Letter to My Body

Dear Body,

Remember when we started paying attention to each other? When we noticed we are not me, even though we are one for now? Me an embodiment of you, you an embodiment of me. Remember when we looked in the mirror and took photos of ourselves? Trying to figure out how we fit in, trying to compare?

Remember when we decided that we looked better at 40 than at 23? But it wasn’t really about looks at all; it was about being able and comfortable to inhabit a space together.

Dear Body – I see how closely you are paying attention now, to the thoughts in my head, to the way I move this pen. M says his daughter grips her pencil too tight – a death grip and that as a child he did the same. What are they trying to hold on to? I, when trying to write quickly – when the thoughts come so much quicker than the pen - also must remember to ease up, to loosen, to breathe.

"I can’t feel the anxiety or panic when my breath is this deep," I told her.

I’ve waited a few weeks to understand, exactly, why I signed up again for this (writing) class. I think I see it here in this letter to my body.

Dear Body - in a few weeks we are going to do something unfamiliar and scary. You are going to be given some drugs – and I will go away for a bit, for a while, like when we had our wisdom teeth pulled. I went away for a while but then I came back to embody you. Things will happen during that time that I won’t know about, but you will, you will know about the incision, you will know about the bleeding, how profuse it was, if you and Dr. H as a team could make it stop, not completely – blood will keep flowing, but enough to keep the surgery safe. You will know what is said in the operating room – surgical room, are they the same? Regardless, you will remember in your tissues what is being said and I intend to ask Dr. H to tell you encouraging things – when I can’t hear, when I can’t remember. I am comfortable with her and I know that you are too. We trust her to take care of us. She is going to try to retain the uterus – you will know if that happened before I. I will try to help with some deep relaxation, affirmations, homeopathy to prevent excess bleeding. You can help too, but here is the scary part for me, the part you probably needed to hear. I trust you and if you think the uterus needs to go, I don’t want that, but ultimately it will be ok. You are ok to make that executive decision just as my mind doesn’t want to release, I trust you more as my body. I trust you to know and I trust the fibroid as well, the 14 week pregnancy sized mass inside of me – the birthing that didn’t happen, the space that was claimed. I trust it too to have a voice, it too to have a name.

Dear Body, you have done so well for me in this life – why you created this seemingly purposeless – yet not dangerous mass – that simply takes up space – space that other organs could have – that consumes and releases blood – that has depleted my ferritin - you too are growth in some fashion.

Dear Body, what have we grown together? A way to discuss a private thing? A way to dive deep into the well of wisdom?

Dear Body, you will know when the stitches come in and the mass comes out and the awareness returns. I will have to inquire as to what happened, but you will know, as you know now, as you know every day – what is going on inside me, what is going on in our world. You take it all in and I forget that. I forget that sometimes. You store things. What is stored in this fibroid?

How about all the blocks to our creativity, to our creative expression, to fully valuing that time? How about we say that is what we are going to remove?

Not in anger, but in willingness, in release, in open-handedness, in letting go.