The human body is a wonder on all its own, don’t you think?
We have hands that can move and touch things, our fingertips can feel the textures before them. It’s so easy to forget, it’s so natural to take our bodies for granted. Holding hands helps transfer heat and warmth. An embrace can make us weak at the knees. And if we work at it, train it, and feed it well, our bodies can do incredible things and achieve the highest praise in sports and acrobatics. Our legs allow us to walk to new places whenever we wish and climb and jump. Our feet can feel blades of grass poking in between our toes, or dig themselves deeper into the cooler sand. Our stomach is wired and geared to help process anything we give it. Working tirelessly to extract what we need and purge what we don’t.
What’s most wonderful and awe-ing to me is our brains and hearts. Our minds, so full of wonder and light as babes and so complex and misunderstood at other times. Our brain allows us to find logical answers to everyday puzzles and problems that arise. It helps us decide between right and wrong, it allows us to come up with individualistic and unique thoughts. It reminds us of our past and the lessons we have learned from it. Our brains gather information and allow us to dream, to plan in advance, to shoot for the stars.
Our hearts distribute the correct amount of blood to all our organs, think about that! It’s a machine of insane power that defines if we live or if we don’t. A heartbeat, unique and special. From the moment the first ultrasound picks it up our heartbeats provide comfort to all those around us and to the woman that carries us for it means that we are living. Then there are emotions that we attach to the heart because of how it affects our heartbeat, because of how it changes in the face of the love of our lives, and family, and that thing you fear most. Love, a chemical reaction. Fear and Worry which steal our heartbeats. Excitement and Surprise that lift our mood and changes our routine.
These bodies we get to call our own are our home, they are the shelter of our soul. They allow us to experience life in our very own way. We get one body in this life, and it grows and develops inside of another human body. Talk about a miracle. Talk about the most magical experience. Carrying life. Every minute, knowing a new tiny human is growing inside. Knowing that everything you do and put into your body will make its way to them. Seeing for the first time how wonderful a woman’s body is, for it can grow LIFE. Your perspective on life changes, and will continue to, through birth, through the early years and forevermore.
Every person’s life has different chapters, and some have chapters they are missing from their story. Some families yearn to get pregnant and struggle through infertility and invasive treatments to be able to grow life. Others have gotten pregnant, had their world changed and then had it changed again when they suffered a loss. Others have had babies that are now gone. There are many other chapters, I don’t know them all but if any one of these is you, know I’m thinking of you. Through this holiday you may feel many negative emotions, it may be hard, and I want to send you a big and warm hug and tell you I’m sorry you are going or have gone through this. I’m sorry you have to watch another Mother’s day go by without your little one, and I hope that you get all that your heart desires. IVF finally works, ClearBlue tells you, YES, or the adoption application goes through.
The human body is a magical mysterious and wonderful thing we have the privilege of owning. Some are different than others, some work in slightly different ways, but regardless of it all. I hope that today you can thank your body for all that it is. Your constant vehicle through this life. Your friend and partner in crime. Something you can’t very well live without. And I hope that it sparks some thinking as to how you treat it, and talk about it, move it and feed it. I hope you think about how you feel when you catch its reflection. Is it with loathing and disappointment or is it with gratefulness and a promise to do right by it. To care and nurture it. To treat it and talk about it like you would your best friend.
Mother’s Day means many things to me, but in my personal journey, it’s a constant reminder to be grateful for my body. To forgive it for what it has or hasn’t done. To be grateful for what it can do, for what it can become, and for what I know deep in my being that it will provide.
