My So-Called Chaos: Body Love {Musical Mondays & Giveaway}

What is Musical Mondays?

Musical Mondays is a weekly linky party where we share a song we're into for the week, and talk about why we like it-or why it effects us. Along with talking about music, I host a (usually) month-long music related giveaway.

This week's song:

Body Love (Parts 1 & 2)

by Mary Lambert

*Warning-it's going to get real and there are a few F-words for those of you who don't like that sort of thing-HOWEVER (especially if you are a woman) I recommend you listen anyway. This is so powerful.

I know girls who are trying to fit into the social norm like squeezing into last years prom dress

I know girls who are low rise, MAC eye shadow, and binge drinking

I know girls that wonder if they're disaster and sexy enough to fit in

I know girls who are fleeing bombs from the mosques of their sins

Playing Russian Roulette with death

It's never easy to accept that our bodies are fallible and flawed

But when do we draw the line?

When the knife hits the skin isn't it the same thing as purging?

Because we're so obsessed with death

Some women just have more guts than others

The funny thing is women like us don't shoot

We swallow pills still wanting to be beautiful at the morgue

Still proceeding to put on makeup

Still hoping that the mortician finds us fuckable and attractive

We might as well be buried with our shoes, and handbags, and scarves

Girls, we flirt with death every time we etch a new tally mark into our skin.

I know how to split my writs to reveal a battlefield too

But the time has come for us to reclaim our bodies

Our bodies deserve more than to be war torn and collateral

Offering this fuckdome as a pathetic means to say

I only know how to exist when I'm wanted

Girls like us are hardly every wanted, you know?

We're used up and sad and drunk

And perpetually waiting by the phone for someone to pick up and tell us we did good

We did good

I know I am because I said I am, I know I am because I said I am

My body is home, My body is home, My body is home

Try this

Take your hands over your bumpy love body naked

And remember the first time you touched someone with the soul purpose of learning all of them

Touch them because the light was pretty on them

And the dust and the sunlight danced the way your heart did

Touch yourself with a purpose your body is the most beautiful royal

Fathers and Uncles are not claiming your knife anymore

Are not your razor, no put the sharpness black

Lay your hands flat and feel the surface of scarred skin

I once touched a tree with charred limbs

The stump was still breathing but the tops were just ashy remains

I wonder what it's like to come back from that

Because sometimes I feel forest fires erupting from my wrists

And the smoke signals sent out are the most beautiful things I've ever seen

Love your body the way your mother loved your baby feet

And brother arm-wrapping shoulders and remember this is important

You are worth more than who you fuck

You are worth more than a waistline

You are worth more than beer bottles displayed like drunken artifacts

You are worth more than any naked body could proclaim in the shadows

You are no less valuable as a size 16 than a size 4

You are no less valuable as a 32A than a 36C

Your sexiness is defined by concentric circles within your wood it is wisdom

You are a goddamn tree trunk with leave sprouting out

Reborn

Some of you may have heard of Mary Lambert because she's the amazing female vocals on the song Same Love by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis which I shared for Musical Mondays back in September of 2013. Did you know she released a solo LP? She's kind of amazing. I read this article by Buzzfeed on 22 Things You Didn't Know About Mary Lambert and was impressed. Before the Grammy performance where they married all of those couples I hadn't seen her, and I was stunned by how gorgeous she is!

So I decided to download her album, which only has four songs-but hey it cost me less than $3. Every single song has so much emotion in it that I honestly feel like it was the best three dollars I have ever spent. It's stunning really. When this song came on in the car I felt like I'd been hit by a freight train. I stopped breathing. I listened to every word and bawled like a baby, still holding my breath, still feeling like a steam engine was plowing through me.

This song cut me so deeply that I'm not sure I recovered for the rest of the evening. First I sobbed for the entire 45 minute drive home, and then the rest of the evening I felt restless and sore in my chest-emotionally sore. Raw. I have never connected so entirely with a song that it physically effected me like this before-and while it hurt I know it's for good reasons. I need to listen to this until the words are so branded on my brain that I never forget them. I've spent far too much of my life defining myself by who I'm sleeping with, what size I am, the number on a scale, my makeup, my clothes... This is a poignant portrayal of how we as women often think-and it's killing us.

I love when she says "love your body like your mother loved your baby feet" because that to me feels impossible. When you think about how much a mother loves the tiny feet of her baby, how she fawns over them, cries because they're so beautiful, and spends days staring at them... Well I don't know how to love my body like that, but I'd sure like to. Pure unadulterated love with no conditions-that's a powerful emotion. That could end the harm we do ourselves.

What are you listening to this week?

Please grab the button and link up your Musical Mondays post in the linky!