A Love Letter to My Body

I did not grow up fighting you.

There was no war between us in girlhood.

No one told me to shrink, to cover, to apologize.

I knew the stretch of my limbs, the shade of my skin, the curve of my hips,

and I carried it all with the quiet confidence of someone

who never imagined her body could be wrong.

I wore short sleeves without hesitation.

I danced with bare feet and open arms.

I sat at the edge of pools and didn't pull my shirt down to hide.

There was no guilt. No bargaining. No shame.

Only the certainty that I belonged to myself.

You were not something to fix.

You were mine, and that was enough.

But then came the shift.

Slow. Subtle. Almost unnoticeable at first.

A passing comment. A tighter waistline. A photo I didn’t quite like.

Comparison crept in like a quiet shadow.

Not loud, not cruel, just persistent.

And suddenly, I was watching myself from the outside.

Measuring. Questioning. Adjusting.

Not with hatred, but with a hesitation I had never known.

It is strange to wake up one day and feel foreign to yourself.

To still walk in the same skin,

but no longer recognize the ease you once felt within it.

To remember loving your reflection

and wonder when exactly that love started to flicker.

Not die. Just dim.

But even in my confusion, you have stayed loyal.

You have carried me, without resentment.

You have healed from the things I blamed you for.

You have allowed me to speak and breathe and reach and hold,

even when I didn’t offer you gratitude in return.

You have never stopped showing up for me,

even when I stopped showing up for you.

So now I return.

Not with the loud urgency of apology,

but with the quiet determination of someone choosing to stay.

I will not promise perfection, not in habits, not in thoughts.

But I will promise presence.

I will promise to listen, to rest, to soften.

To feed you when you’re hungry, not punish you for needing.

To wear what feels like home, not what hides me.

To believe that you are not only worthy when you look a certain way.

I will relearn what I once knew:

That beauty is not a fixed shape.

That love does not begin only when the scale agrees.

That you, in your changing, growing, softening are still good.

Still whole. Still mine.

And more than anything else,

I will remember that this body is not a canvas to impress others.

It is the one place I have ever truly lived.

And for that alone,

you deserve reverence.

I’m here. I see you. I choose you.

Again. And again. And again.