Body And Soul

After using the past year to reassess, refocus and take up running, Meg Honigmann finally learns to love herself

- Meg Honigmann

There was a time when my body seemed so unlike my own that I’d move an arm or a leg and feel nothing as I watched it slowly slice through the air; when I would glance at the reflection of a figure in a shop window and realise to my shock that the unrecognisable shadow was actually me.

Like many other women, my relationship with my body, starting from my early teens, has never good. But it was after a breakup a few years ago that my self-worth truly plummeted. The distance between my mind and body grew, and so did I, gaining weight rapidly over six months. At first, it felt like protection from getting hurt again, a barrier to the outside world. Then, tiny battle wounds started to appear on my body, like the red lightning of a stretch mark on my lower stomach—I was attacking myself from the inside out. Where once I had never thought about my appearance, it now consumed me.