Mik Zazon

Dear me,
I know this feels unfamiliar.
The way your body looks, the way it moves, the way it holds onto things you wish it wouldn’t. You keep trying to catch up to it, like if you just understood it better, you’d finally feel at home again.

But maybe this isn’t something to solve.
Your body is not a problem that needs fixing. It’s a relationship that’s asking for patience. And right now, you’re in the middle of learning a new version of each other.

It makes sense that this is hard. You’ve lived in a world that taught you your worth could shift with your shape. Of course your mind is trying to keep you “safe” by questioning, analyzing, comparing. That doesn’t make you weak. It means you’ve been paying attention.

But there is another way to move through this.
You don’t have to wake up one day and suddenly love everything you see. You don’t have to force yourself into acceptance before you’re ready. You can start smaller than that.
You can start with neutrality.
With choosing not to punish yourself for something your body is doing to protect or sustain you.

This body has carried you through grief, through pain, through days when getting out of bed felt impossible. When pain from an invisible illness is unbearable. It has adjusted, adapted, and kept you here. Even now, it is not working against you.
Look what it’s done for you, creating the garden of your dreams, and caring for animals in need.
There is nothing wrong with what you look like.
You are allowed to feel the grief of what’s changed without turning that grief into shame. You are allowed to miss past versions of yourself and still make space for who you are becoming.

Loving your body might not look like celebration right now.
Maybe it looks like care.
Like rest.
Like feeding yourself enough. 
Like speaking to yourself a little more gently than you did yesterday.
You are not behind. You are not failing. You are in the middle of something real.
And even if you don’t fully believe it yet, this version of you is still worthy of being seen, of being loved, of being lived in.
I’m right here with you, figuring it out one day at a time.

Love,
Me