“I don’t have the moxie for it,” she says when I tell her that on frozen days I go to the women-only baths to soak naked in the pools. “You have such body confidence,” she says. I am as prone to self-criticism as anyone, but there is no space to argue because she is already naming all the pieces of her that she cannot show. 

When she concludes her list, I will tell her that I breathe well at the baths. I will tell her that it is the layers shed before entry just as much as the bergamot oil in the vents that loosens my lungs. I will tell her that at the baths my body is one of many bodies, and that adorned in nothing extra, each of us visibly touched by life, it is so clear: it takes moxie to live in a body in this world. It is so clear: we are in this together. 

Sarah Anne Childers is the online editor at luciajournal.com where she toggles between curating creatives as an editor and creatively curating ideas and the words they live in as a writer. 

sarah@luciajournal.com