everybody has a body 🔔
+ the one question to ask every day
greetings, greetings to you, dear reader.
the sun has reached the blistering heat of late july in the valley between the mountains. i’m considering purchasing an air-conditioning unit, but the inner depths of my brain suggest that i will do otherwise. i’ve been sitting with the windows wide open in the mornings, the shades and windows closed in the afternoon. and so far, have come out in one piece.
continuing along with my previous thoughts from my last dispatch, this past revolution around the sun has given me much food for thought: i was living on the road, i reconnected with folks near and dear to my heart, i saw the country, i considered all the options.
and as magical and mystical as those experiences might seem, they were also incredibly and immensely difficult. marked by pain and loss and grief and unending change.
it feels like the theme of change has continued, even in the phases of plateau that i can never seem to recognize in retrospect.
of note, a theme of change has emerged in recent weeks: about our bodies and how we live in and with them.
i seem to have had conversation after conversation after conversation on this topic.
because everybody has a body. and this i am told with increasing frequency.
i am also reminded that i have a body. but most days, most hours, i do not know how or why this is so.
for my body hurts everyday.
in different places and in different ways each day, to be clear. but still everyday.
sitting in my chair, writing this to you, dear reader, i feel the pain in my hips, in my seat, in my kidneys, in my shoulders, in my skull, in my chest, in my elbows and forearms and triceps, in my neck and knees and thighs and ankles and fingers.
folks are surprised when i talk about living with what some might call chronic pain. because while everybody has a body, all of our bodies are different. and from the outside, mine looks like a fully-formed, fully-functioning body that doesn’t feel like it’s held together by small pieces of construction paper and scotch tape.
everybody has a body. but not all bodies are held in the same way in the same space. and this makes it a challenge for me to remember that i have a body.
because to exist in some conversations and spaces, i have to pretend that i don’t have a body.
it takes a lot of convincing, a lot of effort, a lot of niceness to relay the experience that i have trouble getting off the ground, up from couches, into bed. i shift the weight of my backpacks from one shoulder to another depending on which one hurts more on that given day, depending on which one can bear more weight.
i am told some, if not most, of this pain, will dissipate as i continue to heal, continue to feel safe in my space and world.
i am told, and yet, it does not negate the pain of today.
so i must ask on these days: what does it mean to be well? what does it mean to have a healthy body? is mine one of them? would you say so? does it matter if you do or don’t?
this isn’t a helpless appeal for you to answer. it’s more a request for consideration: i am learning what it means to be soft with myself, to give myself more rest, to let myself creak and groan when i sit down at my desk to write this to you, dear reader. i am aware that the outsides don’t match the insides, the surprise with which people respond when i comment on my state of pain1.
i am becoming more aware of how my language is softened for you, dear reader, when talking about my pain. i am being nice about my pain. i want you to feel comfortable when i talk about my pain.
but the reality is that i am angry, i am sad, i am in pain.
my pain is also nuanced. not only because of, but also due to, a high tolerance and threshold for pain.
if i had to rate my pain on a scale of 1 - 10, on any random day of the year, the average would be around 5 or 6.
a friend of mine reminds me that my 5 or 6 is someone else’s 8 or 9.
so when my pain hits 8 or 9, this friend also reminds me that my 9 might be someone else’s 14.
it’s helpful context for me. because instead of viewing this translation of scale as a form through which i am made aware of how different my pain is from someone else’s, it allows me to be softer with myself. to stop translating my pain into a lexicon someone else understands. to crawl back into bed. to grab the pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream from the freezer. to find the arnica and menthol gels and the heating pad or the ice pack and turn off all the lights and lie motionless for as long as it takes for the wave of overbearing pain to pass.
this is what i think of when i think of wellness: mine looks different from yours, and yours looks different from mine.
i am learning that it is no longer my job to soften myself to you, dear reader, to soften my pain for you, dear reader, to be in pain. to accompany myself through my pain and to move out of it.
i do the best i can to prevent things from getting worse. i do the best i can to stay hopeful that the pain will get better. some days, it does. there’s a lot still to work through.
a common response when i tell folks i have chronic pain, for those who don’t know me well, is: “why are you in pain?”
i laugh (and then cry inside) when i get this question. the simplest answer is: “life.”
the next simplest answer is that some of the pain is living in fight-flight-or-freeze mode and my nervous system becoming hyperactive — and some of the pain is from the wear-and-tear of the lives i’ve lived so far in these 25 years.
i cannot distinguish one from another. but i can tell when i am reacting to the world around me with an increasing sensitivity. and that’s when i know it’s time to dive under the covers again, to pull a blanket up to my chin, to turn the lights off and turn a mindless television show on, to cancel as many meetings as i can, to clutch my water bottle in my hand, and wait for the wave to still itself.
wellness means different things to different people. it should.2
i don’t believe that there’s one size fits all or a single definition or a way in which being well describes a body well.
our best opportunity to accompany others in this journey on this planet is to ask the same question every day, being open to new responses: “how can i support you today?”
the dear friend mentioned above in relating scales of pain is the person i learned this from. she asks the question with such regularity and compassion that i try to adopt it in every conversation i’m in. it is a blessing to learn from the people we love.
when we trust our loved ones to tell us what they need, we build a system of love and care and tenderness not often found elsewhere in our lives.
when we say what we need, and get it, the pain may not go away, but the ground on which we lie softens, the pain becomes easier to look straight in the eye.
my wellness hopes for a long life, with less pain, with more space.
my wellness hopes for folks who can give me a hand up, who see me as the person and not the pain level, who know i will do the same when the day arrives.
my wellness knows that even when i do not feel well, that is okay. because everybody has a body. and we must listen to our bodies, in order to live.3
onward,
sara
⬇️ join my other newsletter here:
fellow writer brianne alcala wrote about developing scales of pain here, which i recommend reading!
and fellow writer mary chris escobar wrote about wellness as a journey here, which i also recommend reading!
i was challenged by a group of fellow writers to write a piece on wellness, as it is a common theme for all of us. this piece is what came out of it. i am grateful to this group and for this group, not only for their structural suggestions but also for the weird and wonderful space we’ve carved out for each other every friday morning. if you’d like to check out the other folks in my writing group, you can find their links below: