Love Your Body, don't jump off a cliff :-)

I've been thinking a lot about my body in preparing for today's blog as part of the "Love your body day" festivities.

http://now.org/press/10-11/10-14.html

I thought about how I've struggled with weight (very original, I know). I though about everything I like about my body and everything I don't like, but I realized that anything I had to say about any of my body parts would probably come off as trite overall; seeking praise or pity.
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This morning, I had a follow up appointment with my neurosurgeon for my 3 month check-up following my cliff jumping shenanigans that left my T9 vertebrae in some nice, chunky pieces.

My heart sank when I saw the CT image of my back. It didn't look much better. The edges of the chhnks weren't as sharp, but they didn't look as whole as I thought it would at this point. My doctor pointed at the fuzzy whiteness that traced the outline of the chunks, "That's evidence of the bone re-growing. It looks really great."

"Great?" I thought, "That looks terrible to me!"

 But then I thought about those fuzzy little white blurs on the edges of the bone fragments and what they really meant. My body is fixing itself, and I'm the only one responsible for it being broken in the first place.

"Your back will never be like it was before you jumped," my doctor said, noting the concern on my face at the image, "you will have to always be careful with your back."

So why wasn't I careful before? I wasn't thinking about my back at all when I thought it would be fun to go cliff jumping 3 months ago, and yet I had the audacity to be disappointed that my body wasn't healing my mistake quickly enough.
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There are many things about our bodies that we cannot change. The curve of your hip and the angle of your calf was determined a long time ago by the same genes, environment, and energy, that went into making your soul, mind, and existence. Yet there is so much more about your body than just what we were born with. We have fractures, scars, freckles and bruises. We have strong backs, weak backs, arthritic fingers and callused palms. We have flattened feet and toe nails painted the color we felt on a lazy afternooon.

Our bodies are a living canvas of our lives and experiences. They tell a whole story that only we can know because only we were there. I love my body because it is real and it is mine. It tells the story of my life and my heritage. It is an imprint left by past generations whispering through time and genetic code, pieces of who I am that make up the whole. My body is a mix of my parents, grand parents , and the ancestors that I never knew, who all took steps that ultimately led to my existence. No one else in the world has a body exactly like mine because no one else has lived my life. Our bodies manifest our heritage and our choices. They show what we've survived, what we have conquered and what we have lost.

So love your body because loving your body is really just loving yourself.

...even if you don't have an intact spinal column.