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Nicole C Ayers
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love notes to my body

Dear Face,

April 13, 2021 by Nicole Ayers

Let’s talk about your rosacea.

I’ve been thinking of writing to you for a while about this, but I’ve put it off. Then yesterday, an acquaintance’s Instagram post about her own rosacea got me thinking more about your struggles.

I remember the shame I felt the first time I realized that strenuous exercise would turn you redder than hot lava. I was almost fourteen, and I was trying out for the high school cheer squad (team?). In addition to Lungs sucking wind because they weren’t used to so much intense aerobic activity, you flushed a deep purply red.

I castigated myself as an overweight, uncool loser with no business cheering if you were going to signal my distress to the world with such a loud broadcast. When I didn’t make the team (squad?), I made it your fault rather than my lack of skill.

But as time progressed and you flushed red at every athletic endeavor, I realized this was just your thing. Once, during my short running career, a little girl in the neighborhood stopped biking to ask if I was okay because you were so red. Remember that? She must have thought Heart was in danger of exploding. I was embarrassed but not as ashamed as I’d been back in that high school gym.

Now, as more years have progressed, you are tinted some variation of pinky red most of the time. It’s been eons since I’ve worn blush because you don’t need any help adding “color” to Cheeks. Summertime is nice because I can attribute your color to kissing the sun. Although it aggravates me to no end when someone assumes I’m sunburnt. Do I explain? Do I leave them to their assumption? Do I care? Why do I care?

Heat and alcohol are triggers for your rosacea, as is exercise still. Wearing a mask really revs up the redness. Makeup is great to tone down the scarlet show, but it also seems to aggravate you.

You’re flaming as I write this, your heat warming Hand when she touched you.

Perhaps, you’re thinking about the debacle that medication was. When I finally decided that I had lived with the redness long enough and asked the dermatologist for help, she confirmed your rosacea diagnosis and prescribed medication. The first medication was expensive and had little effect. The second medication was more expensive and caused you to break out in a rash that traveled down to Neck. The third medication prescribed cost hundreds of dollars. I didn’t even fill that prescription.

I decided that your redness is a part of who you are, as much as Freckles are. I don’t love that you’re red, but I accept it. I know that a consistent skin care routine with gentle, organic products makes you feel best and does a darn good job of controlling the worst of rosacea’s symptoms of breakouts and dryness. I’m committed to your care, and I’ve got plenty of compassion for you.

On that same IG post, another acquaintance shared additional ideas we can try to soothe you. I’m most excited about moon bathing. You too? Let’s make a date under the next full moon.

Nicole C. Ayers

Artwork by Mica Gadhia

I Am My Body

April 9, 2021 by Nicole Ayers

A photo of a white woman from the neck down. She's wearing a pink dress, her arms are behind her back, and her ankles are crossed. The lighting is dark.

Every time I see one of these phrases, most often in memes, I cringe.

The offenders:

You are not your body.

Your body is just the keeper of your magic.

Eating Disorder Recovery

Before I write more, I want to acknowledge that phrases like this can be incredibly helpful for people recovering from eating disorders.

If this is you, keep using them! Keep showing up for yourself. Keep healing.

If these phrases help you stay well, please stop reading and have a lovely day.

***

Why “You Are Not Your Body” Makes Me Cringe

The phrase “you are not your body” is meant to remind us that our worth and value have nothing to do with our physical bodies. So true. We are inherently worthy.

But this phrase makes me cringe because I actually am my body. And my body is me.

Pretending otherwise reminds me of all the years I spent dissociating from my body, living from the neck up, pretending like my body didn’t exist whenever I could avoid it.

I lost touch with my body’s innate wisdom. Rather than look inward for answers, I often crowdsourced what I should do. And I ignored any signals my body sent to get my attention and tell me that sometimes those plans were the exact opposite of what I needed.

After spending so much energy to reclaim my connection with my body, I don’t ever want to make her feel like an unwelcome part of me.

She is the miraculous machine allowing me to experience life. She’s my home. She’s my lifelong companion, the one who will be with me until our very last moment.

Reframing “Your Body Is Just the Keeper of Your Magic”

My body is the keeper of my magic, but there’s no room for “just” in this sentence. “Just” implies her role is somehow diminished in comparison to my magic. But how sacred a vessel is my body to be the container that can hold my magic, my magic being all the wonderful effervescence and creativity and ingenuity and more that is an essential part of my makeup.

As my magic’s keeper, she is loyal and steadfast and trustworthy. I can show up as my full self, and she never says, “Tone it down, dear. You’re too much.”

She offers me a safe space to expand into my full potential, always assuring me that she’s on my side.

My body is the kind keeper, the courageous caretaker, the magnificent magician wielding my magic.

What About “You Are More Than Your Body”?

Am I more than my body? Of course, I am. I’m a complex creation.

But my body is an integral source of my complexity. Without her, I’d be a spirit who couldn’t fully experience all that this human life has to offer.

