We Are Stardust.....

I've really been into this "love your body" thing lately.

Yeah. I know. Boring as hell....

But I found an interesting twist on it. At least for me, I've really had to get beyond the cultural claptrap and nonsense that basically boils down to "if you love your body, you will look a certain way, you will do certain things", all of which come back to following cultural edicts.

When I was in Thailand, the women were lovely... and I don't necessarily mean they were "thin". Some were rotund and heavyset. Some were thin. Some were short. Some were tall.

Here's what they had in common. They all looked comfortable in their bodies. They didn't primp or polish. They didn't seem at all concerned about irrelevant things. They just... loved their bodies and respected them. They often worked hard and that created a look of usefulness. They were not self-conscious and vain. They simply existed in their bodies.

I took a look at my body today when I got out of the shower. Stripped of the Thai clothes which have become so much a part of my image. I need a haircut. I look puffy and unkempt in a way that finally sunk past my rebellion against an enforced body image to an ultimate realization:

If this person before me was my friend, my child, my aunt, my grandmother or my mother, I would do something about it! I would make sure she gets to the dentist a bit sooner. I would make sure she ate better food. I would make sure she understood that the outside can often reflect the inside.

I would recognize what I have not wanted to recognize. I would recognize that this is a person who has been neglected for far too long! And I would want to participate in getting her better.

And I have no one to blame for this condition but myself!

We are given these bodies for a reason. We come with them not only as shelters for our souls, but as functioning machines. They are designed perfectly, right down to our toenails. Our eyes, our arms, our legs, our ears, our fingers.... Our bodies come from Source, just as much as our souls.

Somewhere I read this: We all come from stardust.

And mistreating our bodies is a sign of spiritual sickness.

In my case, it originated with self-loathing and was further fueled by a fierce rebellion against a body image that was developed, no doubt, by white males in advertising companies who come up with it for their own pleasure.

More objectification of women. And, yes, I do believe that is what it's all about. It has nothing to do with our health or our well-being. It has to do with what men want women to look like.

I rebelled against that so strongly that I lost sight of the forest for the trees.

This body has to carry me through until the end of my life, whenever that will be.

I resolve here, today, to take better care of my body in the future. It doesn't need to be overly thin... but another 50 pounds of lost fat won't hurt me any. I'm going to take care of my hair.. and my muscles with more exercise. And what foods I consume. All of these things I am going to do because...

... We are stardust. We are a part of everything else ... and to neglect ourselves is to neglect everyone and everything else.

And I promise that eventually I'll get off of all this self-centered posting. I hope you all will stick with me through it. It's just something I have to walk through right now to get to the other side of it. There's light over there... I can almost feel the heat from it... and I have to keep walking toward it. Believe me, I am not being intentionally annoying. For now, I appreciate all the encouragement and support you've been to me so far.. and hopefully for a while longer.

Also, I'd like to publicly thank Cecileaux for his email this morning. He summarized some things that I really needed to hear. In my next life, I'm going to have a brain like his! :)


Peace,


~Chani