Every time I work on connecting with my body, nurturing it and practicing body love through food and movement, I feel like I'm approaching it from a deeper angle than I have before.
In the early years it was about recognizing I even had a body after spending my formative years outside of my body to cope with the trauma.
I spent a lot of years on the run from my body. For years it kept calling me back with various ailments and dis-ease. It still calls me back when I don't listen.
I limited myself greatly for years, believing that my body just couldn't do certain things.
So when I really started living from my yes, it was my body that I first said YES to. That first year and half of my yes journey was all about saying yes to my body and seeing what it could do. I needed to bust the limiting beliefs I had about how much I could do physically and I did. I now know my body is capable of more than I originally believed it was capable of.
I do still have my limitations physically due to several surgeries and health issues, but for the most part, I shattered those old beliefs and experienced a physical and mental vibrancy I had never experienced before.
My connection started to slip about 8 months ago and I found myself checking out once again with my old trusty way of numbing out...food, particularly the sugar and salt cycle. But even checking out this time was different. You can never really backslide the same way again, once you have experienced growth. You just aren't the same person backsliding and so I still thought about my body, and longed to find my way back again.
This time I'm entering into the next Journey of YES, on June 1st, saying yes to my body again.
I've already begun saying yes, juicing again, listening and paying attention, trying to move more by taking walks, eating greens every day and just eating better in general.
It took a recent health scare for me to really feel how much I value this body even with all it's tender, wobbly and chubby parts. Even with the daily chronic pain and discomfort. Even with the thoughts and feelings around being not good enough. I love this body.
It has done the best it can do with what I have put in it. It has tried to let me know time and time again, that it needs more nutrients, that it needs to move.
It has broken down on me when it could not take the weight of my abuse with food and my negative self talk.
It's done its very best to stay alive.
I love this body more than ever now.
I'm going to Italy in this body! The one I never thought could take a long trip without completely falling apart. And hey it may fall apart for a few days, but this BODY is going to Italy and that is huge.
And yes some days I'm going to eat something that may not be the best for it, but for the most part I can work on being more loving and nurturing toward it.
I can give it vibrant and whole food.
I can listen.
I can move.
I can practice my endless gratitude for it.
I can return again and again when I leave it.
I will be here again, just not the same. I'll say yes again and again because reclaiming of my body is an integral part of healing the way I entered and was received by the world as a little girl.
While it was the portal through which severe abuse occurred at the hands of my mother and several men, it does not have to continue to pay that price.
It deserves my love, my attention, my tender loving care.
It deserves, I deserve healing and restoration.
