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Practicing “Reframe Your Framework” can be confounding for those of
us navigating chronic illness or gender nonconformity. Feeling trapped in a
body that does not feel like it has your best interest at heart assuredly makes
sense. It is hard to love a vessel that appears to be the author of significant
pain. What a terrifying experience to wake up in constant pain or in a body
that does not feel in alignment with who you know yourself to be. It may
very well feel like your body is against you. Remember that this is a
thinking, doing, being journey, and we will need to try on new beliefs and
actions in the service of radical self-love. With tool 3 in mind, we are
invited to ask ourselves, “What peace, power, or joy can be gained by
deciding that this body I am inextricably tied to for the rest of my life is my
enemy?” If there is no access to peace, power, or joy in your current
framework, then it simply doesn’t serve you.
In a 2015 article on the website XOJane, author and clinical social
worker Kai Cheng Thom pens what she calls “a love letter between a
woman and her body.” She challenges the pervasive narrative of being a
transwoman “born in the wrong body.” She writes, “I began to see that my
body was not the cause of the hatred directed against me—society did that.
My body did not fail to protect me when I was attacked; I did not deserve
violence. My body has never been wrong. Someone else decided that.” 3 Kai
Cheng Thom grasped that by trying on a new framework, it was possible to
“relate to my body, transform my body, from a place of joy instead of anger
and fear.”
Radical self-love asks us to try on new ways of thinking and doing that
give us access to new ways of being. Trying on a new framework is like
trying on a new coat. It may or may not fit. The coat isn’t wrong for not
fitting. You are not wrong for not fitting in the coat. It just doesn’t fit. Far
too many of us have been walking around the world wearing our “my body
is the enemy” coat, wondering why we feel trapped and miserable. We tried
on a thinking that doesn’t fit our pursuit of radical self-love. Deciding our
body is the enemy leaves us fighting an unwinnable battle on our own soil.
It all comes down to a simple question: if you decide to be at war with your
body, how will you ever have peace?
Unapologetic Inquiry #26