Prompt 226. Laying It Bare

& a prompt on the body by Nell Diamond

Hi friend,

I’m writing to you from Mexico City. When I committed to coming here, I told myself that all I had to do was leave the hotel once a day, even for just ten minutes. My body has been unreliable over the last year, which can be a real source of frustration. There’s a special kind of claustrophobia when your mind feels held back by your body, when your body literally will not carry you from point a to point b. So rather than set myself up for that kind of disappointment or even anger, I set the bar super low.

But this week, my body surprised me in a big way. Maybe it’s the break from chemo, but I felt like I genuinely turned a corner for the first time in a year. On Tuesday, I went in for a full day of sightseeing, including a visit to a syntropic farm (which is like a next-level regenerative farm) in Xochimilco, a neighborhood of Mexico City famed for its canals and “floating islands.” After that, a little pilgrimage to Frida Kahlo’s Casa Azul.

Both were amazing. As we plied the still waters of Xochimilco, our guide, Victor, talked about the origin of the canals: how they were dredged and the displaced earth used to build up chinampas (often called “floating islands,” though they don’t actually float). At the edges of these little plots of land, they planted tall, thin willows, which like most trees root down to the same distance that they reach up into the sky. These willows act like anchors, shoring up the edges, holding the islands in place. “Rooting is not a static process,” Victor said with a smile.

The willows in Xochimilco via César Hernández Hernández

That idea stuck with me as we toured Casa Azul—as I stood in the room where Frida was born and gazed at an unfinished self-portrait, studying the outlines that were never fleshed out. As I climbed the stairs to her studio and bedrooms, wondering how she ascended them as her health and mobility declined. As I took in her paints and brushes, the microscope her father gave her when she was a child, the medical poster of the female reproductive system and fetal development she likely used as models for her hospital paintings. As I stood beside her bed with the inlaid mirror where she lay and painted self-portraits, I thought of Frida as a willow: actively rooting, digging deep into the details of her life and her own particular plight, anchoring herself, and at the same time, laying herself bare.

Frida's corset, hospital gown, and paints

Being there, I realized what a deeply brave act that was. I don’t invoke the word “brave” lightly, overused as it is in the context of illness and disability. Frida was not brave because she survived a near-deadly accident and dozens of surgeries. She was brave because she took that experience and transformed it and said, “Don’t look away.” Because she made people confront the reality of what it means to live in a sick body, a hurt body. Because she showed us the very thing I’ve been talking about all year—which I sometimes worry I’m exhausting people with, but that I’m going to say again because it’s the truest thing I know, the thing I remind myself of every day: living means learning to hold the astonishingly beautiful and unbearably hard things in the same palm.

With regard to the body, it’s a hard time of year for many of us. For weeks now, we’ve been bombarded with ads about all the self-improvements we need to undertake, many of them centered around weight loss and exercise. I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted by the effort of not just trying to heal myself, but the pressure to constantly strive toward some impossible state of being and looking. And so today, I’m resharing my friend Nell Diamond’s gorgeous essay and prompt, “Tender and Strong”—in honor of our bodies, and all they are and aren’t, all they can and cannot do.

Sending love,
Suleika

Some Items of Note—

• We posted the video replay of our live journaling session—the capstone to our New Year’s challenge. If you missed it, you can find it here!

• Last week I shared “My Year of Love: A Photo Journal of 2022.” It’s a look back on what I thought was the worst year of my life but was in fact so much more.

• In the Isolation Journals Chat, we’re continuing our weekly ritual: our list of collective gratitude. This time, I wrote about a core memory and asked the community to share one of theirs. You can add yours by tapping the button below!

Frida Kahlo, El venado herido (The Wounded Deer), 1946

Prompt 226. Tender and Strong by Nell Diamond

At 13-years-old, my body felt like an enemy. 

I sat on the floor of my tub with the bright lights blaring and willed myself different. I hated the long, tangled hair, the skin so pale it showed blue veins, the flesh that hung over the waistband of my Miss Sixty jeans. I fought my body with celery and cold sliced turkey. I plucked and brushed and cried when she wouldn’t bend. Humanity spilled out of me and I mopped it up hungrily, desperate to fit neatly into the world.

Seventeen years later, I sat in a cold room on the Upper East Side and watched two dark circles appear on an ultrasound screen. Twins. “High risk,” said the doctor with the cat-eye liner. “This will be difficult.” I walked along Seventh Avenue that afternoon and begged my body for forgiveness. I begged her to find the strength to bring me my babies.

For nine months, I multiplied, my cells dancing. My skin stretched to fit two brains, two hearts, twenty fingers and toes. By September, my organs huddled close, like lovers in the winter. I was round like a balloon, like a beach ball, like a planet spinning through time and space.

I watched my body shift and grow like a gardener tending to a rose bush. I fed her bread and butter and sweet, syrupy lemonade and plates of cucumbers dusted with salt. I held her close even when the vomiting felt endless, even when I had to sleep sitting up. Mostly I stayed out of the way and let her get to work. I trusted this sturdy thing with a mind of its own, these mounds of flesh and blood.

Together, we made it to October. On the day I gave birth I felt an other-worldly sense of purpose. I was so certain of my body’s ability to power through.

In a room with twenty doctors and nurses, I closed my eyes and curled my spine and pushed with everything in me until I met my babies. Twelve pounds of life sprung into the air. When I held their sticky bodies on my chest, I felt hot joy like a middle school fever dream. My body was open and raw and ravaged but she kept me breathing, kept me awake to feel the warm breath of my two babies on my neck.

Today I rejoice in the deep purple gashes on my hips and thighs, the black wiry hairs, the bones that still feel fragile and soft. My body is a tender thing and she forgave me for not trusting her. 

Your prompt for the week:

Think about a time that you experienced a shift in your relationship with your body. What caused this shift? Did it last?

If you’d like, you can post your response in the comments section, in our Facebook group, or on Instagram by tagging @theisolationjournals.

Today’s contributor:

Nell Diamond is the founder and CEO of Hill House Home, a digital-first lifestyle brand offering bedding, bath, baby, accessories and apparel, including their widely beloved Nap Dress™. Nell received a BA from Princeton University and MBA from the Yale School of Management. Born and raised in London, Nell lives in New York City and is a mom of three.

For more paid subscriber benefits, see—

• My Year of Love, a photo essay where I look back on what I thought was the worst year of my life but was in fact so much more

• Marriage Vows and the Myth of a Good Catch, an installment of Dear Susu where I answer the question, “Is it selfish to ask someone to marry you if you’re ‘broken’?”

• On Hard Journeys and Packing Light, a discussion inspired by Kate Bowler’s No Cure for Being Human