Hating your body will never get you as far as loving it will. It is our birth right to have a body. It’s our choice how we feel in it.
We all have a different relationship to our own bodies. If you have at any point felt your body is not yours, or your choice or boundaries were not respected please take a moment and honor that pain.
I see you, I feel you. What ever you’ve been through, if it was not your choice know that was not fair. I truly am sorry you had to endure that. This is where you get to choose if being in your body is safe again. No one else’s choice, only yours.
Accepting your body is a journey. Especially when you’ve been shown you weren’t safe, honored or considered. If I could tell you guys all of the stories of body shaming, body neglect and overall hate of my body I’ve been through it would take days. My point is, it’s a journey and it’s a relationship. Just like your other relationships sometimes you’ll need to nurture it more, comfort it, forgive it and maybe even yell and scream at it like we all do in our other relationships every once and a while.
ApologizIng to your body is the first place to start. No matter what you have been through in your vehicle of flesh and bones, give it gratitude for where you are. Declare that you’re done with feeling unsafe in your body and unconnected to this physical world through it.
Your body won’t always feel perfect but trust me it’s worth connecting to and listening. You only get one of these, you can ignore it or you can fucking feel every inch of your body from your toes to the top of your head, it’s a gift and it’s your gift. When we feel the bad shit we get to feel the good shit too. I hear you though, maybe you’ve been so detached from your body you don’t even know where to begin or how to connect back. Or maybe your in your body hardcore and super grounded feeling all the good feels always. Either way this post will be meaningful because I’m sure you didn’t just pop out the womb feeling great in your body. You went through something that built this relationship to your body. We are all on this journey with our human existence and we get a body on this adventure.
Ok story time. TRIGGER WARNING. I’ve been dreading telling this story because it was not the best time of my life And revisiting it has brought up a lot of heavy energy but the beautiful thing about healing is even when you let that emotion back in, you know you will come out of it, definitely wasn’t always that way though.
I was young when this occurred, naive and lost as fuck. So naturally I would land in the perfectly wrong guys lap. This was in high school, my first “real” relationship. Little did I know it would be the beginning of my toxic relationship with my body and overall toxic relationship with men, that always ended up feeling extremely unsafe to me. I actually felt more comfortable with the cheaters, liars and manipulators because that was what I knew and it almost was familiar to be mistreated.
For years I already had an awkward relationship with my body but everything gets way more awkward in high school. You start feeling all the hormones and all the cravings of things you’d never wanted before…… sex.
I was honestly ok with holding off. After hearing my moms story of how she lost her virginity basically to a stranger when she was 15, and not ready. The guy was older and didn’t respect her and that stuck with me after learning that I would always know when it was the right guy and the right time and learn from her mistakes she regretted, or so I thought it would be easier to make a different choice.
This guy I met was my first time holding hands in the hallway, the first time making out and the first time I felt unsure if it was ok to say no. No to him treating me like crap, no to him convincing me he loved me but would have several other of these relationships with girls. He was not good news, he was just as lost as I was, probably more. I’ll never forget the first time I was disrespected on another level though. We were at my parents house in my room and he did not have permission to stick his hands in my pants but he did, and I felt frozen. There was nothing leading up to that he just did it and it shocked me. That’s not were it ends, it only got worse but it was over months not all at once, but the abuse kept me coming back needing a little more of pushing last my boundaries. I just thought that’s how love worked. I feel shameful thinking back because how could I have stayed when he clearly didn’t respect me but when you’re young and you’ve only seen toxic love you accept the worst treatment. it was an addiction to have him mistreat me and for months there was playing with that fire and him testing my boundaries trying to convince me we were ready to have sex, and he wanted to lose his virginity to me and he knew I was the one. Blah blah blah, anything to get into my pants and I still felt like it wasn’t right but started to feel guilty. He said I was leading him on and I begun to question was I? Truly, I just cared a lot about him and didn’t know how to let his toxic bullshit go but I slowly was convinced I was the one in the wrong.
I didn’t feel ready still, and once again without permission and even with a firm no, he violated me. This is where I knew he didn’t care about me. No means no. No does not mean convince me. That’s not what he thought. Actually I don’t know what he thought. He had no consideration. It was all a game to him….. He stuck his penis inside of me and instantly I shoved him off, struggling for a second but I was able to get him off. I told him that was to far, I took him home with not many words exchanged and I left feeling the most lost, scared and upset I’d ever been. Worst part was I felt like I was the one who did something wrong.
I held it in for a week or so and had to tell my friends, thinking maybe they would give any support or comfort. I was having panic attacks the first time in my life and I didn’t realize at the time but I was detaching from my body slowly because I felt so unsafe and wasn’t dealing with it. After talking with my friends I received the opposite of kindness, they actually told me I should have expected that would happen eventually and it was my choice and I should just deal with it. So I did. This is why people who see evil done are sometime more evil. I was convinced at that point, it was my fault and I needed to take responsibility and never let anything like that happen ever again. Over my dead body.
I shoved it down, like it never happened. Part of me even forget it happened. Even though it was completely out of my mind, the pain in my body just kept growing and getting worse and worse. For about seven years I NEVER spoke of this again, and then it all came back to the surface when the pain had built for all those years. It came out mostly in my relationships. It was like a monster was inside of me, doing anything to protect myself. It wasn’t pretty, I felt scared and unsafe in a lot of moments but I was finally healing, and I was able to finally be back in my body and reclaim my right of having a body and being safe in it.
There were a lot of painful things that happened and a lot of suffering before I actually dealt with it but it changed my life once I finally let that pain in. I hadn’t admitted what had been done to me for almost 10 years, a part of me convinced myself I didn’t go through something as bad as most girls go through. I couldn’t own the word and until about a year ago I was finally able to own this pain. I had been raped. I was disrespected when he didn’t hear my no, and trust me I said it. I finally realized it doesn’t matter if they are your boyfriend, if you say no they have no right to do what you are saying no to. People around you might convince you otherwise but fuck that, it’s your body, your choice and you know if it was your choice or not.
This is way to common of a thing going on, and it needs to end. We can’t be quiet, we must not blame ourselves either for the time we have been silent (this is our healing and it can look how ever it needs). It was scary for me to share this so publicly but I know I went through it for a bigger purpose. If I can connect or help anyone who has gone through something similar it will have been for something big that I went through this. Same goes to you, we aren’t meant to feel alone and ashamed anymore. We are meant to heal our pain and raise the vibration of this planet from doing so!!! Love you guys so much, this was a heavy one this week. Thank you so much for reading.
I’m on Instagram too if you guys wanna connect there! danidivinediva____
I made 22 affirmations to connect back to your body. Hope you guys find them healing and uplifting. Sign up in the pop up box!
Diving Deep 