I’m sorry… Thank you. (a love letter to my body)

For those of you who know me, you know that I have spent the better part of the last 15 years working on my health and wellness. It’s a journey, a journey that never ends, so we might as well settle in and enjoy it along the way, right? It’s taken me the better part of a decade to realize that truth. And, it’s also taken me longer than a decade to shift my focus from the mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of health to the physical.

For me, the physical is the “final frontier,” so to speak, of my wellness boot camp. I’ve gone head first into the other three, but always kept the physical at bay. Why? Oh, I could give you so many reasons, but the bottom line is: it wasn’t time – I wasn’t ready. I certainly did many things along the way to improve my physical health, but few of them took hold, or worked, or mattered enough, actually, to make lasting change. Plus, the spiritual, emotional, and mental frontiers were simply easier for me to understand and apply successfully. And, truth be told, I somewhat assumed that if I focused on those, the physical would just fall into place.

Alas, it’s not that easy. Not for me, at least.

So, here I am, finally in a place where I have been deliberately and diligently addressing the physical aspects of my health for the better part of  the last 1-2 years. I have an amazing team of wellness professionals helping me meander through the various bits of information, and it’s been a lot of trial and error, the results of which have been, at times, discouraging. There have been days when I have literally decided to “resign myself to my fate” of not being as physically healthy as I would wish. Of course, I know this isn’t true, but I’m human and vulnerable to the array of emotions that arise from feeling the struggle.

And then, a couple of weeks ago my dear wise friend, Kate (@wisdomofone), posted this quote on her social media:

It’s a quote from starting, by Nayyirah Waheed.

It gave me pause – as all good things do. It was a new approach that I hadn’t heard before. What I knew previously was echoed in one of the first few comments, which suggested that instead of saying sorry, we should say thank you. We *should* align with the energy of gratitude when dealing with our physical health. It’s a common message these days, touted by every spiritual thought leader, guru, author, and teacher: Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude… the cure all.

Yes, but… But there was something about this quote that tugged at my emotions and made me sit a little taller.

Frankly, I don’t think it’s an either/or proposition… why can’t we do both? Say “sorry” and “thank you?” And what happens if we do?

If our physical health has been suffering (at our own hand, or otherwise), it seems to me that it would make sense to BOTH apologize AND say thank you. It seems to me that the most powerful approach to wellness includes an acknowledgment of our responsibility as well as an opening up to possibility. The minute I read this exchange on social media, I knew that was what I, myself, needed. I needed to humbly kneel before my own vessel and apologize, asking for forgiveness while also embracing it with genuine gratitude and joy for all it has done for me throughout my transgressions, whether conscious or unconscious.

And with that, I wrote this note to my body:

I’m sorry for the way I treated you when I didn’t know better.
I’m sorry for the way I treated you when I knew better.
I’m sorry for when I didn’t make you a priority.
I’m sorry for when I let others treat you poorly.
I’m sorry for when I ignored your messages.
I’m sorry for taking you for granted.
I’m sorry for not loving you enough.
I’m sorry for not loving you more.
I’m sorry for not loving you.

Thank you for taking care of me when…

… I treated you poorly.
… I allowed others to treat you poorly.
… I didn’t make you a priority.
… I didn’t listen to your messages.
… I took you for granted.
… I didn’t love you.

And perhaps that’s how we should look at all the aspects of our health: By taking ownership for our role in the patterns we have created (consciously or not) and apologizing, then expressing gratitude for what’s worked. And maybe, hopefully, this can be a model that we can take out into the world with our other meaningful relationships.

xoxo,
Martina