The whisper that changed me

A quiet moment on World Naked Gardening Day made me realize I had never once loved my body

If a nudist who has written about body dysmorphia and the impact of negative industrial messaging cannot look at his own body without contempt, does that make him a fraud? A hypocrite? A liar? That’s a question I asked myself on World Naked Gardening Day when my subconscious whispered, "I love my body," and it froze me.

What was that, I wondered? I was reading a book and watching hockey, so thoughts about my body were far from my conscious mind. In fact, my conscious mind has never once blurted out that thought. From childhood until now, I can find flaw after flaw, berating myself for not eating better, or exercising better, or magically being better. Can one say one has a love-hate relationship with something if the love has never existed? And, oh my, have I really wasted 40-odd years just hating myself, or at least my being, my vessel?

My Saturday night had just gotten interesting.

My pattern is many faceted, though here’s a typical event: I’ll look at old photos and think, I didn’t look half bad back then. OK, I then tell myself, remember that when you start judging yourself next time. And then, like a dutiful servant, I immediately go back to withering self-judgment, forgetting the pep talk I’ve just given myself. I can only guess that it was something I couldn’t intellectualize. Sure, my brain says, you can say what you want, but only I know the truth. And then I live that "truth" over and over again. Ditching the scale became focusing on the mirror. Eating poorly transitioned to doing exercise I hate. And with each passing year of soul-sucking judgment, which I didn't even recognize I was doing, I would wonder why I wasn’t aging gracefully, why pain and soreness became constant companions.

I’d yoked myself to a rock that had grown bigger and bigger for three decades. A quarry of negativity that I lugged with me to every situation.

I dared not let that show. I’d cheerlead with the best of them:

“Every body is worthy!”

*except mine*

“Eat what works for you!”

*except me*

“Don’t torture yourself with exercise!”
“Love yourself!”
“Every body is beautiful!”

*except, except, except, EXCEPT, EXCEPT!!!*

It’s pretty amazing how exceptional I made myself! How sad that is!

I sat with the whisper for a while and rifled off a few euphoric texts and emails to trusted friends. A breakthrough! It had never once dawned on me that loving my body was an option, nor that what I had been doing to myself was the opposite of what I have preached and discussed and posted about as an advocate for nakedness. I considered that in addition to judging the superficial characteristics of my body, I also do not show it gratitude. That afternoon I’d just run five miles and running is an exercise I love. A decade ago, my body fought off the 50/50 live-or-die of sepsis and gave me another shot at living. It helped bring my kids into being. It does all the things many of us take for granted every day.

No gratitude. No high fives. No thanks. Just judgment. Condemnation.

That’s how I’ve paid back my body throughout a lifetime. In response, it was screaming back at me with aches and nervousness and exhaustion. Yet the only thing that sent a clear message was a whisper from the deep. A message I'm taking to heart and working to heed. New words. New thoughts. They might take a while to assimilate, but if I can build a prison around myself with my thoughts, surely I know the map that’ll lead to my escape.

To answer my earlier question, I decided that I’m not a fraud, hypocrite, or liar. I was doing what I could with what I knew at the time. Aspiring. Faking it and hoping to make it. Now, thanks to the message from beyond, I have hope to embody it authentically for the next few decades. 🪐