Identifying the Real Wound

Today I’m going there.

There are parts of my story I don’t share because they’re dramatic.

I share them because they matter.

Throughout my life, my body has changed many times.

I’ve lived in smaller versions of my body.

I’ve lived in bigger versions of my body.

I’ve experienced being treated differently as my weight shifted.

For a long time, I thought my struggle was with my body.

Looking back, I don’t think it ever was.

My struggle was with what people projected onto it.

Comments disguised as concern.

Jokes disguised as honesty.

Advice I never asked for.

Over time, I began to notice something.

The comments people made often revealed far more about their relationship with bodies than they did about mine.

That realization brought me a great deal of freedom.

It also gave language to experiences I hadn’t fully understood before.

One of them happened during the passing of my biological mother.

Traveling to Aruba to attend her funeral wasn’t an easy decision.

Our relationship wasn’t simple.

There was love.

There was hurt.

There was distance.

There was grief.

I carried all of it with me.

Long before I boarded the plane.

One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I have a very sensitive nervous system.

When I’m carrying something heavy…

my body often carries it too.

I’ve made peace with that.

Because that’s how God created my body.

Instead of criticizing it…

I study it.

I try to understand what it’s carrying.

I ask what it needs.

I support it until it settles again.

I have a deep love and respect for my body.

Not because it has always looked the way I wanted.

But because it has faithfully carried me through every season of my life.

While I was grieving…

a lot of people took the opportunity to comment on my body.

“Don’t eat too much birthday cake, you’ll get too big.”

It was one of the hardest birthdays of my life.

Two days later, I would bury my biological mother.

I wasn’t thinking about cake.

I was trying to gather the strength to stand beside her grave.

“You’ve gained weight, haven’t you?”

“When I was younger, I used to be fatter than you.”

Each comment left me with the same realization.

Other people felt like my body was open for discussion.

Without my invitation.

Without my consent.

Looking back, I now understand why that felt so deeply unsettling.

It was a boundary violation.

I remember confiding in friends afterwards.

They were incredibly loving and supportive.

Some suggested,

“Let’s just watch what you eat.”

Others said,

“Let’s work out together.”

I knew they meant well.

But I also knew…

That wasn’t the heart of what I was struggling with.

I wasn’t at war with my body.

Weight loss wasn’t my focus.

I was focused on burying my biological mother.

It wasn’t my weight that was hurting me.

It was the boundary violation.

One thing I want to make clear is this.

I believe our bodies deserve reverence.

They deserve dignity.

I don’t comment on other people’s bodies.

Not because I think everyone is perfect.

But because I don’t know their story.

I don’t know their genetics.

I don’t know their overall health.

I don’t know the medications they take.

I don’t know the circumstances they’re navigating.

And I don’t believe I need to know.

Respect isn’t something people should have to earn by explaining themselves.

I’ve never felt entitled to make someone else’s body the topic of conversation.

Which is why the experience felt so incredibly confusing to me.

I knew something about it felt deeply wrong.

I just didn’t have the language for it yet.

Looking back, I realize I wasn’t looking for a solution.

I was looking for protection.

It was watching my brother model how to respond to a boundary violation that changed something in me.

When he witnessed someone mistreating me, he didn’t explain it away.

He responded by placing a boundary.

Watching that made me realize what I had actually needed all along.

It wasn’t weight loss.

It was boundaries.

Not because my body needed fixing.

But because my dignity deserved protecting.

Looking back, I don’t believe healing came from changing my body.

It came from protecting what I knew to be sacred.

That is the contemplation I’d like to leave you with.

Maybe the thing you’ve been trying to fix…

isn’t the thing that’s actually hurting.

Perhaps it looks like…

Weight management.

Body image.

Plastic surgery.

An eating disorder.

Perfectionism.

Achievement.

People-pleasing.

Unhealthy dynamics.

We often become consumed with changing what is visible…

while the deepest wound quietly lives somewhere else.

Sometimes healing doesn’t begin by asking,

“How do I fix this?”

Sometimes it begins by asking,

“What is it that’s actually hurting?”

We All Have the Right to Exist Safely

Today, I want to talk about an uncomfortable topic.

A topic that may be difficult to name, but that needs and deserves to be discussed:

The sexualisation of girls’ and women’s bodies.

This topic is deeply personal to me.

