My therapist recommended an affirmation book specifically for sexual abuse survivors. There are 52 weeks, and each week has an affirmation you are supposed to repeat everyday and ponder. So I thought I would blog my thoughts and feelings on each affirmation. Today is “My body is my own.”

I have a lot of confusion that comes up when telling myself that affirmation because I have never really known that. People have done many things to my body, that I feel disconnected from it. It’s like I am thinking, “This is the body I was born into, but I don’t have any rights to it.” This affirmation was the first time I even considered that my body is my own.

I also have a lot of hate when it comes to my body. I am disgusted with it. That’s why I struggle with Bulimia. I am always trying to make my body perfect, because the way it is, I really hate, but the thing is, it never ends up perfect enough for me to say, “I like my body.” Some of the other affirmations that I will write about later say something like, “I love my body,” or something like that. The concept of loving my body is foreign to me.

That concept brings a lot of spiritual baggage that I grew up with as well. I was taught that I should not love myself, or be proud of myself. That self-pride was a sin. So the idea of the fact that I am supposed to love my body automatically makes me feel angry and uneasy. I am trying to learn to develop my own beliefs about God, not what I have been raised to believe, but it is hard. It is like the beliefs are hard-wired into my brain.

But, I will go more in depth with that when that affirmation comes up. I am going to try to write my thoughts about this same affirmation every day, and see if anything new comes up for me. Some days where nothing new comes up, I might not write that day, but for this week, I will kind of “meditate” on this affirmation as I go through my week.

If you would like to follow my process of changing my beliefs using these affirmations, I invite you to subscribe to my blog. Maybe it will help you as well, if you are a survivor of sexual abuse. Maybe we can all work on healing together. Feel free to share your thoughts and feelings about this affirmation as well, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Kelly