A different kind of freedom.
A different kind of freedom.
Sometimes the lessons we were learn from our elders is how not to do.
Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything - anger, anxiety, or possessions - we cannot be free.
- Thích Nhất Hạnh
When I was young we all gathered for a big fat Italian American family reunion on Big Floyd Lake in Detroit Lakes, MN. My cousins, my sister, and I burned black snakes, threw bang snaps, and performed our favorite songs as we stepped through smoke bombs in the alley between my great grandparents’ cabin and great aunt and uncle’s cabin.
My uncle or cousin pulled folks skiing and tubing. A big spaghetti dinner was eaten and nearer dusk, we all piled onto my great uncle’s pontoon for a trip around the lake to settle into a bonfire and fireworks after dark.
Someone always managed to gather us all to take one of those large family photos with 30 or so people in them, but inevitably two or three people were always missing, usually absent for whatever reason, from the year’s festivities, and their faces were cut out from other recent photos and pasted in, in the times before photoshop.
As we kids got older we started getting together with friends to slow tube down a nearby river and hang out in downtown Detroit Lakes for the fireworks and the drunken drama. Bars and restaurants of course line Detroit Lake beach, there’s almost nowhere to park within walking distance, and cruising the two or three-mile strip can take hours. Exactly the thing 16 yr-olds were into in the late 90s.
In my 20th year, I decided that I would spend the day in my swimsuit. Though it was a bit cloudy and chilly for July, I was determined and succeeded until nearer dinner when I decided it was time to put trousers and a T-shirt on. I headed over to my cousin’s house across the lake where we were eating and was minding my own business in the living room-kitchen area with 20 or so of my mostly female relatives when my great-grandmother, tactful as she was, looks at me and says, “You look a lot better without your belly hanging out.”
And—the shame washed over me. I couldn’t speak. And bless her now departed soul, my cousin Bonnie, some years my senior, cracked a one-liner at my grandma, diffusing the situation, and drawing attention away from me so that I could leave the room and eventually find a lift back to the cabin to cry.
I stopped trying to be physically attractive by any standard measure years ago. If only my great grandma could see me now: never any makeup, hairy legs and pits, wrinkles, naturally greying hair even though I’m only 40, bra-free, and my belly is still hanging out whenever I want it to. I can’t say that I’m completely body-shame-free, but mostly my aim when I started making these choices ten years ago, was to just be able to forget about my body. To exist in my body without having to think about how it might be imposing on someone else or upsetting to someone else. To exist in my body without all the bleeding time, energy, and money women have to spend just to be considered human.
I ditched mirrors except for in the bathroom to, you know, make sure nothing was in my teeth or on my face. I got rid of my heels (they’re never comfortable!) and over time, went feral.
Initially, I was a bit wishy-washy about these decisions. I held onto my makeup for ‘special occasions’ like weddings where the expectation is that I look more like a ‘woman’, I have mostly kept my legs and pits covered even on hot days. But in How to be a Woman, Caitlin Moran points out that all that’s required of men (generally speaking) is to be polite and relatively clean. Or clean and relatively polite, either way, it solidified an indignation at the expectations that I must make certain alterations to my body before leaving the house in order to be considered an acceptable member of society.
Outside of amorous situations I have firm boundaries around anyone speaking about my body. Even compliments. I’ll take compliments on my clothes, accessories, and hair because (to a certain degree) these things are all choices I make. Objects I’ve collected or styles I’ve chosen. But unless it’s a trusted partner objectifying my body in an amorous situation, I don’t even want to hear that my physical body is beautiful. Not because I think it’s not, but because it’s irrelevant: I am not my body and my level of physical beauty does not determine my value.
Unfortunately, this memory of my great-grandmother drawing attention to my apparently unpleasing body is the memory I come back to every year. It, of course, wasn’t an isolated incident. Our (folks assigned female at birth) bodies haven’t belonged to us since, as I understand it, in the Western world we moved from hunting-gathering peoples to landowning peoples (men) in which women also became property to sell for more land/resources (though maybe it’s wishful thinking that we were freeer prior to then).
