I want my body to feel like home.

But I've been too busy trying to control it.

Hi. I’m Katie. This newsletter is a place for the woo curious to explore spirituality, culture, and humanity in an intersectional way. Here’s what I’m thinking about this week…

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I talk about my relationship with my body in this week’s essay. If this topic isn’t good for you to engage in right now, I’d skip this week’s post.

I also want to acknowledge the immense amount of privilege I have as a thin, able-bodied, white woman—my struggles are not the same as someone whose body has not been as readily accepted by society. I recognize that, and I also hold space for my experience.

In the corner of my childhood room, a sturdy beam of wood stretches from floor to ceiling. From a distance, it is unremarkable. Its edges are even, square, and sure. Though I have not stood in that house in the middle of the Missouri countryside in over a decade, I know that this beam holds true.

And I believe that, if I were to return home, walk up the stairs, turn right and look hard at the grain of the wood, the pencil marks would still be there.

Every year or so, my father brought out his yellow measuring tape, stood me against that beam, and marked my height with his square carpenter’s pencil, its sturdy edges not unlike that of the house itself.

I straightened my spine and pressed my back against the solid embrace of the wood, eagerly awaiting the results of my father’s precise measurements. I had always grown, at least a little—the newest mark always hovered above the last. Next to it, my father would lightly pencil in the year.

Later, after he had left, I ran my fingers carefully along the rough wood and traced the lines next to the numbers he had written: ‘95. ‘97. ‘01.

I always wondered where the next mark would fall. Would I shoot up three inches overnight, like the sunflowers that we grew in our garden each summer? Or maybe I would unfurl more slowly, gaining a half inch that I would proudly claim when asked how tall I was.

The rate of change wasn’t so important. All that mattered was that my body and I were changing in tandem. We were roommates who shared a bunkbed and a toothbrush. We stayed up late, swapping secrets as we stretched and expanded and shifted into a new version of us. We were doing it together.

If a score was being kept, it wasn’t too important. We were playing for fun.

I cannot confidently tell you when my body stopped feeling like home.

Maybe it was after watching my tall, thin mother fill our cabinets with Snackwell cakes and Fresca after declaring she was, yet again, on a diet.

Perhaps it was when my high school dance coach declared that my shoulders were “too broad” as I stood shivering in front of her in a bra, watching mutely as she placed a measuring tape over parts of my body and wrote secretive numbers on a yellow notepad.

But if I had to pick one moment where I clearly remember declaring war against my own body, it would probably be when Nathan Howard looked me in the eye at the end of a weeklong cruise and told me, in earnest, that I “looked like I had gained those ten buffet pounds everyone talks about.”

When he said that, I saw tally marks just like the ones my father had made when I was a child. But this time, instead of being a source of excitement, they were proof of my failure.

I was 15 years old.

He was an adult, a friend of the family, and the opinions of adults counted.

I had just spent the last week in a bikini.

I had eaten the late night ice cream and the pizza and the chocolate lava cake without hesitation.

My thighs, which had touched since I was twelve, spilled out from my shorts.

Points slashed across my mind, one after another, lighting up a scoreboard in my mind: away versus home. I felt sick with shame as I looked down at the place where my thighs met.

I had decided that my body was the away team. It was the enemy, not a disgustingly rude middle aged man.

I refused to eat for the rest of the day.

I wish I could tell you that things changed as I got older.

But my body and I grew farther and farther apart. I stopped remembering what it felt like to share a home together—I had spent too much time away from her to feel at ease.

I spent my 20s trying to outsmart my body. I read health blogs religiously, eagerly consuming “What I Ate Wednesday” posts and adjusting my own diet to mimic the meager portions listed. I got really into running, into barre classes, into yoga. I quit sugar once. Twice. A million times.

Three Women | Fernand Léger, 1921-22.

With each cunning move, I distanced myself from my body. I reinforced the label of “enemy,” of “other.” When I preached body acceptance and positivity in the barre classes I eventually taught, my body stood in the corner, crossed her arms, and shook her head.

You don’t really believe that, she would whisper under her breath.

