#normalizeexcessskin

Excess skin

#normalizeexcessskin

I never thought I’d look like this. I never thought this was even a thing? Waterfalls on my legs and stomach, coke bottle boobs hanging down to my belly button which on it’s own looked like a wonderful hideyhole for little ones, sharpei's eyebrows smiling up at me, pinching when I sit down. I can’t talk like this about myself. I SHOULDN’T talk like this. And yet it’s so freaking ridiculous.

I worked so hard for so many years to release all the unhealthy, life sucking, heaviness from my heart and my head and my body only to find it now gleams bright and in my face. The shame and guilt and battering I do to myself about how I got to this place and how hard I worked to fix it… and now this?

It’s not body dysmorphia. It’s real. This is me. And it’s not on any covers of any magazines I know. There is a photo circulating on Facebook (I shared it myself) of an incredibly accomplished softball player completely naked, hands strategically placed for purity who has curves and softness and substance…. And feels a need to justify all those curves as nourishing and supportive. 

I can’t call what I look at in the mirror anything like that. I can give it beautiful names like waterfalls flowing in and around my middle and my thighs, angel wings that allow me to fly in totally new ways and to places I’d only dreamt of, aprons that represent the remnants of the rent my babies played until they were ready to be born, the sharpies eyebrows that tuck in and sometimes pinch when I first sit down.

I know in my head AND my heart that my excess skin is a badge of honor, it’s proudly carried on from decades of hard work and agony pushed down, from years of using food to numb myself, from ages of wearing my addiction on my sleeve. I’ve spent decades judging myself and watching others judge me. The fat jokes alone I’ve heard flow through and around those waterfalls… a reminder that society doesn’t know what to do but laugh. It is a quick way to hide behind the pain and impossibility that doing the hard slog day in and day out required to actually release the weight to get to a right sized body entails.

How do I, someone who is willing to share her journey so openly, get into the spaces of those who so closely hold dear their sacred space of aloneness - that isolating shame-filled place perpetuated by our crazy brains and our self-deprecating approach… it must be my fault that I’m here. After all, I put that food in my mouth. 

It’s just FUCKING WRONG that I have ANY negative emotions around my weight release. It’s just FUCKED UP. And I mourn for any sweet skin sisters out there, alone in her thoughts, alone in her pain, alone in her shame, alone in her judgment, alone in her torment.

So. How to surrender and allow the grief and sadness to flow through me and out? How to relax and share and laugh and love on myself in the way I’m meant to?

Resonance. Connection. Trust.

I’m meant to love me

I’m meant to love my body

I’m meant to be proud of me and all I’ve accomplished

I’m meant to be happy.

I’m meant to live in joy

DAMMIT!