My Letter to My Daughter About her Body

Step one: Don't talk to your daughter about her body, 

except to teach her how it works.

Don't comment on other women's bodies either. Nope. 

Not a single comment, not a nice one or a mean one.

Recently, an article by Sarah Koppelkam called How to Talk to Your Daughter About her Body, published on the Huffington Post, seemed to be everywhere I looked at once. It is beautifully written and inspiring, and I think it is a great guide for the early years of a girl's life. Something was missing, though. I felt I needed to have my own talk with my daughter about her body.

Dear Coralie,

Your body is strong; it is healthy; it can do amazing things. It can climb mountains and run marathons and move furniture and dance and sing and experience pleasure. It deserves to be cherished. I cherish yours, and I hope you will too. I care for it, feed it, file its nails, rub its back, run with it and wipe its tears because I love it and I love you. Your body is how I communicate with you.

Right now, every time you look in the mirror or see a video of yourself, you light up with pure joy. I hope that "I am awesome!" revelry lasts as long as possible. That's how I wish we all felt about ourselves!

The time will come in your life when everything will change. It's called puberty. And I do not serve you well if I avoid talking to you about the incredible and the harsh realities of growing into a woman. Puberty is awe-inspiring and glorious as it allows you to experience maturity, sexuality, and fertility if you wish. However, it's a time when you're going to be inundated with negative messages about your body and other people's bodies. As they grow up, many women stop enjoying their bodies and become obsessed with how they look. FIGHT BACK. Recognize those negative messages and kick their butts.

Those lies come from people who are suffering in their own self-hatred, or who want something from you, or who want power over you, or who want to sell you things (especially that last one!). They are not the truth. If you buy into them, you set yourself up for misery. You don't have to live that way. I am heartbroken every day over all the women living in a prison of self-loathing. They are caught up in other people's delusions. Other people's definition of good and beautiful. They miss out on so much of life!

Life is what our bodies give us! I felt perilously close to losing my life a couple times, and it gave me a whole new gratitude for my body. Your dad witnesses other people's tragedies every day--people who would give anything for our healthy bodies and their idiosyncrasies.

You are a masterpiece. I hope you can see yourself that way your whole life. If other people don't, ignore them. You and I know the truth about you. I hope you always love you as much as I love you.

To Be...or to Overthink It

"I'm not depressed. I'm extra-feely. 

I'm not anxious. I'm extra-thinky. 

I'm not addicted. I'm extra-passionate about lots of things...

some of which may do me harm." --Glennon Doyle Melton

One thing I have learned from mindfulness practice...and as far as I know, Taoism...is that most of us have (as one of my clients called it) an "unhelpful sophistication in our thinking." The part of our brain that analyzes, evaluates, measures, and makes meaning is very often unhelpful. When we give value to something as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, right or wrong, better or worse, we are frequently setting ourselves up for suffering. And as far as I can tell, we are CONSTANTLY doing that. Or maybe it's just me. Or maybe it's just the people in therapy.

I think therapy draws NFs and NTs disproportionately: those are "extra-feely" or "extra-thinky." Those of us who just can't get out of our heads. Who think about life perhaps more than we live it.

Being in our heads splits us off from our experience. It actually takes us away from our lives. It makes us pull inside, away from the people around us. Away from our present moment. There are so many ways we split off.

"This moment is better than that moment."
"This aspect of me is more beautiful than that one."
"I am not who I should be."
"This person is not the person I imagined myself with."
"It doesn't make sense for me to feel this way."
"Tomorrow..." "Ten years from now..." "What if...What if...What if..."

All that is, really, imagination. It's our mind's ability to fantasize. It's in the same family as fiction and delusion. It has its place, but it's not the only voice or the most important voice.We are kidding ourselves if we really think we can predict our futures or live up to our ideals (or that others will live up to them).

What's helped me most is to stop trying so hard to get better. To bring myself back, over and over. What do I feel? Who am I right now? What if I let go of what I want to feel/be...let that go like the clouds passing by...

Often, if someone is feeling anxious, I'll try having them simply sit with it. I'll ask them to describe it to me. What does it feel like in their body? What is the quality of it? Does it move? How intense is it? What if we just invite it into the room? It's welcome here. What would it say to us? (I didn't come up with this approach, of course. :) )

It feels like diving into one of those pitch-black water slides. You don't know when or where you're going to come out.  Except, usually within minutes, the person comes out. They land in the shallow pool at the end and the darkness is gone. Often what is left is just...acceptance. Not just, actually. Acceptance is damn hard and dangerous and freeing. Radical acceptance.