“If life and the soul are sacred the human body is sacred…” -from The Body Electric
“I celebrate myself, and what I assume, you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as soon belongs to you.” -from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman
I have an unlikely companion in my journey towards wholeness. The poet Walt Whitman is the self proclaimed poet of the body and the soul. His poetry is loud and uncompromising, especially when it comes to claiming his space in the order of things, as he would say.
His poetic voice as well as his insistence on the sacredness of the human form has been a constant reminder to me to insist the same about myself.
Walt Whitman is my muse. His poetry is still surprising, forward-thinking, uncompromising and audacious even after 150 years plus.
Two of the threads running through my healing walk (the time that I let go of the brokenness of disability and claimed the wholeness of healing) has been my insistence on claiming my space and gaining my voice.
My body is on the smaller side of average to be sure. It’s easy to hide. It’s also easy to be underestimated. Part of my path towards wholeness has been my insistence on taking up space. Being bigger. Standing up straighter. Speaking up.
I am just now telling a story that I once though was unimportant. I can’t exactly say that I insist on being listened to, but I do know that I now insist on not letting my cerebral palsy compromise my being. My disability and the stumbling blocks it has thrown at me throughout my life does not make for an isolated or isolating experience. It is a human experience.
My voice has grown stronger, my shoulders broader because now I stand among others and claim my place in their lives because my story, I now know, can inform their own. I have claimed my body’s sacredness.
Western culture has taught us fallacies about what it is to be in a body. The idea of “claiming our bodies” is an strange concept for many of us. To one extent or another we have grown to reject our own embodiment. From young ages, women think some of the meanest things while they are looking in the mirror.
Whether we practice it or not, a traditional understanding of Christianity has informed us all that this body is simply a vessel for the more important soul. That this life’s goal is to get through it, ditch “this pile of flesh”, and move onto “our home” in a place most of us call heaven. We are taught that our bodies are temporary “vessels”.
I say our bodies are our homes. What if we’re tiptoeing through our own homes when we should be sprawled out on its couches and raiding its refrigerator? What if we never painted our names on its doorpost? What if we never sat down and found peace inside of it?
I hope you’re getting my outlandish metaphor.
Wholeness comes when we stop the constant rejection of our selves and our bodies, and we begin to swim against the tide of our body-rejecting culture to claim our bodies as our homes. When we kick off our shoes and start claiming our place in the world. When we insist on taking up space. When we stop the whispering and we claim a place at the speaking center or our own lives.
When we uncompromisingly claim our own sacredness.
This is the healing walk. Continue this journey with me.
Still loving your posts! As someone who struggled with infertility, I had to learn to be aware – and be forgiving- of my own body. It’s amazing what one can learn by bringing awareness to thebody…amazing.
It is amazing that our bodies can be our best (and most patient) teachers!