These practices have supported me in thriving with lifelong chronic illness and chronic pain. The practices invite greater sense of agency and awareness of choices, living well with the bodies we have, and creating more well-being. These practices encourage allyship within one’s self and across communities and identities.

Every June, a certain person I know will ask where I am off to as I dance away in rainbow colors with fistfuls of transgender and Phillie Pride flags. I will singsong, “Off to Queer Pride celebration in X place!” And they will solemnly admonish me, “Pride goeth before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18: Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirite before a fall.”) I am tempted to giggle about the introduction of a Biblical translation named after one of the queerest kings in history.

Yes, that’s correct. I am saying that joy thrives with responsibility. Consider just for a few moments, how many relationships in your life would be less joyful if when you harmed one another you did not take responsibility for that harm, make amends, and stop doing the harmful thing. Pretending that no harm happened, or that we really did not have anything to do with that harm, or it could not possibly be as hurtful as the person we have hurt is saying does not increase joy in our relationships. Responsibility and accountability need not result in punishment or meting out equivalent harm for harm caused. But they do require attending to the beings in these relationships with respect, compassion, tenderness, and, yes, that uncomfortable reality of having caused harm. I say beings, because maybe the relationships that need attention are between human beings and maybe they are with others, like our polluted air and waterways or this rapidly changing earth.

Size and virtue do not correlate. My size is not reflective of my will power, my lovingkindness, my self-care, my care of others, or my care for this planet. I am fat and I am virtuous enough. It is possible to be fat and be a good person. But this might be hard to believe in a society so obsessed with shaming fatness and fat people. 

In the swirling, thick, thuggy atmospheres of hate and disdain, the proposition of loving the world and being loved by it may feel like fairytales and moonbeams on a cloudy night. Indeed, there are aspects of the world set up to actively not love us, depending on our identities, social locations, or how vulnerable where we live is to the worst effects of our changing climate. So then, how and why is it helpful to commit to loving the world and letting the world love us?