make peace with your body

My Awakening

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I’ve been asked many times what pivotal event ignited my passion to help women make peace with their bodies. For me, it was a series of moments, over years, that built like steps on a high-dive ladder. With each event, I climbed a little higher until I made it to the diving platform. Then I inched my way past the safety rails until I was standing on the edge of the board.

I’d love to say that once I was gripping that board with my toes, I wholeheartedly leapt off the diving platform full of the awareness I needed to execute a fancy double flip, triple twist, water entry as smooth as velvet dive. The reality was a heart-palpitating, gut-churning false bravado that would have probably resulted in me crawling back to the ladder, except a bout of dizzying vertigo took charge and pushed me off the board in a sideways sprawl that knocked the breath out of my shocked body when I hit the water. Only after I clawed my bruised body to the pool’s edge and laid myself out on the hard but precious concrete did I realize the initiation I’d just passed through.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to wrangle my memories about the most vivid events that sparked my awakening. Because I tend to write the stories that are the loudest when I sit at my desk, this retelling will not be in chronological order.

Part 1 – The Dream

I had a dream experience that still takes my breath when I recount it: I was in labor and gave birth to a baby girl. She looked like a sleeping angel, swaddled in the white hospital blanket with blue-and-pink stripes. She wore a jaunty little hospital cap that the nurses had added a bow to. She was perfection.

But she didn’t cry. She was alive but also not a part of this world. There was no spark inside her. I was frantic that she wasn’t crying, but no one in the delivery room was bothered. I looked at my husband and asked, “Why isn’t she crying?” He just shrugged and looked away. The nurses who had washed and swaddled her were not at all concerned. I screamed, “Help her. Somebody, help her.” But everyone ignored me, unfazed by my desperation.

I felt invisible and helpless and terrified.

Then rage slid like hot lava down to my bones. This baby should be crying and no one but me cared. How could I be the only one who cared?

If no one would help me, then I would heal her myself.

I dropped to my knees, lifted my arms, and unleashed a primal, guttural cry. The baby wailed so loud that I woke up.

As soon as my eyes popped open, I knew that baby was me. I was going to have to heal myself, to find my voice, to ignite my authentic spark. No one could do it for me. But I was ready, ready to love myself, ready for a bolder life.

And everything I needed was inside me.

Gratitude for My Body (2021)

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Gratitude for My Body, Day 1

Gratitude played a major role in my efforts to make peace with my body. Finding something about my body to be grateful for helped me offer my body kindness and respect even when I wanted to change it, even when I hated it. Gratitude slowly shifted my perspective.
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Today I am grateful for Eyes that spy this little green lizard hiding in the blooming banana leaf.
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What part of your body are you grateful for today?

Gratitude for My Body, Day 2

Gratitude helped me remember that I found a few parts of my body sparkly and wonderful, even when there were many parts I wanted to hide.
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Today I’m grateful for the white fairy hair that has magically begun to weave its way between my darker strands. I love the natural glitter and shine, and they make a lovely complement to the rainbow colors I add in. I am also proud of the hard-earned wisdom they represent.
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What is a body part that gives you some sparkly wonder?

Gratitude for My Body, Day 3


Gratitude creating stepping stones for me to reframe beliefs about my body.
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Today I am grateful for my mind. I spent so many years living from the neck up, and my mind worked so hard for me. I found a lot of my worth in my academic intelligence when I struggled to feel worthy anywhere else.

I am so happy that my mind now has such an able and supportive partner in my body. It doesn’t have to carry the burden of making all my decisions alone because my body holds so much wisdom too.
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What’s the connection like between your mind and body?

Gratitude for My Body, Day 4


Gratitude was not the first tool I used to make peace with my body. Before I could be grateful, I had to get honest about how I felt about my body and her parts. Once I faced some of the emotions that are hard to hold, I was able to be curious. I realized through that exploration that I could be grateful for my body even when I didn’t like it. And like magic, I began to make peace with my body.
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Today I am grateful for my breath. This life-giving force exists naturally, and I can lean on it anytime I need to find calm. It’s always with me. It softens me. And it feels like love.
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What is your relationship to your breath?

Gratitude for My Body, Day 5


Gratitude shifts my perspective, my mood, my beliefs. It helped me think about my body in ways I’d never considered.
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Today I am grateful for my feet. When I’m barely conscious, when I’ve yet to open my eyes, my feet help me come back to my body after a long (or short) sleep. During these liminal moments, my feet are super sensitive. They rub the sheets, and my nerve endings delight in how soft the sheets feel. The sensation only lasts a few minutes, and then the sheets just feel regular again. I love this part of waking up slowly.
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Do any of your senses become extra sensitive when you’re waking up?

