No Secrets Here

I Know I Love My Fat Body Now

Words are powerful. They hold infinite ways of communicating and we all everyday get to decide how we use them. We can use them for hate or use them for love. Some words will always mean hate but sometimes a word can change to us and when the changes happen what we have been called out of hate we not accept but enjoy it because it means something else to us, sometimes. I read recently in an article dated from three years ago it's time we took the power back from the word, fat.  I am fat. that use to mean when I would say it to myself that I meant I was ugly, I was uncommitted, I had gave up and the worst of all I used it to say I wasn't healthy. 

In Mary's song "(I Know Girls ) Body Love Parts 1 & 2" one of my favorite lines is " It's time to reclaim our bodies" Mental abuse holds invisible scars that grow deep inside of a person. It can trigger trauma and cause a lot of health issues. There is certain words now used in pride that I grew up to in different meanings and it makes me cringe. I associate them with pain, fear and imminent danger because when they were used it meant hate. However the more I see gay people use them in loving ways now I begin to change my attitude towards them. I am not saying I will ever use them to describe myself but I am saying they don't make me shiver as loud inside of my bones now when I hear someone else say them, that is healing, that is winning the war you never signed up to be in. It's not only time to reclaim our bodies but to reclaim our words. The most powerful way to defeat hate is to change it from hate to love. 

"Love your body the way your mother loved your baby feet" that is another favorite line of mine from Body Love Part 2. My mother loves me, I am lucky, I feel so much empathy for people whose mother's either neglected, abandoned them or do not love them unconditionally. I long to show love to those who have never been loved as they deserve to be for who they are not what they do and not what they grow into. The image of a mom adoring a baby's feet is so beautiful to me it's helped me out of so many terrible images that have robbed my mind. I have meditated on this line a lot this past year and It always leaves me hopeful and grinning through anything life throws at me. 

In conclusion of the song Mary says we have leaves sprouting out of us and we are reborn. this is true. Every day we are growing. We are not stumpy but flowery. We don't stop growing, we bloom out. The word fat use to mean a lot of negative things to me, now when I hear it or use it for myself it means Body Love. I know I am fat and I love my body as it is right now. It is going to change tomorrow, next week, next year if I am still left breathing on this earth but right now and all the changes to come, I love it and that is too huge a feeling to be called skinny, I am proud to call it fat body love.