Mourning the healthy body I'll never have
Grief on a non-diet health journey
We must let our dream body and life wash down the drain, so the one that we are living can unfold before us.
A big part of my non-diet health journey has been grief. Grief has no calories, but it sits heavy inside you like a stack of pancakes made of cement. Existing in a chronically ill or disabled body means that grief comes along quite often. With each new diagnosis, new medication, or new injury, grief follows shortly thereafter. The body is mourning what it once was, and will never be again. For many years, I choose to live in denial of this grief. But only once did I let it come out, once I felt the immense feelings trapped inside me, did my body begin to feel like home again.
To accept the disabled body, it is crucial to go through all the stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. We must mourn the body we’ve dreamed of that can do all of the things and accept that it does not exist. Maybe it did and now it’s gone. Maybe we didn’t know just how good we had it until we lost it. But we will never be able to accept the reality of the current body we have, without mourning the ideal body that we dream about.
It feels heavy and sad when the body changes for better or for worse. With mourning comes the death of a life that we had always wanted. The perfect job, the perfect relationship, the ideal exercise routine, and the ideal income all go out the window. The dreams we once put on a pedestal slowly melt away with each tear. Although these dreams never became reality, they may still be a part of us that we have to let go of. And to do that, we must grieve.
We must cry every last tear. We must accept the pain that we did not ask for, but is ours nonetheless. We must let our dream body and life wash down the drain, so the one that we are living can unfold before us.
Living with a disabled or chronically ill body means that this might happen more often than not. Grief may follow us everywhere we go. Without processing it and giving space forward to emerge, it can hold us back. It can keep us trapped, living in a future that’s not real. It can keep us trapped in the internalized ableist narrative that because we cannot be fully independent, we are a burden.
The body we are to contend with on this floating rock is nothing short of magic. Our body is a vessel for life, for spirit, for G-d, for living our soul’s purpose. When we release the grief, the magic begins to emerge from under the surface. With so much grief and being forced to slow down, it can be easy to spiral. It’s not easy to live a life where we can’t live out the able-bodied fantasies that we may have watched on TV. But our existence is truly magic, whether we can see it obviously or not within the grief. It simply is. And we must let go of the grief so that we can finally see the magic underneath.
How do we grieve in a supportive way?
Releasing grief is not an easy task. It means we must actually feel. We must allow the sad and the anger that we tend to push away, to rise to the surface and shake us at our core. We must find the tools that allow us to move through these emotions with grace, including but not limited to community, therapy, somatic practice, psychedelics, stretching, dancing, and prayer. And we must do it in a way where we feel we are in a safe and supportive environment. It is important to let people into this who we can trust. Someone will hold us who will sit with us in our feelings and not shy away. Be in the form of a partner, a friend, a family member a therapist or a support group. Where our grief will not be weaponized or held against us. Where we can fully accept our tears and the surrounding company can as well.
Some people may feel the urge to go into fixer mode and try to figure out exactly what is wrong with them so that they can come up with a solution. Trying to fix the problem is counterintuitive to feeling. Feeling grief is not a time to rationalize, it is a time to let emotions flow without judgement toward ourselves, or trying to diagnose ourselves.
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