Tonight I went to the Boulder Youth Body Alliance Body Slam. It was a night of poetry, of appreciation for the body, of recognizing the silence of an eating disorder and that silence can no longer be tolerated. I am trying to process tonight and it was just so intense. The words from two amazing poets Andrea Gibson and Sonya Renee touched my heart, made me cry, laugh, and turn inward. Here is my tribute to tonight:
I'm truly confused. How did we get to the point in our society where we hide our pain, where we feel as though we can't truly show up, that we can't speak our fears and be honest in the moment. To speak of the pain that lies within all of us. We yearn and search for connection and yet we deny ourselves the same thing we are searching for. We sit in coffee shops on our laptops and crackberries for the facade of feeling connected to the outside world. We sit in anxiety, pain, sadness, depression, confusion in the so called safety of our own home and feel embarrassed and shame when we even let someone else in to the reality of our world; like that is not the way life should be. The mirror becomes something we hate. It is the thing that reflects back all of our pain, our self criticism, the false self we hide behind. And we then turn that hatred outward toward the people that reflect back to us all that we despise about ourselves on the inside and yet never let anyone in to crack the film over the mirror to help one truly see themselves again. We were born in to this world pure, full of laughter, smiles, lightness and hope. I believe this can be reclaimed; that the war on the body is a misguided attempt toward trying to reconnect with who we once were when we entered this world. A new path can be created. Every minute we get to decide to choose to be happy, to choose to love and be loved. Choose you, no matter who that is, choose you in your gloriously awkwardness, choose you.
I'm truly confused. How did we get to the point in our society where we hide our pain, where we feel as though we can't truly show up, that we can't speak our fears and be honest in the moment. To speak of the pain that lies within all of us. We yearn and search for connection and yet we deny ourselves the same thing we are searching for. We sit in coffee shops on our laptops and crackberries for the facade of feeling connected to the outside world. We sit in anxiety, pain, sadness, depression, confusion in the so called safety of our own home and feel embarrassed and shame when we even let someone else in to the reality of our world; like that is not the way life should be. The mirror becomes something we hate. It is the thing that reflects back all of our pain, our self criticism, the false self we hide behind. And we then turn that hatred outward toward the people that reflect back to us all that we despise about ourselves on the inside and yet never let anyone in to crack the film over the mirror to help one truly see themselves again. We were born in to this world pure, full of laughter, smiles, lightness and hope. I believe this can be reclaimed; that the war on the body is a misguided attempt toward trying to reconnect with who we once were when we entered this world. A new path can be created. Every minute we get to decide to choose to be happy, to choose to love and be loved. Choose you, no matter who that is, choose you in your gloriously awkwardness, choose you.
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