Body

I was listening to a podcast about the Enneagram, which is my current obsession (along with National Parks and makeup primers, but these are all best left for another day).

Focus, Melissa. Focus.

So anyway, the hosts of The Road Back to You were interviewing Nadia Bolz-Weber, a type Eight on the Enneagram, and Nadia said this: “I feel everything in my body. Everything.”

The hosts mmm-hmmmed and sighed and yasssed—and then one of them added this little nugget: “That’s true for Nines and Ones, too.”

I stopped dicing the onion on the cutting board in front of me, and my eyes shot left and slightly down, as they do when my brain single-tasks.

The podcast ran on, but I heard nothing. The phrase I feel everything in my body was so revolutionary and yet so solidly right, I became unaware of my surroundings for a few minutes.

Eventually, Nadia’s voice and the smell of the onions came back to me. I kept chopping. But I knew—like when I knew Matt for the first time (and, yes, I mean in the Biblical sense)—that this moment was important.

Without going into a ton of detail, here’s the sitch: I’m a One on the Enneagram with a Nine wing. And I have been working very very hard almost my whole life to tamp down, shut off, ignore, be angry with, soothe, and fight everything going on in my body.

Every freaking minute of the day.

So you can imagine the needle-on-the-record scratch I felt listening to that podcast. Especially given this: I chose body as my word for the year.

Yep, in the late fall, I chose body as my word for 2017, or as these things tend to go, the word chose me. I was listening to another podcast, this one Sorta Awesome, and the hosts were sharing, almost shyly, about how specific exercise routines had become game-changers for them. I was not in the least intrigued by Pilates or weight-training, but I was intrigued as they talked about listening to their muscles. I live in the land of symbols, for sure, so I’d typically interpret such a phrase in a figurative sense, like, “Oh, my muscles need blah-blah-blah,” or “I can best take care of my muscles by yada-yada-yada.” But in this moment, I thought, “Do my muscles have a voice?”

And then I had the crazy impression that maybe body should be my word for 2017.

Believe me, I tried very hard to reject this idea. Remember the war I described? I don’t need more war, more focus on what I am or am not eating, more self-anesthetizing, more extreme exercise goals. Choosing body as my word for the year initially felt like one more attempt to tame this malicious, evil beast, an attempt that would look one hundred percent successful on the outside but would leave me exhausted and angry on the inside. Again.

But then, in the way these things go, the word would not leave me alone. More books and podcasts just happened across my path: a recommendation for Lindy West’s memoir Shrill, a friend’s book club discussion that featured Roxane Gay’s writings and Ted Talks, sudden observations that made me narrow my eyes (why I eat so much more around certain people than others, for example), and on and on and on.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Or in this case, when the middle-aged woman is maybe the teeny-tiniest bit ready to take a vulnerable look at her life-long body image issues, all the world conspires to help her.

Dammit.

And that is why I read The Telling in January. And why I will read Shrill in February, and why chapter three, “Standing, Kneeling, Bowing, and Living in a Body” of Liturgy of the Ordinary is rocking my world. And why when I wake up in the middle of the night, my mind racing with all of the things to do and all the things left undone, I’ve begun doing this:

I’m noticing what’s happening in my body. It’s nothing more than taking an inventory, really, like re-organizing the cans in my pantry to get all the diced tomatoes together (c’mon over if you need some because I’ve indulged in way too many BOGOs).

It goes like this: I stop the brain swirl for a minute and just notice. As in, my pinkie toe is tingling and I can feel the sheets on my hips and I’ve got an itch over my left ear and my stomach is growling.

My thinking drifts off to other stuff, stuff that has nothing to do with my body inventory. Pinkie toe tingling? Gee, I haven’t had a pedicure in ages, and the last time I went with Robyn we had such a delightful day, and I wonder how she’s doing, I worry so about my girl.

Eeesh. I gently try to return to the task at hand. “Wait. Body. You first.” And back to inventorying I go.

And you know what happens? I fall asleep.

For this life-long insomniac (no trouble falling asleep—just cannot stay there all night), this is a miracle drug. I’ve been doing it every night for the last dozen days or so, and it’s a pretty foolproof strategy for getting back to sleep. Which wasn’t my goal at all. Just a happy by-product.

My goal was—and is—to stop the constant pendulum swing between obsession and total shutout.

To listen and pay attention.

And, ultimately, to love (the healthy kind).

Watch out, 2017. I’m going to be making a lot of phone calls to senators and representatives, and I’m going to get on a lot of airplanes, and I’m going to show up and engage in the community right outside my front door. I’m going to hold Matt’s hand, and I’m going to eat good things and bad things and too much and too little. I’m going to cruise social media and read and write and pray and sing.

And I’m going to take a few steps towards making friends with my body.