Hello My Dearest!
In case you missed it, you can read part one of this post here.
Let's dive deeper today.
Loving Your Body Is A Powerful Tool For Changing The System:
Again, I know the diet industry that has so deeply tied our food consumption and worth - we are 'good' if we are eating these foods and 'bad' if we are eating those. We are 'good' if we are this or that weight, 'bad' if we aren't. This has deeply obfuscated the truth about food and health. Its obfuscated the fact that so many are in states of food insecurity. It's hidden the fact that convenience foods require slavery. It's hidden the fact that not all of us have access to what we need to be fit and healthy and to internalize that shame rather than demand that the system be more inclusive.
To heal this again, we have to do the internal healing work so that we STOP shaming ourselves for that which needs to be changed on a structural level. If we keep turning the shame in, the system will continue on. If enough of us unpack our shame and see where it came from, and we stop feeding INTO the system that oppresses and shames and start to REBEL in a HEALTHY way - we will then demand a new system by BEING that new system.
Those of us with the most access have the most power to change the way this works. It is MOST important for those of us with resources to dismantle this internalized shame around our food, bodies and productivity levels so that we can start to USE our ACCESS and our POWER to defund these systems that aren't working for anyone, while supporting and creating new systems. It is up to us who have the choice to make a new one.
It's a powerful form of social activism to stop hating your body. To stop minimizing your needs for rest and cycles. To stop conflating your worth and value with your dietary choices so that you can see more clearly that which does and doesn't support your health and the health of the planet. To stop seeing food as 'good or bad' in the sense of how it's going to make you LOOK, and rather look at how it makes you FEEL, and then look at the systems required to PRODUCE that food - and question if those systems align with your values. To turn the script around - YOU get to be the judge of that which is worth your money and investment and that which isn't rather than looking to the system to tell you whether you are worth the time and investment.
When you change how you interact with the food, beauty and wellness world, you change how these systems function. When you stop hating yourself long enough to look at what's really happening, you are going to divest. THIS IS MASSIVE POWER. This will force the systems to change, making them more equitable for ALL of us. The marginalized are ignored because we are so busy being distracted by this sense that we are not good enough. The system keeps doing what it does because we are all bought in and feeding it.
If you want to make the world a safer place for all to get nourished, you're going to have to check out of the systems that oppress. You are going to do this first by owning your own value and worth outside of productivity and ascetics. This again will allow you to take a look at the broader picture of what's going on, where you are investing your money and time into things that perpetuate harm, where you can divest and then reinvest in wellness practices that serve YOU better, and that serve the WHOLE better.
Your goodness has NOTHING to do with your body shape or size, nor does food have any effect on your virtue. Until we learn to tear these two things apart, finding what actually serves us and our health will be impossible. I get why so many people feel that it's impossible to change the body, feel that we have no control over our health or weight outcomes. I do. So many people have tried 'everything' mainstream and alternative as far as diet is concerned and feel terrible no matter what. So it seems that there's no 'truth' in healthy vs. unhealthy foods. So long as doughnuts are off limits you will never TRULY be able to FEEL what it does in your body. The body doesn't lie. And not all foods are created equal. Processed foods are not health foods in the sense that they do not provide the nutrition we need in the forms the body is designed to receive it, we were not designed to process these foods and they often have a drug like effect on us. At the same time - if we are mentally doing gymnastics all day in order to avoid them - again telling ourselves we are bad if we eat them or we are bad if we 'get fat/sick' because we ate them - we are shadowed from reality. Thus, there are times and places where it's deeply healthy to FULLY embrace ALL FOODS with no judgement, so that we can find our self worth in reality, and then from THAT place start to OBSERVE how food affects us. Reality will tell us what actually serves our health. There will be no shame or guilt or virtue in it. Just pleasure and pain.Food and our bodies are also political. They are being used as tools to control, to manipulate, to distract and to create disparities of wealth and opportunity.
From here, as you start to INVEST in what is TRULY nourishing for you, you will also start to realize what is TRULY nourishing for HUMANITY. You will start to LIVE in a new way, again creating that new system that works better for everyone. You will stop your reliance on the system of over production so that the few may have far too much and the majority doesn't have access to enough. You will see it more and more, and the more you honor YOUR TRUE needs, the more you will see how this helps you live in ways that honor the needs of ALL people. We are all one. You can't truly nourish yourself without nourishing the whole and you can't degrade yourself without participating in a system of global degradation.
But don't take my word for it. Try this for yourself. Stop looking 'out there' for what to fix, and start inside. Change how you are with you, and let THIS guide how you are 'out there.' Your vote is your every day choices. THAT is your activism. If you're no longer a victim to the culture, you can then create a new one.
What Do We Need For A TRUE Body Positivity Movement?
