Women who run with the wolves

"If a woman is taught to hate her own body how can she love her mothers body? Her grandmothers body? How can she love the bodies of other women and men close to her? Harsh judgements about body acceptability create a nation of hunched over tall girls, short women on stilts, women of size dressed as though in mourning, very slender women trying to puff themselves out like adders and various other women in hiding: Destroying a woman's instinctive affiliation with her natural body cheats her of confidence. It causes her to perseverate about whether she is a good person, and base her self worth on how she looks instead of who she is, it pressures her to use up her energy worrying about how much food she consumes or the readings on a scale. It keeps her preoccupied, colours everything she does. It is unthinkable in the instinctive world that a woman should live preoccupied by appearance this way...
The body is like an earth. It is land unto itself. It is as vulnerable to overbuilding, being carved into parcels, cut off. The wilder woman will not be easily swayed. For her the questions are not how to form but how to feel. The breast in all its shapes has the function of feeling and feeding. Does it feed? Does it feel? It is a good breast. The hips, they are wide for a reason, inside them is a satin ivory cradle for new life. A woman's hips are outriggers for the body above and below; they are portals, they are a lush cushion, the handholds for love, a place for children to hide behind. The legs they are meant to take us, sometimes propel us; they are the pulleys that help us live, they are the anillo, the ring for circling a lover. They cannot be too this or that - they are what they are.
There is no "supposed to be" in bodies. The question is not size of shape or years of age, or even having two of everything for some do not. But the wild issue is: does this body feel? Does it have a right connection to pleasure, heart, soul, to the Wild? Does it have happiness, joy? Can it init's own way move, dance, jiggle, sway, thrust? Nothing else matters."
larissa Pinkola Estes