My Most Beautiful Thing - a Love Song to my Body.

Today, I am taking part in the 'My Most Beautiful Thing' blogsplash inspired by Fiona Robyn's just released novel, 'The Most Beautiful Thing'. People all over the world are taking part and creating a shining web of their most treasured things, which is a beautiful thing in itself.

I thought long and hard about what I would write about. Every day I write about a 'small beauty'; those little things that are so easy to miss but that, when we notice, make life endlessly beautiful. Today my small beauty is the fragile new crescent moon but what is 'my most beautiful thing'? There are so many things to choose from and yet again and again I came back to my body. Without my body I wouldn't exist on this precious planet and couldn't experience the beauty all around me.

So...

My most beautiful thing is breath, the lungs that flood my body with beautiful oxygen, from my very first breath to my last. And the space between each breath, that dance with no breath, with the tiny death that happens over and over again every day. The space where I am empty, limitless, part of everything. It is a thoughtless act of faith that breath will come again, that my lungs will rise and fall like the sun. Breath is my most beautiful thing.

My most beautiful thing is my heartbeat, the heart that pumps blood around my body, never stopping its beautiful rhythm of life, the rhythm of the drum and of Mother Earth. And in between those moments of deep silence, of endless solitude before the beat comes again. My heart is as old as time and carries the echoes of every moment that has ever been. My heartbeat is my most beautiful thing.

My most beautiful thing is my voice, a voice filled with breath and with heart; the sound of my singing, not always beautiful, but a symbol to me that I can reach out of myself, beyond my own edges, and break all my boundaries. Today, in Woolwich Town Centre, amongst the buses and the hustle and bustle of people, a tiny bird sat in a little bare tree and sang and sang and I heard it above all the noise and stopped to listen. The voice and the song are a gift, an offering to the wild spirit of freedom. I knew why that bird was singing. My voice is my most beautiful thing.

My most beautiful thing is my stomach, the home of my fire, the centre of my hearth, round and soft and comforting. My stomach speaks of woman and of nourishment, of connection to the land and to things that grow. My stomach has her own knowing. She is a teacher of deep mysteries. My stomach is my most beautiful thing.

My most beautiful thing is my womb, my deep dreaming connecting to my Mothers and to all women, a dark, red, pulsing cave of possibility, an invitation. My womb holds the red thread that reaches back to my ancestors before the ice. My womb holds the memory of the reindeer tracks. My womb pulses to the beat of the dragonlines. My womb is my most beautiful thing.

My most beautiful thing is each silver-track scar on my body. The most beautiful is the largest, reaching from my left thigh, all the way up to the top of my leg and around. It has been there since I was six months old when my dislocated hip was repaired. It has grown with me. It has become the scar of a woman, not a child, and I am proud of it. My scar sings of my fight to be born and to live. My scar sings of the beauty to be found in difference and in frailty, the beauty and power of deformity. My scar makes my body mine. My scar is my most beautiful thing.

My most beautiful thing is my body. My body is my landscape, my home, my map of the journey. She senses for me, she feels for me, she holds my pain when I am too afraid to face it, she knows how to dance in the rain and bask in the sun. She knows how to rest. I am not always good to her and yet she forgives me. She knows the beauty in me that I don't see. My body is my most beautiful thing.

A Love Song to My Body

My body is a poem

Of soft, enfolding beauty

A warm, embracing homecoming.

My body sings songs of Mother Earth

Of rich green rolling hills

And deep mysterious valleys.

My body is a wave

Undulating in the distant sea

My body is the full moon pulling at the tides.

My body dances and ripples

Like breeze across sparkling water.

My body moves

Like a snake across the desert,

Like a dancer dreaming of warm caresses.

My body is wild and untamed

Dark undergrowth and tumbling waters.

My body is soft as a dragonfly’s wing

My body sings to the ancient ocean

Of deep sex and tender longings.

My body is pulling, receptive, fertile,

Innocent, angry, wanting, needing,

Healing, expansive, sacred.

My body is Goddess,

I am my body,

My body is me…..

Jacqueline Woodward-Smith (2003)