Surviving Year Two: Week 37

Healing My Body/My Heart/My Mind/My Soul

This is Week 37 of my Surviving Year Two Grief Project. Details about all my Grief Projects, as well as Grief Resources can be found here.

I have been working through some newly resurfaced body shame, that feels connected to my Grief. I have been doing a lot of body healing (including lots of doctor and chiropractor visits) which has forced me to be present in my body in a way that has always been scary to me, despite being a weightlifter for 11 years.

I always find it fascinating that when we start to consciously focus on an aspect of healing, transformation almost immediately starts happening, whether we are "doing" something about it or not. It's as if just clearly making the intention and bringing our focus to that aspect of healing changes the energetic vibration — like just having the intention re-calibrates things to prepare for the deeper healing work to come.

I was finally able to see a Sports Medicine Doctor about my injured shoulder and was officially diagnosed with an impingement in my subscapularis muscle with some focused bursitis. Now that my Chiropractor knows what is going on in there, she is doing some focused therapy and it's already helping my shoulder pain tremendously. Because I have Kaiser, it took OVER A YEAR before they would let me see a Specialist, but my rage at the dysfunction of the Kaiser system is for another time!

Clothes I Would Have Never Worked Out in Before

As I have shared previously, going to the doctor as a fat person is a brutal experience of fighting for my right to exist as the size I am (although, I'd like to say that the office of Dr. Neid, the Sports Medicine Doctor I saw at Kaiser, Santa Rosa, had absolutely no body shaming of any kind! Perhaps because he works with weightlifters and knows that athletes come in ALL shapes and sizes). When I have to fight for the rights and safety of my body, it forces me to fight for my own existence. In a time when suicide has been a very real thought in my mind, it is an interesting experience to then fight tooth and nail for my right to exist.

As I care for the healing of my body and the healing of my Grief, I have been experimenting with new clothing. Lots of ladies (and some men) wear very tight leggings to lift in at my gym. I always admired how they looked and yearned for the ease and comfort they must be feeling to be so unrestricted — both in clothing and in body shame. I have also been watching a lot of Glitter & Lazers videos and she regularly highlights cute, very form-fitting workout clothes. One of her "hauls" included leggings by Lola Getts (and FYI, they aren't paying me anything to promote them — I truly am impressed with their workout clothes). When I tried them on, they were extremely form-fitting, supportive and comfortable. I knew I had to lift in them, but I was panicked by showing that much of my body in the gym. I was so used to hiding my body in baggy sweatpants and voluminous t-shirts.

When I wore my new, tight leggings to go lift at the gym, I did see some eyebrows go up, which made me fill with body shame. But I breathed through it and let that shame go and got on with my lifting. I was then filled with so much joy and happiness at having consciously moved through that shame that my weights felt light as air. It was like my body was running on rocket fuel and champagne. It was dizzying and wonderful. In that moment, I realized that other people being uncomfortable around my body is their problem, not mine.

So now, as I move through my grief, missing my husband and the way he relished, loved and supported my body in all its forms, I am learning to love myself with the same fervor and passion. This is liberation. This is healing.

Thanks for witnessing me. See you next week.