Over the past year, I have realised that the trick to self-care was to treat the self and its host body with the tenderness we are generally conditioned as women to reserve for other people
Tending to one’s body from a space of love, hope, and self-directed desire, and not to perform for the benefit of someone else’s colonising gaze is a prerequisite for any kind of encounter with joy. Representation pic
After a shower, for instance, I now retreat to our bedroom and, as I hover before what is my moisturising station, I listen to music and, once the beat enters my soul, I dance, too. We don’t have a mirror in our bedroom, which has made it a safe space for me. I sometimes glimpse my reflection in the window glass, and it’s fun to see this spectral image of me moving recklessly to a beat. Because I no longer allow myself to dwell in shame, I have begun to delight in my body. Sometimes I flex my arms and touch my growing biceps. It is truly remarkable what just 15 minutes of daily exercise over a period of time can accomplish.
It’s been a long and lonely journey to get to this point where I no longer feel weighed down by the opinions of others when it comes to my body and its boundaries. Before, a casual remark could set me off, trigger my insecurities and my internalised sense of shame. It is empowering to look in the mirror and not feel like you want to change anything about your body. Over the past year, I have been taking care of it as if it were my beloved. I realised that the trick to self-care was to treat the self and its host body with the tenderness we are generally conditioned as women to reserve for other people. Essentially I’m following the medical advice my gynaecologist had offered me back in 2017. I try to be in bed by 10.30 pm so I can be up by 7.30 am. I eat lunch exactly at noon, and usually done with dinner by 7pm. I know that living with my partner’s parents makes this possible, because on days when I’m swamped with work, I know I don’t need to be responsible for feeding myself. It helps that I have a support system. I know how hard I struggled when I lived alone to feed myself in a timely manner. But I also know that so much of the struggle was because I often prioritised everything else before my own bodily needs. I regularly sacrificed my well-being in order to keep up with the world.
I’m still learning how to be kinder to my body. I’m still learning how to care for it, how to touch it lovingly, how not to demand more from it than it can offer me at a given moment. It really has been an intense process, tending to one’s body from a space of love, hope, and self-directed desire, and not in order to perform for the benefit of someone else’s colonising gaze. But I’ve learned it’s a prerequisite for any kind of encounter with joy.
Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com.
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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