There’s a pink stuffed monster named Izzy sitting on the back of my couch. She’s not a scary monster. She is actually a ‘Not so Scary Monster’ stuffed animal. Izzy has been with me through six moves, 4 states, countless conversations, and had even sat on the dashboard of our car during long drives, guarding toll money with a sketchy sense of joy.
The Good Gift:
Izzy was a gift. She was good gift. Well, actually she was a great gift.
Izzy came into my life one Christmas, a year after my divorce. Things were fragile between me and my daughters. I was a mess. Still in self-destruction mode, and trying so hard to do my best to hold things together. That special Christmas morning, Ashley and Alyssa handed me a box. The fact that they actually got me a gift surprised me. Not because they wouldn’t think to, but because I was so full of self loathing, I didn’t deserve one.
After a time, I finally opened it… to find the very stuffed animal I had once fallen in love with years before. We had all seen it at FAO Schwarz in NY…and at that time, hadn’t been able to justify buying for myself.
I sat there, staring at little Izzy, and I cried. And I cried. Tears of gratitude, appreciation, love, and something even deeper: a feeling of being seen.
Izzy wasn’t just a cute stuffed animal… She was proof that my daughters had been there fully. They remembered, cared, and wanted me to feel loved. And I have loved her. Izzy, has now become a representation of the love I have for my adult children…
In the years after I received Izzy, I started to heal. Not only my relationship with my daughters, but also the relationship with myself. It was because I loved her Izzy so much that almost unconsciously, I took care of her. And in doing so, something else clicked in my brain.
ENTER: The Good Gift / Bad Gift Theory
Here’s what I’ve come to believe: we naturally take care of the things we value. When we receive a good gift, something we truly love, it’s easy to treat it with kindness, care, and appreciation. We protect it, talk about it, show it off, and handle it with care and appreciation.
And yet, when we receive a “bad” gift…something we don’t really care for or want, didn’t ask for, or even dislike, we tend to put it the back of the closet, a donate it, regift it, or forget it altogether. We certainly don’t treat it with the same reverence.
The similarity between gifts and body is interesting…striking almost, and as I thought about this, I asked myself, if I think about my body as a bad gift…how might I be treating it?
“Do You Treat Your Body Like a Bad Gift?
Many of us have spent years and even decades treating our bodies like bad gifts, myself included. We’ve judged them, neglected them, tried to exchange, or shrink them. We’ve believed that only after changing them, they would be worthy of love, care, or attention.
But what if you shifted that perspective?
What if you could see your body as a good gift?
Not because it’s perfect by society’s standards. But because it is the body that allows you to experience your life in.
It allows you to see a sunrise, dance with a partner, hug a friend, tell a story, cry unconditionally, connect with family, produce a PowerPoint, laugh at a sitcom, grieve with your loved ones and heal from your past experiences.
If you started to see it as the gift that allows all of that, would you be more likely to take care of it? To listen to it? To nurture it?
The Power of Body Neutrality
When I realized how lovingly I treated Izzy, the voice I gave her, the place of honor she held in my life, I started to ask myself this painful question: Why haven’t I ever treated myself like that?
The answer was clear: I didn’t think I deserved it. I felt I didn’t deserve it. And yet…how has thinking like that been helping me? It hasn’t.
I had been living the definition of insanity. I was doing, thinking, feeling the same things over and over again, expecting a different result. So, If I wanted a different result, I had to start doing some things differently. Alyssa, Ashley, and Izzy taught me this.
I started small. I didn’t try to start loving my body (are you kidding, that was just inconceivable) because that felt too far. Instead, I stepped into body neutrality. This resting place between body hatred and body love. I began with a body gratitude practice. I assigned my “Maxi Me” (my supportive inner voice) the job of finding three things to appreciate about my body each day.
- “My legs allow me to walk, move and have independence.”
- “My face can smile to share with someone else”
- “My ears can hear the sound of children laughing”
- “My belly carried and brought four children into the world.”
It was simple and it was powerful.
This simple shift of focus towards appreciation led me to care a bit better for myself…and that care led me to start trusting myself. I started to realize that I could think of my body as a good gift or a bad gift, and I realized that was completely in my own control! My body is my business. Period.
Your Body Is Your Business
Your body, as it is today, and how it has been in the past has shown up for you every single day of your life. Through joy and heartbreak, success and failure, love and loss…it’s been there. It may have been able to do things that it can no longer do. It may not be able to do things you have expected it to be able to do, and nonetheless, it has been there with you.
It has been your most loyal companion. Maybe it is time to treat it like the good gift that it is. (Even if it is not working the way you wish it would…hating it for that impacts how you move through your days).
Body Neutrality makes room for the times you are not all that happy with it. That doesn’t mean that it is still not a good gift. Are you willing to see your body through a different lens, one of respect, appreciation, and worthiness?
The truth is that when you shift your thoughts, your emotions and actions follow. You show up differently, thus you live differently.
And you begin to believe: I am worthy of kindness and support, especially from myself.
How might you treat yourself like a good gift today?
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