Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg – Body Love is a Verb

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg is Poet Laureate of Kansas and the author or editor of ten books, including her recently published memoir on cancer, community and coming home to the body, The Sky Begins At Your Feet. Her fourth poetry collection, Landed, was also recently released. She founded and coordinates Transformative Language Arts – a master’s degree in using writing, storytelling, drama and more for community building and personal transformation – at Goddard College (www.Goddard.edu) where she teaches. She facilitates writing workshops widely, and with singer Kelley Hunt, writing and singing workshops through their business, Brave Voice (www.BraveVoice.com). Learn more at www.CarynMirriamGoldberg.com.

For years, I knew that as much as I loved chocolate, my husband and kids, and the smell of lilac, I didn’t extend the same love out to my own body. I believed that if I were thinner, better-dressed, healthier, more disciplined and just prettier, then I would arrive at the place where I could truly finally love my body. But what I discovered through motherhood and cancer is that loving the body is a noun – a thing we can earn or find – but more a verb, a way of living as if I love my own body, and in those moments, feeling love for this 49-year-old, somewhat overweight and aging body of mine.

Going through childbirth, nursing my babies and hauling around my children, I gained a newfound appreciation for the amazing capacity of this flawed body to give life and sustenance, not to mention ample transportation, to three children. Of course I also gained ten pounds that remained from each pregnancy, but nonetheless, the sturdy ability of my body to give life continues to dazzle me. In my journey through cancer, I found a new love for my body when I witnessed how I could take in the poison of chemotherapy and transform it into healing my body from cancer. I also witnessed how I could go through three major surgeries and bounce back, finding the strength in my legs to take me again on the long walks I would take before surgery, and the new flexibility in my torso through yoga that helps me feel alive.

Like many of us, I sepnt too much time waiting for the perfection that never came. What helped and still helps is to see my body with the same kind of tenderness and wonder that I bring to the natural world. The weather comes through surprisingly fast sometimes and changes the brilliant blue of the cold sky to a humid gray. The leaves unfurl at lightning speed in the spring, and then dry in slow motion before they fall in autumn. We are not so different. The seasons of our life pass through our bodies, leaving their marks, scars, extra pounds, new-found cushioning and old habits. Yet there’s a vital beauty in persevering. I write about this toward the end of my memoir, describing a moment when someone was taking my picture after my double mastectomy:

I looked deeply into the camera in a way I never had before. I leaned my arm on the windowpane and watched the dark circle of the small lens glass in the camera that saw me seeing it. I knew that, however this photo came out, it would really be me. I also knew that it would hurt to look at it, that I would have to find a way to see, a new way. More like the way to love the body long after it had ceased to look like anything close to what resembled youth and beauty, at least not beauty apart from the aging of trees and motion of weather.

This kind of love is Wabi Sabi love. Wabi Sabi, a Japanese word originally used to describe the beauty of passing time, to me also speaks to the perfection of imperfection. It’s a love rooted in knowing that everything, even our own bodies, changes and is in constant motion. Loving ourselves in motion – the way we can summon the agility of our fingers to type an email to a friend, the power of our legs to walk us through a canopy of changing leaves, the beauty of our eyes as they take in the world – is a way to love the world in motion too. While I can’t say that I don’t occasionally land on those moments of berating my body for its shape or wrinkles, I can say that meeting even those occasions of self-doubt with the same curiosity and compassion we might extend to dear friends in transition is a way of loving myself toward health and peace.

And of course, you can win a copy of Caryn’s book, The Sky Begins at Your Feet.

See the contest entry at Caryn Goldberg and The Sky Begins at Your Feet