And everyone feels they have the right to make comments pleasant or unpleasant: family, friends (apparently my knees aren’t very well defined), classmates (yes, yes, my legs are very pale, thank you, Kyle, but no I don’t need to tan before I wear shorts in the spring), random men on the street (yes, my ass is quite nice, but I didn’t ask for your opinion), random women on the street, lovers, and ourselves.
Everyone seems to have an opinion about how we (folks AFAB and transwomen) should exist in our bodies and whether they’re worthy of being classified as women (whether we want to be classified that way or not).
I learned that my body was an insult to the world. That being seen meant being disliked and unloved. And these little moments added up until much too soon I made myself small. Tucked myself into myself as much as I was able. Took up as little space as possible. Tried to blend in. Played small across all aspects of my life. And it’s been a long journey, that I am still living, to allow myself to be the expansive ball of light and love that I am (that we all are).
So this year, as I sit outside, mostly alone in the woods (my dad is inside watching TV), shielded from the rain by an eave, listening to the birds and watching the perfect circles ripple out on a shallow puddle on the cement, I burn this spiritual contract I never meant to sign. Playing small hasn’t been serving me, nor does it serve anyone living that way.
And this memory of my great-grandmother, it’s not the one I want to carry with me. She had a particular way about her that grew from her own traumas and lack of bodily autonomy. What I want to remember is her house smelling thickly of garlic, her runny eggs (shudder) and the tiny re-used pimento jars that were strictly for orange juice, spaghetti dinners at the long table at the lakes, the plastic over her furniture, and her dancing late into the night at wedding dances, from my memory, until her dying breath.
I don’t particularly uphold the whole freedom aspect of the Fourth of July celebrations, considering only certain peoples obtained, and currently have, total freedom, and fireworks terrify both me and the poor dogs, but I suppose it’s not a bad day for a bbq and boating activities if one chooses to indulge.
The kind of freedom I am excited about, however, is freeing myself from the internal blocks and generational traumas passed down that have been preventing me from being my whole, authentic, human self, whoever she is!
What kinds of freedoms are you savoring tonight?
Invitation for Reflection
It’s a bit woowoo, burning a spiritual or social contract (metaphorically, of course), but it’s a practice I learned from the master of emotions, Karla McLaren. I hadn’t thought much on it since reading her books four or five years ago, but a couple of days ago I was in some intense, uncomfortable emotions, crying and tapping and crying and tapping (EFT Tapping, for the uninitiated) and the emotional energy just wouldn’t shift. I was recognizing patterns that keep coming up for me and I couldn’t stop going over and over the same thoughts regarding them. Burning spiritual contracts just popped into my head.
So as silly as it sounds, I visualized a piece of paper with all the details on it about those patterns, visualized my reluctant signature, and then took a lighter to the corner of the paper and watched it burn.
Because it’s in my head, I took pleasure in really letting the paper alight into a blue ball of fire, which is incongruous with how typical paper actually burns, but it was much more satisfying. Then I watched the ash fall to the floor. Dust. And I found I was suddenly dry-eyed, feeling much, much lighter and much freer, and frankly, thinking on it, I can’t even recall specifically what was on that contract, as if it’s no longer a part of my story.
Since then, I’ve burned a number of contracts I’ve unwittingly signed over the years and am eager to write new contracts more intentionally going forward.
So, I ask you, gentle reader, is there a spiritual or social contract (a pattern that keeps playing out in your life) that you’d like to see go up in smoke?
If nothing comes to mind, you might write this question at the top of a blank page, stop thinking about it, and then free-write for three solid pages on nothing in particular and see if anything comes forward through the pen. Then feel free to visualize (or literally) burn this contract.
If you try it, let me know how it feels!