Brittany Williams - Dear Body: What I Lost, What I Gained, and What I Learned Along the Way

Dear Body,

Life has often felt full of conflict. Ive felt dissonance in body, being, and self. There has been grief, shame, and affliction but also deep love, immense joy, and persistent hope, always hope. It seeps through every crack and crevice, bubbling up, spilling out into even the darkest of moments, undeniable.

Living in this body is both a sacred and complicated experience. I promise to stay open, willing, and present as we continue to make our way through the world together.

Our relationship is complex and ever changing: Thats what makes it beautiful.

Dear Body,

Today I promise to honor you with intention.

Ring.

My foot jittered involuntarily, my neon-orange toenails tracing an invisible line on the floor as I cradled my cell phone on my shoulder, listening to it ring on the other end. Id had restless legs syndrome since I was a preteen; today it felt less like a nuisance and more like anticipation.

My hands were occupied, holding my nine-month-old as he nursed distractedly, latching, then pulling off to laugh at his siblings. The older kids were playing on the floor with an array of wooden cooking spoons, pots, and old containers. They preferred to play with the items we used every day rather than the buckets of toys that littered their rooms. Go figure.

Ring.

I sighed and shifted my position on our old leather hand-me-down couch. I caught a whiff of the cinnamon streusel banana bread baking in the oven. It smelled like autumn, although it was March, and I made a mental note to check it after my phone call. Was it so irrational to want my mom to answer my calls on the first ring?

Life had been full lately and I had a feeling that this fullness was about to expand. My excitement always began to build in the springtime and blossomed fully in the summer when the weather got hot and the sun shone brightest. But this was different. This was a new kind of energy. My spirit was nearly shouting that I was on the precipice of something. My gut was telling me to go, build, makebut my brain was quick to remind me that I had three children under five and that all of my attention should be focused on them.

Ring.

But I couldnt shake this feeling that I should be doing something more. I thought of my aunt Kim, who always said that your identity should never be so wrapped up in your children that you didnt know who you were anymore when they left. Youre not raising children, I could practically hear her voice in my mind, youre raising adults. I knew that it was just as important for me to invest in and take care of myself as it was for me to care for them. Maybe even a little more important. As the saying goes, you cant pour from an empty cup.

Just a few months earlierJanuary 4, 2017, to be exactI had decided to practice intentionality when it came to filling that cup. And it was Aunt Kims words that assuaged my societally conditioned mom guilt when I began to take moments for myself. For the first time in my life, I realized it was necessary to cultivate a lifestyle that encouraged my long-term health and wellness. There was a meme that had been floating around the internet that said We would all die for our children, but are we willing to live for them? I wanted to live for my children, but I was discovering how important it was to live for myself.

Ring.

Actually live. Make positive choices that supported longevity and sanctity of mind, body, and spirit. This was something big for me. Soul-rattling, person-changing. A revelation that practicing self-love with nothing but a massage, pedicure, or bubble bath wasnt the type of care that my mind, body, and spirit truly needed. What I really needed was the courage to dig deep below the surface and uncover the roots of the illness that had kept me from reaching my full potential, that I had so carefully buried over the years because facing it was too much to bear.

But I was twenty-seven now and responsible for mothering these three beautiful little beings, and I knew that unhealed trauma, no matter how deeply buried, always rises to the surface, begging to be dealt with. So I greeted 2017 with a goal to heal, and as I became diligent about taking time for my own health and wellness, I began to feel like it all might be for some greater, grander, more extraordinary purpose than I had ever imagined.

Ring

Hellooo. My moms musical voice practically sang through the other end.

Well, hello to you! I responded with a smile. We worked through our usual niceties What have you been up to? Hows Dad? How are the kids?before she cut to the chase.

Whats up?

Have you ever felt like somethings coming? Something big and inexplicably life-changing, but you cant figure out what it is and why you feel that way and you dont know if its really a premonition or just last nights lasagna? I asked all in one breath. My mom chuckled softly as I sat the baby on the floor with his siblings.

Hmm, she murmured. Off the top of my head, I cant say that I have. Is there something you want to be doing? I heard her fiddling in the background and guessed she probably had me on speakerphone as she worked through one of her paint-by-numbers on her favorite iPhone app.

I went to go check on my banana bread. I feel like Im supposed to be doing something more.

She hmmed again and asked me how my challenge was going. She knew that my New Years resolution was to invest more time into cooking. Starting in January, I had challenged myself to cook dinner at home every night with real, minimally processed or unprocessed foods. If there was a party or function we had to attend, we could eat out, as long as I stuck to real food. In other words, Id eat stuff that came from the earth, not a laboratory. Id spent the past six years researching ingredients and educating myself about the importance of what goes into the bodyand on it. By making small changes over time, Id been able to see the benefits that came from being mindful about these things.

But what I really wanted to focus on was managing my time better so we could eat this way every day, not just some days. As a stay-at-home mom, I knew I could find the time to make meals if I reorganized my life a little. Up until that point, Id fallen stomach-first into having the hubs pick up dinner several nights a week on his way homepizza, Taco Bell, and the occasional Wendys drive-through had turned into our normal routine instead of something we resorted to in a pinch. I knew that the food choices we were making didnt support a healthy lifestyle, and I was on a mission to change that.

I opened the oven and stuck a toothpick in the loaf of banana bread; it was perfect. I pulled it out and set it on a wire rack to cool. Its going really well. Ive lost forty-six pounds in three months. My doctor told me to stop taking my Synthroid because, for the first time in ten years, my thyroid was overmedicated. She thinks that I may have reversed my thyroid disease.

Thats fantastic! she said.

I know. I think about all of those people out there in the world who have accepted sickness as their baseline. I didnt even realize how sick I was until I felt better. I find myself saying constantly, I cant believe how good I feel. Because the truth is, I was sick, but I lived with it for so long, I forgot how it felt not to be sick. And now that Im healing and recognizing how important ingredients are, I want to shout it from the rooftops! I punctuated that statement with a bang of my spatula as I tidied up the counter from my baking.

You might be onto something, my mom said. You should pray about it.

Ive been hearing that a lot lately. And I had. Every time I discussed this feeling with my husband, he was adamant that prayer was the answer. I was reminded of one of my kids favorite movies,