How I Learned to Be Naked: Listening to My Body and Healing Body Shame December 17, 2019 by M. Robinson, Guest Writer Leave a Comment 437Share with your friendsYour NameYour EmailRecipient EmailEnter a MessageI read this article and found it very interesting, thought it might be something for you. The article is called How I Learned to Be Naked: Listening to My Body and Healing Body Shame and is located at https://thebodyisnotanapology.com/magazine/why-i-broke-up-with-my-wii-fit-listening-to-my-body-and-healing-body-shame/.CaptchaSubmitContent Note: This article references a parent’s use of Weight Watchers for their child. I didn’t always hate and hide my body. I was athletic as a child. I swam competitively and played outside until the last drop of daylight. I trusted my body and knew it well. That changed when puberty hit in the fourth grade. I started to look more like a woman than a little kid, and a handful of boys in my class made sure it wasn’t going unnoticed. I felt isolated and alone. It seemed like my body had betrayed me. The more it changed, the less connected I felt. I stopped playing outside with the other neighborhood kids. I started to hate wearing a swimsuit. My mom enrolled us both in Weight Watchers, and my education in body shame truly began. From that point on, I lived in my head and ignored my ever-expanding body. The only time I acknowledged it was to express my repulsion. I was raised by a mother who hated her body and talked about how awful it was often in my presence. I looked exactly like her, so naturally I learned to hate my body too. As I entered my thirties, I wanted to change. I didn’t want to teach this hate and body shame to my children, if I ever had any. More Radical Reads: When Meaning Well Does Harm: 4 Ways We Keep Socially Shaming Fat Kids and How to Stop I found a therapist who specialized in eating disorders and body image issues. With her support and guidance, my perspective started to change. She urged me to shake up my beliefs about what a good body should look like, helping me find the Adipositivity Project and other communities through social media that showed me a different way. After two years in therapy and a great deal of inner work, I participated in a webinar with The Body Is Not An Apology founder Sonya Renee Taylor. I learned about her RUHCUS experience and decided that I wanted to experience this as well. I hoped to gain confidence while healing the shame I felt. I longed to find a safe home in my body again. One of the key elements of my RUHCUS centered around being comfortable naked. I wasn’t comfortable in the world, clothed or otherwise. I wanted to learn how to be vulnerable in a healthy way and be naked in life – literally and figuratively. I read books on plus-size sex and the body positivity movement, I attended a burlesque class, and I decided to do a cast of my naked self. I asked a handful of friends to help me with the casting. Even though I trusted these people more than anyone else in the world, I was nearly paralyzed at the thought of them seeing me and touching me naked. I had nightmares about it in the weeks leading up to the event. I was panicked, but I’d made this thirty-day commitment to myself and was determined to see it through. As I showered and shaved on the day of the casting, I recalled a memory from high school. I was visiting a friend’s house after going shopping, and we were going to change into some of our new clothes. My two friends started disrobing openly as I proceeded to try to change under the bed. They were petite and thin. I did everything in my power to shield them from my body. Now I would be asking some of these same friends to slather my naked body in Vaseline and cast every inch of me. There would be nowhere to hide. I made my final preparations. A friend gave me a shot of whiskey and a card with a beautiful butterfly to show her support. I was still terrified. I was preparing to be rejected. Instead I was greeted with applause and tears as I dropped my robe and lay down on the shower curtain in my dining room. I was met with unconditional love and grace. I conquered a huge fear and we all survived. My friendships were strengthened and I was grateful for my community of support. More Radical Reads: How 30 Days Nearly Naked Changed My Life After the casting, I went to a concert and danced the night away. I came home triumphant, but I was taken aback to see my shape still curing on the floor. I still felt proud of what I had accomplished, yet I was unprepared for the reality of my size. I was tempted to throw it away. I judged it harshly and I didn’t want it to be me. All that old shame came barreling back to the surface. I left the cast in the dining room for days, literally having to step over myself to get out the door. I wished I could hide again. However, something started to shift. I would stand over the cast and notice different elements: the symmetry of my shape, my broad shoulders, my waist, my ample bosom, belly and butt…the part of my body I had hated the most. Seeing myself in this way started to change me. These were all the parts of myself that I was no longer going to hate or ignore. It took creating a model of my body to actually see it for what it is. To actually see it at all. Without judgment. To see it as one good body. I did what I set out to do. I gained a new way of being and overcame a hurdle that has led to greater confidence. I am comfortable being naked now. I don’t hide myself. I dance and have sex and do yoga and all the things I was convinced my body could not do. I am grateful for this body and all of its scars and all the ways it continues to support me, despite years of abuse. It is my home, and it deserves love. [Feature Image: Photo of a fat couple resting in bed together. The focus is on the woman on the left, who has light skin, short dark hair, facial piercings, black glasses, and is wearing a pink hoodie. She is looking towards her partner while holding a mug. The woman on the right has brown skin, short curly reddish-brown hair, and is wearing a dark patterned tank top. She too is holding a mug while looking up at the woman on the left with a smile on her face. Sunlit filters into the room and across both women through a large window. Source: AllGo – An App For Plus Size People on Unsplash] TBINAA is an independent, queer, Black woman run digital media and education organization promoting radical self love as the foundation for a more just, equitable and compassionate world. If you believe in our mission, please contribute to this necessary work at PRESSPATRON.com/TBINAA We can’t do this work without you! As a thank you gift, supporters who contribute $10+ (monthly) will receive a copy of our ebook, Shed Every Lie: Black and Brown Femmes on Healing As Liberation. Supporters contributing $20+ (monthly) will receive a copy of founder Sonya Renee Taylor’s book, The Body is Not An Apology: The Power of Radical Self Love delivered to your home. Need some help growing into your own self love? Sign up for our 10 Tools for Radical Self Love Intensive! 437