Your Reaction is Your Responsibility

What to do when your bile rises in response to a story

This morning I received a rather long, clearly heartfelt, but misplaced response to a piece- no, just the title of a piece- that I wrote on our bodies. Given that this is one hell of an emotional topic for most of us, as it has most clearly been for me, I can understand the response. I’m not without compassion.

The title of the article is The Body You Have is the Body You Deserve. The article goes on to discuss a number of things, but nowhere in the body of the article NOR in the title do I say or imply that if you’re fat or disabled or anything else, it’s all your fault. In fact, the article says just the opposite.

But that wasn’t how this one reader saw it, and that’s the point of this article.

As someone who has been both obese and so thin I nearly died from eating disorders, I have had decades upon decades of direct experience with extreme body dysmorphia. It might be fair to state I know what the fuck I am talking about when it comes to body image issues. Suffice it to say those paths have allowed me to develop tremendous empathy for anyone else who does.

However, I also know that the body I had at any point along my life path was the body that I needed to have at that moment, no matter how uneasy I might have been with its boundaries. The body is an IT, not me. That lesson has taken me years. Not only that, the body has been a superb teacher, but it doesn’t and never has defined my value. It reflects the lessons I need to learn, the patience I need to develop, and offers me a chance to have a sense of humor about our humanity. Without the body, we don’t learn these things.

The body is a tool, not us.

As my Medium friend Rosennab says, any relationship is a relationship with the self, and I want to underscore that here. The responder took me to task for my choice of words, which was quite intentional.

Here is an excerpt from my article:

When someone is dealt a rough hand, either by their own hand or by Fate, by Time, those people have every single right to do their best with the body they end up with as any fitness competitor.

and…

I’ve got an aging, injured body to build, not people to impress.

I have difficultly seeing shame heaped upon the reader in these words for whatever body they may be inhabiting.

But the commenter heard it in my title. Her comment:

No one deserves the disability they got after being hit by a car or having a traumatic childbirth, no one deserves the extra 100 pounds they carry due to the childhood trauma of food scarcity or sexual abuse. So please, leave the moralizing language about our bodies out of your argument.

In fact, she is simply regurgitating my precise points.

One of the great gifts of Medium, and one which far too many of us miss, is that the reaction we have to someone else’s words has nothing to do with the author. What my commenter reads in my title isn’t there- not for me anyway, I sure as hell wasn’t moralizing about body types. Any regular reader of my stuff knows that. While she isn’t under any duress to read my drivel, the point is that she also has no right to put words in my mouth.

This is the real lesson. The words, the interpretation, are hers and hers alone. Just as any other commenter who has a powerful negative reaction to your material or anyone else’s gets the chance to check their shit. The job of the writer is to bring that shit up. It’s not the author’s job to clean up our messes.

Trolls, angry folks and those looking for a fight will accuse the writer of all manner of beliefs, ideas and motivations that may or may not have any bearing on what the author wrote. You and I don’t have access to their truth. We only have their words.

AND what those words bring up out of our basements.

The feelings I might face upon reading a particularly difficult passage in someone else’s article are mine and mine alone. They rise because I need to look at them. Just as my commenter’s emotions around body image came up in response to my choice of words. I didn’t put them inside her. They are already there.

This falls into the category of “you made me feel…..” Bullswallop. I cannot make anyone feel anything. You feel what you feel. You can also choose to feel differently. This is what owning your shit looks like.

We have a society that preys on our body insecurity. The way I read her words is precisely how we allow society to cause us to feel apologetic for the skin suit we inhabit. Again, any regular reader of my stuff on fitness will get precisely how I feel about that kind of shaming. I am hardly going to pass it along.

Trolls (and I am not accusing this particular reader of being one) lash out at a writer because of the sewage that rises inside them in response to a truth. I’ve had my share, writing about sexual assault (how DARE I) writing about BLM (how DARE I) and other hot topics about which I have feelings and have personal direct experience.

The sewage that is flung by those offended by my truth is their sewage. Gillian Sisley speaks to this, as many of us have, when trolls pull the shit out of their asses like so many zoo monkeys and fling it at whomever might offend their delicate sensibilities. Interestingly, their shit sticks to the glass, just like it does in life, because that shit is theirs, not ours.

There are articles I’ve scanned on Medium which have caused my bile to rise. I might want to pen some kind of angry response. I’m human, join the club. However, several things: first, nothing I write is going to change that author’s point of view. Period. Especially if it was incendiary. Second, it’s not about them. My reaction is all about me. The Universe doesn’t give a flying doodle that those words make me uncomfortable. If anything that’s the entire point: my discomfort. Because clearly there is something in my inner world I needed to see, feel, experience.

My god, what a gift to Dear Reader.

It’s called feedback.

Courage is being able to understand that the reaction is the whole point. When you and I as Dear Reader lash out at the author, we’re missing the gift. The gift is to look at what rose. What is within us that is offended, angry, hurt.

That is a wound that we need to heal. The author of the article is not the author of your pain.

Let’s take this a step further. Let’s say that an author writes something outright hateful. Good news, they won’t last long on Medium. More importantly though, they are cascading what’s inside them onto anyone who wants to carry it for them. Not my job, not your job. Their job. However, hateful was nowhere to be found in the piece I penned about having the body we deserve. It was about finding peace with it, and calling out the body shamers at the gym.

There have been times that a kind Medium writer has PMd me that something I wrote was outright incorrect, or my choice of words could well offend an entire group of people. In those cases I have most certainly made changes. This isn’t one of those times, especially when the article in question goes to some lengths to make the point about being accepting of the vehicle we inhabit.

The commenter got that, then ignored it, because the title appears to be offensive. I might note that the words (you lazy piece of shit) don’t appear in the title. If someone hears them, that’s not my voice.

As a journalist, author, and someone who has since April 2018 penned close to 5600 articles on Medium, I have a large body of work which speaks very clearly to how I feel about body image. When folks come after me, that usually indicates that they didn’t bother to check anything else I wrote, which would of course clearly show trends. That’s work. It’s far easier to fire scorn or anger rather than do the research which might throw valid questions into their POV.

That’s Deep Work. So is embracing the fact that our angry reactions to someone else’s work has nothing to do with the author, and everything to do with ourselves. Of course it’s hard. That’s the whole point. If it were easy Gillian and I and a whole lotta other writers on tough topics wouldn’t have to deal with trolls.

One of my favorite writers, Kris Gage, wrote me one time that she liked my work because I own my shit. Goddamned right I do. This is precisely what owning your shit looks like.

But I will not carry yours or anyone else’s. Your reaction is your responsibility and yours alone.

I offer you godspeed on your journey, and applaud anyone with the courage to own their reactions to difficult material. That’s a journey into the self. That’s the whole point.