This is my belly. These are my scars. This is my chest.

These are all parts of my that have been so deeply hard for me to love.

My belly has changed shape and size as I have healed my relationship to food and movement. It is soft, round, and strong. It relaxes and contracts so that I can take deep breaths, which are one essential aspect of physical, emotional, and spiritual wellness. As Charlie Shipley has written in The No-Diet Notebook, "When you begrudge the belly, you begrudge the breath." It welcomes the sweet touches of my sweetie Christine, and relaxes as it accepts her love and my own. I have learned to treasure the soft expansiveness of my belly.

My scars are a testament to all I have survived. I cut myself for the first time when I was 9 years old. I cut myself for the last time when I was 29 years old (9 years ago). During the 20 years in between, I cannot count the many times that self harm was part of how I navigated the emotional challenges that faced me during some truly traumatic portions of my life. While it was important for me to let go of that coping mechanism (with the help of my AMAZING therapist, who excels at helping queer folks who are trauma survivors) in order to allow myself to move towards more expansive health and flourishing, it is also true that self harm was one aspect of the harm reduction techniques that kept me alive long enough to reach the point when I was able to work on finding less hurtful emotional coping mechanisms. I have learned to view my self-harm scars as proof of my resilience and ability to grow in to a future with more luminous light than I could have imagined a mere 10 years ago.

My chest is the part of me where I experience the greatest gender dysphoria. I will not go so far as to say I love my chest: that is not how dysphoria works. However, I honor the importance of taking care of my body with my actions, even as I struggle to navigate the pain of gender dysphoria in my mind, even as I continue to jump through the hoops that are required of me by my insurance company as I seek top surgery. I have learned to love myself as a trans person, even in the midst of dysphoria, and am learning to let myself be seen as I am in the meantime, with a deep understanding that I do not need to be ashamed even though I don't "pass."

In this photo, Substantia / Adipositivity finds the beauty in the parts of me that have been hardest for me to accept. I look at this image and feel profound tenderness, and deep gratitude for the path that brought me here, the path that I am excited to continue walking into the future. #dailygratitude

~Lore

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