Most of us think about love in the romantic sense, yet romance is often one of the most fleeting and superficial of all loves. There’s a deeper love that is found when the object of our love is accepted fully and taken in completely as a part of us.
Have you ever felt an all embracing, all accepting, feel-it-in-your-bones kind of love?
I thought I had at one point, upon divorce, strangely enough. I came to love my ex husband more in divorce than I ever had in marriage. It isn’t a romantic love, but a deep love and appreciation that comes from a true acceptance of who he is, without needing to make him be anything else.
I’ve recently discovered an even deeper version of love that every woman can have, and it changes everything in life.
I will first illustrate this with a story.
A Love Story
She was my best friend. I believed she could do anything. She was so strong, flexible, and fearless. She took me on adventures through the forest, climbing trees, building forts, and skipping rocks by the creek. She showed me how to do back handsprings and fly across the uneven bars in gymnastics. She showed me how to swim for hours, exploring the water as if a mermaid in complete freedom.
She seemed to fear nothing, and was always up for a challenge.
She was able to pick up anything she was shown, learning the complicated butterfly stroke and breaking records at her swim meets. She even experimented with other athletic endeavors, just for fun. She wasn’t worried about what others would think of her, and I loved her for that.
But then one day, some people started telling me that she was not all I thought she was. They implied she needed to be different. They said she was ugly, and I started to feel ashamed to be seen with her. They didn’t like her laugh, or the way she looked at life. “It’s not normal,” they would say.
I started pushing her to be different, demanding more of her, expecting more of her. She complied, like a dutiful friend, and fully accepted the idea that she could be better.
She pushed herself harder, working so hard to comply with all the things I thought she should be. No matter how much she tried, I never thought it was enough. I made her believe she didn’t deserve love or nourishment. In fact, I started hating her, but I held onto her, feeling somehow powerful with the control I had over her.
I began to ignore her, and she felt it. She wondered why I was being so cruel, but she was loyal to me and never left. She put up with the extremes of my ignoring her or pushing her to the brink.
She broke under the pressure, a few times in fact, but my goodness her persistence was unbelievable. Somehow she’d find a way to recover and repair the damages. She would return ready for whatever else I had in store for her.
But she was tired. So very tired.
Eventually, I couldn’t help but come to appreciate her perseverance and loyalty. I didn’t understand it, but I wanted to. I began to feel compassion for her. I thought, “If she keeps coming back to me and treating me so well, maybe I need to reconsider how I treat her.”
Over time, I did start treating her better. I appreciated her more and more as I continued to realize the miraculous nature of her ways. I discovered things about her I never knew, and explored more of who she was and what she was capable of, with curiosity and interest.
I took care of her when she needed me, and stopped pushing her so hard. I gave her space to be herself, without imposing my domineering expectations (the ones that others had instilled in me) upon her.
Soon, her fatigue faded. She started encouraging me to know myself more, and explore my own potential from new perspectives. She supported me to challenge myself and believe I was more capable than I thought. The stronger she became, the stronger I became, and vice versa.
She is so much more than a friend now. She is the deepest love I’ve ever felt. I have embraced her as a part of me. She never lets me down. She communicates with me, and I continue to learn to listen to her better. I appreciate her so much for the amazing miracle that she is, and let her know every day.
She is my body. My beautiful, strong, loyal body, and I love her.
A Body of Work
Learning to love your body requires a body of work.
Tears came while writing the love story with my body. Some are tears of sadness and pain around how horribly I treated my body in the past, while most are tears of joy at the beautiful love affair I’ve discovered.
We must work to discover the love we’re longing for.
Our culture brainwashes us into believing that our bodies are not enough on almost every level. We push them to the brink of destruction with a lack of awareness that there’s another way to be in relationship with them.
My journey has been difficult, the details of which will be for another article, though I’m sure you have your own challenging journey in your relationship to your body, and understand what I’m talking about.
For many women, our bodies take the brunt of our discomfort with dominance culture, either by our own bodily oppression, or using our bodies as a tool to hide.
Dominance culture takes Nature’s law of relativity, which tells us everything is neutral until compared to other things and given “relative” consideration, and has us forgetting neutrality, believing that nothing is enough or right or worthy. There’s always something more to strive for.
We must learn to return to neutrality.
Striving for our ideals is important, but we must question where those ideals came from.
Once we’re clear that the ideals we strive for are truly of our own Soul’s longing, then we can take action and do our work out of our own values and initiative, and not those of any external authority, accepting what is while striving for what may be.
A Body of Dreams
As we remember who we truly are, and reconnect with what we truly value, we begin to dream again. We start to see new possibilities for the future that we hadn’t considered.
I couldn’t see my body as being miraculous, beautiful or worthy until I stopped focusing on external validation and acceptance, and started aligning with my own truth. I couldn’t connect with my dreams when I wasn’t even fully connected to my embodiment.
Living and embodying our own unique dreams requires us to ignore the shoulds and shouldn’ts, and begin moving forward step by step, day by day, in the direction of our vision.
We may grieve the old, considering the many days wasted trying to live for others and be what society told us we were supposed to be. Allow the grieving, for in the flames of grief, deeper love is forged.
Believe in your dreams, and explore how your body can support you as a trusted partner in achieving them. As a healthy partnership with your body grows, the love continues to deepen.
A Body of Love
Our body is the applicator for our will forces, and in order to move toward our dreams, we must activate our will and apply it in the direction that serves our vision.
All of these ideas around loving our bodies are worthless if we don’t begin to take action toward a new vision of and for ourselves, one that holds our bodies, minds, emotions and spirits as holistically sacred.
Here are 10 steps to practice in moving toward your embodied dreams:
Path to Embodied Well-Being
- Let go of shoulds and shouldn’ts – The only expectations that matter are the ones you know are from your Soul.
- Align with Nature – Honor the beauty of your body and all that your life is, in neutrality, just as all of Nature does.
- Consider what you value most – Question what you’re striving for and why.
- Be patient with yourself, taking one step/day at a time – Have compassion for the process of unlearning and relearning.
- Discover what works for you and brings joy – There is no system in the world that applies to everyone. Experiment to find what works for you, iterate, and evolve as you go.
- Practice appreciating and loving yourself daily – Wake up daily with gratitude for your life and body, looking yourself in the eyes to say, “I love you.”
- Explore your body, self-pleasuring and understanding its needs and longings more – Overcome the fear of truly connecting with, knowing, and honoring your body.
- Practice letting go of what others think – The assessments of others say more about them than they do about you. You are your own authority.
- Remember the miracle that your body is and all it’s brought you through – Notice each day the many gifts your body gives you and ways it supports you.
- Do something that brings your body nourishment and energy daily – Our bodies need to be well fueled and used lovingly to feel appreciated and empowered.
Each of these steps will support you in creating a sense of fully embodied well-being that includes loving your body and embracing it fully.
A Body of Gifts
Your body is a gift given to you to experience all that this incarnated life has to offer.
Loving your body is a journey of deprogramming, learning to let go of all that we’ve been led to believe, and falling in love with the reality of what we have.
No matter where you are on your journey to love your body, it’s not too late.
You’re not too far gone.
It’s not about food or fitness routines or numbers or will power.
It’s not about what others think, or past traumas.
It’s not about how you identify or how others identify you.
The journey to loving your body is only about you, and your relationship with your body.
You get to decide what the relationship with your body will be, and take action to practice embodying that relationship every day.
Only step by step and day by day can we come to appreciate the gift of our body, treat it with immense care and love, and allow it to become the greatest life partner we have.
I promise, the journey and the love affair is worth it!