By the time I turned 32, I was the thinnest I had ever been. I was also the saddest I had ever been.

To escape the heaviness of my impending divorce, I spent a lot of time in poorly-lit fitting rooms, trying on clothes and celebrating how they hung off of my fragile frame. Everything else around me was messy—paperwork, half-packed moving boxes—but my body was easy to quantify with a single digit found on a clothing tag.

One cold February day, not long after I had moved out, I wandered into Target. I filled one of those plastic red baskets with clothes that I had no need for: soft sweaters. Cropped jeans. And a tiny, floral bikini.

It’s the bikini that I remember the most, probably because I took a picture of myself in it. Standing in front of the fitting room mirror, I felt a perverse sense of pride. Look at me, I thought. Who says that I’m not okay? Look at how disciplined I am.

The ever-present scoreboard in my mind lit up, and, for once, I, the home team, had all the points. Hip bones that jutted out. Ribs that slashed my side like marks tallying up my success. My belly button, which my father once told me was shaped like a palm tree, was flat and unnoticeable.

I stood under buzzing fluorescent lights and waited for the rushing sound of a crowd cheering for me, a woman who had finally won the long-fought battle against herself. I waited to feel that happiness that would come from parading this controlled body around in front of all of the Nathan Howards in the world.

But I didn’t feel happy. Not even close.

The body keeps the score.

I keep the score.

It’s me versus me, and it doesn’t matter who started it—my mother, diet culture, Instagram, or conventionally attractive women who hunch over so their stomachs will create the sort of rolls that mine always seems to have these days.

Because I gained the weight back. And then some.

In the two years since my divorce, even though I thought I had won the battle, my body snickered under her breath and produced a different kind of leger, a tiny black book that held all of the marks that I hadn’t accounted for. The sort of pain housed deep inside of me. The restricting and withholding and denying…it was all there.

My body has changed as a result of this. My cheeks are round again. My arms are soft where they were once sinewy. And my thighs touch as much as they always did. Maybe a little more. Little by little, the scores evened.

When I take eagle pose in a yoga class, the new shape of my thighs makes it difficult for me to bind my legs. I had to give away every single pair of shorts that I bought in 2020 because they were all too small. I pull my favorite skirts away from where they cling to the curve of my stomach, right below my palm tree belly button.

I am happier in every other way. But I am not happy about this.

I glare at my body and her tiny scorebook. Why are you doing this to me? I ask her, pinching the part of my inner thighs that are bisected by stretch marks, some silvery and some an angry red.

She shrugs. I never asked to play this game, she says.

But I need you, I tell her, gesturing to the slowly-disintegrating control I have over my life. The moving boxes are here again. The roots are being ripped up. My life is changing yet again, and she is the one home that I cannot lose.

She laughs and tells me the truth.

You locked the door a long time ago.

I wish I could end this essay by telling you how I found the spare key and am, once again, in partnership with my body. I wish I could tell you that now, at the age of 34, things have changed. I wish I could write you a beautiful essay about my eventual homecoming to myself and tell you a story where I have fully embraced the ever-shifting landscape of my body.

But I cannot. In many ways, I am still that 15-year-old girl who believed that the best thing you could do with a body was to force it to stay the same.

I know that this is about control. How could it not be? In the moments where every other part of my life is spinning wildly, I cling to what I can curate and dictate and pin into place. And my body is my first, easiest choice.

I am tired of keeping this sort of score.

I want to return to the faint tally marks of my childhood, the sort that I could regard with curiosity. I want to start keeping a different record, one that measures the amount of joy and pleasure and love that my body can hold.

I want to hold hands with my body and tell her that she is allowed to change. I want to hear her laugh and tell me, I don’t need your permission. I am you.

I want to believe that I can plug my ears and drown out all of the noise: the Instagram reels where a woman tells me it’s okay to eat the bread. The articles on the newest superfood. The stupid fucking chant of “just love yourself.” As if it’s really that easy.

I don’t want body positivity because I don’t want to think about my body so damn much. I want my relationship with her to be like the one I have with my breath: still there, supporting me, even in the moments when my mind isn’t wholly focused on her.

