TW: this blog discusses body image issues, self harm, eating disorders, and diet culture. Please take care of yourself and skip it if you need to. 🙂

A few days ago I was scrolling through Instagram and I came across a post from Teri Hofford. She’d posted a beautiful photoshoot of herself with no clothes and covered only with pink flowers. Her account is dedicated to body image education, so the shoot fit with her niche, but what has stuck with me is the caption she posted with the photoshoot. I’ll link the post at the end of this blog so you can go read the whole thing for yourself (and you should, it’s incredible) but the line I keep hearing repeat itself in my head is “my body is softening as I do.” The first time I read it I gasped. It’s so good, and so true. The rest of the poem hit home for me as well and I was in tears by the time I finished reading it, but that one line has been on a loop in the back of my mind ever since.

Growing up as female kids in the 90s was ROUGH for our relationships with our bodies. Victoria’s Secret was advertising skeletal-level thinness as the standard, clothes were cut smaller than ever (but not resized on the label), and toxic patriarchal beliefs were spewed at us literally everywhere we looked. Knowing what we know now, it’s easy to see all of the harmful things we absorbed for what they were, but at the time it just taught us to hate ourselves and pick our bodies apart piece by piece. I have vivid memories of standing in front of my mirror in my underwear and pinching the “fat” away from my stomach, pulling at my love handles, and swatting at my bat wings (tricep muscle and skin) wishing I could just cut all of the extra off. Most days I was tempted to try it with the kitchen scissors, and eventually that self hatred developed into eating disorders. I know I’m not alone in that and I’m so mad for us that we were made to feel that way.

I spent our time in Washington working on myself. I went to therapy, unpacked a LOT of harmful beliefs I’d grown up learning, and finally started to love and accept myself in a big way. Part of that has involved processing through my eating disorder and how connected it was/is to self hatred and the compulsion to self harm. Digging into why I have those thoughts and feelings and where they originated from was so heavy, but I finally wake up in the morning and don’t dread facing another day in my own skin. I don’t have the compulsion to shave off extra fat with a razor blade or avoid looking at myself in the mirror or in pictures. I look at my smile first now, and I wouldn’t trade that feeling for anything.

“My body is softening as I do.” What an incredible explanation of my new relationship with my body. My body is soft. She’s softer than she’s ever been. I have dimples and rolls and bumps in places that used to be smooth. She has also gotten me through so much life and given me so many wonderful memories. She’s taken me to see 49 states and 3 countries together, to swim with sharks and eagle rays and tropical fish, and to hug our favorite people. She’s defended me from illnesses, protected me from injury, and and held me when I needed it most. She serves as a canvas for beautiful art from beautiful people. She’s covered in kisses from the sun that remind me of days spent in my favorite places. She provides me pleasure and warns me away from harm with pain. She may have bumps and rolls and scars and stretch marks but she is soft and comfortable and kind. As she’s gotten softer and kinder, so have I, and life is so much more beautiful now. All of those “imperfections” on my body tell the story of how I learned to love her back and that’s my favorite story yet.

Teri’s Post