The Receptionist

Can I Really Become Friends With My Body?

"And I said to my body, softly, 'I want to be your friend.' It took a long breath and replied, 'I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.'"
-Oge Agibe

What a dream, am I right? Just the thought of being friends with my body feels like a huge sigh of relief.

I've come to realize lately that, while I am all about body acceptance in the general sense, my acceptance of my own body is entirely conditional. I fully love and accept my body, so long as it stays within a tiny range of criteria. Which is, of course, is not really how we treat things we love.

But what about how we treat friends? Friends are people who we care about and love in a whole range of circumstances. We want to get to know them and spend time with them and check in on them. Sometimes they annoy us, sometimes they surprise us, sometimes they spontaneously do something that makes us feel so loved we cry.

Imagine, treating our bodies like that. Like whole beings that matter and are worth getting to know, all on their own.

An animated gif illustration of a woman kissing both of her shoulders

Laura Salaberry

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The Wounded

"If you're a stranger to your own wound, then you're gonna be tempted to despise the wounded."
- Father Gregory Boyle

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Believe It Or Not, There is Still Joy to be Had in Retrospecting 2020

An animated gif illustration of a dumpster in an alley that is burning, but it's all very cute

100%Soft

Usually, I get really excited about year-end roundups every December. I love lists! What's better than a season of LISTS???

This year seems a weird one for that, and I'm sure magazine editors spent the last month freaking out about how they would do year-in-review listicles without bumming everyone out, but there are already three that have come out.

One: Vice's Everything You Already Forgot About 2020.

Some of it's a real bummer, which is to be expected, but there are some funny, quirky little news stories that I had completely forgotten about (or not noticed). Like Dr. Phil's mansion that "looks like it was decorated by a teenage energy drink tycoon" and the deadline for which George R.R. Martin said he could be imprisoned if he hadn't finished his recent book passing, with the man still walking free.

Two: McSweeney's The Best Books to Gift This 2020 Holiday Season.

This one features popular books with their titles adapted to become relevant to the year that's passed: Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere is now Enormous Fires Everywhere, Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude is One Hundred Beers in Solitude. It's a real hoot. I would probably buy a notebook set with these faux book covers.

Three: Tom Whitwall's 52 Things I Learned in 2020

Mr. Whitwall publishes a list every year of 52 things he learned that year. It's always got some delights and deeply interesting facts in it. Like the different ways emojis are perceived across cultures, the fact that the inventor of the pixel has always regretted making them square, and in 2017, researchers turned dragonflies into human-controlled drones.

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Nothing Ends, Not Even COVID

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Nothing ever ends.

That’s what they tell me, at least. The scientists, about nature. Things don't end, they change. They transform. It is, as they say, the circle of life.

Does this mean COVID will never end?

Yes, I guess so.

I mean, it really only exists (as we know it) thanks to a whole host of other transformations. It has continued to change, in tiny ways, since we got to know it on such a personal level, and perhaps one day it will change so much it doesn't even recognize itself.

Our medical interventions transform. We've developed a treatment that does whatever treatments do - the molecular version of dismantling the virus and selling it for parts? Kneecapping it so that it's rendered ineffective? Making our bodies into bad hosts so that it has to transform into something else in order to stay alive?

At some point, too, the public health restrictions we are living under will change. One day, officials will stand before us at a specially-scheduled press conference. They will try to contain themselves, but smiles will take over their faces (can you IMAGINE how they will feel on that day?) and their message will have changed completely. The records of the restrictions will be filed away. The webpages will be edited or archived. The social media posts will go stale. They will be replaced with new papers, new webpages, new posts.

Our behaviour will transform. We will hug. We will go to brunch indoors. We will attend concerts and stand right next to strangers. We will hopefully never shake hands again because that is now a repulsive and unnecessary act.

Our boredom and anger and isolation will transform into--well, they won't. We will still feel bored, angry, and isolated, although perhaps less often. We will feel those things while we host dinner parties and crowd into movie theatres and wonder if a stranger in a bar is looking at us and stand in line right next to each other and completely forget where we put our homemade masks.

Meanwhile, the virus will still exist, floating around us. Or maybe it will transform into something else, without 7.5 billion human bodies as nice, squishy hosts?

