A post shared by Your daily reset (@yourdailyreset) on Jan 23, 2017 at 8:03am PST

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” ~ Mary Oliver

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I have had a fraught relationship with my body over the years, particularly as a growing teenager and a young adult.

It has taken me a long time to appreciate this gift as the worthy vessel that it is. Like many precious elements of our lives, we cannot always appreciate them when we need to, with hindsight offering the best angle.

Let’s not waste our lives waiting for gifts to reveal themselves. Let us try to appreciate all that we have, without holding the false measuring tool of perfection on our precious lives.

A Gift.

This is a gift.
This is a gift, from my body to me.
This is a gift, from my body to itself.
This lesson.

This extra flesh, these extra parts of me that expand my physical being,
Have been sent to me
To teach me to love my body for its inherent worth
Its value despite its extra edging
Despite the subtle lack of slender
Despite what I feel when I look in the mirror,
Or precisely because of that.

Remember when you promised to love your body?
To love it as your worthy vessel through this physical experience,
To love its efficacy, the miracle of its function,
Its glorious physicality?

Remember when you promised to love it because it works,
Because it allows you to Be
Here, now, experiencing all of this?
Remember that?

Love your body now just as much as ever,
For it is made for more than resembling the images of what we are told to love.

My body, and your body, and all bodies
Are more miracle and wonder
Than glossy pictures can dictate or define

My body, and your body, and all bodies
Are here to represent a unique flair of existence,
A personally designed choreography by the universe in motion,
An inimitable expression of creation.

My body, and your body, and all bodies
Are made for the reality of love,
The messy, explosive journey of Real True Love.

My body, and your body, and all bodies,
That house heart and mind and soul,
Are made for expansion and opening,
And cracking and retracting,
And crushing and rebuilding
And opening and shining
And radiation of Love.

I am Love. You are too.
And this lesson
Shows that every gift
In whatever form it comes
Can grow you and show you
The reality of your being.

~

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Author: Jenny O’Hare
Image: @yourdailyreset/Instagram
Editor: Callie Rushton
Copy Editor: Catherine Monkman