In my first-year actors’ showcase, all the way back in 2020, everyone picked a word they wanted their solo performance to reflect. Accompanied by the published poems or monologues of our choice, each combination of Word and Words Recited was key to providing the audience insight to every newest member of the acting program.
My chosen word for artistic meditation was Medicine. My chosen poem, “In Celebration of My Uterus” by Anne Sexton, was a misdiagnosis.
But it also wasn’t.
My poem, about “the woman I am,” was both wrong and right for me. It’s easy to laugh at how obviously not-woman I was, even then. Putting the pressure on the words to reflect my whole self (and putting pressure on myself to reflect the words) was never going to work. Yet, although the vocabulary is imperfect, the poem’s core message has never felt more alive in me.
At the heart of that poem is a certain type of Medicine. At the heart of that poem is Acceptance: living With your body, working With it rather than Against it.
Despite my poetic proclamations cheering on saying Yes to my body’s needs, I spent the next three years pushing, ignoring, compromising. This led to breakdowns — about once every semester. A lifetime of not speaking up for myself and here was a safe space to do so. And more often than not, I’d not. “Why even bother?” I thought.
Now that the training’s done, I’m actually resting. I’m tuning in to my own wavelength, not just a sufficiently okay one that matches the group’s. My class was full of hares, and good for them! The industry hires hares! I, however, am learning to be content as the tortoise I always was and always will be.
And I suspect there are more kin tortoises, their hearts palpitating agitating their worn-down shells.
Really think for a moment: are you working With your body? Are you letting yourself rest? Are you setting healthy boundaries? And again, are you letting yourself REST?
I’m striving more than ever to cultivate that Live-With-Not-Against-Myself lifestyle. It’s hard. It’s damn near impossible with the pressures of capitalism — go faster, do more, never be ugly. Be a pleasure to have in class.
But when everyone in me is a bird, I have no choice but to chirp. Shit on cars. Snack on bugs.
“Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, so I’ll sit in the garden eatin’ worms…”
Is it worth it to you, being liked? Consider, might you find more joy in just Being?
How would it feel to beat ALL your wings?
To acknowledge the multitudes in your person?
To give grace to the one in you tending a seal? Straddling a cello? Wiping the ass of her child?
To the one in you screaming out 40-year-old stanzas like you’re the second-to-last stop on the line?
The poem chooses to celebrate these multitudes. Celebration is a fabulous tool. It is also the entire point: to embrace the extravagant within, to welcome the shunned and scared parts of you, to give your shadows a seat at the table.
This is where the true medicine begins, at least for me. It won’t cure me of anything bodily, not for now, but it might help soothe my weary spirit.
Not everyone likes birds. Some may even feel cursed by them. But you must live With the birds inside you, not Against them. They’re flitting in your body just as the un-birdened parts of you are; and we’re all just bodies trying our best.
We’re extraordinary creatures, unparalleled in our ability to live. It doesn’t mean it’s easy. But it does mean we ought to keep going. Even if there’s no grand prize — even if there’s no Infinite Worm Dispenser in the sky.
As a great philosopher once said, “All roads lead to the end of the Barbie movie.” Anne Sexton’s “In Celebration of My Uterus” ends the exact same way.
One word.
One bold and beautiful dare to live: “Yes.”