Stop living for when, live for now.

So many beautiful and fleeting years spent waiting for “when I…”.

Lose weight, become happy, gain confidence, am acceptable…

Moments we can’t take back, and missed experiences we can’t re-do.

Life happens all around us, and every time we hide away, we miss it.

But not now, not anymore.

Life knows it’s beautiful and ephemeral (it’s simply a blessing to wake up earth side each day) and it won’t stay idle while we sit stuck waiting for perfection.

Now is our time, today is our day, tomorrow is never promised and other assorted quotes to inspire you to live life now 😊.

( Full disclosure: yes, this is an older picture. Move to the landlocked north right before a pandemic and subsequent quarantine, and it becomes 2 years before you dust off a bathing suit. Y’all have seen enough of my bras 😉)

True happiness?

I know the first and quick answer is yes, of course.

If you stop and think about all the things that create true happiness the ideal body isn’t one of them.

At least it’s not on my list, not anymore.

⭐️ A happy and healthy family.

⭐️ A life spent dreaming big and reaching goals.

⭐️ Laughing until my sides ache.

⭐️ Pizza with light sauce, and just the right amount of cheese and crust.

⭐️ Going to bed at the end of the day knowing I made someone feel good about themselves.

So while the quick and surface answer is yes, the deep and thought through answer is a resounding no.

Also, what would I be missing out on trying to maintain that “perfect” body? The perfect pizza with my happy family? Hours spent in the gym instead of making others feel seen and showing up how I am?

I’ve tried that, it sucks. No, no thank you. I’ll take the body and mental state that show health and peace, and pizza.

I’m the “bigger” partner.

I am the “bigger” partner, but in our lives there is no bigger or smaller.

We don’t talk about our bodies. We don’t comment on the others loss or gain of weight. We discuss our body’s health but how it looks isn’t a topic. It just doesn’t hold a shred of value in our relationship. It never did for him, for me it was different.

I fought his unconditional love for a long time. Apologizing for a flawed body. Flaws he just didn’t see, but I refused to believe he didn’t.

He just wanted to love me, and I just looked for reasons that he couldn’t.

I grew and evolved, he supported and reassured. It took time, good things always do.

The person meant for you will see the heart and not the hips.

Demand that kind of love.

(As a side note, my husband has always been very slim, something that for years made him feel bad about his body. He was chasing pounds as I furiously running away from them. No one is immune to body shame.)

Uncomfortable?

Does my body make you uncomfortable?

I ask, because for the longest time, bodies like mine made me squirm.

I was so programmed to believe that larger bodies were unhealthy, disgusting, to be feared.

I wanted to separate myself so desperately from “that body”.

I was fat and fat phobic. Seems like the ultimate contradiction, but it’s the reality for many people in larger bodies.

Then I learned, unlearned, sat with my hatred and uncomfort.

Realized that hating mine and other bodies so deeply wasn’t going to rid me of extra weight.
It wasn’t going to separate me from “them”.

It tore me up, and made me hurt.

Hurting and hating doesn’t bring peace, success, joy.

It’s just hurting and hating.
It’s just pain.

Pain that has no place here anymore.

For our kids.

Telling her she looks just like me while feeding her the lie that a body like mine is disgusting and should be hidden, dooms her to a life of shame, dieting and never feeling worth.

My fat body created her. My fat body grew her, fed her, nurtured her. From her beginnings, my body was her vessel. It’s only ever shown her love. She never saw weight until it was shoved in her face.

We groom kids, ALL KIDS, to be afraid of what their bodies are, and will become.

We’ve shown them cookie cutter bodies and given them face slimming filters.

What about teaching our children the value of a persons being and not the measure of their jeans. That their bodies will change. That they can choose to change their bodies. That however their bodies changes, by choice or by life, their value and worth does not.

I want her to know her value is in her actions, not her body size. And that my body isn’t her future, and even if it was, it’s beautiful and amazing and made my best friend.

Shadow or Glow.

You know those moments in life when you have to make emotional flight or fight choices?

The really uncomfortable ones that mean being in the memory living in our bodies or being just outside of the memory, hiding our bodies. There, but not really there.

We have learned to be so anxious about those choices. We fear them long before we are even faced with them. They are in the back of our minds, looming.

I spent so much of my life on edge about those choices. How would I explain that I “just don’t like the beach”. Or I “forgot my bathing suit”. Mulling over my excuses long before the beach day or pool party. I had my list of “no’s” prepared, pre planned.

We can continue to choose the flight response, and be a shadow in our memories. Or we can fight, and be a glow.

Flight or fight.

Shadow or glow.

That choice, is yours.

Dear Body

Dear Body,

I will not be sad about the way that you look, the scars that you bear or the marks you’ve grown. I will not be sad that you don’t look like her, or them or that. I will not put pressure on you to perform in in a way that feels forced, foreign or painful. I will not expect the impossible, the unattainable the out of reach- because it doesn’t exist.

I will be sad for how I’ve mistreated you, for the actions and inactions that have weakend your health or made you feel less than.

I will do better, and make the wrongs into rights by listening to your pleas, by giving back, by nurturing you.

I will compare you not to the bodies of others, not to the impossible standards, to the photoshopped and face tuned perfection that isn’t real.

I will heal you with love, fuel, care and most of all understanding and grace and time. Lots of time. Because that’s all we have, you and I. Time together. Time to be complete and completely in love.

Love,

Thigh Song.

I got mad at my thighs today, for rubbing together and making a “shushing” sound as I walked. I literally got mad at a body part for doing what a body part does and what mine will probably do long after my death because a thigh gap will never be in the cards for me.  

Now at 39 years old, having lost and gained and lost and gained weight, having been  bulimic in my teens, near starving in my early 20’s, a binge eater from 25 on (still struggle with that) I thought I had made peace with my thigh songs.  It took me aback a little, that I felt so angry with part of myself.  It stopped me in my tracks.  It took me a minute to shake off the feeling, and I found myself laughing.  “SING ME THE SONG OF YOUR PEOPLE THIGHS, IM LISTENING!  HEY, WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR BREAKFAST?”

Learning to be ok with, or not even think about physical parts of yourself is a life long lesson.  You will never reach the end of your tutorial. You will have moments that bring you right back to the self-hate.  It could be the jiggle in your belly when you dance, the back of your arms waving when you do, or the song of your thighs rubbing together.  But absolutely none of those things have any meaning, they won’t love your family, be a kind heart for a wounded friend, or pay your damn bills.  Remember that when you see a part you hate, it’s meaningless.  Laugh at yourself and feed yourself some breakfast.