Day 2 of this 30 days of self-love blogging challenge required me to identify the ‘gifts’ of my body that I am grateful for. I focussed on the very functional areas of my heart; my mind and my lungs. Sure, it may sound as if I took the easy way out, but it’s not the case. My choices were based on my own experiences with those whose organs have failed or are failing. In that blog I commented on the fact that I take these things for granted. And it isn’t uncommon – for us to not appreciate what we have until we no longer have it. It’s human nature.
I feel grateful that I personally have not dealt with significant health issues. My blood pressure was astronomically high (but is being controlled with medication AND is even lower now I’ve given up alcohol (mostly) and am losing weight), I have several autoimmune diseases (hypothyroidism, am coeliac and have some other gastritis something or other), but that’s about it. I injured my hip a few years ago and it’s failed to heal properly. I regularly have hip flexor issues and currently get shin splints… but if that’s the extent of my ailments, I know I should be thankful.
So now that day 9 has come around I am faced with identifying and acknowledging three more aspects of my body, for Gifts of the body #2. And this time I will reach a little farther and won’t stick to the safer organs… and frankly one’s intestines and pancreas are a tad boring… though there’s always the bowel and bladder. Just kidding. Kind of….
Last week, we began the first installment of the weekly “Gifts of the Body” posts. I decided that every week needed a day to take a closer look at our bodies and appreciate the blessings they provide us. Critiquing our bodies comes easily to many of us but finding praise in our physical attributes can pose a challenge. For this reason, I believe we must make the effort to change how we view our bodies.We need to shift the qualities with which we define them from aesthetic ones to purposeful ones. Hopefully, after completing 4 rounds of this exercise and having to come up with 12 different parts of ourselves we recognize as a gift, we will grow to love our bodies more and more. Are you in for today’s challenge?
You will see I find it hard to be thankful / self-congratulatory without slipping some self-deprecating comments in. ‘My legs are strong, but fat.’ I know I do this, but writing these blogs helps highlight this for me. I’m nine days into this challenge and – believe me – if someone wasn’t ‘making’ me (in a sense) write about being thankful for my body, I wouldn’t be. So…. for that (Tina) I am grateful as well.
0 Comments