Body, thank you.
I’m from the Midwest, so when you feel grateful, you write a Thank-You Note.
Dear Body of mine,
This is a thank-you note, which will also include a few apologies. But the gratitude and awe are a much bigger feel than the sorry. I think that’s because you understand way more than I do about how evolution works, and you celebrate what it actually looks like to evolve. So, my heart tells me you don’t need the apology. Forgive me for getting that bit off my chest anyway.
Thank you, for your unfathomable patience with me.
I had no clue what you were all about. I thought you were something I had to manage and figure out how to take care of, so you would do what I want you to do. I also thought you were a particularly needy and whiny body, so I took some extreme measures to control you. All along, I thought you were the slow study.
If I thought you would judge me for my blindness, knowing what I know now, I don’t know if I could face you.
I didn’t understand that you are alive and awake.
That you have language. And that you move intelligently, instinctively, without any need for my instruction.
Every cell of you is its own sentient being with its own pains and desires, making up a complex yet intricately streamlined system of creation and communication.
I don’t even know how to explain you in words. I’ll try a little more.
Everything you do is efficient and precise, and connected to everything else. Each tiny move you make inside or outside of me is like a miracle. You’re recreating over and over again in every second, and reimagining how things could be one percent better, then one percent better, then one percent better. And you're not only working on deepening this individual experience, you’re working on something much bigger. And I’m smart enough to know I won’t be able to fully understand.
And you’re doing it all for me, and for everything I’m connected to.
Thank you for having so much faith in me.
Even when I had so little faith in you.
I needed external, expert advice on every little move you made. I even questioned if you really understood fully how to make a baby. Way too many experts, and so little faith.
I’m sorry I needed so much proof, and I lacked belief. You had to go to such great lengths. You were patient and resilient, and I led us into so much confusion and suffering, just so you could show me what you’ve got again and again, with a hope that I would one day trust.
You believed in me and knew I’d come around, and you were willing to risk everything and take me somewhere that would break me, so you could put me back together before my very eyes.
Thank you for telling me what I need to know with so much accuracy.
I didn’t know your language, and I didn’t know that you would tell me things through sensation.
This was the hardest of lessons for me, and was way out of my comfort zone. You are my devoted teacher of the nuances and complexities of body linguistics.
You showed me that you communicate for my intuition. And that I can trust it as the most credible datapoint in the equation.
Thank you for your movement and processes.
It feels like it must not be real, what I have seen you do and what you’re capable of. You’ve shown me how you know exactly what to do with emotions that feel entirely unmanageable, shocking truths about myself that I don’t know how to digest, or thoughts I can’t seem to unstick from. You aren’t just processing and digesting food and oxygen, you’re neutralizing the unseen in every moment.
But you’ve given me the gift of witnessing your work.
You taught me that personal growth is a very physical process, and our cells, glands, and organs have a lot of work to do when we want to grow. And, you're teaching me how I can collaborate, and about the abundance of free therapeutic tools that are part of the package of being in a human body.
Finally, thank you for your endless well of sensuality.
You’ve taught me that my sensuality is connected to everything I do, way beyond the physiology of reproduction.
Its creation in every sense.
From sensuality comes new life, and also new models and systems.
You taught me how to use it to connect to pleasure and joy, even during the hardest parts of the creative process.
You taught me that my sensuality is safe.
Body of mine, we’ve weathered the most extreme parts of the learning curve together. You are more intelligent and refined than I could have ever imagined.
I am all in, you’re in charge.
And I love you so much.
Hayley