Can Chronic Illness Lead to Self-Love?
It can if you let it.
I never used to love my body.
I took it for granted, always wishing it was fitter and better looking, completely missing all the amazement and mystery it holds.
I tried to starve it into submission through anorexia for thirty years, starting when I was six. I self-harmed. I berated it for not looking the way I wanted it to, not doing what I wanted it to do. I picked apart my appearance, focusing only on my perceived flaws, missing the beauty that was there, that is there in all of us.
I blamed it for any bad things that happened to me, for not protecting me from bullies or grief, instead of placing the blame with the bullies, where it belonged, or accepting grief as a normal part of life.
I hated it for carrying me through experiences I would rather not have had. It was my body that brought me to school. Took me to parties where the other girls laughed at me and called me weird.
When I couldn’t have children, I hated my body for letting me down.
When I look back at pictures of myself, I don’t understand where the hatred came from. I was beautiful. And strong. I still am.
Five years ago, I developed Inflammatory Arthritis.
And a funny thing happened. After nurturing my body through this illness, not knowing at the start if I’d even live, I feel a tenderness and affection for it that I never have before.
My disease started with a bang. I lost 45 pounds in the space of a couple of months. It was terrifying. No one knew why it was happening. We still don’t, but the weight slowly crept back, so we’re pretending that part didn’t happen.
My body aged decades in that short time. At first, that scared me. But one evening, after a lovely meal on the back porch with my husband and my dog, I realized with a clarity I’d never had before, that I want to live — a long time. I want to grow old. And that means wrinkles, and I’ve already done that, so, hey, something to cross off my to-do list!
I started to love my body — even the swelling in my knees. The body wrinkles brought about by repeated, sudden weight loss. The way new lumps seem to spring up overnight and then magically start to diminish.
Even injured by this disease, my body is a miracle. It heals. It’s capable of rest. It makes progress, which is then wiped out by a flare. But I’ve learned to trust that the improvement will come again. And even if it doesn’t, I’m in awe of what this body can withstand.
I used to have thin ankles. Now, if I’ve been able to get out of bed for a while, they puff up like terrified blowfish. At first, it really bothered me. But now I can smile at them and say, “Well, I guess you’ve had a busy day…”
So how did I get to this point? It’s not like chronic illness magically confers self-love.
I think it started because when I first got sick, I was working with a naturopath. The treatments and diagnostics she recommended involved me paying attention to my body, how it felt, how it responded.
There was the elimination diet, which involved cutting out a whole bunch of foods and then slowly adding them back in and noticing what happened. Gluten causes no adverse reaction for me, but eggs and dairy do. So now I avoid them, looking out for my body so I stand some chance of getting to do the things I want to do instead of being so slayed by the pain I can’t get out of bed.
I paid attention to other things, too. Whether certain supplements were helping, and when it came time to move to the pharmaceuticals, whether or not they were working.
It was this attention that built my love for my body. Noticing it without comparing it to the bodies of others. Asking it how it felt. And not telling it how it should feel. Seeing and appreciating the way it continues to struggle toward healing in between flares.
My medical doctors kept telling me that with most patients, once the damage was done, there was no going back. Both my naturopath and my massage therapist believe that healing is always possible. And together, we keep cheering my body on.
Slowing down and noticing, paying attention, and caring for this ailing body led me to be able to love it. In the same way that spending time with almost anyone and getting to know them deeply will allow you to become friends with and eventually to love them.
If you’re healthy, you don’t have to wait for an illness to learn to love your body. Forget about how much fitter, stronger, tighter you wish it could be. Learn to appreciate that you have a beating heart, skin that can feel a soft breeze, muscles that can get stronger no matter what state they’re in now.
All bodies are miracles. For as long as we’re alive, our bodies deserve our love, but we’re not taught to pay attention to them, to care for them like cherished friends.
We drag them through life, expecting too much of them, and then we blame them when we fall sick. We follow generalized prescriptions for them, taking up running or following a Paleo diet because that’s what the wellness gurus recommend, instead of discerning what our one particular body does best on.
Most of us lavish more care on our cars than we do on ourselves.
I’m sad that it took me so long to learn to love my body. I’m sorry that it took a chronic illness for me to start to pay attention. But I’m solidly on my body’s side now, terrified blowfish ankles and all.
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