The only thing that ends is our perception of things. We decide, once this, now nothing. Once we had COVID, then we didn’t. Once we had love, now we don’t. Once we had life, now we won’t. But really, it didn't end, it just changed enough that we gave it a new label.

There is a forever-ness to life that doesn't quite make sense because eventually, we transform enough that our bodies don't work and our consciousness doesn't exist anymore. Or it changes. Into what?

Nothing ever ends. (That’s what they tell me.)

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Sarah Khan's Out of a Book

Painter Sarah Khan really has it going on. And hey! She's Vancouver-based.

A watercolour painting by Sarah Khan that is a person wearing a skirt with a big, flowery sweater, and some kind of antelope head.

A watercolour painting by Sarah Khan showing a person who is pregnant - you can see a little world in their belly - they have a beard.

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The Discipline of Hope and Also Being Very Cynical

Do you ever read an interview with an artist or otherwise known person (known enough to get interviewed, I suppose) and think, "Wow, I like how this person's mind works and also I want to be best friends with them."

This is what happened to me with an interview with writer Jia Tolentino in Interview Magazine. She has this practical cynicism that is deeply pervasive and yet doesn't seem to strip away her hope. I really identify with that.

Some quotes:

"I don’t know if a country founded on the narrative of liberty and the practice of racist exploitation can remake itself in the however many years we have left before humans are burned off the Earth."

Ooooooof and also yeah. I often find myself having to hold back my predictions of when and how humanity will be, as she says, "burned off the Earth." It's not going to be a pretty process and the Powers That Be are clearly uninterested in actually stopping it, so... here we go.

"I’ve also been really sick of my own brain for a while now."

Want to trade?

"Reading more Black writers isn’t like taking medicine. People ought to seek out the genuine pleasure of decentering themselves."

This is so true! I genuinely love watching movies or plays where there is a joke or reference that isn't for me or another language spoken without translation. There is something really wonderful about that experience.

"I don’t feel that I have the right to consider giving up hope. To do so would mean abandoning or failing to recognize the work that’s being done."

Wrapping it all up with a bow. Yes, injustice is everywhere and not stopping. Yes, disruptive climate change is, at this point, inevitable (due to human choices, not because it wasn't completely and easily preventable). But giving up hope, in the sense of giving up and just watching it all unfold around me? Not an option.

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I Don't Know Who Needs to Hear This But....

... asking a woman's permission to masturbate to her regular-life, non-sex-worker social media posts is not a nice way to respect her right to consent. It's some kind of gross harassment.

An animated gif of Paris Hilton making a grossed-out face

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Life-Changing Advice From a 90's Woman's Magazine That I Can't Forget Even When I Try

A yellow square with the word "never" in large type

Photo by Chris Piascik on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

When I was a kid, I used to read my mom's lady magazines. (Wait, that makes it sound like they were scandalous. What I mean is, my mom got Ladies' Home Journal. It has "lady" in the title. Officially a lady magazine.)

One of my favourite columns was called "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" Couples would write in with their issues, each taking a turn to describe the problem from their perspective, and then a therapist would give their take. (Yes, as a child I was reading couple's therapy columns for fun. Feel free to decide what that means about me.)

In it, I got an incredible piece of advice that has stuck with me to this day: strike the words "always" and "never" from your vocabulary when talking about another person.

People are just not that consistent. We may do something a LOT or hardly EVER, but the fact is that there are always exceptions. And so guess what happens when you claim an absolute? Those exceptions pop into the other person's head and BAM! The opposition intensifies.

Basically, our nevers and alwayses will always (ha!) be wrong, and not only that, they'll put the other person on the defensive and drive the argument towards nitpicking statistics of activity instead of whatever it's actually about.

As an extension of this, I am automatically suspicious of anyone who claims "always" or "never" status for themselves.

I am sharing this with you because:

a) I think it's good advice that everyone could use, and

b) I truly don't understand how some snippets of information we receive stick with us so effectively while others are completely lost. Why did this thing I read ONCE as a young little thing get ingrained so deep in my psyche it actually permanently changed the way I argue and yet it takes ongoing effort to remember to look at my to-do list?

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Ummmmmm... Did You Know You Can Show Love for Yourself Using Your LOVE LANGUAGES???

