📿Learning to Love My Body, One Cough at a Time

Reflecting on illness and how to love yourself as you are

I have a cough. It’s an ugly cough. Sometimes I cough twice. Sometimes I cough for two minutes until I’m doubled over. I’ve had it for eleven days and it’s impacted my ability to sleep, making me now feel internally ugly and doubled over.

New on my desk today sits four different types of prescriptions, stemming from my second doctor’s appointment in two weeks. The first is a steroid, next to it an asthma inhaler, then a nasal spray and finally a round of antibiotics meant to be employed if all of the above doesn’t have an impact. The last feels like one of those “break open in case of emergency” boxes.

Navigating a post-pandemic world with a cough is interesting. I got the all-clear from my doctor regarding being not contagious so I kept to a plan to go to New York City for a night. I almost thought about making a custom t-shirt reading, “I Don’t Have COVID” so as to assuage anyone’s anxiety around me. I decided not to, as I feared that it would only raise more questions that were already answered by my shirt. 

The fun trip to see friends, surprisingly, did not help my healing process. I have bags under my eyes (more than usual). I have gained weight due to lack of exercise (more than usual). I am not entirely happy with how things are going in this body (more than usual). 

I have a meditation student. We’ll call him Jake. Jake just turned 24 and lives in New York City. While we were discussing some issues coming up - issues that stem from being 24 - he had the self awareness to also acknowledge that this is the age where he would likely feel the healthiest and strongest in his body. I nodded, knowingly, and coughed in response. 

On the other end of the spectrum, I work with so many people who have chronic, ongoing pains that come with the reality of aging. People whose bodies do not do what they used to do, or who suffer unknowable undiagnosable diseases that debilitate their lives (for a great take on that, check out my conversation with Liza Kindred). 

When I look at Jake, I feel sadness for myself. When I look at people who suffer from ongoing health issues - what with my prescriptions boldly claiming I will feel better five days from now - I feel sadness for them. Neither is a particularly helpful reaction to cling to.

Meanwhile, in my online meditation community, The Basic Goodness Collective, this week we’re talking about how to love yourself. We are practicing loving-kindness for ourselves, where we, for example, bring to mind various parts of ourselves, such as the part we love and admire or the part we don’t really want to look at, and send each aspect of ourselves a little bit of love and tenderness. 

Loving-kindness is a term we use in the West which stems from the Pali word metta. It’s a perfectly fine translation of the word, although I prefer the clunkier and perhaps more accurate “kind friendliness.” It’s the idea that we can offer genuine, kind friendship to everyone, knowing that this term “everyone” includes ourselves. That means befriending all of who we are, in sickness and in health, in youth and old age, as we might want to look or as we currently do.

This focus on loving-kindness got me thinking.

What if I could approach my body with the same mindfulness and compassion that I aim to bring to my meditation practice?