Honoring the screams of my body.

The first time tension truly released from my shoulders I remember calling my best friend and sharing how horrified I was that I spent my whole life walking around with shoulders up to my ears.

Mar 27, 2023

I wouldn’t say I love my body.

However, I do have a deep respect and appreciation for it. I like the way I look. In fact, I think I look better and more confident in this hunk of flesh than I did 10 years ago. I’ve come a long way from grabbing chunks of my skin and thinking the only way toward acceptance, toward love, was cutting it off or a summer spent at fat camp. I could give you the whole play-by-play, about the origin of my body issues–the comments forever seared in my brain, the generational shame pumping through my veins, but that’s not the angle I want to explore right now.

I’m so much more comfortable in my skin. Even if I look a little older & crazier! There was also just something about darker hair and figuring out how to embrace my curls that helped.

I didn’t know I was out of my body until I found my way back in.

The first time tension truly released from my shoulders I remember calling my best friend and sharing how horrified I was that I spent my whole life walking around with shoulders up to my ears. Relaxation was a foreign concept. As I healed and did the work, the more my body soaked in safety and ease. I learned to listen to what it was trying to tell me. My brain and body started acting like a team. Lately, there have been days where I almost wish I could go back to my disembodied state because my body knows how to keep the fucking score and it can HURT.

Overall, I am healthy.

I couldn’t tell you the last time I was truly sick. I’ve never broken a bone, required surgery or a hospitalization. All things considered, I am a well-oiled machine, albeit with a larger BMI than society deems appropriate and after watching my mom suffer, I have immense gratitude. But for the last 18 months there's been patterns of tension and pain that appear and make me miserable.

What does it look like?

Tension in my jaw so bad I almost cried at the dentist one day because opening my mouth hurt.

An inability to find a comfortable position for my laptop so my arm doesn’t go numb typing.

A shoulder and upper back so tight they feel vacuum sealed.

A neck that feels like one wrong move and it will snap.

When it gets really bad I even get a nice tingle in my chin.

Before anyone hits the panic button…

or tries to throw some WebMD diagnosis my way, I’ve been to physical therapy, my doctor knows, it’s not constant or worsening and I pretty much know the recipe for getting it to simmer way down. It’s an obnoxious blend of compression exasperated and carved into muscle memory by 9 months of living in a pretty perpetual state of trauma last year. Even knowing all of this, it’s still unnerving. Especially when both your parents died in their late 50’s and one had a disease that destroyed her body piece by piece. It’s also a reminder that even though I’m still a youthful and healthy 32, my body is changing and aging.

I know the blend of things to make it better.

In fact, there’s one antidote that can almost cut the pain down 75%. It requires carving out chunks of time to hit pause on everything, and then creating the right combination of safety and space to feel the feels.

My body was screaming on Friday. So I did my due diligence, rolled around on the floor, did the whole feeling thing and instantly felt better.

Saturday, felt pretty great.

Sunday? Well, clearly, we are back to square one, since I am using it as fodder for my newsletter.

I’m angry and tired.

Somedays, I just don’t want to go there. I want to just ignore my feelings and enjoy the sunshine. I just want to function without a constant dull ache. Unfortunately, my body’s response to this plea goes something like this:

Okay Maggie. That’s cool. You can put dealing with this on the back burner for a bit, but just so you know that tension and pain is just going to get kicked up a notch as a consequence, because not only are you ignoring what’s kicking around inside, you’re also annoyed with it and anger is like pouring gas onto the tension fire.