Thus, to me, a TRUE body positivity movement will involve the following things:
A CONSCIOUS uncoupling of self worth and body image/diet: Full stop. This is tough work, and I have a LOT of resources to help you - check out this page here for all of them. The more we do this in ourselves, the freer we become. The less we are going to be manipulated by culture and the more we are going to be liberated to find our true selves and true expression. From there we will be creating the new system by BEING the new system. This will make it more accessible to ALL. We must go through the phases of letting ourselves eat whatever, letting go of all the rules, finding our love of self in ANY body - and then working from that place FEELING what feels GOOD in the vessel - and knowing that we don't owe the world our leanness, health or ability. We do it because we want to only. Then we start to examine the industries we are supporting, the systems we are relying upon and so on, and changing based on VALUES that WE HOLD rather than looking to find OUR VALUE in the system.
A CONSCIOUS uncoupling of body ability/wellness and self worth: You are not your body and you are not what your body can or can't do. Chronic illness doesn't define you. 'Disability' doesn't make you anything less than worthy and perfect. Your journey, your struggle, your pain, your trauma within your body, the care/rest/attention you need - it's all legitimate. You're allowed to hate it, wish you felt different, wish things could be another way WITHOUT that being a hit to your sense of SELF. Your experience within your body doesn't have any baring on your worth in real reality. You are worthy. Always. Forever. No matter what. Don't let culture convince you otherwise. Own the fact that this world is not set up to support anyone who is less than 100% productive, and own how this has made you feel. See if you can stop blaming and shaming yourself for the society that doesn't align with human nature. Can you choose compassion for yourself? For others? Then where can you be a part of the new system that works WITH human biology vs. against it?
A CONSCIOUS questioning of WHY you judge your body and the body of others: Again, a LOT of this is rooted in unconscious trauma. Insecurity. Feeling unsafe. LOVE these parts of yourself that judge and fear - it's not your fault. They need tender care. Any time you feel the need to reject or recoil from a body - look inside. What is this triggering in you? What are you trying to run from? What does that body represent to you? Love that inner child, that traumatized human who is scared of what it's seeing. Discover the humanity in that person you see and in yourself. Ask questions before projecting answers or advice. Get to know the people you're judging and see where they are at if you are truly curious. Don't let yourself just judge. Investigate. We need to fully release the idea that we can discern someones health status by looking at them. Full stop. An elite athlete who was fueling their sport via McDonalds and cocaine can drop dead in their prime of a heart attack looking and performing like the epitome of health where a person who is 60 pounds overweight who has been going for nightly walks, lowering their processed food intake and managing their stress may be in the BEST shape of their adult lives having lost none of their 'excess' weight.
A CONSCIOUS choice by each of us to VALIDATE ourselves and our experience: We all need to stop waiting until we are represented and validated by culture. Culture validates and represents so few - and even those that are validated and represented are CONDITIONALLY so. It works to delegitimize the real trauma that so many are experiencing on a daily basis exiting within a system that is counter to all of us thriving. YOUR EXPERIENCE MATTERS. Your pain is not your fault, and nothing you have been through was because of YOUR BODY - it was due to a world full of traumatized people working within a dehumanizing structure. You are not to blame and the first step is to validate you. It's a constant battle to stay in the 'in crowd' and honestly - we all just need to stop and check out. Do the work, the hard work, to be there for YOU. To own your body, your skin, your experience without needing anyone to tell you it's real. Advocate for yourself. Own your space. Don't ask for permission. The more of us who do this, and again I KNOW it is HARD, the safer this world is going to be for all of us. Especially if you have access. You checking out and creating a new system holds real POWER for all of us. Do this work. For all of us.
A CONSCIOUS re-learning to FEEL: What does it FEEL LIKE to be in your vessel? What might your vessel be trying to communicate to you? What may you be running from with diets, body shame, food and so on? Can you learn to start to be with all the feelings without running? Then, what do the systems you are participating in FEEL like? The food production systems you support? The wellness products and messages you support? The beauty standards you hold yourself and others to? How do all of these things feel? Do they align with your values and the world you want to see? If not, are you brave enough to risk the rejection of the masses to invest in a new system? When you have the space to be rejected and still be ok - can you do it? Can you love yourself safe enough to build the new thing? It's scary. Validate you. Love you. Go slow and be gentle. Keep peeling back the layers and finding your VALUES vs. looking for you VALUE in the systems, and start to live by that ethos of 'how does participating in this FEEL for me?' That is your guidance to truth. Your nervous system will freak out and that's ok. Just keep being with you and making you safe, then re-checking in. You will be a part of the solution by how you live.
A CONSCIOUS act of making real foods/wellness available to all people: Using our time and resources to distribute more equitably the capacity to nourish the body so that we don't have swaths of the population dependent upon government subsidized, mass produced franken foods that mess with our ecology, biology and psychology. Again checking out of the systems that work for no one and are required to hold up our unnatural productivity model so that we can usher in something new and actually humane. For us with resources - so we stop killing ourselves trying to be and do all the time, and for those who are being marginalized by the system, forced to work for less than what is required for health because that is the only way to make OUR lives of constant productivity viable. It's a cycle. It's up to us with the resources to break it by returning first to our humanity.
How we nourish ourselves is a political act. A social act. A vote for the world we want to live in. How we view our value and worth, how we inhabit these bodies - it makes a big difference. As within, so without. The system can't stand if we are standing for ourselves.
This is how I see it.
I would love your thoughts too.
<3
