Your Very Flesh Shall Be A Great Poem
“…your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
- Walt Whitman, preface to Leaves of Grass
Sometimes I think about all the times I’ve missed out on things purely from being self-conscious. My weight has fluctuated and yo-yo’d for most of my adult life. Last year, I was probably in the best shape of my life, aside from playing sports in high school. I was strong. I was happy. But I overdid it. I worked out too much and injured myself. So, for the past year, I’ve been softening, all around. Losing that strength, and along with it, my confidence.
I hate bathing suits. Yesterday, my family and i were vacationing in the mountains of North Carolina, and went to a natural water slide and then a waterfall where you could swim. I chose to sit it out, and watch with my camera in hand, as my husband and young son played in the water and scrambled over rocks. My son had such joy in that place. I avoid bathing suits, and therefore miss out on activities like these.
But then, I see other mothers with children. They are wearing their bathing suits and the cellulite without seeming to care. Why am I so embarrassed? Maybe it’s because we adopted our child and my body hasn’t changed from childbearing, but only from neglect. Maybe it’s from feeling outside scrutiny, but maybe it’s just all my internal shame.
Why are men with their “dad-bods” given a pass, while mothers are held to impossible standards? Why did I feel like I needed to keep up with the twenty-somethings at the Pure Barre studio when I was able to exercise? Why can’t I embrace my own body? I am forty years old, and I feel like it will only get worse. Unless, I change something inside myself.
I need to read more Walt Whitman. More Pablo Neruda. I used to carry around a tiny pocket version of “Song of Myself.” I had bits and pieces memorized. Whitman writes:
Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
I have felt proud to understand poetry. But I need to come to terms with my body, and feel proud of who I am and how I look. I need to allow my body to sing with every motion.
I remember how my son would squeeze my biceps when they were strong. Now he squeezes and says, “Mama, you’re chunky.” But he loves me just the same. I know what my body is capable of. I know how strong it can be. It takes a lot of work to get to the place of strength. But in the meantime, I don’t want to sit this one out. I don’t want to have those “what ifs” like Anne Lamott describes:
“Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you're 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written, or you didn't go swimming in those warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It's going to break your heart. Don't let this happen.”
― Anne Lamott
I do have jiggly thighs and a nice big comfortable tummy. I shouldn’t let them get in the way of my “big juicy creative life.” I don’t know why this is so hard for me, but it is. After all, your beach body is just your body, at the beach. No one cares. No one who matters is judging me. I want to wear the shorts, put on a bathing suit, and own my body, my poem.
My song will be Alanis Morrisette’s “That I Would Be Good.”