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4 Magazines Delivered to Your Door

An Open Letter to the Body I Spent Too Long Hating

I’m sorry for labeling you a problem to fix, a condition to manage, a burden to shed, when all along, you were offering me life.

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You’ve been through hell, and much of it has been my own doing. I’ve berated you for having normal folds and genetic dimples, starved you of joy and freedom, forced you into a tireless routine, then wondered why I was so depleted. 

And guess what? It was never enough.

You’ve always been labeled “skinny,” and at times you’ve been deemed underweight, especially when battling mental health struggles and autoimmune flares. But I didn’t support you through them. No, instead, I kicked you while you were down. I rejected the idea that you were healthy, because you didn’t look like the women on my TV screen or in the magazines or on my Instagram feed.

It’s ironic: Just like you, I overgive, I bend, I break, I burn out, I exhaust myself to the core, just to feel like I’m enough for the people in my life. Craving appreciation and love. In turn, I just end up seething in resentment of my own making, my own habit of self-neglect.

You reflect the same story—the same pattern. No matter how hard I push you at........

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