The only thing that’s mine.

Have you ever had the experience of reading a book and suddenly you realize that it’s the book you have always wanted to write? That happened to me yesterday. I got through the first few chapters of a new book happily engaged, but as I continued to read a slow curdle began to grow in my stomach. I didn’t want to keep reading because I knew that the book in my hand was the story I had been conjuring in my mind for years. I snapped the book closed. Dammit! Throwing it down on the bed with a smack, I said out loud, “Is there anything that’s mine?” The question lingered in the air as my hand fell onto my chest. I felt the rise and fall of my chest under my hand as I breathed, and the answer to my question appeared. My body. My body is the only thing that’s mine.

As soon as my first child came out of my body, I was hit with the most intense feeling that she was already moving away from me. It was deeply humbling and scary because I instantly understood that she was her own being. I am only here to guide and keep my children as safe as possible, and to create a space for them to discover themselves. No, my children have never once been mine.

There have been many times in our 30 years together that I have wanted my husband to be mine. I have wanted him to share my views, like what I like, go against his inner judgment to agree with me, only need and want me and nothing else. Despite my efforts to change him into me, and despite his efforts to do the same with me, I can happily report we remain steadfastly ourselves. Which is not to say we have not changed! On the contrary, we have changed with each other but not into each other. This is one of our greatest feats.

I once made a dance where one dancer said to another dancer, I have an idea, you be my voice while I tell you what to say. The first dancer begins to move while the second dancer translates in spoken word what the first dancer dictates through movement. This dance was filled with ideas, ideas that each dancer shared with the other which somehow turned them into each other. The ideas in this dance were not mine although they did formulate in my mind. They were a combustion of many ideas that had come to me, not only from my own head, but from the heads of other idea-makers that I had loved, learned about, and experienced. But now I wonder if even my thoughts are my own. When I work with clients in therapy, one main topic of discussion is sorting through the voices in our heads that create our belief systems. Whose voices or ideas are they really? Mother? Father? Ancestors? Media? Culture?

If my body is the only thing that is truly mine, what do I do with it? And what do I do with the knowledge that there are people whose bodies are not their own – those that have no say in how their body is treated or not treated? The horror of a deeper understanding of what it is like to not have body autonomy sinks in. What do I do about those whose bodies – the only aspect of life solely their own - is assaulted, forced to have sex, or to give birth against their wishes? These desperate thoughts swirled in my head as I marched to my desk and filled out the volunteer form at Planned Parenthood. What can I do with my body? I can act.

Later, after my book hurling, deep thinking, and action taking I was in the car with my teenager. I told her about the profound realization about my body being the only thing that is truly my own. She replied matter-of-factly, the sunglasses on your face are yours. There’s nothing like a teenager to pull you out of existential crisis and ground you firmly back into consumer capitalist reality.

My body is mine and I need a new idea for a book.