020 - Body as Friend with Ashmae Hoiland

The Show Up Podcast

Natalie Norton

Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Health & Fitness:mental Health

5 • 638 Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2019

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"I said to my body softly, ‘I want to be your friend.’ It took a long breath and replied ‘I have been waiting my whole life for this."— Nayyirah Waheed Do you struggle to love your physical body, without condition of any kind? As you heal your relationship with your physical self, you may be surprised to find that every aspect of your life also begins to change. In today's episode Natalie and author Ashley Mae Hoiland discuss: the notion of "body as friend" how our lives can change "in the flick of an instant," including our experience with our physical self Ashley's recent MS diagnosis (following what she thought was a simple visit to the optometrist), and how that diagnosis has served to magnify her deep love for her body how what we say and do, every day, is writing the script for our children (and for anyone within the reach and impact of our influence) as it relates to the relationship they build with their own bodies the fact that so many of us have carried a flawed paradigm about what's "normal," "perfect," "desirable"—a paradigm that is not our own, but that was handed to us by a distorted and damaging societal agenda/"norm"—and how it's time to set that sh*t down and step bravely into love and truth This discussion is a tiny drop in the bucket of a much larger conversation (and REVOLUTION). The experience of navigating the journey to genuine body love is broad and multidimensional, and one woman's experience may vary greatly from the next but there is a common thread that has emerged. Through each story, we see further evidence that as a woman learns to truly love her body, her entire life begins to shift in remarkably beautiful and powerful ways! About Today's Guest: Ashley Mae Hoiland has a BFA in studio arts and an MFA in creative writing. She has written and illustrated several children's books, did the We Brave Women project through Kickstarter, which produced a set of 60 cards with the stories and painted portraits of women from history. She's written two memoirs, One Hundred Birds Taught me to Fly, which was a finalist for a national award, and her newest book, A New Constellation. She teaches writing classes at MineToTell.com, which Ashely describes as "a dream fulfilled." She currently lives in Santa Cruz with her three children and her husband. Link to upcoming course: https://ashmae.teachable.com/p/mine-to-tell-session-3-summer-2019/ See more of Ashley's courses at www.MineToTell.com Use Code SHOWUP for $25 off Follow Ashley on Instagram: @birdsofashmae Natalie's Links: Instagram: @natalienorton Website: www.letsshowup.com Email: [email protected] Thanks so much for listening. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast, and please take a moment to rate and review the show in iTunes so we can continue to bring you great content, week after week.

Transcript

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0:00.0	After I shower now, I spend a long time standing naked in front of the mirror while I do my makeup and brush my hair, just going slow.
0:07.0	Like any American girl, I learned early on that I should want my body to be something other than it was.
0:14.0	Not unfamiliar to most people, I spent years labeling it with symbols like L and 14, and later, XL and 16.
0:23.6	I won't go into the details about what I wanted my body to be because whatever you are imagining is probably correct.
0:30.6	Skinnier, prettier, smarter.
0:32.6	Doubtless, we each know the story so well from the view inside our own skin.
0:36.6	In the last few years, my body's needing and wanting to take a different form diminished,
0:42.3	and friendship between my spirit and body has replaced that gnawing desire to be something else.
0:47.3	When I started following body-positive women on social media,
0:51.3	I resisted what they said was beautiful.
0:53.3	My eyes had been trained for so long to acknowledge a single standard
0:58.0	that it took time to really believe the women who put up pictures of themselves in swimming suits,
1:03.0	with folds in their skin, bellies that were not taught and thighs that had no gap.
1:08.0	It all took time to receive because, though I looked like these women,
1:12.4	I had never called what I looked like beautiful. When I used words like beautiful to describe my
1:17.5	own body, I almost felt that I was stealing something that wasn't mine. It took time and courage.
1:24.5	It took a realignment of everything that I'd learned wasn't supposed to be mine.
1:29.3	Over time I came to love my body though, not just to say that I loved it, but to really love it and to know it like a dear friend.
1:37.3	Now, I stand in front of the mirror, my stomach not flat, the wideness of my grandmother's hips written in my frame.
1:45.7	My thighs with the muscles of my days playing soccer still barely visible.
1:50.6	My breasts round like the two moons orbiting Jupiter.
1:54.4	There are curves like a pencil line that I want to draw.
	...

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