While writing this contemplation, I tried to remember the very first time I felt that my body was being sexualised.

At first, I thought I was eleven years old. But as I reflected more deeply, I realised that it had begun much earlier than that.

I remember what happened.

I remember the moment.

But I no longer remember my exact age.

I only know that I was very young.

As I grew older and my body began to develop into that of a curvy Caribbean girl, the sexualisation continued to take different forms.

There was inappropriate touching.

There were comments about my developing body.

And through all of it, I was still very much a child.

I was playful, innocent and often living in my own little world.

As an autistic child, I did not always understand the meaning behind people’s words, looks or behaviour. I did not understand what sexualisation was.

All of it was deeply confusing for me.

I did not always understand what people were saying or doing, or why they were doing it. I only remember that something about it did not feel right in my spirit.

I could feel that a boundary was being crossed, even before I had the language to name that boundary.

While I was still simply being a child, my body was already being interpreted through an adult gaze.

That can make attention feel unsafe.

Now, as a 37 year old woman, I understand more clearly what the younger version of me could feel but did not yet have the words to explain.

And yet, the sexualisation did not simply disappear when I became an adult.

Even now, simply preparing to go outside can sometimes feel like preparing for a mental war.

Will I have to defend myself against unwanted attention today?

Will I be able to enjoy a peaceful walk without being followed or harassed by a man I do not know?

If I tell someone to leave me alone, will he respect my answer?

Or will he continue to insist, as though my “No” is only the beginning of a negotiation?

Encounters like these can feel deeply unsafe for women because we do not know how the man approaching us will respond.

Will he respect my boundary?

Will he continue to follow me?

Will his interest turn into anger when I do not respond in the way he hoped?

What may seem like a harmless interaction to someone else can place a woman’s entire nervous system on alert.

That is why unwanted attention is not always experienced as flattering.

Sometimes, it feels like a situation we have to navigate carefully in order to remain safe.

I once had a man approach me at the gym and say:

“I’ve seen you for a very long time, shaking your ass whenever you walk by.”

And I remember thinking: I had never seen this man before in my life.

And just because I have an ass does not mean I am shaking it for anyone’s attention or entertainment.

I was simply walking.

Simply living.

Simply existing in my body.

But in his mind, the natural movement of my body had somehow become a performance intended for him.

That is what sexualisation can do.

It can turn a woman’s ordinary existence into an invitation she never extended.

Sometimes, a woman is not trying to attract you.

She is not performing for you.

She is not asking to be approached, followed or commented on.

She is simply existing.

Something happened last week that made me reflect on this subject even more deeply.

I was sitting near a playground, talking to a male friend, when two women arrived with their children.

At one point, one of the little girls needed to pee. Her underwear was removed, and she was allowed to continue walking around the playground with her private area uncovered, in the presence of people she did not know.

When I saw her, my heart broke for her.

Because children depend on adults to protect their privacy until they are old enough to understand why certain boundaries matter.

A child’s body is innocent. But we also live in a world in which not every adult looks at children with innocent eyes.

That is a painful reality to acknowledge.

I want to encourage parents and caregivers to remain aware of this and to be proactive in protecting their children’s privacy.

Please do not normalise children being exposed in public spaces or around people they do not know.

Not because there is anything shameful about a child’s body, but because children depend on us to protect their privacy and safety while they are still learning why these boundaries matter.

They rely on us to teach them that their body belongs to them, that their private areas deserve protection and that they are allowed to have boundaries.

The responsibility should never be placed upon the child.

It belongs to the adults around them to protect their innocence, privacy and safety.

And I would love for more men to understand what it can sometimes feel like for women to simply live and exist around them.

Not because men should be afraid to approach women, but because greater awareness can help create interactions in which women also feel safe and respected.

Attraction does not create entitlement.

Showing interest does not guarantee access.

A woman’s friendliness is not consent.

Her clothing is not consent.

The shape or natural movement of her body is not consent.

And when she says “No”, moves away or asks to be left alone, her boundary deserves to be respected without negotiation.

A woman should not have to hide her body, alter the way she walks or make herself smaller in order to feel safe.

The younger version of me was not trying to be desirable.

She was playing.

She was growing.

She was simply being a child.

And the woman I am today is still allowed to simply exist in her body without her existence being interpreted as an invitation.

We all deserve to move through the world with dignity, freedom and safety.

We all have the right to exist safely.