Hi baby,
I wrote a letter to you years ago when you were just an idea. I was scared then you’d never come, but you’re here! You’re not an idea anymore, you’re a pineapple-sized human kicking me as I type. We have a room for you, decorated with a stuffed bear rug and pictures of your cousins and books about animals and other babies and a beautiful one about fungi. There’s a dresser full of diapers and onesies and swaddles that can’t wait to smell just like you. We’ve spent 29 weeks together, and if we’re lucky, we’ve got nothing but years and years and years together in our futures.
This past week has solidified sore joints and shallow breaths and sleepless nights, but that’s not what compelled me to write to you again. You see, I wrote that letter to you years ago for a class—Professor Anne Detrick’s class, you’ll meet her and love her—and I was tasked with writing about what I hoped you'd learn in your lifetime. I called it Body of Knowledge because I think our bodies have so much to tell us, and we are trained to overcome or suppress or ignore its messages. I ignored and often harmed my own body for years. I still do sometimes despite my best efforts because the lessons leading me away from my body were relentless and rigorous. What I wrote then is that I wanted you to experience so much more love and respect for your body. I wanted you to trust your gut, to listen to your thigh aches and your heart thumps and the back of your neck when it goes tingly. I wrote that I wanted you to get to know yourself intimately and understand that you and your body are no better or worse than anyone else, you simply are. And how beautiful it is that we all are.
It’s been a rough week for bodies, my love. This letter pours out of me after a week of tapping in and out of conversations with people we love who now fear for the safety of their bodies in the only home they’ve ever known. See, child, there are lots of people we share a big home with, and some of them misunderstand the beauty of all of our bodies. They see the differences in how we look and feel and listen to our bodies as threats to their own way of looking, feeling, and listening to their bodies. But remember what I told you? You and your body are not better or worse than anyone else, you simply are. This lesson goes ignored, intentionally or otherwise, and lots of perfectly beautiful bodies are in danger because of it.
What I didn’t mention in my first letter is that in our home, we have a lot of categories for bodies. We call some men, some women, some trans, and some nonbinary, but even before we get too far into our categories, my love, I have to stop to tell you that people do not respect these categories equally. Men, for example, have asserted themselves as the most respectful for reasons I cannot describe because I do not understand. But remember what I told you. We also categorize people into something called races, a concept brains made up generations ago to ensure that some colors of bodies would be deemed more valuable than others. Race has led to the judgment and punishment of others because of how they look from the outside, less about how they feel and listen to and show up in their bodies. Again, we've decided the race we call white is most respectable and all others are often dangerously misunderstood, simply because they are. But remember what I told you.
There are lots of categories, child, simply too many to name here, but the point is that because of all of these categories, some people never learned to see the beauty in the fact that we simply are. When I told you I wanted you to learn to trust your body and the way it speaks to you and inspires you, what I didn’t tell you is that some people might feel threatened if you do that well. Some people—and my love, I was almost one of them—never see themselves outside of the categories that they’ve been given. I am a woman. I am white. I am straight. These categories made me respectable…mostly. I would be respected for being white and straight, but as a young woman, I learned that I would not be respected, especially if I was not a small woman. I learned that I would not be a respected woman if I expressed and explored sexuality, yet I also would not be respected if I did not attract the attention of men. I attempted to heed these rules for years, child, and ignored the sharp pains of neglect from my stomach as I starved myself smaller. I ignored the way my veins froze in my limbs as I let men do what they wanted to my body. There are a lot of rules to being in these less respectable categories, love. Following these rules is often not even enough to get us the respect we’re promised, and it keeps us from understanding and trusting our bodies.
What we learned last week, my love, is that lots of men who believe in these rules and categories are going to become the most powerful in the country, in our big home. Lots of people we love who’ve worked so hard to love and trust their bodies in spite of all these rules are now being threatened. They’re being threatened because a lot of these newly powerful people never learned that their bodies are no better than anyone else’s. Maybe they never learned because they still have yet to know and listen to and trust their own body. Maybe what they know of their body doesn’t fit into the rules and that scares them. I felt that, too, when people scolded my body for being too big to be respected and loved. For a long time, I believed them and thought it was easier to obey the rules than trust my body. Maybe that’s what they believe, too.
I can’t say for sure because I’m not in their bodies, I’m in mine, and that is kind of the whole point too. When I wrote to you years ago, I didn’t mention the rules and categories because I wanted you to get to know yourself separate from those. I told you that your body was no better than anyone else's, but that doesn’t mean your understanding of your body might not be truer and deeper than some others. I’m sad and sometimes angry that more of us don’t work to get to know our bodies for who they are and appreciate that they have a lot to tell us. But we can’t let some peoples’ lack of understanding of themselves deconstruct our own. What I want is more for them, not less. More understanding. More room to listen. More room to be how they are and feel so loved and celebrated for their self-knowing that they aren't threatened by others' love and self-knowing. We don’t know and can’t know how they experience their bodies. I won’t know and can’t know yours, but I promise, child, I’ll love and respect and celebrate how you are.
I’m grateful to be in a place where I understand clearly what my body is telling me, and what I know for sure is that my body is aching, child. My chest is sore from expanding into space for all of the beautiful bodies that expressed fear of punishment for the way their bodies love. My gut is sour after hearing about others who feel their bodies might be disposed of like trash, taken out of their homes and forced into new and unfamiliar ones. You are part of my body now, too, my love, and each thump of your movement feels like a drum beat connecting me to all of the other women and people who experience pregnancy in their bodies in such varying ways. Those newly powerful men don’t respect those varying ways. But remember what I told you.
The circulating message coming from many men’s mouths and fingertips is your body, my choice. Some say this is a joke, but the way it makes my fingers and toes curl tells me to trust its meaning. The message is most obviously to women who are asking to be as we are, arguing that we deserve our bodies, but the way my heart bursts into a sprint when I read it or hear it suggests to me the message is much broader than that. Their message is for immigrant bodies, particularly the Black and brown ones, because they think their white bodies are more respectable. Their message is for anyone in the LGBTQ+ community and especially for trans bodies because they are afraid of the level of trust and love someone must have for themself in order to express their truth in the face of strict rules and categories. Their message is to me because I’m a woman, and they believe their bodies are more powerful and sacred than mine. They desperately want me and the others under attack to surrender the trusting relationships we’ve built with our bodies, that we’ve worked for years against their rules to gain, one that I’ve written about to you, child, in the hopes that you’d never have to fight so hard for such a relationship with your body.
I guess I’m writing again, my love, because I want you to remember what I told you. Those men’s bodies are not better or more sacred than yours. I want to say that I’m sorry that not everyone understands that yet. No one’s body is more sacred than another, but if you listen to your gut tugs and heart thumps, you will know and trust yourself as you are. I want to say that I’m sorry that some might find that threatening instead of beautiful. I want to promise to do everything in my power to have our smaller home be a place where you don’t feel afraid to explore how to better trust your body, where you love and feel loved. I will help you learn how to listen and feel and be in your body without judging others’ bodies.
As my body unclenches some of the tension of this week, I’m left with warm waves of gratitude that you are not just an idea anymore, my love. You’ll be here soon. Your kicks are helping me stay grounded in my self-trust, in my self-love. I love myself and you enough to not give into the rules or to go back to ignoring myself for the sake of perceived safety. My fear for our bigger home, for our country, and for all of the bodies that are under threat for simply being as they are will surely be present in my restless legs and tight shoulders, but more than ever, I feel so honored to create a safe space for you, love. However small that space may be, I will make sure you feel free to explore and feel and learn more about yourself. I love you, baby.
Forever,
Mom
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