What’s it like to hear something’s “wrong”
with your body from an intimate partner?
I had this happen, and it totally blindsided me.
Me – “I love the flatness of our bellies together.”
Him – “Your belly’s not flat, actually.
Not even close…”
He proceeded to define for me precisely and
in great detail what “flat” was, in the world of him.
When I heard these words,
something inside my body caved in around my heart.
By this time in my life I was middle-aged and
clearly didn’t look like a 19 year old yoga instructor.
And I had peace around that fact…until those words came at me from a man I loved.
Instantly I wanted to leave,
to hide my body from him, to shut down,
and to punish.
I wanted to stop giving him the gifts of me.
Any of them.
ALL OF THEM.
I’d let someone else’s perspective erode my own sense
of value, of preciousness, of enjoying my own body.
It happened really fast and that bothered me
more than my story of “what he did to me.”
What I did to myself,
in giving those words the importance that I did,
was to give his experience more weight than my own.
It was a huge lesson in energetic boundaries.
There was ultimately more to this story. A lot of me yelling, stomping, crying.
This was a caring, loving person who, like all of us can be really unconscious at times.
I learned a lot through this how to make the hard, better choice – keeping my heart open enough to be able to speak cleanly about the impact this had on me, rather than close down around it.
To speak through the wound and the hurt, and not close down around it.
What’s happened in you when you’ve experienced
your body judged and found wanting by someone
you’ve been intimate and open with?
And could you, can you, use it as a compassionate reminder to love YOURSELF better?
Because ultimately, this is the place of power, or sovereignty…
The place we can each choose self-love, no matter what the rest of the world does…
XO,
Marina