Dear Body December
I’m late to the @forwomenwhoroar #dearbodydecember challenge, but I am listening to my body deeply today. Listening to its wisdom, peacefulness, fears, tensions, longings, and what is still unsaid.
Dear body,
As we fall into December, I want a record of you. I want to set the record straight and say I am sorry for the ways I don’t take care of you. I like coffee more than water, but I confess I like Diet Coke best of all, especially with cherries. Your skin is dry, but I drink in honor of you. I eat with decadence in honor of you. I wear my glasses so your eyes can rest to see another weary, rainy day. . .
Dear body —
I dream of a oneness, a completeness, a wholeness I’ve only known once in my lifetime. I dance to feel it again. Emptiness is a silent song I play on repeat. I encircle my folds and luxuriate in the movement until peace comes again. . .
Dear body,
Thank you for teaching me how to survive, how to return, how to feel my heart inside of you, not just outside of you in my hands. Thank you for bringing me home and for spreading my wings.
Dear body —
As I look at your face that is my face, I study the nuances that change in an instant. How the softness of my face becomes brighter, and the grief I contain is concealed in the moment I decide to smile for the iPhone camera. I think of my first favorite poet because I, too, “contain multitudes.” 🌞📱♥️
Dear body whispering of secrets. I glimpse an inner craving, a cavernous layer unfurling. We hunger for love. We hunger for love so deeply, and we’re afraid to be captured.
Dear body —
15 years ago you heard this song by @officialsarahmclachlan and realized if beauty like this still existed in the world, it was worth being alive to see it. And this evening, the same song gave you wings to soar with. Maybe there is still depression, and there is also hope; beauty and stillness; gravity and women I love to lift me.
Dear body —
1. To truly behold the depths of self is holy, heady, confrontational. Here I am. There you are.
2. I turn away—from you, from myself, from all of the consciousness and all of the beauty and all of the growth.
3. Here I stand, holding self-compassion in my head and hand, not yet my heart.
4. Then I brush, brushing away sorrow, brushing away resistance, sorrowful resistance, and the things between us that are past.
5. To begin the day again a little freer, a little lighter, a little more me.
6. A little more me, a little more blonde and a little more layered—my soul reaching in thick bleach.
Note: Thanks to @mayalowe_hair for the beautiful haircut and self-care ritual #freeyourhairbrush by @roxiejanehunt! Also much love and thanks to @hairbydawnmadrid for the perfect ashy blonde color!!!
Dear body —
In coming face-to-face with my own image of myself, there is an intensity to my gaze, a mirroring, in meeting head on. Beneath the mask is the dance of wanting to be seen and wanting to hide, needing to turn away from the unmasking. And yet, there is such a yearning to be known and face the truth with resoluteness and vulnerability.
My mask is a laugh, a nod, a retreat into my mind—my inner refuge or sanctuary. Out of the fruitful darkness grows a path of deep trust, inner knowing, the wisdom collected, imagined, forged, coming into expression.
My essence is an innocent child—an inquisitive, loving, colorful little girl full of wonder, full of spirals, and thoughts transforming up and out. She is a dragonfly seeking the ephemeral, the imperfect mirroring, and these endless inquiries coming from the original questions: “Where did I come from? Will anybody love me?” Her name is Kelsay, and it means “from the sea”?
My human soul is a tidal wave. I feel. I see beneath the surface. I believe I can surrender to the deep dark. I do not fear the depths, for I am present. My hands and eyes remain calm and powerful amidst the chaos. These are the parts I am most comfortable with showing to the world. My pain is a human pain. It might be dark and messy, but it’s an acceptable and adult kind of messy. My inner child, that little girl looking for love: so young, abandoned, and helpless is unacceptable messiness I want hidden, even from my own love and compassion. I work so hard to bury her and not feel her presence. She’s craving transformation because it’s what my soul self likes, and I won’t allow her to just be herself.
One of my favorite quotes by Yip Harburg keeps resurfacing: “My heart wants roots. My mind wants wings.” Well, my hands hold wings pulling me away from myself in two different directions. Maybe the pulling is me. I pull away from myself, abandoning the most precious part of me, trying to get closer to my mother and all the mother figures in my life. Who can hold me? Who can hold all of me? Not even I can do that yet, but I’m finding people who can see me and understand that, even before I get there, and that is also love.
Dear body — I am grateful to feel more of you, to look into your face and fall in love with you again every day when I catch a glimpse of your penetrating stare, to feel your outline, each contour defining your existence. Every day with you is an adventure, a work of art, a love affair.
Dear body —
Sometimes I feel awkward in you, clunky, as though you do not belong to me. But you do belong to me. . .only me. Only me.
Dear body —
I know you secretly (not so secretly) want to cuddle into the soft, shaved fur of a bathing cat and be bathed yourself. Life is better with Instagram filters, though not necessarily realer. And, body, I have always loved you better in black and white.
Dear body —
Winter is here, and I continue to wrap you in pink salamander and soft fabrics, so you can feel charming and girly, and I can get lost in cozy knit leg warmers and cashmere gloves; chocolate peanut butter tarts and cacao sweetened with honey and cinnamon; wood-fired bread and all the wonders of a day.
Happy Holidays from the SF Bay Area!
Dear body —
I know you know that “dreaming is free”!
We dream together, play together, make faces together. I am starting to realize what it feels like to have fun with you! Lightening up in more ways than just our hair, which is of course, the ultimate dream we dream. . .
Note: My letter appears at 3:27