Gratitude for My Body, Day 6


Gratitude can serve as a crutch, a strong tool to lean on in, as you begin to journey along the self-acceptance path. Crutches are often viewed in a negative light, but it’s a sign of strength to know when you need help to move forward.
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Today I am grateful for my scars. I spent a lot of years feeling ashamed of them. I thought they showed one of my weaknesses. But these scars mean just the opposite. I had to confront pain, live through it, accept help, use tools like crutches and wheelchairs and therapy, and show up for myself every day to heal.
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Is there a body part you’ve felt ashamed of that you’re ready to write a different story about?

Gratitude for My Body, Day 7


Gratitude is a magic elixir.
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Today I am grateful for the blood 🩸 that flows like a river in my body, a reminder that I can surrender to life’s rhythms.
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What reminders does your body offer you?

Gratitude for My Body, Day 8
Gratitude fills the spaces where many of my negative thoughts about my body used to live.
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Today I am grateful for my sweat. I think it’s amazing that my body has its own cooling system, which it manages without my input.
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What’s something about your body that amazes you?

Gratitude for My Body, Day 9


Gratitude is a core value for me.
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Today I am grateful for the electric goosebumps that rise all over my body when I experience a soul truth.
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How does your body let you know something is meant for you?

Gratitude for My Body, Day 10


Gratitude.
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Today I am grateful for my crow’s-feet. Those crinkly little lines by my eyes help broadcast my smile, especially when I’m wearing a mask. I love that each smile I’ve ever beamed have contributed to their creation. They’re like treasure box of happiness.

Gratitude for My Body, Day 11


Gratitude can connect us.
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Today my heart is grateful for all the veterans in our armed forces.

Gratitude for My Body, Day 12


Gratitude can amplify the joy you feel in the special moments.
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Today I am grateful for the dreams my soul places in my heart and then gives me the courage to pursue. Tomorrow one of those dreams becomes reality.
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What dreams live in your heart?

Gratitude for My Body, Day 14


Gratitude creates more gratitude.
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Today I am grateful for every part of my body, which stood on the #TEDXCrawfordRoad stage yesterday. This glorious moment was possible because my body is the vessel that allows me to live. And she showed up strong yesterday. I am so proud!
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I am also overflowing with gratitude for the event producers, my fellow speakers, the audience, and the precious people in my life who showed up, sent me encouraging messages, prayed for me, coached me, and showered me with love. ❤️🥰❤️

Gratitude for My Body, Day 15


Gratitude reminds me to be playful.
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Today I am grateful for the holes in my ears, which allow me to wear dangly earrings to showcase a little bit of my personality to the world.
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How do you like to share your individuality?

Gratitude for My Body, Day 17


Gratitude reminds me not to take the things I can’t see for granted.
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Today I am grateful for my lungs. They pull in the tree’s breath so that I, too, can breathe. How lucky am I to be connected to nature this way!
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Is there something unseen in your body that you’re grateful for?

Gratitude for My Body, Day 18


Gratitude helps me soften when things are hard to accept.
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Today I am grateful I get to practice what I teach while my face experiences this rosacea flare-up. It feels icky—my face tight with burny-itchy sensations, redness, bumps, and scaly patches on my eyelid. Rosacea sucks. But I can accept my face, as it is in this moment, and offer myself, compassion, kindness, and care. Making peace with my body means that I know I have the capacity to hold both feelings (the suck and the acceptance). And that I am worthy of the care and compassion.
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Are you holding hard, opposing feelings about your body?

Gratitude for My Body, Day 20


Gratitude just plain feels good sometimes.
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Today I am grateful for my synovial (what a fun word to say!) joints. Rolling them, bending them, moving them in slow motion feels delicious. I love the way they serenade me with their snap, crackle, pops.
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Do you have a body part that you love to move?

Gratitude for My Body, Day 21


Gratitude can be playful.
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Today I am grateful for the blank canvas of my fingernails. What colors will I choose to paint them? The time spent on my manicure will be a much-needed respite with myself.
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How does your body help you express creativity?

Dear Cellulite,

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I think your nickname should be Dimples. Thoughts?

I don’t see you often, but I feel your textured divots when I smooth lotion on the backs of Thighs and Booty. I’m most aware of you when I put a swimsuit on and turn around to get the view from the backside.

I used to believe that you only existed on people who were lax about their weight (yes, this meant I was berating Body for weighing too much). But that’s just one more made-up belief I’ve learned to release.

Now I know that you’re created because of the way that Fat Storage Cells and Connective Tissue are arranged vertically in one of Skin’s layers. This is why I’ve seen cellulite on thin bodies and on young bodies and on all sorts of bodies. Men’s fat storage cells and connective tissue are more of a crisscross pattern, which is why we don’t see cellulite as often on men.

I’ll never forget enjoying a couple’s massage on a cruise with Terry. After the massage was over, the massage therapists offered me cream for you. Wow, that felt crummy in a moment that I wanted to feel sexy.

I hate that people use you to humiliate women when textured skin is a really normal part of being human.

