Lady Sings the Blues (and smells like BBQ)

They say that 45% of people usually make New Year's Resolutions.  And by "they" I guess I mean the University of Scranton's Journal of Psychology, from which I got my statistics, but at least I didn't make them up this time.  Of those, only 8% have success.  49% have infrequent success and 24% never succeed and fail at their resolution every single year.  (I believe the remaining 19% were too hungover New Year's Day to remember what they resolved to do.  Or maybe they were distracted by cat videos on YouTube.)

Six months ago I made some resolutions.  They were not about weight loss, though that's not necessarily a bad goal if properly motivated.  I just don't believe in starting off my year bathing in a pool of self-loathing like most who resolve to lose weight on that day.  Instead I wanted to approach the topic of body confidence and body love from a resolution angle.  What goal can I set that I have avoided my whole life because of how I felt about my appearance?

Well, you all know I don't like having my picture taken.  Never have - that's no secret.  So one of my goals was to commit to 30 Days of Selfies in order to take back the power of the camera and learn to be more present rather than afraid.  I did it.  I took a photo of myself every day.  I only gave myself one or two shots at the most and I just went with it.  Sometimes I was at the gym.  Sometimes I was on my couch.  Sometimes I forgot until the end of the night and took one on my pillow. Sometimes I had cried all day. Sometimes I even wore a bra and make-up. (Moments saved for special occasions.)  By the end of the 30 days I was entirely sick of photos of myself but they no longer elicited any emotional reaction beyond, "Oh.  There I am again.  That's me."  I felt I had some success.

Speaking of which.

My other resolution had to do with vocal lessons.  I love to sing.  LOVE it.  I have no delusions about fame and fortune with my mediocre talent but it brings me such joy and all the same feel-good endorphins that a workout also gives me. I've always wanted to take vocal lessons but I knew they would almost always end with some kind of performance.  And THAT is what I just couldn't do.  Not only because I wasn't that great but because I was fat.  Not thin enough, not pretty enough, not talented enough, not confident enough, not perfect enough.  Not enough.  So I haven't had a lesson since the last one I took with my junior high choir director.

I have declared this last year since my 39th birthday my Year of Bravery.  I've made concerted efforts to do the things that scared me the most.  I wore a two piece swimsuit in public last Summer.  I had photos taken in my drawers.  There were numerous other personal braveries that I tackled.  But there was still another thing I was afraid of that was within my grasp as the age of 40 rushed at me at breakneck speeds.

After my month of selfies I contacted a vocal coach, Connie Olson, at the recommendation of a friend.  Within a week I had my first meeting with her and she asked me to be a part of the Showcase she has for her students at that very meeting.  I thought she was out of her mind.  I was terrified to sing in front of just her, let alone an audience.  But Connie was adamant and she's hard to refuse.

I took vocal coaching lessons with Connie from mid-February until June and in that time I could tell my confidence was growing.  My singing was stronger, my embarrassment was miniscule and my joy was abundant.  And never when I was with her did I think about not being pretty enough or thin enough to sing.

Until I thought about that performance, that is.  The thought of it still made me nauseated but I was committed.  June came fast.  Too fast. As the date of our performance at Famous Dave's BBQ & Blue's Club approached I started getting more and more nervous but I couldn't back out.  I told too many people.  Jesus, I shared it on Facebook, the most concrete and eternal of all promises.  I had to do it now.

I was nervous about the singing for sure but I was more nervous about how I would look.  I'm just not meant for the stage and I'm fine with that.  Too fine.  God, what in the hell am I going to wear? I found a dress that was curvy and feminine and sexy, I thought, without being too revealing since my kids would be there.  I took a few selfies (yay, me!) and sent them to some friends to get the nod of approval.  I got it.  I know I've gained weight but this dress made me feel good.  See?  Not so bad, right?  *cough*  We'll get back to that in a bit.

Connie asked me to sing three songs instead of the typical one for newbies and I had chosen three songs that I knew like the back of my hand.  Bluesy, jazzy, old school.  Perfect.

About two weeks before the show I found out we lost our sax player to another gig.  I could NOT not have a sax player with my songs.  Panic! Since I happen to know one of the best around I contacted Walter Chancellor Jr. and he was willing to help, thank God.  What an honor to share my first time on a stage with so much talent.

To say I freaked out over the final week or two would be an understatement.  I worried.  I panicked.  I literally made myself ill.  I'm not lying when I tell you my anxiety was through the roof.  Just ask my husband who had to give me daily pep talks or my friends who helped me after my post-rehearsal melt-down.  I was scared shitless.  Shit. Less.

I did come very close to vomiting the morning of the show.  Which would have been a damn shame because it was a Sunday.  And anyone who knows me knows that my family always has bacon on Sundays.  Always.  It's our church.  To vomit up bacon would be a mortal sin in my book. I held it together, though.  Fortunately by the time I started showering and getting ready I started to feel better.  I did my hair, put on my makeup, some heels and that dress.  That damn dress.  Anyway, I felt beautiful, which is a victory in and of itself, and I was as ready as I was going to get.

