Naked & Unashamed

Loving My Body

On the last day of Black History month and the eve of Women’s History month, it seemed an appropriate time to share about my journey as a Black woman who’s learning to walk in a different type of liberation and freedom:

Body liberation.

Over the last few years I have been on a journey back to me. I realized early in my journey just how fragmented my life had become as well as the ways I had internalized narratives that my body was bad. This lead to me disconnecting from my body and cutting off a critical part of myself in the process. 

My journey has taught me the need to embrace three truths seen in scripture: (1) I was created in the image of God, (2) when God created me She proclaimed me good, and (3) I am wonderfully and amazing knit by the hands of God. As a Black woman born in the US, with skin that was kissed by the sun before it saw the light of day, I need to sit in the truth of my goodness. 

As one born female whose ancestors were taken from their homes in chains, I need to know that my body is good and not evil as I have been told. As one born holding the collective generational trauma of women whose backs bore the lashes, weight, and transgressions of power that sought to dominate and control our bodies, sexuality, identity, and ability to mother, I need to hold on to the truth of my goodness.

As a mom and pastor who in the past internalized a theology that said my body was bad, I need a new framework that reclaims the truth that Toni Morrison put on the lips of Baby Suggs to love this flesh and love it hard.

I’m grateful that God sees, knows, and affirms all of me in spite of what the colonizers declared in their declaration. So I’m rejoicing as the psalmist did in Psalms 139 and like the folks in Genesis 2 I’m embracing and loving my body naked and unashamed. As we shift from honoring Blackness to Womanish ways, I sit here at the intersection of these two parts and celebrate my beautiful Black female body, no longer ashamed.

This year to honor my beautiful Black female body, I did so by doing my first nude photoshoot. As I was taking pictures of myself for myself, I realized it was an act of resistance and celebration.

It is my act of continuing to embrace what Sade Green speaks of as divine bodily autonomy. I wanted to capture what it would mean to celebrate that my body was a temple, one that deserves to be loved, worshiped, and adored.

And so now I stand naked and unashamed embracing my body as a living breathing temple of God. One that is holy, lovely, unapologetically here, and choosing to take up space. And I share these photos with you and I hope that you also find the space to embrace and love your whole self, especially your body.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll continue to share more about this journey, including what it has meant to navigate and unshackle myself from ideas such as respectability, perfection, being above reproach, and the role of the pastor so stay tuned.

I’ll also share a bit more of my journey dating again after a divorce, unraveling all the craziness from the purity culture and my road to sexual wholeness and liberation. I encourage you to follow me on TikTok, IG, and on my here as well. If you don’t want to hear about this part of my journey, no worries, you can simply unfollow me or just stick to my personal FB and IG pages.