 My relationship to my body has changed a lot since becoming an amputee. I've always had a bit of a complicated relationship with it. We live in a culture that promotes odd ideas of what bodies should and shouldn't be, and I was not immune to those standards growing up. I developed an eating disorder when I was 13 that morphed into a different eating disorder by the time I was 15 that eventually changed into obsessive exercise in early college. I always have had this narrative ongoing in my mind as many of us have that I am not what I should be, that my body is not what it should be. Now, when you are someone who has dealt with chronic pain, chronic illness, or disease, something that is not right within your body, I think it further complicates our relationships to ourselves. It promotes a distancing because the body is not a particularly safe or easy place to exist in. On top of that, for those of us like myself who have experienced trauma, physical trauma, sexual trauma, the message becomes reinforced that the body is not a safe place to be. I've spent years of my life distancing myself from my physical form. I oftentimes don't feel like I'm really here, right? Like, I don't feel like this belongs to me because why would it? It's not right. I don't like it. It's not safe. It hurts me. I don't want it, right? I think I've punished my body for that for years. I think I've starved it and forced it into different molds of what I thought it should be. In the years immediately before my amputation, I started developing a little bit of a healthy relationship to my body. I didn't hate it quite as much. I was okay not stepping on a scale every day and checking the numbers and seeing if that number was going to ruin my day because if it was a little bit too high, for whatever reason, that really messed with my brain and it would affect my mood the rest of the day, just mentally berate myself for allowing this to happen. It's taken a long time to heal the pieces of how I talk to myself and how I view myself and how I view my body, but it was getting a little bit better. I was really concerned that when I had my baloney amputation, when I permanently looked different from the rest of average people, though I don't like the word when I became disfigured and could no longer fit the standard of the perfect image or the perfect ideal or whatever that is, I was afraid that it would trigger really bad old habits and I probably went in a little overconfident. I realized that there was a risk there that I might start hating my body again or trying to harm it in some way, but I thought, you know what? I've got some confidence now. I've worked through a lot of stuff. I'm sure it'll be just fine. And then I lost my leg and I realized that that was maybe a little bit naive. I did struggle for a while with how I saw myself. I did not like looking at my uncovered amputated limb, my residual limb because that was not attractive. That was just icky to me, right? Even though I could talk about it on camera and show pictures and probably seemed like I was comfortable enough with it to most people, it was a point of insecurity for me. I questioned if my husband could ever, ever be attracted to me. He constantly assured me that he was, but I still wondered because I didn't love how I looked. And that took a couple months, but it began to calm down. You may have heard of the body positive movement. At its core, it promotes celebrating your body, loving it, just, you know, accepting it, loving the skin you're in, loving whatever size you're at. And I've never really resonated with that movement because I don't love my body. I've spent a lot of years thinking about my body. I've spent a lot of years over analyzing it. I am very aware of my form, though it was a little bit of a rocky start with insecurity and feeling weird and different. And I still have moments of that. Since I lost my leg, how I've viewed my body has really shifted. And I think it's shifted strangely in a positive way. I think a lot of people expect people who are disabled, people with disabilities to be uncomfortable with their skin because people think that they would be uncomfortable given that situation. But I've discovered quite the opposite. The more I've been an amputee the longer I've lived this life, the more I've began to appreciate my body for what it actually is and what it does. It's a vehicle that allows me to live my life and I've heard that message for years, but it never really connected with me. I heard a lot from the sort of body positive movement about loving yourself and loving your body and just being ecstatic about the skin you're in and it doesn't matter what you look like, you're perfect the way you are. And while I appreciate all those messages, I could never quite get on board with them because I don't feel this ecstatic love for my form. I've begun to appreciate it for what it can do. I hopped on a scale the other day for the first time in a very long time, which in itself is an achievement. And the number I saw was concerning to me. It wasn't what I wanted to see. And then I paused for a moment and wondered why I was upset about that. It's an arbitrary number. I am healthy. I'm not concerned about my weight. It's not a health concern right now. Why was I letting that eat at me? Why was that affecting my day? Because what my body allows me to do is to get up this morning at 5 a.m. with my dog and go to an open space we have near us and watch the sunrise over our Colorado mountains and throw a stick for my silly dog who just wants to chase sticks and balls all day and hike two and a half miles in the beautiful summer air. I get to experience those things and feel those things because I have a body. I've spent a lot of time wishing I didn't have a body wishing I didn't have this body wishing it was different and I certainly have those moments still but what my body can do is incredible. Like it's mind-blowing to me what it can recover from that a part of itself can be removed multiple times and I can walk around on a piece of metal a very well engineered piece of metal but a piece of metal that is tied on to me and experience incredible things. I heard a term the other day called body neutral which I really liked because body positive never quite fit for me but the idea of being body neutral is that you have a body and it's a body and that makes a lot of sense to me because that's what I've started to feel I've stopped thinking so much about what it looks like and started appreciating a lot more what it can do for me I've wanted to take care of it so that I can do the things that I love not so I can look a certain way or not hate myself when I look in the mirror the more I've been able to focus on those things the more I've been able to focus on what I can do on the experiences it allows me to have the less oppressive the thoughts of what I look like have become Now I want to add that I fully recognize that this is not a simple issue I'm not suggesting that I just started thinking better thoughts about my body and now I no longer hate myself it's been a process of, oh you know, a decade and a half but it's funny to me that losing a part of my body has caused me to have this deep appreciation for my skin for what my skin contains for the abilities it allows me to do I absolutely very much still have moments when I'm super conscious of what I look like and I don't like it and my brain is fixated on trying not to think about it but it's right there but those moments are passing now they're much more fleeting I think it's incredible that I can walk not everyone has that privilege and I am so grateful for it for now, I don't know how long it will last for but right now things are going really well it's always felt like a waste to me to spend so much time and effort and energy on how I appear to other people but it's something that I've had a very difficult time getting away from those thoughts have been all I've thought about for some years of my life I live in a society that very much promotes this mindset that promotes always improving what you look like and always improving your body and getting more fit or getting skinnier or whatever it is though we've made them matter a lot it's not what matters what matters at least to me is what our bodies allow us to do the things we get to feel and experience and taste and smell and move in and this is not a journey that's completed for me I don't think it really ever is for anyone but I'm grateful that losing a limb has taught me to really appreciate what I have, like sincerely be grateful not a forced gratitude not like I'm grateful I have a body, yay but I still wish it was different sincerely grateful to have this for now and to be able to sit on my bed and drink coffee to be able to walk downstairs or move downstairs and make myself lunch in a few minutes at least in the societies I've existed in bodies are complicated they're not just complicated for me they're complicated for most people how we view body image is hard but I've begun to think that there is a way to heal that, to balance that I've begun to try to implement that for myself I'm really grateful that losing a limb has taught me to appreciate what I have left