I built a whole online community around telling people how to dress over the years, and this current iteration of me is considering: how do I create a new way to think about this.
I only want to approach the discussion of bodies with the utmost gentleness and respect. (Not that I wasn’t in the past, but I want to be clear.)
Bodies hold everything; bodies fluctuate and change. Bodies carry our words, and the connotations of those words, and words are spells and frequency. Words are a creative and destructive force.
Your body hears and recognizes patterns. It responds according to its training. I've been telling my body stories about what is "good" and "beautiful" for 27 years. My body absorbed the language of my mother before I was fully formed, and she spoke harm over her frame Her bones remembered fear and lack and abuse. (Perhaps oversimplified, but I might be able to talk about my mom forever because she’s such a profound character in my life.)
But I had a fear of being undesirable that was passed down from her. I’m still untangling the threads. I had a fear of being "too ____," as if my body couldn't hold more than a crumb. And my body heard and shape-shifted, contorted into a form so small, so withered— yet she still couldn't escape the perception of mother, of men, of some false god; and her Aquarian desire to be understood and to belong, to be accurately perceived; and her distorted Virgo desire to be excellent, to be perfect, to be holy, to be whole.
So I want to talk about the extremes held within the body. The both/and. The binaries of this earthly plane. Day and night.
I want to talk about transcending those binaries and living in an ambiguous place. Dawn and dusk.
I want to talk about naming things accurately and objectively, calling patterns what they are, and recognizing when the roots are so tangled and interlocked that it's hard to propagate the plant without risking its death. I want to talk about how death is part of it all, and it's one of the most beautiful and certain events of our physical experience, even if you were taught it was an enemy to be destroyed and conquered. (And please understand, this is just one aspect of death, as connected to grief and letting go of parts of you that once protected you, but no longer allow you to exist in connection to everything living.)
I'm asking myself, who am I in context? How can I perceive myself as anything but a momentary reflection of the divine, of nature, of love? Inherently connected as whole and part of the whole, my existence is the result of choices made outside of myself, and now my delight stems from within.
Back to body typing and getting dressed every day (and it’s hard to feel like any of this matters right now.) This is the both/and:
Who am I to tell you who you are? Only you know.
And yet, what a gift to be entrusted to speaking gentleness to your body, to offer a perspective outside of your own mind that says, first and foremost, you are beautiful and inherently good?
And here is a way to collaborate with your frame in it's wholeness.
And here is a way to celebrate the body that holds everything, the body that protects, the body that continues to sing and dance and heal despite it all and in spite of everything that said it wasn't allowed to.
To ask, why do you dress the way you dress? To feel like yourself? To feel like you belong? To finally feel warm? To communicate that you belong to the people who scoop you in and say, Welcome back! We missed you!!
I'm here to give you permission to express your wholeness. I'm here to celebrate your discoveries with you. I'm here to facilitate the conversation between your mind and your body. I'm here to remind you that it's all connected, and when you soften your relationship with one aspect of self, you soften your relationship with everything else.
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