An Open Letter To My Body

I've come to you today to ask for your forgiveness for the way I've been treating you. It's not fair, I know, to get angry with you for not healing faster. Healing will happen on your own schedule and I can't do much to rush that. I can support healing by giving you good food, getting enough rest, meditating daily and following our physical therapist's recommendations for easing back into exercise.

But I can't make it happen faster just because I'm frustrated. Yes, I miss pool classes and power walking and weight reps and crunches and feeling strong. Don't you miss feeling strong, feeling confident that you can push grocery carts or open heavy doors without asking for help? And I miss the way a good workout makes us feel, all glowy and on top of the world. I miss the way it helped us sleep better. Yes, getting all that back into our life will happen in time. Saying that is one thing, but my feelings are another. It doesn't mean I like waiting. It doesn't negate my frustration, my sadness, my anger. And we know how important it is to acknowledge my feelings.

But taking them out on you? Trying to push too hard, or stuffing down my emotions with food that will only make you feel worse? Already I'm seeing the extra pounds I've put on you, and I know the inflammation from that is making your job even harder. It seems counter-intuitive, doesn't it? Asking you to heal, yet undermining your efforts with Oreos and potato chips and chocolate and whatever sweet, salty, fatty food-like substances I can stuff into you?

I'm sorry. I do love you, and I hope you will forgive me. I don't know what I can promise, since we're only human, after all, but I do promise to try harder to handle my emotions in better ways. For instance:

1. Put them in my journal. I've slipped from this daily practice and it's a good time to take it up again. Even if I need to fill it up with cursing and tears, so be it. No one else is going to read those words. I can't even read my own handwriting at times. But the exercise comes in getting the feelings and the words out of my head.

2. When I find myself standing in front of the refrigerator or the pantry, I can hit the "pause" button and ask myself why I'm there. Are you truly hungry, or do we need another kind of "food?" Are you tired, or thirsty? Am I bored, lonely or sad? If I'm bored, I can find something else to do. Read a novel. Find a friend. Watch a silly TV show. If I'm sad maybe we just need a good cry. If I'm reaching for Hub's Oreos because I'm frustrated, maybe a dose of deep-breathing could fill that need instead. It will give you a chance to rest, and also will calm our parasympathetic nervous system. At the very least, hanging in that "pause" I could imagine how eating crap will make us feel like crap. I could remember the last time I did it. In as great a detail as I can imagine. The headache, the fuzzy brain, the digestive ills, the regret, and even more frustration.

3. I can amp up the self-soothing. That's a term from cognitive behavioral therapy. It means just what it sounds like - soothing away the negative emotions in ways that make you feel good. Maybe I'm overdue for a massage appointment. But I can do some of that pampering myself by smoothing on some nice body lotion or using warmed massage oils on the parts of you I can reach. Doesn't that sound nice? Or I could make a cup of my favorite tea, wear soft fabrics, wrap a plushy throw around us, or snuggle under the down comforter and listen to something fun on the iPod.

4. I can look for points during the day when I'm most vulnerable and most likely to hurt you. Already I know that in late afternoon, I feel down and look to food for comfort. This is the time when I need to find something else to do - something fun, engaging or soothing. I even put a note on the refrigerator: find something else to do. Even if I don't consciously read it each time, at least it might give me that moment of pause to realize what I could be about to do to you.

Because I want to stop causing you undue pain. I want us to get well together, to thrive together. You and I are one and we need each other. We have so much to give and so much to accomplish.

I hope you'll forgive me.

With Undying Love,

Me