Her physical manifestation of “me” allows me to connect with nature, to inhale all that my senses encounter, to hold close the ones I love. She gives voice to my soul’s messages and embodies all the unique bits that make me who I am.

Because of my body, I get to be a human being.

My Body

No pithy phrase or meme will ever be able to fully describe my relationship with my body.

Our connection is a nuanced mosaic that continues to evolve. And now that I’ve rediscovered how powerful our relationship is, I want to celebrate my body as an integral part of my existence.

Photo Credit: Cass Bradley, Find My Fearless

Dear Forearms,

February 8, 2021 by Nicole Ayers

a painting of a dark-skinned woman's arm. She wears a red bracelet on her wrist. The background is yellow.
Art by Mica Gadhia

How are you? Last I checked, you were still a little tender to the touch, but the bruises were fading. Isn’t it amazing how you heal? Is there anything more you need?

I’ve been thinking so much about pain and healing since our massage last Thursday. About how I make repetitive choices that create tension and tightness in you that I ignore until I can’t. About how I am so familiar with your tightness that I don’t even realize how constricted you are. About  how I overlook you when I’m stretching.

And mostly, I’ve been contemplating how the fastest way to release your tension was to sit with some intense discomfort as the massage therapist used a special tool to break up all the knots in your fascia. The sensation created a synesthetic crackling that reverberated in my body. And of course, it’s left you tender and bruised. And also looser. And healing.

I can’t help but compare this experience to what happens when I come against an old wound that’s ready for healing balm. The emotional pain rises sharp and swift. It hurts in its intensity, and I question why I agreed to this. But I sit with it. Teeth gritted. Body tensed. Tears flowing until I surrender. And I breathe. And breathe again. And breathe once more.

As I hold on for another breath, the pain lessens until eventually it’s transformed. I’m tender and bruised. But also lighter.

Healing sometimes comes with pain, but it’s a different kind of pain than what I’ve been holding onto. And it’s worth sitting in the acute discomfort for a while in order to find myself in a new space with a little more clarity about what I need going forward.

And for sure, there are moments of divine grace that bring healing with complete ease. I celebrate those gifts. But however the healing happens, I’m grateful for its miraculousness to create change.

Nicole C. Ayers

Mica Gadhia’s Body Love Note

November 13, 2020 by Nicole Ayers

I’m so grateful to Mica Gadhia for sharing a love note to her skin tag with me, and with all of you. Learning to accept our bodies, just as they are, is community work.

If you’d love the support of this women’s circle, please send me your love note. You can always share anonymously if you wish.

Mica Gadhia
Illustrator of Love Notes to My Body

Mica’s Conversation with her skin tag

“Well, hello.”

“Hi. I’m a skin tag.”

“Why are you right there on my thigh in that weird spot? There aren’t any other skin things around you. You’re like, right there, in the middle of nowhere.”

“It’s a great place to be.”

“Hunh. I’m not sure it’s a great place for you to be.”

Mica’s Musings

My first thought is about cutting the skin tag off. I saw a kit at the store that gets rid of skin tags, so maybe I’ll go that route.
In the same moment, I think about my role in producing a book about self-love for our bodies and all of its parts. Is it self-love to not want this skin tag here? Why do I not like it? Or do I not like it because the media has told me not to like it?

So I sit.

And I think and journal about the skin tag.

And because no immediate action is clear, I choose to do nothing.

We live in peace for many months.

Then, I go to the dermatologist for a full-body check-up, and I tell the doctor about my skin tag. And this person doesn’t care one way or another about the skin tag. I ask if it needs to come off and they say, “If you want.” 

And then I’m back at the same place where it is I who has to make a choice about a new part of my body.

I don’t feel like I’ve had agency over my body for much of my life, but right now, it’s me and my skin tag, and we’re doing just fine. If I decide one day to get it taken off, I will have a ceremony and thank it for being such a great teacher to me. For now, the skin tag stays so we can walk through life together . . . in love with each other. 

Mica’s Love Note 

Dear Skin Tag, 

Thank you for coming to me and being on my leg. You were unexpected, and I had difficult feelings about you in the beginning. I may have those feelings again someday. If I do, I will definitely work hard to love you and the emotions that I experience the entire time. 

Know this, Skin Tag, I love you and what you’ve done for me. I love that you’re here and being a part of my life. Thank you for joining me on my grand adventure of love and acceptance. You’re a small but powerful journey mate. 

Love, Me

Dear Cervix

October 23, 2020 by Nicole Ayers

I’ve been giving you side eye for more than a decade now. You’re an integral part of me, but I haven’t wanted much to do with you. Yet I find myself oddly grateful for you during this time of self-isolation.

Once before, because of you, I was forced to stay home for months. With the hindsight that’s only ever available years later, I know I needed to slow down, to learn how to wait, to find a different path.

