This morning, I went for a run. It has been a long time since I last did. I had forgotten how much I love this feeling, especially on a cold, dry winter morning. This feeling of being frozen when you start to trot and on the contrary to have the cheeks that burn when you finally enter your house, which suddenly seems overheated … And then, little by little, come back down, the muscles deliciously sore, and enjoy a hot coffee on the sofa before going to relax in the shower.
But this morning, deep inside me, like a small pang in my heart… Today, if I left my usual swimming pool, it is to support a woman who has just lost her soul mate.
This woman, we’ll call her V, lost her husband in a car accident.
This woman, I have never met her.
I only know her through a screen, through a support group, linked to sport and a better lifestyle.
But, when I needed support, V was there.
By her example, she pushed me to get out of my comfort zone, to push my limits.
Thanks in part to her, I became more active, going from a saggy woman on her couch to a woman who could run six kilometers in thirty minutes despite my size 42.
So today, as she mourns her husband, each according to our possibilities, we have decided to run, walk, swim, in short, sweat, in honor of V, in memory of her husband.
Because that’s what real women do: they support each other. Despite the distance, despite the vagaries of life.
That’s what I learned from V and a few other such women.
These women also taught me to respect myself, in my everyday life, in my body, to make sure that I live better with myself.
Because I will have to live in this body until I die …
And yes, it is obvious that I had never seen before!
This body that I have mistreated for so long by ignorance, stupidity, fear or quite simply forgetting… This body marked with extra pounds, scars and dramas. This body which houses a simple heart and soul, also marked by the vagaries of life.
But now, I feel like these broken Asian pottery, repaired by the art of kintsugi.
In this Japanese tradition, broken objects find a new lease of life and can continue their life: they are repaired with gold lacquer.
The scars are visible, golden, they catch the eye. And yet, it is these scars that suddenly give value to the object.
Did you know that these kintsungi pottery was even sold for more expensive still on the art market than intact pieces?
It is the same with our bodies: our scars are the reflections of our experiences, of our life. We should be proud of it.
So yes, I have big thighs and a big ass.
My face is often marked by fatigue.
And I would never have the silhouette of a magazine model.
But I am what I am, with my story. Woman, mother, lover and loving. I move for myself and for others.
I shine from my past, from my cracks and my breaks.
I have already been broken, laid lower than the earth, but I am here… with hope, with strength and with the certainty that even if the road is sometimes strewn with pitfalls, the best is yet to come.
