This is a time of year that people talk a lot about their bodies, so I will remind you:
Your body is a wondrous thing.
It has lungs that help bring oxygen into your bloodstream.
It has a heart that pumps blood through the circulatory system.
It has skin to protect your tender inside bits.
You probably have opposable thumbs! How cool is that!
You have a mouth and tongue to help you talk, if you’re able, taste food, kiss.
You exist in this miraculous vehicle for experiencing the world in all of its messy, impossible magic, and for sharing your own exquisite gifts and love.
Every day, cells in your body are dividing and dividing again, renewing themselves. Renewing you.
You woke up this morning. That’s incredible. Ponder the sheer number of things that had to go right in order for that to happen. A miracle worthy of great gratitude.
Jews traditionally say a blessing after leaving the bathroom. Because everything working correctly—with all of the open parts staying open and the closed parts staying closed—is truly no small feat to take for granted.
As the artist Mx. Glenn Marla put it, “There is no wrong way to have a body.”
Bodies come in all sizes, all shapes, all ability levels, all genders, all sorts of ways of moving and existing and manifesting, all holy and beautiful and each and every one made in the divine image, in its own way.
I want to bless you with finding gratitude, self-compassion, and tenderness in your engagement with your body, and with radical amazement at all that it can do.
