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Stunned Silent Watching Others’ Battles

Posted on February 18, 2017

A week ago we went to see the movie “Embrace—Your body, the movement, global change”. I watched the promotion of it with curiosity. It was strange for me to see a local connection to a deeply personal issue, one of the hosts was my neighbor, friends of mine were posting on Facebook that they would be attending. I’m used to managing my demons in a private vacuum. I know there are women in my community who have battled with image and that there are abuse survivors, even closet liberals, but I’m more accustomed to finding connections on these issues through the relative safety and anonymity of the internet. I suppose me talking about anonymity is strange as someone who has voluntarily shared great parts…

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A Game of Chicken with Weight

Posted on February 12, 2017

I have obsessed about weight. In college I abused laxatives. I’ve battled with disordered eating. I said hateful things to myself. I compared myself to women in magazine, classmates, strangers, and, quite possibly, people who didn’t even exist. The lengths I took to keep the bar of how I was supposed to look and what I should weigh just out of reach was staggering. I made it impossible to succeed. As I raise three daughters I feel terror because of all the very real threats in the world, hating ourselves can be the most devastating. I watch them grow, their shapes changing constantly, and each new contour and curve makes me fall more intensely in love with who they are. They have never had a…

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Learning to Balance Gratitude & Action

Posted on February 8, 2017

I have to remind myself that not everyone thinks like me. Do you have any quirks?     Here, I’ll start, I don’t like to step on or drive over the painted wheelchairs in parking spaces. I also cannot keep myself from turning tails-up pennies to heads up for the next superstitious/hopeful person. Sometimes I whisper thank you to green lights and when I pass people on the street I’ll think, “You once toddled across a floor to someone else’s profound delight. I hope you are still loved like that.”   I may seethe and say awful things sometimes, but mostly I think about good things. Trying to figure out how to manage the unpredictable flow of questions and commentary as a parent has become way…

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