Documenting the Quarantine ed. 5: Thanking our bodies

Jen Hatmaker was on the Facebook Live this morning reading a passage from Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire about our bodies. That’s not triggering for any of us, I’m sure. No one out there began to squirm or cross her legs for fear of the varicose veins or cottage cheese cellulite showing. Not one dear reader has body shame or is still grappling with the same dang issues she thought were behind her but continue to pull her into their toxic loop as in the manner of changing for gym class in 7th grade. And because I am perfectly at ease with the own sacred vessel that is my body, I feel comfortable enough writing about the miracle that she has been to me in quarantine. In the manner of St. Jen, here she blows:

Cheers, cheers to your teacher body who has pivoted from her comfortable spot as a sage on the stage of the classroom, into a home office that doubles as a greenhouse and a kiosk for wayward Minecrafters. She has gone, without warning, from standing and making large swooping gestures across a dry erase board and occasionally dancing, to existing as a flattened pixelated head in a box. She knows that this is not what she was created to do but she has adapted. She adapts so well. Even when she hates it, she agrees to play along.

Huzzah to your mothering body who has carried babies inside of her and papoosed them on the outside. Now she mothers ones that are taller and some smaller than she but whose problems are vastly more confusing and amorphous and seemingly solvable but probably just want to be listenable. Salutes to that listening body that hears the plights of the socially distanced youths and shows compassion on her face and offers hugs and Sour Patch Kids purchased at Costco in bulk because sugar prohibition has no place in quarantine.

Kudos to the body that has been present in her marriage, that has relished car rides and impromptu walks and laughter—my word, the knock-you-breathless laughter that this quarantine has fostered. What a beautiful thing for your body to bask in, uninterruptedly and indefinitely and unabashedly.

Raise a toast to that body that has obeyed stay-at-home orders, who has worn her unfashionable mask so well it has achieved new heights in Corona Couture. Your body has walked and run and taken medically-approved puffs of her steroid inhaler, and taken roughly three zillion showers because it feels like a field trip, that stepping into the soothing soundproof booth of steam and song. Glory!

Let’s be honest with your body: this has been a terrible time to be a body. It would be much easier being a turquoise cloud that gets to move seamlessly along the contours of the earth without boundary. But we are contained in bodies and we will occupy them and shelter within them as we shelter in this space and place that we call here and now, until all the other bodies can handle everybody taking their bodies elsewhere.