self portrait
So many things are shifting within me. I've been dancing and wrestling and courting voices within. Some really gentle and nourishing and some harsh to the bone and not at all serving my soul.
Today I did something I haven't done in a long time. I walked around naked while Cedar was napping. The weather is a dry hot here. The Santa Ana winds are blowing. I am a Kapha and the heat can at times feel oppressive and bring to surface emotions that run deep. I feel suffocated when the weather gets like this. Trapped underneath many layers of dessert sand.
When walking around naked, as much as I could feel the slightest breeze on my skin through the windows, I could also hear the harsher voices sing. They told me to pay attention to my thighs rubbing together or my bum drifting from side to side or when I would twist to grab something off the counter, they let it be known that the extra rolls on my back felt more prominent. I felt exasperated that I couldn't even enjoy this moment of pure naked freedom in my home. I yelled out and told them to shut the eff up and fought for my sanity. I sat down in front of a mirror and asked my body what it needed to feel loved. I gazed longer at those bits I turn away from in the mirror when getting out of the shower. I gazed and I sent those hills and valleys love. The dimples and the rolls and the bumps. I felt my whole being soften. I felt more forgiveness and deeper into the present but I didn't feel sexy.
I know I've shared this quite a bit but I have wanted so badly to feel sexy the way I used to before (in)fertility came into my life. I have blocks. Walls. I feel guarded at times with my husband. I feel stripped down and raw and sometimes, not as feminine as I used to. Its not his fault. He's so brilliant at trying to remind me but its just me and those voices and the hurt and confusion that this journey brought with it. I have work to do here. Whether it means seeing a therapist or just being aware of these emotions. Staying true to them. Staying honest and carving out time like I did today, to love on my body. Because in the end, my husband could bow down at my feet and tell me I am the sexiest woman he's ever made love to but it is me that needs to believe it. It is me that needs to love myself and celebrate my walk on this earth as a woman and embrace those curves and shifts and gray hairs on my head and lines on my eyes. Sometimes it is easier to be gentle when walking around with fabric covering your curves...but when peeled down and completely vulnerable with nothing but my skin, it needs some special nurturing.
So, I laid down on the bed in my loft and took some photos of my body. Not for him but for me. The way I used to when I felt so deeply connected to my curves. Sometimes I laughed at myself. Sometimes I cried with myself.
This is a movement in the direction of healing for me. Reconnecting with my curves after years of (in)fertility and the depression and treatments that added weight to my body and soul. Remembering that I am still a sexual being that is feminine and desired. Accepting the wider sway of my hips and bosoms the way I do when I lust after other curvier women.
This is an act of being gentler on myself and learning to love me all over again.