Have you ever gone through something tough and noticed that the people around you involved it in every. single. conversation? When I was going through my divorce (and becoming a single mom), it seemed like it’s all anyone could talk to me about. They weren’t trying to bring me down, in fact, most of the conversations were supportive and encouraging and let me know that they were thinking about me. But I was more experiencing more than my divorce, more than my impending single motherhood – my life, job, kids were all still doing their thing. Yet everyone reminded me alllll the time of this big thing happening, while they could have easily asked me about how work was going, how the kids were doing – you get the idea.

So how does this tie into body positivity?
The divorce = the body. We can do years of work learning to stop hating our bodies, we can buy clothes that we feel good in, we can practice intuitive eating, we can stare at ourselves naked and say nice things every morning.. and don’t get me wrong, these are all good things. (..and I think these things can be an important part of healing our body image.) BUT it’s all. about. your. body. At some point, it’s worth considering that our body is just a body and there is a whole lot more to you than just a body, just like I had a lot more to my life than my divorce.

Body positivity is not a bad thing. I think it’s a natural swing from body negativity to body positivity – but then we find a place to settle in the middle. Enter Body Neutrality.

Body Neutrality, for me, is having love for myself as a human who deserves good things, so I take care of myself, and my body is just part of that. KRISTEN deserves to feel good and be taken care of, fed well, feel strong, and experience joy and love and all the things – and my body is just part of that.

The shift is away from the body. The shift is toward YOU. Because even when we’re approaching something with love and support and joy, there is just so much more to us, to our lives, to our personalities, and to our beings – than our bodies. And really, our bodies aren’t even part of us much at all. If a mean person gains a lot of weight, they’re probably still going to be a mean person. If a sarcastic person loses a lot of weight, they’re probably still going to be a sarcastic person. Changes in my body don’t take away the fact that I’m a mother or a sister or a best friend. So body neutrality says we can take the attention off the body completely. Whether you have a fat body or skinny body, a freckled body or short body, legs with cellulite or a foot with 6 toes, you are not your body. You are you, and you deserve to be celebrated – and your body is welcome to come along for the ride. ❤️

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