My friend shared this on Instagram and my eyes basically bugged right out of my head.

My people! A part of loving yourself is SHOWING love to yourself and you can do that using your LOVE LANGUAGES.

WHAAAAAA?????????

I LOVE IT MY WORLD IS NEW.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Girls Against Oppression (@girlsagainstoppression)

If you can't read the images or are averse to clicking through:

Slide 1: "I don't know who needs to hear this but practice your love languages on yourself."

Slide 2: "Gifts: I buy myself fresh flowers every week or buy yourself something you've always wanted."

Slide 3: "Physical Touch: love your body and take your time moisturizing your skin every morning."

Slide 4: "Quality Time: Take yourself out on a date. Pull out a journal and write a letter to your younger or future self. Meditate or do yoga."

Slide 5: "Acts of service: Give yourself a break and do something nice for yourself or clean your room/get organized."

Slide 6: "Words of affirmation: Say nice things to yourself like 'I'm proud of you.' 'You are the best.' 'You are so beautiful!'"

Slide 7: "In other words, don't wait for someone else to offer you the love you want and deserve. Start being intentional and actionable about how you love yourself. It makes all the difference."

LET'S DO IT.

What are your top love languages?

My number one is definitely touch and then I can never decide between acts of service and gifts (maybe I'm just extra needy). I never would have even THOUGHT that I could give MYSELF love through touch (okay that sounds very dirty, but you know what I mean), but maybe this is part of why taking my physical comfort seriously has been so helpful this year?

An animated gif illustration of a woman looking in the mirror, her reflection comes out of the mirror and hugs her.

Patrick Smith

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Your Big, Beautiful Life

A nice moment of perspective thanks to Stephanie Chinn.

(via)

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When You're Definitely Not Okay But You're Trying to Dance Anyway

This tweet is (obviously) from the pre-US-election days, but I still think about the girl in this video. She's out dancing and trying to have a good time but is also so sad and her friends just don't even seem to notice? The one is having a great time and another is like, "Hey it's PICTURE TIME!" and she is literally wiping tears off her face!

when you’re happy the polls are going your way but you’re terrified they’re wrong pic.twitter.com/JiTXxQXaXV
— shauna (@goldengateblond) October 29, 2020

What's the story here? Is she trying to get over a breakup? Is this song some kind of sadness trigger for her? Is she a party hostage? Did her and her friends agree before the party started that she would be weepy but she didn't want them to acknowledge it? WHAT IS HAPPENING???

And what about the rest of us? What is our version of "I'm really not okay but I'm trying to be okay so I'm going to go through some motions but it's really, incredibly obvious that I'm definitely not okay."

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Stretch Your Way Through Zoom Calls

An animated gif of a football player sitting on the field doing a forward fold stretch, he's pulling his feet back one at a time so it almost looks like a dance

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I recently discovered the BEST way to keep engaged through long Zoom calls: STRETCHING!

Zoom fatigue isn't just mental, y'all. It's PHYSICAL. And because our bodies are wild little ecosystems, the physical and the mental impact one another in a big ol' way.

Depending on the type of call you're on, this may be easier or harder. Obviously, if you can turn your camera off you're free to stretch however you want, but I have even done it with my camera on without really being noticed. Just set your laptop up on a coffee table or chair so that you can sit on the ground while being face-level to the camera and stretch away!

The only real downside I have found is that I wind up having to flip my self-view back on quite a bit to make sure I'm still in the frame and looking reasonable.

Bonus: I genuinely believe that when our bodies are more flexible, our minds are too (it's the wild little ecosystem at work), so maybe you'll come up with better ideas if you stretch while you talk.

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Shocking Discovery: It Feels Good to Feel Good

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BREAKING: Did you know that making sure you are physically comfortable is an important part of being content???

This includes:

- Making sure I am warm enough (or not too warm) and comfortable in my clothes.

- Eating when I am hungry.

- Going to the bathroom when I have to go to the bathroom.

- Stretching/varying my body positions so I don't slowly solidify into one, compact, shape.

As per my earlier post about embracing (or at least accepting) fall for what it is, I have been really leaning into physical comfort this season, and WOW! I really feel like it's making a huge difference in my overall mood and experience of life!

Like, I feel better when I feel better! Say wha???

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