For the longest time, I treated my body as something to manage, control, punish, and abuse. It started so small. Little comments from my parents, “Are you sure you’re hungry? You don’t need more of that. Haven’t you had enough?” Little denials of truth like dictating when to go to the bathroom or comparing what I ate with what my sister ate meant, slowly, comment by comment, look by look, I learned that my body was not something to trust but to override, deny, ignore, and fear.

I learned to deny my cravings, to ignore hunger pangs, or to feel ashamed when I “gave in”. I learned that people outside of me claimed to know better when it came to food and movement and what I needed and wanted, which later translated into believing that boys I dated and people I was in relationship with knew more than I did, too. After all, my desires, my cravings, my wants and needs weren’t trustworthy and were, more often than not, inconvenient.

Year after year, I did what everyone around me told me to do with my body. How to make it more pleasing to others. Why I was a failure for not looking a certain way or weighing a certain number.

It’s no wonder that knowing what I want became so fraught and foreign. No wonder advocating for myself in vulnerable, high stakes situations started to feel utterly impossible. I couldn’t hear my body screaming “no!” at the red flags. I couldn’t understand my hungers unless they got really big and loud and overwhelming.

It’s not my fault, just like it’s not your fault that our desires and our hungers feel so scary. We’ve been trained to hand our power over to others.

But the truth is these bodies are so so wise. They are constantly whispering to us, “I’d like that.” and “That would feel good.” and “Yes, more please.” And those whispers can guide us towards extraordinary connection, healing, and joy.