Bodies and stories

Tired of narrative gerontology yet?  Hope not, because I continue to read...

My latest thought is about the relationship between our bodies and our stories.  It is impossible to separate our experiences from our bodies. After all, without a body we would not "be."  In that way, our body is the setting for our life story and the changes of our bodies, the changing setting, one of the storylines.

I can think of only a few times when the condition of my body was noticeable to me.  One was during my first pregnancy. I was quite pregnant and had gone to lunch with a group of friends. We were shown to a booth in the restaurant and I realized that I could not comfortably fit my belly into the space.  I suddenly became aware of my body in a way I had not considered before.  I knew I was pregnant, I was gaining weight. I knew that I was wearing differernt clothes to accomodate the changing shape.  But, I had not considered it on a day to day basis.

The other time was when I fell skiing and injured my knee. The moment of awareness was as I was falling and thinking, "My knee is not supposed to move in that direction."  It was a short, but intense moment of realization.  My body was doing something I did not want it to do.  The feeling was different from the frustration of being unable to make my body do what I want, it was if I was suddenly aware of my body as separate from me.

With age it seems we become more aware of our body, its functioning or not.  It becomes more a focus of our stories. The changes in our body force us to focus on our identity in a new way. Am I the same person in a different body, or do I change in some way as my body changes?