My body

I love my body. It fascinates me. The way it changes, adapts, grows, learns, survives, thrives. It's energy, it's weariness, its journeying, its learning, it's power, its weakness, its uniqueness, its sameness, its joy, its sorrow, its story telling and its story making, it's dying and its renewing, its temporarlity and its eternity.

My body does not need to be thinned, tightened, controlled, straightened, perfected, tamed, tanned, lightened, changed.

My body is a paintbrush not a canvas. It creates its own picture, it is not a blank for others to paint perfection on.

I love my body, it is me and I am it. To alter it is to assault myself, to starve it is to hate myself.

I do not need to look in the mirror to know my body is there, it always comes with me. I do not need a mirror to tell me if there is something wrong with my body, it is supremely articulate and always let's me know. I do not need a mirror to tell me I'm the fairest in the land - I and my body have no desire to be.

My body beats the rhythm of the day, the week, the month, the year.

I am so tired of the war on my body. I was going to write a blog explaining why my vagina is not too lose, my legs not too hairy, my breasts not too saggy, but why should I. My body does not need to mount a defence against the tempest heading toward it, that storm's waves will crash apart against the rock that is my body.

I love my body and the more I'm told not to the more I'll love it in all its defiant glory. The older I get - the more defiant it will become it will wrinkle, increasing its ability to communicate a million complicated emotions, idea's and adventures. It will continue to journey away from that caged magazine pretty, towards beauty, freedom, hope, adventure, discovery, wisdom, death and glory.