Thursday, November 4, 2010

i want to live where soul meets body...

I have always had a love/hate relationship with my body.

Well, that's not entirely true. I have hated my body. I have been ambivalent about my body. I have been disconnected from my body. I have wished my body to be many things. Very rarely in my life have I really loved my body.

From a very early age, I remember feeling like my body had betrayed me, had let me down. Things were done to my body that were out of my control that left me feeling ashamed. And even though I used to run and dance and take pleasure in movement when I was a very young child, I lost that feeling of joy in my body when I was still very young. I escaped into books not exercise. For a very long time I lived my life as if my body were just this thing that I needed to get me around, but wasn't really a part of me.

I've been learning over the last few years to connect to my body again - to recognize it as as much a part of me as my mind and my soul. But we struggle, my body and I. For as much as I distrust it, it has every reason to distrust me as well.

I blamed my body for what happened to me when I was young. I blamed my body for being naturally chubby - something I was told over and over and over again that I shouldn't be. I blamed my body for a lot of things, and so I would punish my body with food, while trying to comfort my emotions. I remember buying family-sized bags of chips on my way home from school in grade 7 and eating the whole thing on the swings before I got home, stuffing handfuls of chips in my face because the girls and boys in my class had teased me about something like my stomach, or my hips or my breasts. I didn't treat my body well for many, many years. It's taken us both a long time to learn that neither one of us really wants to hurt the other. It's taken us a long time to learn to work together.

The miscarriage has brought my relationship with my body back to the forefront of my mind again. I felt like my body let me down. But really, it did what it was supposed to do. I didn't need a D&C or medication to miscarry, I did so naturally. And my body recovered quickly. Until this last cycle, our first TTC again. This last cycle I didn't ovulate. I had to bring my period on with medication. My trust in my body has been shaken once more.

But instead of punishing my body, this time I'm trying to work with it. Even though I feel disappointed in it, I'm learning from my mistakes of the past. If I want my body to work for me, I have to work for it. It's no coincidence I chose Yoga as one of my activities this fall - yoga forces you to be present, both in the moment and in your body. Walking is good for that too. And I'm trying to have faith - my body knows how to ovulate. We got pregnant on our own once, hopefully we can do it again. And if not, I have a plan with our RE (reproductive endocrinologist). We're going to see what this cycle does. And if it, too, isn't cooperative, then we'll start investigations in the new year.

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