Dear Body...

My body is great, and amazing, and I really should stop hounding it so much. If my body can DO everything I want it to do then it should get to look how it wants to look. After all, when it comes to doing all the things a body does, it knows way more than me. I wouldn't have a clue how to keep my heart beating if that were left up to me as a consciousness to handle. And make a whole new person? I don't think so! How many cells need to divide each day? What week do I tell the fingernails to start forming? And thats not to say anything of figuring out how to get it out on my own! Yup, my body is smarter than me when it comes to itself so why do I keep trying to tell it how to look?

If my arms can curl 30lbs, (which they can't quite yet, I'm up to 20 with 30 being my goal) and I still have waggling underarms, then I think its my arms' prerogative. Those arms manage groceries, carry an almost five year old, work a garden, build forts and lift arbitrary amounts of weight for no real practical purpose other than I tell them to. "Now arms, please do all this AND look skinny while doing it, if you don't mind." I'm like that husband who comes home to a clean house, happy children and dinner on the table but can only see that his wife's hair isn't done!... Dear arms, I'm sorry. You are lovely and you are doing a great job!

And while I'm at it, I need to give my legs the same apology. Legs, you work very hard. You carry me wherever I want to go, you even jog sometimes even though we both hate it. I've sent you rappelling  over a cliff barefoot into icy water, hiking through miles of sand, there was a time when I made you dance 4-8 hours a day and I continue to stretch you into positions I'm sure you must find unreasonable. All this and we haven't even mentioned hair removal! If you need a little fat to keep you going then who am I to tell you otherwise? If you break out into little red bumps sometimes when I shave you, then I should cut you some slack. I mean, how much hair removal can two legs really take? And the fact that you bruise easily and are never without some sort of purple contusion, well, I'm sure thats not your fault and I know it doesn't help that I keep frequenting climbing gyms, canyons, workout equipment and sometimes just flat out walk you into things! Legs, you do everything I ask of you and the fact that you might not get a gig in a Nair commercial should have no bearing on our relationship.

So...
Dear Body,
If you can just keep on doing what you do, you know, like breathing and carrying around my sometimes undeserving spirit, I promise to be nicer to you. Please know that I appreciate you even when I don't show it because without you I'd be... well, dead, or a disembodied spirit, or maybe a cryogenically frozen brain, all of which are unappealing options. So thank you, I'm sorry and I promise to do better.

Love, Me