Throughout the afternoon, over several hours, I got Stuart Smalley type texts from a friend of mine who follows my blog and apparently uses my own advice against me.  I can't tell you how much they meant to me that day.  I was laughing by the last one and that's exactly what I needed. I saved them all.  Here they are:

"You know you look fantastic, right?"
"You also know how much fun you are, right?"
"You also know how smart you are, right?"
"You also know you have fabulous hair, right?"
"You need to take a selfie right now.  Duck lips and all." (I did and sent her one after another prompting)
"I also know you're wearing amazing shoes"
"I like your knees and your toes, too.  They're pretty awesome."

She sent all these texts without telling me she was coming.  When she walked in I was shocked and so very grateful.  My family was also there - my husband, kids, mom, aunt, cousin and baby 2nd-cousin who loved her first trip to a bar.  Fitting it was with me.

 In addition, some of the women I love most in the world were there.  The ones that put up with all my crap.  The ones that listened to me cry when I left the job that I loved.  The ones that support me daily and unconditionally.  I couldn't have asked for more.

I was surrounded by love and friendship and cheers and hugs.  I could do this, right?  RIGHT?

My first song was pretty awful.  I'm not gonna lie.  The tempo was off with the band so I was off and I never actually got it under control.  Was it worthy of American Idol when they make fun of the worst singers around?  No.  But it wasn't my best.  The second song I started to rally.  Much better.  The third song, Queen Latifah's cover of "Baby, Get Lost" from her standards album, The Dana Owens Album, was when I really felt like I did my thing for someone who has never been on a stage in her life.  Having a spectacular sax musician right next to me sho' nuff didn't hurt, either, but that's the video I'm going to share with you shortly.

When I got down from that stage, amid the hooting and hollering of not only my people but others in the crowd, I was all fired up.  Fired up with adrenaline and relief but most of all pride.  God damn it, I did it.  I really did it.  The adrenaline high was so strong I couldn't even eat much of my BBQ ribs after.  Now you know that's some serious excitement.  I was flying high the rest of the night and into the next morning.

When I got in the car to drive home I snapped another selfie of myself (because that's kind of how I roll now).  This is what pride looks like.  And feeling achieved.  And blessed.  And relieved.  And grateful, for myself and everyone else who supported me.  This is what knocking another item off the bucket list looks like.  This is 6 months almost to the day Resolution Success.

This is also "My shoes are starting to hurt my feet"

Now I knew my family took some video on a tiny pocket camcorder and I had enough sense to wait a couple of days to watch it.  I wanted to keep feeling all those feels.  I wanted to not think about how I looked or how I sounded and I wanted to be happy that I. Just. Did. It.  But I knew I was going to have to look eventually because I wanted to share it with you all.  So I looked.

If I had to guess just how negatively those videos would impact me I would never have come close to the full amount of self-loathing I was capable of.  They were bad.  So, so bad.  Not the singing - the singing was just as I described.  But how I looked.  I was devastated.

Now, it's no secret that I have gained weight.  A considerable amount in fact.  You only have to run in to me at Target in my stretchy pants and hoodie to discover that.  But what I saw in that video compared to what I saw in the photos I took of my dress and the selfie I took in the car were light years apart.  Light years.   Maybe it was the poor quality camcorder.  Maybe it was unflattering stage lighting showing every bump and roll. Maybe I was just swelled up like a tick.  Maybe the old myth about the camera adding 10 lbs was true and I had exactly 72.5 cameras on me. 

All I know is that it broke my spirit.  For a couple of days.  I was shocked and embarrassed and mortified that I got up there.  And just in case you think I am over-reacting, my husband did agree that the video was "unflattering" which is about as close to the honest truth as I'm going to get from a smart man who knows how to word things properly for his woman on the edge.

I had a pity party for exactly two days.  Then a friend told me she hid in the back room of her house when her husband's friend, whom they hadn't seen since their wedding, stopped by for a visit.  She hid because of how she looked.

And then I decided enough is e-fucking-nough.

I am fat.  Much fatter than I used to be or that I want to be. And perhaps I don't know how to choose outfits that are flattering under stage lights.  Maybe the video was worse than it looked in person or maybe I do actually look like that and I'm delusional. Maybe this didn't heal me from worrying about how I look.  Whatever.  It doesn't take away from what I did.  And that's what made me the most angry at myself.  I allowed what I DID for myself to be diminished by how I LOOK.  When will that stop?  We let ourselves be made small in the very face of our huge accomplishments because we aren't perfect enough on the outside.  It's got to stop and stop right now. 

