When you are a young woman and your body becomes a reminder of tragedy, how can you ever come to love it?

"'When you are a young woman and your body becomes a reminder of tragedy, how can you ever come to love it?' I wrote in that secluded cabin in Banff. 'You yourself become a crime scene — a place of mourning you carry with you every day. Something tolerated, hated or, most commonly, ignored. I am happy for those people who see the body as a tool of empowerment, a vessel for pleasure and strength, but I’ve had to unlearn mine as a site of violence out of necessity.'"

from Stacey May Fowles's fantastic What Can't Be Published in the National Post. (There was so much in this essay that I wanted to quote, it was hard to choose a section that didn't end up quoting multiple paragraphs. This is an important essay. Please read it.)