again. Even with all the self-love and the kindness and the acceptance—I have been loving on and being kind to and accepting a 'flawed' body. But the point—I'm starting to finally fucking realize—is to learn to see your body NOT as flawed, but as perfectly DIVINE.

I know it's easier said than done, but if you can just TRY to wrap your mind around that, you're on your way there.

Exercise, health food—it's all meant to be an expression of how much you ALREADY love your body—as NOURISHMENT for something you love and want to care for (the way you'd want to keep a child feeling healthy and at her best)—not as punishment for how much you hate it, or as a filler for something else in your life that's missing. I realize we're not all going through body image issues, but hopefully there's some inspiration that can be unearthed here.

Healing comes in waves, in layers. We think we've gotten through something, and then it hits us harder, stronger, with more depth.

Let it hit.

Hibernate if you have to. Just try not to run from it, if you can help it.

And then work with it. Bit by bit. Piece by piece.  

For more thoughts on how to work through these layers: check this 'gram.