Honey – Black Rock City USA

/in /by

When I was little I was aware of beauty, and my body and my face. I was aware of my outer beauty and that it was considered important. I was aware of Jane Fonda’s body in her aerobic videos, and in awe of what a woman’s body “should” look like.

I don’t know what initially sparked my insecurities, but I remember by age 4 or 5 I thought I wasn’t thin or beautiful enough. I remember trying to be thin, not aware of the harm I was causing my heart.

Years passed and my obsessions about my beauty would come and go. People would say I was pretty, but I never really believed it.

I took gymnastics, as a child, ages 7-12, and I continued to compare my body to the other girls. Their thighs didn’t touch, their stomachs were flat. My mother dieted a lot. I saw a lot of women doing weight watchers and “trying to lose weight.” I took to this pattern myself.

I ran cross-country and that made me feel strong and like a deer. I started ballet at a pre-professional dance school at age 11. I began to follow my dream to be a ballet dancer. Many of the girls had eating disorders and were very thin. I thought I should look like that. I counted my food, and I poked, prodded, and pounded my body to be a beautiful ballerina. I was never good enough.

In college, I turned to creative and healing practices; modern dance, experimental theater, music and yoga. Through time and awareness with these practices, I began to experience deep healing. I started to feel more self-care and self love, more connected to spirit, rather than what was a reflection in a mirror. I still deal with daily judgments. I am pursuing music as my career, and this nourishes my soul.

I believe in my spirit and have experienced moments, days, and weeks where I can start to see my body free from years of judgement. We all know our society places women in a place of thinness and modes of insanely impossible archetypes. This ideal in the commercial world represents the feminine. It still exists… yes there are movements, it is getting better, but the vast majority of the archetypes still in the magazines are beauty and thinness. Why is this cycle of pain, abuse, and judgment toward a women’s body still embedded inside of us? How do we as women collectively break this cycle together?

I am starting to heal and see my body as an emerald vessel, in rose quartz, all love and light. To expose my deeply felt emotions with the temple and the sunrise will always be a shimmering light of healing in my body. 

I stood at the temple today and released 20 or more years of body judgement and shame. I am beautiful, I felt beautiful. I felt supported and healed in this ball of open light. To have my sister there, and to share my feelings, has initiated a great letting go and an awareness of love. I am loved and supported. However, I still have loving work to do every day. I want to continue this loving practice in my body, to allow myself to feel peace inside of my body. 

My prayer is that this experience will help me in my healing, so that I may love my body as it is. It doesn’t matter how big or small I am; I will always be this love. I will always be a vessel of light.

My prayer is that other women can join on this path toward re-shaping our culture’s expectations of the feminine body. I would love to one day fully embody and embrace my heart, my magnetic body as something not of just skin and flesh and bone, but of pure spirit, pure bliss, pure gratitude, acceptance and love.