My job closely connects me with the impact of the body on people’s lives. There is my actual work with persons who are seriously ill and/or in pain, and there is also the daily walking around and through an adult hospital that’s right next door to a children’s hospital. The halls and common spaces have far more than the average number of assistive walking devices, beanies and caps covering chemo-bald heads, oxygen tanks, prosthetic limbs, etc. Every day I pass parents pushing children in wheelchairs or pulling them in wagons that hold not just their child but also some kind of bulky medical device. And then there are unhoused persons, many of them with skin sores and swollen hands or feet, drawn to the safety, climate-controlled open spaces, and generally welcoming attitude of a public hospital.

One morning, as a colleague and I walked the two blocks from our office to the building where our Spiritual Care Department has its daily huddle, we passed a middle-aged woman pushing a young man (20s, maybe?) in a wheelchair. Both his feet were gone, and the skin at the base of the amputation sites was pink and puffy. Once we were past them, I said, “I’ve seen them every morning this week.”

She sighed. “That skin looks painful.”

“It’s gotten me thinking about our specific bodies and the ways they shape our lives.”

“Say more.” (What a good chaplain she is!)

“These bodies of ours determine so much of our existence and even how we become as persons. I know there are lots of factors–socioeconomics, geography, family background–but the presenting aspects of our bodies–our skin, any disabilities, any anomalies–those impact how other people look at us and see us, and then their reactions shape how we think of ourselves.”

She nodded. “And then it shapes the opportunities that are open to us–or not–and the groups that are available to us for belonging.”

“Yes,” I continued, “and all I know is the experience of my one body and its specifics, but I tend to think that my one experience gives me information and insight into other people’s embodied experiences.”

I’ve continued to think about that conversation, and I’ve done a little practice with it.

First I listed out my identities that are connected with my actual body, starting with those that are most obviously connected (*the full list of the identities I used is at the bottom of this post). And then I explored each of those a bit.

For example, I am able-bodied, with all my limbs, ten fingers & toes, normal range of motion in my joints, able to use all my sense organs (seeing, smelling, hearing) in a “normal” range. This has been true since my birth. I followed a normal timeline of crawling-toddling-walking-running and my coordination and balance were again in the normal range. I wasn’t great at sports, but I could engage in them and never be the last one chosen when the kickball captains picked their teams (what an awful practice–why did we ever think this was a good idea?).

Then I tried changing one thing that is listed in the above paragraph and imagined how that would have impacted the actual life I’ve lived. What if I’d been born with one hand that I couldn’t use “normally”? Just one. What are the things that I engaged in as a child (like knitting, swimming, cooking…) that would have been impacted by that ONE change? How would I have been seen differently by my peers–in school, in sports? What facial expressions would I have seen regularly on some people’s faces when they noticed my hand? How would that have changed how I felt about myself, how I interacted with them? What about my daily life now? What adjustments would I need to make? What would I need assistance with? How would this change how I get around my city?

ONE change–and I could be a completely different person. I could have a completely different outlook and way of relating. I could walk around seeing my world and other people from a viewpoint that I (in the body that I inhabit) can only imagine.

I have to admit that this was not a comfortable practice for me. I am very used to life within THIS skin, with this particular skeleton, skull, organs, and mind. I know only THIS lived experience. This practice forced me to imagine my life from a different experience, one embodied “bit” at a time, which made it–for me–a little more real and possible than trying to imagine myself as a poor child in a war-torn country around the world from my own.

This also helps me to understand the compounded and complicated effects of intersectionality (such as a lesbian woman who is African American who’s had Type 1 Diabetes all her life). It was a lot to think of these changes ONE identity at a time; what about holding each one and then adding another and then another!!!! I remember once participating in a training exercise in which the facilitator had our group stand in a horizontal line facing him. “Take a step forward if your parents went to college,” he said. “Take a step forward if you’ve never had a stranger call you a name related to your physical appearance.” With one statement after another, some of us moved forward. Some didn’t. At the end, the facilitator asked those of us closer to the front to turn around to face the group members behind us. (Here’s a link to an example of this exercise: https://www.eiu.edu/eiu1111/Privilege%20Walk%20Exercise-%20Transfer%20Leadership%20Institute-%20Week%204.pdf)

Empathy work is hard work–good but hard. But it’s oh, so important.

*BODY-RELATED IDENTITY LIST (this is the list I created and used for my own empathy practice)

-Gender (from “super” feminine to “super” masculine and all that’s in between as well as the level of comfort with where one lands on that spectrum)

-Skin color

-Size (tall to short, small to large)

-Visible “Ableness” of the body (arms and legs, sense organs, etc.)

-Less visible “ableness”/health of the body (diseases such as sickle cell, diabetes, heart conditions…)

-Anomalies of the body that are visible (strange head shape, facial features)

-Sexuality