When Your Body Shows the Score

Facing the Truth About My Body

Photo by Samuel Ramos on Unsplash

To say that I am on a health journey is an understatement. I am engaged in a physical revolution which involves a civil war within myself.

Many of us have love/hate relationships with our bodies. I am not the exception.

But, truth be told, I have held more hate than love; more contempt than marvel; more regret than hope when it comes to my flesh—my body—this physical address where my soul currently resides.

But, there is a shift happening in me. Something in me has clicked. I’ll spare you the “before and after” picture. I have none. But I do have a story to share.

What I have is my complicated journey to amend my ways; accept my body and embody a truth that now feels more like freedom than chains. I’m on my way of living this out now and living this out in a deeper and more elemental way than I ever have before.

My poem, “Give Homage to My Body” reveals my naked vulnerability. My words here lay bare some shame. There is no rhyme in my regret about being asleep to myself in a physical sense. This poem is inviting you to look with me into the mirror. Here, you will not only see me—but perhaps yourself as well. You be the judge.

In a world of air brush polishing of photos and advertisements; in a culture that idolizes the fit; in an epidemic of over-weight masses, it became time for me to look in the mirror and make a choice.

I am making the choice to live better so that I will be better—be healthy. Be integrated: body and soul.

I had to face the truth about myself housed in this body of flesh.

More than a diet, my journey is learning to give homage to my body. I could not just treat the symptoms. I needed to find the root cause of so much “food chatter” going on inside my head—for as long as I can remember. Something got broken in me as a boy that I am now trying to repair as a man—as an older man at that.

It’s never too late is the wisdom I am asked to believe.

It’s not about calories. It is about a whole, new and transformed way of looking at my body—which has kept the score all of my years on Earth.

Here’s my poem of confession, lament and hope for transformation to be found in my flesh—not just my soul.

It is time. Now is the time. Every day I now want to give homage to my body—not just my soul.

(To read “Give Homage to the Body” and all of my poems on Substack, you’ll need to upgrade your subscription. You can do that here:

Give Homage to the Body

by Stephen W. Smith


Now is the time to give homage to my body.
I am coming to understand that my body is not an afterthought.
For too long, body has been foe, not friend.
I felt divided, detached, divorced in my essence.

I was imprisoned in this matter that felt overinflated.
There I hid. There I survived. There I endured.
Reading I was “fearfully and wonderfully made” felt more a tale than truth.
Late am I to embody this treasure buried in my fallow field of fat.

Sometime, we must face the facts about our bodies.
Face the brutal. Face the beautiful.
Face our fears. Face the shame we have so absorbed into each and every cell.
Then, tell the truth about our skin-wrapped souls, no matter how astonishing it is.

Too much soul, not enough body is my story.
I drank the elixir of the Gnostics.
I felt numb to my sinews, skin, skeleton, and scalp,
Lost in a spiral headed down, down, down. 

What is the story of your body?
You tell me yours, and I will now share mine.
You bring your body, and I will give of mine.
This courageous vulnerability will bridge our great divide.

My body has kept the score.
Labs and lips of doctors conveyed the somber and sober truth.
It was then I awakened and took the invitation to genuinely care
For my body, to revere this soul made flesh—to quit calling my body “it,”

To live embodied, 
To now hold space for my precious flesh and blood,
To not die before I am dead,
To embrace my wholeness, my fragile and fantastic self.

It does not take a lightning bolt or diagnosis to awaken and love our flesh,
To say, I will embrace wonder, adventure, and beauty
With those I love for as long as I can,
My body taking me, carrying me, holding us together.

This body is my incarnation.
When I now look into the mirror to see myself,
I can say, “Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I have come to love. I am here to live.”

So, my Substack friends, I am wondering how this will sit with you. What’s stirring? Is there a line that invites you to reflect more?

This isn’t just me, surely.

Can you relate in some way that might be helpful to share here?