Functional and beautiful are a Venn Diagram

So, I suppose this post could be seen as a companion to this one, as they deal with similar things, but really, it's just what's been on my mind lately.

Lots of the people that I know are very into body positivity, not necessarily as something they actually feel, but as something they want to feel. And I completely understand that, and why you need to immerse yourself in something in order to help yourself embrace it. I've struggled with both physical body image and non-physical self image for a long time. But while I was in the shower today, I found myself thinking of all the reasons I actually love my body, and realized that few of them are at all related to appearance.

I thought to myself, "My body is so incredibly functional, but only parts of it are beautiful. Still, all of it is valuable."

And here are the reasons I've discovered I love my body.

It heals quickly

My dad's side of the family has always healed quickly, and I tend to take that for granted. But I inherited my klutziness from my mother, and I realized recently that I'm lucky to have the two of them together, because I frequently end up hurting myself. But because my body heals, like all bodies, that doesn't stop me from doing the things I want to do. And because it heals quickly, I'm able to do those things without having to wait around to stop bleeding. Which, in my case, is a very useful trait.

It lets me modify it.

This is something I wasn't really able to do until recently, but once I started, I was hooked. My body is flexible and able to adapt, and incredibly tolerant of the things I decide to do to it. Some of that goes with healing quickly, and some of it is just because I was lucky enough to get a body with minimal allergies and intolerances. But my body is mine, and I'm able to add things to it to make it look a certain way, and I think that's fantastic.

It may not be strong, but it's capable

Photo by Max Pittman

In the past few years, I've come to learn how very privileged I've been to posses a body that does all of the things a human body is "supposed" to do. For someone who was born nearly three months premature at a time where neonatal care was good but not great, this is another one of those things that I take for granted but shouldn't. 

When I was born, I had a heart murmur and lungs that didn't know how to be lungs yet. I grew out of both those things, and even if I hadn't, they were minor complications for someone in my position. The doctors warned my parents I could be blind or deaf, have learning disabilities or developmental delays, or possibly even have physical disabilities. 

I am extremely fortunate to have missed those possible outcomes, and to have come into a body that lets me do things like hike the buttes of Montana, paddle thirty miles down a river in a day, bike to my friends' houses, and stand front row for my favorite bands.

It lets me experience the world.

Photo by Madison Rae/Withered Flower Photography

This is another thing I never stopped to realize until recently. Everything I've done in my life has required me to have a body to do it. All of my art needed my body to bring it from my mind to the rest of the world. My photographs only exist because I have eyes to see them and hands to use my camera. My writing is incredibly dependent on what my body has been through and can imagine going though.

My body is housing to my mind, but it's like a lens on a camera--the mechanism of the mind will work without the lens of the body, but there will be no experiences. No photographs. My body is what has enabled me to be alive. Without it, I wouldn't even exist.





I feel incredibly blessed to come to these realizations two days before I leave to spend my summer at a summer camp as a counselor for kids with special needs. I will meet so many people this summer, and each and every one of them will have something new to teach me, from what they've experienced within the scope of their own mind and body.

No two people will ever look the same, but sometimes, we can lay beside each other and compare the things our bodies have given us--the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful--and all of the lessons we have learned from every scrape we ever got and ever scar we have.

I am so looking forward to this.