Most treatment methods claim to reduce or improve the appearance of cellulite, but the results are short-term. Makes sense because none of the treatments, including liposuction, can do anything to change the shape of our fat storage cells. Needless to say, most treatments are ineffective.

You’re harmless. And I don’t need to do anything about you. We can coexist just fine.

Nicole C. Ayers

Write Love Notes to Your Body

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Writing love notes to my body was my entry onto the body-acceptance path. I knew I wanted a different relationship with my body, but I had no idea how to get started.

I considered how people fall in love. The whole courtship and wooing thing. Writing love notes has always been a direct way to my heart. Something about seeing love declared on the page makes me melt. One of my favorite memories with my husband was the year we took turns making lunch for each other. We’d leave little love notes in the other’s lunchbox. Extra points for when they were punny.

“I’m bananas for you” written on the banana peel. “You make me melt like butter” on baked potato day. “I doughnut know what I’d do without you” on a sweet-treat day.

With that memory in mind, I decided I would attempt to love my body by writing her love notes.

Except writing to my body felt overwhelming. I had already written a “history” of my body and was still reeling from the experience. It was angry and wounded and raw and way too much to wade through.

I wanted to tiptoe my way into this healing process, so I made the decision to write to my body’s parts instead of my whole entire body.

Writing Heals

Over the years, I’ve read so many benefits to journaling. It’s always been an intuitive action for me, one I’d take whenever I had something to process.

Well, not always. There was over a decade that I didn’t write anything more than academic papers, and a couple of decades that I didn’t journal. But that’s a story for another time, one you could read in the “Dear Voice” essay of Love Letters to My Body.

Writing, journaling specifically, is a path to healing.

There are studies to support the therapeutic benefits, such as reduced stress and better sleep. Also, some studies have shown support for journaling to heal from trauma.

Here’s why journaling helped me heal my relationship with my body.

1. It helped me get my thoughts in one place.

They were no longer swimming in my head. I could reread them and get curious about them. I could examine my beliefs about my body and determine if those beliefs were mine, or something I’d picked up from another source.

2. It made my thoughts visible.

No longer were my thoughts about my body nebulous negativity. I was very clear about what parts I liked, what parts I hated, what parts I was grateful for, and what parts I wanted to change.

3. It helped me establish a connection with my body.

Journaling turned into a written conversation I was having with my body. It shifted my feelings so that my body became “her,” rather than “it.” I realized that there was no escaping my body, no matter how much time I’d spent disassociated from her, making all my decisions via my mind. Instead, I learned that my body had things to say too. Wisdom to share.

Love notes, you say?

Yes, love notes. Sort of. Sometimes, I wrote hate notes instead.

While I wanted to write loving notes, I wanted to write honest notes more. Deep, authentic relationships are built on honest foundations. I didn’t want to bypass the pain I carried in my body and pretend that I loved her when I didn’t.

Plus, I figured that she already knew how I felt about her. It wasn’t some big secret. I’d been clamoring nastiness at her for most of my life. She was strong enough to handle some heartfelt, soul-searching notes about the places in her that hurt.

I often kept it simple. One or two sentences would suffice. Somedays I had loads to say and those notes transformed into letters. I didn’t set any rules around the love-note writing other than to show up as truthfully as I could.

As I began to write, I realized that even when I hated a particular body part, or held a lot of anger or grief around it, I could often find something to be grateful for too. I had the capacity to hold both feelings.

I could be curious about what I was feeling and why. Then I could process the anger or grief or resentment. And I could soften toward that part. Which paved the way for a more accepting relationship with my body. Which has led to a more loving relationship with my body.

Benefit of Writing to One Body Part at a Time

I mentioned how overwhelmed I felt when I thought about writing to my body as a whole. There was too much to process, and I shut down.

But writing to my body’s parts individually allowed me to use a trauma-informed approach to my healing.

This process is called titration. It asks you to move slowly through your healing process; to dip into the experience and then dip out, in small increments; to pause and notice what’s going on in your body during the experience.

I didn’t know about titration when I began this process, but intuitively, I knew this was the best approach for me. It helped me maintain a consistent journaling practice, and it alerted me to the wounds that were too much for me to work through alone so that I could seek help as needed.

How to Get Started

You just need a notebook and something to write with. Set aside time to journal each day. I found it easiest to write for a few minutes most mornings, but you may prefer a different schedule. Or no schedule at all.

If you need ideas to get started, check out my guided journal, Writing Your Way to Self-Love.

You can also connect with me on Instagram and read lots of body love note examples there.

A Few Reminders

Making peace with your body is a journey. There’s no set number of notes to journal. There’s no “right” way to do this. There’s no finish line to cross.

Remember that you can offer yourself love even if you don’t love your body. Offering love and actually loving are two different experiences.

You have permission (in case you need it) to show up on the page however you need to.

I’d love to support you in this process, so please reach out and share how your journaling experience is going.