Bodies

From a young age, people (especially women) are constantly taught that we’re in competition with one another. Whether it’s our grades, our social status, our economic status, or those creepy beauty pageants for 6 year olds, we’re immediately thrust into a world where we’re taught to view everyone as adversarial to a certain degree.

A historian told me once to always be suspicious of anyone who used the word "progress" to describe the unfolding of events from past to present and from present to future. History is full of instances of change, she said, but it’s important to remember that change isn’t the same as progress.

The inimitable Alice Walker said, “When you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul.” As someone with multiple mental illnesses, I truly believe that crafting has soul-restoring properties.

Forty means mammogram.

Even though in the U.S., abortion is a safe and legal option, conservative lawmakers in my state have made sure that among the hundreds of regulations restricting access to legal abortion, restricting the mere mention of it in public schools is up at the tippy top.

“Wow, what happened?” (as eyes glance at my stomach area)
What do you mean, “What happened?” When asked this, I sometimes wonder if little aliens are flying around my waist or if blood is spewing from my hips.

My swimsuit phobia started in middle school — that breeding ground of body shame and fear. One minute I’m a kid excitedly putting on my pink two-piece and running into the ocean, the next, I’m avoiding any place where people are known to live in their swimsuits and I might be forced to wear one.

I don’t remember when I started holding in my stomach. [...] It’s hard to trace a habit so ingrained that I don’t know it exists. Until I’m lying on a table and her hand rests at my solar plexus and she tells me to let go. I can’t. I don’t know how, or not yet.