How can you love your body when your body doesn’t love you back?
by Erin
Erin Hawley
How can you love your body when your body doesn’t always love you back? I struggle to answer this as I become more aware of society’s ridiculous beauty standards, and while dealing with the progression of my Muscular Dystrophy. It’s easy to promote self-love and body positivity, but not easy to practice it yourself. Finding that balance of living with pain or physical inability, and being proud or accepting of your difference, is challenging.
Since I don’t have the muscle strength to hold myself up, I have to sit in a crooked position in my wheelchair, leaning far to the left on my arm; this leads to daily back, arm and neck pain, and requires frequent repositioning by my nurses or loved ones. I don’t mind needing help, as I’ve been disabled since birth; it’s second nature for me to work alongside someone in my daily activities. But there are times when I wish I could just sit straight to alleviate that pain; I often think “how cool would it be to go a day without being in pain?” I sometimes wish I had an abled body just so I could reposition myself as needed.
When I’ve had these feelings in the past, I always felt like a fraud; how can I be a good disability advocate if I harbored these thoughts? Doesn’t wishing the impairment away, even if it was a fleeting idea, go against everything I hold true about disability rights and disability pride? What would abled people think if they knew I wasn’t 100% okay with my disability? Disabled people are often portrayed as objects to be pitied –and I never wanted anyone to pity me. No one wants that. So I always thought it was important to show people I was proud of my identity, even if that meant never talking about the bad stuff – including the pain. That’s why it took me a while to speak up about my somewhat unrelated depression and anxiety; I didn’t want people to think I was suffering because of my Muscular Dystrophy. I was afraid to fall into that pity stereotype.
Looking back on it, I realize I was being too hard on myself. Anyone would want pain to go away, and for me, the only way to do that is to not have my disability. Pain killers can only do so much. Now that I accept these desires as reasonable, as part of my disabled identity, I am able to love myself even more. No longer do I feel like a fraud – instead, I understand that my relationship with my disability is ever-evolving, and there is no singular way to exist; that is what makes me beautiful. That is how I am able to love my body through the emotional and physical pain, and despite the narrow lens of society’s sexist and ableist standards.
So often, campaigns and slogans about loving your body leave out the bodies of disabled individuals. And even when they do include us, they tend to ignore instances of mental illness and chronic pain. Sometimes I don’t love how my body makes me feel. Sometimes I wish I had a different body. And you know what? Those feelings are valid. Those feelings don’t mean I can’t also love myself and my body. It’s a life-long love and hate relationship, and that is okay.
Join other young women with disabilities for support and conversation at Easter Seals Thrive and its Facebook and Twitter pages.
This post was originally published on the Sweet Tart Beauty blog.
November 24th, 2015 at 8:36 am
Hi Erin,
I loved your post, especially the part of loving yourself no matter what your feeling emotionally. I’m not disabled but am going through menopausal stuff which isn’t fun but I am trying to embrace everything that I am feeling even though @ times is not fun but if you can love yourself no matter what and just embrace the process then, your truly living in the moment.
November 13th, 2015 at 3:35 pm
very true I have cp know How u feel love always