I don’t want body neutrality because I crave the moments where I am intimately connected with my body and her eccentricities: my crooked second toe, the dimples of skin across my thighs, the strong curve of my calves. I want to watch my body shift and change exactly how I watch the moon wax and wane: with curiosity and awe.

I want to believe that all of this is possible. I have to believe all of this is possible.

I don’t think I can live the rest of my life with this sort of scoreboard looming over my head.

The other night, I stood, naked, in front of the full length mirror in my bedroom and looked at my body.

The first minute was difficult. I wanted to walk away because immediately, the scoreboard appeared. +1 point for a visible collarbone. -1 point for the violin shape of my hips.

But after the minute passed, something shifted. I began to move my body and watched as it changed shape. I watched the skin on my side fold like origami as I stretched my arm overhead. I watched the spill of my stomach as I took uttanasana, standing forward bend. My mind skittered into a place of scorekeeping every so often, but pure curiosity drew me back.

For a moment, I was at home with my body. I opened the windows and let out the stale air. I moved about her rooms with a nearly-forgotten familiarity. For once, I did not feel like a stranger in my own home.

It was just a moment. But it was a start.

I don’t really know what sort of discussion to ask for on this sort of post, but I hope some of this resonated with you. Let me know.

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✨Cards for Humanity: The Devil ✨

Whether you’re into tarot or not, here’s a few things to consider about this weird thing called life.

The fifteenth card in the major arcana is probably the one that elicits the strongest reactions when I read tarot for other folks. And it’s easy to see why—it’s pretty scary! The figures we first encountered in the sixth card in the major arcana, the Lovers, reappear, but this time, instead of an angelic presence hovering overhead, they are governed by the menacing Devil.

The Devil mimics both the Hierophant and the Magician with his body language—he, too, points his hands up and down, indicating that this particular card holds both earthly and spiritual lessons. But instead of providing guidance, the Devil speaks of limitations: the fiery torch in his bottom hand represents a passion that has gone too far and is now used to hold us captive.

The chains that surround the two humans on the card also speak of entrapment: the heavy iron links surround the necks of the man and woman, indicating a connection that has become unfulfilling and even toxic. Whatever is binding these two together is no longer serving either party…but it is difficult to see how to free themselves.

Often, when I see this card, I encourage people to ask themselves to examine these chains and to see how empowered they are to liberate themselves from patterns that no longer serve. But these days, I think the Devil is less about telling us to free ourselves and more about choosing to see ourselves as humans who are all bound to something in some way, shape or form.

The Devil can be a card that makes us feel weak, inadequate or even stupid—like we’re fated to continue to play this unfulfilling game where everyone’s keeping score but nobody’s winning. But there’s a lot of humanity in this card because it speaks of a universal truth: we all have relationships that have become toxic. The relationship with ourselves, our bodies, other folks, our job…the list goes on. It’s part of life.

We can shame spiral ourselves into a place of inertia, where we can do nothing but feel bad about these chains…or we can choose to look at the reality of what we face and look for ways that we can move in spite of these chains. It’s less about shaking them off and more about learning how to work with them.

The Devil is never far from us, and as such, we are never completely free from this place of darkness where we are in competition with our very human nature to judge ourselves and others. I suppose the Devil is more about choosing honesty over shame…and knowing that you are not less than or weaker than others because you struggle. Because we all do.

When the Devil appears in a reading, look at yourself with love. When you see the less-than-ideal parts of yourself emerge, hold space for both loosening the chains and loving the person who wears them.

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✨Prompts | The Devil ✨

Meditate. Journal. Pull some cards.

☀️ Where has shame shaped your life? What new shapes can be made in its release?

☀️ What chains do you wear, and how can you move in spite of them?

☀️ Where in your life do you feel powerless? What acts can help you reclaim a sense of agency?

☀️ Where in life can you make space for acceptance of your flaws? What would it feel like to be at home with your imperfections?

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✨Weekly Mantra✨

Write it down. Say it out loud. Share it with a friend.

I choose to work with myself, not against myself.