wanted from them. My cheeks flush as I remember the closet door thrown open, one of their mothers finding us, seeing what was happening, and never speaking of it again.
More memories swirl around in my psyche, and I realize that every memory I have that is connected to my body is full of shame, regret, guilt, and hatred. Is that true for you, too?
The mercy of remembering
It’s hard work, diving in and remembering. So many memories we have are painful, and it’s normal to avoid things that hurt us or make us uncomfortable. If memories of our bodies bring up shame or hatred, more than likely we will avoid those memories. Here’s the problem, though: if you avoid the pain and shame, neglecting the work of going through tough memories, they don’t just disappear. I am who I am today because of all the experiences I have had. If I choose to ignore or avoid the hard ones, I don’t fully know or understand myself. If I just stuff them or hide them away? That will never lead to lasting peace. This is true for all of us.
If memories are not addressed intentionally, they will continue to interfere with our normal operating systems. In The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Bessel A. van der Kolk writes:
We may think we can control our grief, our terror, or our shame by remaining silent, but naming offers the possibility of a different kind of control. When Adam was put in charge of the animal kingdom in the Book of Genesis, his first act was to give a name to every living creature. If you’ve been hurt, you need to acknowledge and name what happened to you…. Feeling listened to and understood changes our physiology; being able to articulate a complex feeling, and having our feelings recognized, lights up our limbic brain and creates an “aha” moment. (232)
Though Dr. van der Kolk is writing specifically for people who have post-traumatic stress disorder — where sufferers have endured violence, neglect, or abuse — we can draw from his wisdom. When we feel shame arise, we need to investigate why we feel that way. This is because when we can remember where that seed of shame was planted, we can go back to uproot it. That is an act of mercy toward ourselves.
For example, when I look in the mirror, I am tempted to be very critical of my knock knees. Not only do they prevent me from standing with my feet together, but as much as I scrub them, the skin covering my knees is darker than the rest of my (very white) legs. Feelings of shame arise, and I am tempted to hate my whole body.
Yet I believe that every body is a good body, without question, even bodies with knock knees. So why do I have shame about my knees? It’s not because they don’t work well — they do. It’s not because I judge other people for their knees — I don’t. But when I was a child, someone I loved made a comment. They told me how distinct my knees were, and that if I exercised a certain way, they might stop knocking together. I was ashamed because someone told me that I should be. It’s a painful memory, because I was so young, and I internalized the comment as a rejection of my body and therefore of me, too.
The mercy of God, though, enables me to go back to these memories and see the truth about my experience. In his mercy, I can see myself as the little girl I was then. I can see the person looking at my body critically, and I can see the self-hatred of their own body that they unconsciously expressed in the words they said to me. I can recognize that while I internalized their comment as a rejection of my body and of myself, it was not really that. Bringing that memory into the light of God’s mercy, as hard and as painful as that can be, allows me to see the truth that sets me free. My knees are not bad just because someone else thought they were, and I am under no obligation to hate them. There is no shame in having discolored knock knees. They are my knees, and they do amazing things!
Just because I have remembered that moment of shame regarding my knees, however, doesn’t mean that I don’t still struggle with judging my body. The difference is, now that I have named that experience and called out the lie that says knock knees are shameful, I can counter the tape player in my head that gets on to me about my knees. Over time, the volume of that tape player gets turned down and down and down, until I can’t even hear it anymore.
Wearing shorts — something I used to approach with apprehension — is now an act of defiance I perform against the commentary that my knees are somehow not good. Naming the shame has given me power over it, and I can press on in loving God and loving my neighbor as myself, even with knock knees. If we fail to embrace the stories that our bodies are telling, if we don’t name our painful memories and thereby release ourselves from their power, we can’t fully engage in the world around us. Dr. van der Kolk writes, “As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself. Hiding your core feelings takes an enormous amount of energy, it saps your motivation to pursue worthwhile goals, and it leaves you feeling bored and shut down” (232).
Practically, what does it look like to do the hard work of remembering? First, you have to pay attention to your feelings. When feelings of shame or regret come up, follow them back through your life — where have you felt like this before? Is there an experience connected with this shame? As you begin to map out the memories, ask God to help you see yourself through his eyes of mercy. Recognize any lies you believed about yourself because of what happened and uproot the seeds of shame that were sown. By removing the seeds of shame and instead sowing seeds of mercy in those memories of the past, you are preparing yourself to reap a harvest of mercy for your body today. And when you start to live out the story your body is telling with mercy and joy, others will be drawn into it. As my friend Nicole Morgan writes in her book Fat and Faithful, “Courage begets courage.”
Remember with Mary
Fortunately, we are not alone on this journey. One of my favorite things to do is to spend time before the Blessed Sacrament when I need help getting my heart and mind on the same track.
Before the monstrance that contains the consecrated host, we can start the hard work of remembering, trusting Jesus to carry us. We can let ourselves be drawn into Christ’s story. I place myself there, at the foot of Jesus’ cross during the crucifixion. Jesus hangs above me, looking at me with love mixed with pain, and he speaks to me: “Amanda, behold your mother.” I look to the side, to where his eyes are pointing me, and suddenly I am a child, weeping and longing for comfort. Mary takes me up into her lap, and as we sit at the foot of the cross together, she starts to teach me.
Like a child does, I grab at a string of beads around her neck. She reaches up and pulls the strand over her head and puts the beads in my hand. “This is how I’ve learned to treasure these things in my heart,” she whispers in my ear, and she begins to tell me about the mysteries that she has experienced — joyful ones, luminous ones, and right now, sorrowful ones. “The glorious ones are yet to come,” she tells me. The sadness in her voice is tinged with the smallest bit of hope, as we sit together beneath the crucified Jesus.
The Rosary can serve each of us as a guide as we sift through out own memories of our bodes. Yes, the reason that we pray the Rosary is to gain understanding of the life of Jesus through Mary’s eyes, to journey with her from the Annunciation all the way to her crowning. And as I journey through these memories with Mary and learn to meet God in these mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary, I also learn that I can meet him in my own set of memories, too.
What memories would be on your set of beads? If our bodies tell our stories, then that means we have to confront our memories so we can learn that story and learn to see that it is good and beautiful. For myself, this means I have to pull up many memories that are painful — excruciating, even. I don’t know if I am brave enough to do the hard work of remembering.
That’s where Mary comes to help me. And I am confident that she will come to help you, too. She urges each of us to take up our beads and map out our stories — all the mysteries that we have seen and experienced in our bodies. The joyful ones, the luminous ones, and even the sorrowful ones. “The glorious ones are coming,” she promises. Her promise gives us courage to remember. The sorrow and pain point us toward glory on this journey with God, and that knowledge can give us strength to do the hard work of remembering.
Look at the crucifix. See the broken and bleeding form of the Son