Falling in love with my body at last – a letter from Sophia.
Silhouette of two people on a ropes course in a forested area.
Hello! Sophia here, one of the writing coaches at Firefly, with a story.
It was 2015 and I was in the deep woods of California, struggling to maneuver up a ropes course. I was 20 feet up in the air, hands stretching to grip a log swinging horizontally above me, using my friend Sue’s thigh as a springboard.
It was a part of a leadership development course, but in that moment I had no idea why I was there. My legs shook and my heart pounded. Tears were streaming down my face. My body was going into fight-or-flight because I knew I couldn’t do it, and I knew I’d feel humiliated once everyone else could see that too.
They’d all know why. My body gives me away. I’m a fat woman.
Before we’d even started climbing, my friend Sue noticed I was deep in struggle and came over. As I choked out hot words lathered with shame, I fully expected her to abandon me for a more capable partner. But instead she told me to look at her.
With effort, I raised my eyes from the forest floor.
Will you let me be your brain?
Sue is wise. She knows from years of mountaineering and teaching elementary school that our minds are our worst antagonists. They don’t want us to fail, they compare us to everyone else, they desperately want to protect us from discomfort and hurt.
Up until that point in my life, I had handed over a LOT of my power to my mind. It was time to try something else. I listened to Sue.
Left hand on the rope ladder, right foot on the bottom rung.
Reach up with my right hand and then my left foot.
Breathe. Surrender. Be.
As we moved slowly up the vertical playground, two bodies, one mind, I noticed a calm starting to hum through my body. The usual cacophony of judgment, resistance, and worry had vanished. Instead, I felt the air cooling my head under the helmet and heard the rest of the group cheering us on from the earth.
When we summited and I finally rested, eye-to-eye with the majestic California pines, I celebrated my body exactly as it was for the first time.
Summiting changed me. From that moment, I deliberately chose to believe in my capacity, walk away from diet culture and towards body liberation and radical self love.
Big shout out to Sonya Renee Taylor for those powerful words. I highly recommend her book, The Body Is Not An Apology, and for a taste, her conversation with Brené Brown here.
I also began to recognize how all those decades of internalizing negative messages about my body had seeped into the most joyful and powerful parts of myself — the parts that wanted to sing loudly in the car, the parts that wanted to stand on a stage speaking, the parts that wanted to write just for fun. I started to slowly and surely move towards those heights too.
Another day, not long in the future, I would choose to go to my first writing retreat. Reading one word after another to a group of strangers in a circle of lawn chairs on the shores of Georgian Bay, I was, again, shaking. Those were my first steps into the community of Firefly.
Next on my path — I’m using that courage to create a new Firefly workshop about writing from our bodies, about our bodies, and for our bodies. I can’t wait to tell you about it when it’s ready.
I have two video for you today. The first, just in case you’re curious, is the full video of the full ropes course. Ah! And the second is a Messy Beautiful Pages video I made for you to help you write into your own self-limiting beliefs and how they might be getting in the way of writing. I’ll be your brain. Or I’ll give your brain some small next steps so that it doesn’t need to move through it alone. Here’s the video. (If you’ve read this newsletter, you can skip to 3:27.)
If you’re looking for a process and community to climb to new heights this summer, here are our Firefly workshops.
I now know that I am capable beyond what I had previously imagined. I want you to know that you are too.
Writing is such a beautiful way to find that truth. I’ll meet you there.
In it with you,
