I've Been Doing Everything I Could to Keep Us Together.
Sometimes the smallest exercises reveal the biggest questions. This week it was a tongue-width exercise. It unexpectedly led me to wonder: What if the parts of ourselves we've been trying to fix have been trying to care for us all along? This is about where that question led me.
This insight came from one of the most unexpected places.
My tongue.
Many of you may not know that I sing. A few years ago I discovered that singing helps me manage my pain.
Recently my overtone teacher, Iannis Psallidakos, gave me a tongue-width exercise. (Yes... tongue width.) His lessons have a wonderful way of making me aware of parts of my vocal tract I never realized I was using.
The exercise was surprisingly difficult.
As I sometimes do, I started joking that my tongue wanted to speak to management. The conversation in my head went something like this:
Tongue: "Excuse me. I'd like to file a formal complaint."
Management: "What's the issue?"
Tongue: "For forty-some years I thought my job was eating, talking, and occasionally sticking out at people. Then this woman starts taking singing lessons..."
"...now I'm expected to coordinate with the soft palate, stabilize the jaw, shape the vocal tract, play the didgeridoo, overtone sing, articulate five different larynx heights, find harmonics, and somehow not make donkey noises."
Management: "Anything else?"
Tongue: "...and apparently I'm responsible for facial symmetry now."
Management: "Request denied."
It made me laugh.
But after laughing, something unexpected happened.
I found myself wondering...
What if my tongue wasn't complaining at all?
What if it was simply saying,
"Oh... you noticed."
"I've been trying to tell you."
Recently I had written a question for myself:
If just 1% more became available, what might be revealed?
Suddenly the question felt different.
What if my tongue wasn't waiting for me to get it right?
What if it had been faithfully participating all along?
Then another thought arrived.
Tongue: "I wasn't waiting for you to get it right. I've been with you the whole time."
It reminded me of something I had written months earlier:
What if I'm not trying to fix my body? What if I'm learning how to relate to it?
Then I imagined my body saying,
"I've been doing everything I could to keep us together."
I just sat there.
And cried.
Because for the first time...
it didn't feel like a muscle.
It felt...
...like someone loving me the whole time.
For years I've felt like certain parts of my body were getting in my way.
If my tongue wasn't doing what I thought it should, then it must have been too tense.
If another part wasn't behaving the way I expected, then surely that was the problem too.
I kept assuming that if I could just get each part to do what I wanted, everything else would fall into place.
But then I imagined my tongue replying,
"I was protecting your airway, helping you eat, speak, swallow, breathe, and adapting to everything life asked of us. I wasn't your enemy."
That changed something.
Not because every adaptation is ideal.
Not because there isn't still work to do.
But because relationship feels different than correction.
Instead of asking,
"What's wrong with you?"
I found myself asking,
"How have you been trying to keep us together?"
That question quietly became forgiveness.
Not pretending nothing happened.
Not denying pain.
Not abandoning healthy boundaries.
But seeing through a different lens.
What if forgiveness sometimes begins with realizing we didn't recognize how faithfully something—or someone—had been trying to care for us?
That thought didn't stop with my body.
It made me wonder about people.
How many times have I looked at someone and silently asked,
"Why are you like this?"
...when perhaps beneath it all was someone trying—imperfectly, incompletely, but sincerely—to protect something they loved?
I'm not excusing harm.
But understanding and excusing are not the same thing.
Sometimes understanding is simply the beginning of a different relationship.
Maybe that's true of our bodies.
Maybe it's true of one another.
All I know is that a tongue-width exercise somehow became one of the deepest lessons I've received this year.
My tongue stopped being a muscle.
It became the first part of me that seemed to say,
"I've been with you the whole time."
And suddenly I wondered...
How many other parts of me have been waiting for me to notice?