I’ve been giving you side eye for more than a decade now. You’re an integral part of me, but I haven’t wanted much to do with you. Yet I find myself oddly grateful for you during this time of self-isolation. Once before, because of you, I was forced to stay home for months. With the hindsight that’s only ever available years later, I know I needed to slow down, to learn how to wait, to find a different path.

During my first pregnancy, when you began to open much too early, for no discernible reason, I felt like you failed me. Dashed were my dreams of how my pregnancy would go. Instead of bebopping around with my growing belly on full display, I got thirteen weeks of bedrest. Ninety-one days of feeling lost in my very own Bermuda triangle as I moseyed from my bed to the bathroom to the doctor’s office and back to bed.

The one exciting outing I was allowed—to my sister-in-law’s wedding—ended early with a trip to the drug store to purchase suppositories because my horrendous constipation was causing my belly to cramp and contract. Nothing went according to the plans I had carefully arranged this stage of my life around.

I relinquished so much in that mysterious waiting zone: my idyllic dreams, the pregnancy orgasms, a pain-free back, my identity as a distinct entity, separate from my baby, and eventually my teaching career.

As the days of this Covid-19 lockdown pile up, I’m experiencing déjà vu. Memories of bedrest crowd my mind.

The first few days felt like a vacation in Shocksville. I couldn’t quite comprehend the looming danger or face the particular what-ifs, and it felt pretty nice to sleep in and relax and get special attention.

The following few days were harder. All the plans I’d been making to keep my life “just so” were cancelled. I couldn’t wash my own underwear, much less decorate a nursery. There was no longer plenty of time to make long-term sub plans for my classroom babies. New disappointments arose every day as I realized more things I was missing while I hung out at home: a bachelorette trip, a baby shower, the freedom to go anywhere I wanted, whenever I wanted.

But I tried to hold it together because I was okay. There was no good reason to cry. Other people were looking to me to know how to respond to this crisis, and by golly, I could be the strong one. Even if every moment felt like a slog.

Finally, the breakdown came.

And then the surrender.

Repeat.

I learned how to exist in this new space without making too many plans. To let go of the hustle that had guided my every move for too many years to count. To unhitch from the identity I’d carved out of my profession and to get to curious about who I might be if my world was different.

That curiosity led me to pivot just a couple of short years later from a teacher to a stay-at-home mom, to an editor running my own business, to a published author.

The early days of the Covid-19 pandemic have very much mimicked my bedrest experience: the shock and incomprehension of my new circumstances, but gratitude for a break from the grind; then my futile attempt to power my way through the disappointment of all my book events being cancelled; the snotty heart-broken wails as I lay on my closet floor and grieved my loss.

I’m somewhere between the breakdown and the surrender. In that intense crucible of the waiting room—the place where what I’d planned transmutes into what the divine has planned for me.

I am so grateful to you, Cervix, for that enforced rest twelve years ago because, now that I’m so far on the other side of it, I can clearly see its purpose. There were so many gifts waiting for me that I could never have imagined if I’d stayed that version of me.

The enforced waiting room of Covid-19 is different, of course. The intensity of the waiting is amplified because the whole world is in this space. For far too many, there is loss that feels like too much to hold. Illness that takes people to the brink of death, and maybe beyond. Loss of loved ones. The shuttering of a business that was someone’s life’s work. And for many others, the fear of experiencing similar tragedies is just as hard, especially when circumstances dictate that they can’t stay home to protect themselves because they’re a healthcare worker, or the woman who can’t feed herself, or her family, if she doesn’t show up to her job.

My own lockdown is fairly comfortable. Lockdown is such a dramatic word. I’m not an inmate. I’m snugged up in my pj’s, in my safe and comfy home, trying to keep the balls in the air: the work, the caretaking, the feeding and watering of the plants, animals, and children. Sneaking in moments of breathing and meditation and Wild Soul Movement. Too much screen time. Not enough sweets. Too much booze. Not enough activity. But overall, everything that I need to ride out this pandemic in comfort.

I am so, so grateful for that, and I also recognize how many of my privileges have afforded me this level of safety. I’m also grateful to you. Thank you, Cervix, for opening too early. Had I not been placed on bedrest, I wouldn’t have the experience to lean into that reminds me I can wait. I can trust. I can just “be” in this very terrible moment.

I don’t know yet what is coming after Covid-19, or how the world and her people will be changed for good or bad or both. Or how I will be changed for good or bad or both. But once before, I have been forced into my home, made to sit still, and wait, all the while, hoping and praying for the best. So that’s what I’ll do now. Sit still and wait, all the while, hoping and praying for the best.

A closing to the letter that says: Love, Me

Artwork by Mica Gadhia

Note: This essay was first published in April 2020, a few weeks into the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The Nastygram Narrative

October 14, 2020 by Nicole Ayers

I used to say the meanest, cruelest things to myself. I still do, but now I catch myself and try something different. In this video, I share about the last time I injured my knees and how I managed to shut up that mean voice in my head.

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