In a novel I recently read, a character’s hands were perpetually clenched. She wasn’t looking for a fistfight. She was steeling herself for the next struggle that her hard, sad, painful life would bring.
For me, it’s not the hands that clench involuntarily. It’s my jaw, my neck, my shoulders, my glutes, my legs.
“Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves,” Mary Oliver writes in “Wild Geese,” the poem that inspired me to quit my job, start this blog, and try to live Oliver’s advice. Mostly I have understood that advice metaphorically: giving myself permission to do what makes me feel whole and happy, and not to make the to-do list — or worrying about the to-do list — my main focus.

Lately I am also thinking about the literal, physical animal of my body. It is not a soft animal. (Unless we’re talking about flab.) Deconditioned though I am after years of chronic illness, many of my muscles are not soft. They are tense, hard, painful. Continue reading