Healthcare should be one place that is sacred and safe to get the help you need without judgement. Doctors take an oath to do no harm, but I wonder, do they think about that when they provide subpar levels of care just because of a patient’s weight?

I don’t know stop. I don’t know quiet. I don’t know peace. How to just sit and be. And I don’t know these things because I’ve never been taught to rest without guilt, or stop without shame

Our minds are marvels at protecting us from things we are better off not knowing, but our bodies never seem to forget. It is as if they know that pain must be held first if there is any hope of letting it go, and so they soak it up.

My heartbeat quickens and my stomach churns as I imagine what could have been done to my body, what can still be done to my body.

How do I care for such a vulnerable asset?

“Vaseline darlin.”

It coats her skin, our skin, like armor.

I never imagined that Fluff would become both my business, and an integral part to my own healing and my own journey with my body.

“I am disgusted at how often I was quick to show teeth as if to say, “Don’t shoot. I am one of those good negroes.” Stretch my lips wide as I cried inside. Must fix it. Must fix mouth to say, “I’m not a problem. Forget about me.” Grin big and wide, “Look at my dimple. Isn’t it dainty? I am a woman. Protect me, too.”

We will never make a world where every BODY belongs if we are always centering my story, or the stories of people who look like me, live like me, and love like me. We have to do better than that. And we will.

…”This story - our story - the human story… it needs a new ending. And when women write the story, the human story changes.”

But here is what I know about running: It. Is. Exhausting. And where do you want to go when you’re tired?

Home. You want to go home.

And it all makes me wonder…. What if 10% of us decided to channel 10% of our energy away from the obsession with our bodies and toward the thing that sets us on fire.