My Body in Lockdown

In 2020, I devoted my newfound free time to the activities and relationships I had deprioritized during pre-pandemic life. I fed a sourdough starter until it spilled onto the countertop. I revisited the worst of my middle school fiction writing days. I called friends I hadn’t reached out to enough during my junior year and went into frantic event-planner mode, avoiding my physical realities by designing Zoom challah bakes and soliciting virtual speakers. When I ran out of shows to watch and baked goods to concoct, I just sat on my bed and thought. 

Perhaps the most surprising relationship I’ve contemplated in 2020 is mine to my body, my female body—a body I hadn’t ever embraced on my own terms.  

I’ve never been in a space where my body’s been entirely my own. 

DAHLIA SOUSSAN, “My Body is My Own in  Lockdown,” the JWA Blog, January 5, 2021