Bigger Questions
A poetry break and an invitation to reclaim your body.
One of my earliest memories of being aware of my size was when the elderly neighbor who babysat for me required me and her granddaughter to get on the scale to determine if our combined weight would exceed the limit for the driveable Barbie car.
She looked at our weights, summed them quickly in her head, and with an ashy cigarette hanging from the side of her mouth, told us it was too much. We’d have to take turns. I knew, even at that young age, that it was likely “my bigness” that had pushed us over the limit. The reality wasn’t intended to be harmful, and I certainly enjoyed getting to take a solo ride in the Barbie car, but the memory stuck with me.
It was an early moment for me in which my weight felt like a deciding factor in whether or not I would get what I hoped for. You can see how this pattern of my body being the barrier could persist.
I don’t mean to say that this one incident is why I struggled with body image, but it is to highlight a distinct and early moment when the notion of my body being problematic became concrete for me. The idea of my body being the barrier to my hopes and dreams is not unique to me. I believe many people struggle with this, especially us women. These barriers as I aged sounded more like “Was I not thin enough to date, be found desirable, or be a sexual being?” “Was I too big to ever get married?” “Did my size undermine my credibility?” “Am I too big to have a safe and healthy pregnancy?” “Can I explore the world comfortably in a large body?” “Will I ever be chosen in this body?” I think size could also be a stand-in here for any sort of body “othered ness,” this is simply the experience that I know personally.
It’s easy, but unhelpful to blame our bodies for our hopes being unfulfilled. But, that’s like fighting your closest teammate when you feel like you’re losing…they feel like the safest to attack, but are the ones we need in the closest collaboration.
My work in my personal Body Reclamation journey has had to do with snatching back, dusting off, and owning some of the ways my body has been labeled as problematic by me or others. Owning my “bigness” is one of those ways.
This poem had been begging me to write her, and I finally let her emerge a few months ago when I was invited to answer the question “What do you wish the world understood about your body?”
Big(ger) Questions
Am I this big to hold my vastness and complexity?
How big do I have to be to contain all that I’ve become?
Is this big body the only body that could house my evolution?
Is this the body that contains my expansion?
Have my rounded, solid muscles grown over my sturdy skeleton to protect my precious intuition?
Does my behind shimmy as I walk to accommodate the rhythm of my prayers?
Do my arms stay soft to embrace what I am becoming, and what you’re becoming too?
There isn’t much call to action in this week’s post, other than my invitation to you: Can you see your body as a gift? Can you see it as a perfectly designed home for your soul? Can you reclaim what was offered to you as an insult and live in full expression of your own “bigness?”
At the risk of appearing self-promoting, I also want to remind you I’ve said a whole lot more about this body stuff over on my website. I’ve made a career of helping people reclaim their bodies, in fact. If that’s not reclamation, I don’t know what is.