Learning to Love My Body (and a song to go with it)🤗
Today was another triathlon practice. Last week my practice was really exhausting but today felt much better! I’ve been trying to baby my hip and leg due to recent injuries and I was overjoyed that my body seems to be slowly healing.
Maybe others are like this too, I don’t know, but my life seems to be measured by the seasons of physical injuries I go through. Ya know, the season when I had a lot of back pain. Then there was the time that my knee went wonky and severely limited my exercise for a couple of months. After that, my ingrown toenail really jammed things up. It’s a pain; a pain in my “whatever” is hurting me at that time. I get so fucking annoyed when my body limits me to what I can and can’t do. Usually, at some point, I get so downright frustrated that I cry. Eventually, I accept my misfortune and try to embrace a season of rest.
Though these times of healing always help me grow and learn to care for myself better, I still struggle and wish my body wasn’t hurting.
Recently, it was my canal.
Above is a link to a sort of simple diagram that shows you where the femoral canal is. I am nowhere near capable of explaining it to you, but all you really need to know is that somehow my muscle got stuck under it and caused a “hipload” of pain. My chiropractor did his best to describe to me what was happening but since I didn’t attend medical school all I really caught was that it’s more common in women due to how our pelvis is shaped.
Cool. Another reason to hate being a woman.
Anyways, it’s been a couple of months of trying to take it easy on my body and frustrating return visits to the chiropractor as we worked together to problem-solve the never-ending issues. It started with my canal and progressed to bursitis.
Here’s what the Cleveland Clinic has to say about it:
Bursitis is painful swelling in a small, fluid-filled sac called a bursa. Bursae (the plural of bursa) cushion spaces around bones and other tissue. They’re like bubble wrap that protects structures throughout your body. Bursae cushion the spaces between bones and your:
muscles
tendons
skin
Bursitis happens when a bursa becomes irritated and swells. The most common causes of bursitis are overuse and putting too much pressure on a bursa. The pain from an inflamed bursa may develop suddenly or build up over time.
Sounds fun, right? Apparently, my canal situation caused bursitis. I guess my body decided it was time to transition to the next thing. Anyways, I’ve never had one before now and I hope to never have one again. I could barely walk for days. It’s extremely painful. I felt like a million-year-old grandma struggling to walk the dog when it felt like instead I should be in bed writing up my will.
Last night Jennifer and I were walking the dog together. Most of the conversation lately seems to include my bursitis. I turned to Jennifer and said, “Bursitis sounds like some horrible disease or something that old people get.” This immediately inspired me to start singing. In seconds Jennifer and I were doubled over in laughter as we took turns adding to the song.
It went a little like this:
“Grandma got run over by bursitis
When she trained for a triathlon
You can say you don’t believe in injuries
But as for me and Grandma, we believe
She was doing all her training
But her hip was not the best
Her canal started complaining
Then bursitis came and put her on bed rest”
I’ll tell you what, laughter really is the best medicine. We laughed so fucking hard.
Here’s the thing: I don’t really know why my body goes from issue to issue.
Maybe because I ask so much from it. Yeah, I suppose that could be it.
But I never fail to get frustrated at it. I find myself being angry at my very own body. I wanna scream at it, “You have no reason to act like this! Pull yourself together. Literally. Please.” It’s like I turn on myself. I act like my body is some separate organism that is my slave. I try to beat it into submission. I work it hard. I tell it to stop complaining. I tell it to do more. I tell it that I have no time to rest. I am so terrified of being lazy that I swing in the complete opposite direction. Why? Why do I do this to my own precious body?
I recently listened to an episode on Glennon Doyle’s “We Can Do Hard Things” podcast called “The Bravest Conversation We’ve Had: Andrea Gibson.” I recommend this episode to every human on earth. It’s powerful. It’s eye-opening. It has rearranged my insides. During the podcast, Andrea reads one of her poems that’s called “For the Days I Stop Wanting a Body”. God, it’s good. It stopped me in my tracks and gave me a whole new perspective on how beautiful this experience we get to have inside a human body is. I even began to see pain differently. Suddenly, I realized that I don’t want to waste my life hating on my body and treating it as my slave. What a waste that would be. I get this one chance to live on earth, inside this unique container for a very limited amount of time. I want to appreciate and love my body while I have it.
I could blog a whole lot more about all the things in that podcast episode that helped me rewrite the way I see life but honestly, you should just go listen to it.
It’s not a fun listen. It’s an important and highly valuable listen, though. I promise it’s worth your time.
After my triathlon practice this morning, I found myself thanking my body as I washed it in the shower. This body which is only a couple of weeks away from being 40 years old, has done a damn good job carrying me through life. She has been through serious trauma, grown and birthed 3 babies, worked like a boss anytime I needed her to, and done her best to keep up with my love for exercising. Even when she’s fucking tired, she rises to the occasion. Sometimes though, she gets hurt and needs me to give her rest. I have not been very kind to her. I talk negatively to her and shame her when she needs attention. I think her needs are an inconvenience. For some stupid reason, I expect her to perform at high capacity all the time as if life is a race.
But even race cars have limits. Even race cars burn out and have to have their engines rebuilt.
I know that learning to love my body and see it as a beautiful gift carrying my soul around is going to take time and a lot of practice on my part. But I am committed to it. I am committed to her, to loving her, to appreciating her, to seeing all she does for me.
So thank you, my amazing body. Thank you for doing your damn best to keep up with all my wild ideas. If there is anything worth celebrating on this earth, it would be you.
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