My biggest fear was getting up on a stage to do the thing I loved and looking bad or sounding bad.  And the very things I was afraid of happened to some extent.  And no one died.  And no one kicked me off stage.  And no one, aside from myself, even said horrible things to me.  Perhaps I won, not because I have conquered the fear but because I did it in spite of it.  I am not fearless by any means.  But I can call myself brave now.  Lessons are never learned from perfection.  They are learned when, in the face of imperfection, you still act.

So what was my lesson?  I'm glad you asked.  I may have forgotten for a hot minute what I set out to do by performing on a stage.  I got caught up in ego.  I may be a slow ass learner but I'm getting there.  The lesson is this:  What I do for myself and for others and how those things make me feel are the only things that matter in this life.  How I looked while I did them?  That's nothing.  It's not often I get to feel proud of myself and successful and beautiful all at the same time.  I don't ever want to take that gift away from myself again.

I'm reminded of an article that I read recently on HuffPo by Glennon Melton and shared on my Facebook page.  I recommend the read but one thing that struck me was the line, "If you do not feel beautiful then FILL UP, Precious Sister."  Fill up on all the lovely experiences because that's where a beautiful life comes from.  And when I got down from singing I felt pride in what I had achieved in facing my fear.  I felt all the love of those supporting me.  I felt radiant.  To hell with the dress.

I got up on that stage, not because I'm thin enough, pretty enough, talented enough, confident enough, or perfect enough.  But because, god damn it, I FUCKING CAN.

I'm sharing a video with you of that last song.  In the spirit of full disclosure I will tell you that it's not the full body shot that I saw and disliked but it still doesn't exactly match what I see in the mirror.  However, I promised to be vulnerable and open and that means you get to delight in my amateur singing abilities as well as my sailor mouth and pantsless jokes.  Enjoy.

Hey, Forty?  Come at me, bro.

Blue Monday

I meant to get a blog done (finally) and have it ready for you before New Years Day.  Then I meant to have it done a few days later.  And then a day after that.  But well, you know, life.  It just happens.  I've had so many topics I have wanted to write bouncing around in my head that I fear they may now be all jumbled together and vomited from my brain in one big pile of wordy crap.  You're welcome in advance.

I'm actually glad I haven't had time to write until just this moment.  This morning as a sipped my coffee, used my five pointless Candy Crush lives and watched the Today show I learned that it was the most depressing day of the year.  Wow.  Why wasn't I told? Blue Monday they call it.  It's supposed to be the third Monday of January but some asshole somewhere must have got the wrong memo and bumped it up a couple of weeks.  I wasn't even prepared.

Well, that's not true.  Where I live our entire state was enduring a freak out of epic proportions I like to call Coldpocalypse 2014.  With windchills at -40 degrees and colder all the schools were shut down by the governor.  You know this was supposed to be the first day back after a two week winter break, right?  I'm done with togetherness and, frankly, so are my boys.  By 10:00am I was threatening these two adolescents with the punishment of organizing my underwear drawer if they didn't get their shit together and stop beating on each other or screaming.  Today was an Ice Blue Monday.

Why the depression in January?  I think there are a lot of reasons for it.  Long, cold days.  Seasonal depression. The relative slowness and inactivity after the craziness of the holidays.  The lack of something to look forward to.  But I think there is more to it than that.

Let's go back to Christmas Day.  I spent the entire day with my family relaxing, opening presents and enjoying our time together (until it was time for me to make dinner and then it was panic time since every year I forget I do not own double ovens).  It was a wonderful day. And much like last year I woke up the next morning in a bit of a funk.  I was feeling like a sorely needed fruits and vegetables and I was exhausted from the last minute play calls I had to make to even pull off the holiday at all.  But thanks to the daily body gratitude challenge I was participating in on my blog's Facebook page I was able to combat those feelings that I normally have about my body, post-holiday, pretty easily.  Unfortunately, my Facebook friends didn't fare so well. 

On Christmas I saw post after post of well wishes, glad tidings, happiness, family togetherness, great food and celebrations and just overall - JOY.  That all changed the very next day.

Every post I saw was along these lines:

"I need to get back on track."

"God, I'm so fat today."

"I can't believe I ate so much."

"The diet starts now."

"Nothing fits today."

"I feel disgusting."

It made me so sad.  The shift from joy to self-loathing was almost tangible.  I've been working so hard on keeping those kinds of thoughts at bay for myself and there they all were in the form of statuses from all my beautiful friends.

And this is the frame of mind that people are in when they make New Year Resolutions?  This is the feeling they are to be inspired to make change from?  I've already tried to explain why real lasting change will NEVER come from a place of non-acceptance.  I promise you - it won't work.  This is why I started the Body Gratitude Challenge in the first place.  It's normal to want a fresh start each year and to have new goals but I truly believe there is merit to entering the new year with love, gratitude and acceptance as your backbone before you initiate change.

Blue Monday 2014 happens to be the first Monday after New Year's Day.  This is the day that many start their resolutions, often fueled by this aforementioned self-loathing.  They're creating lists of all their "can't haves" and "must dos". Or worse, they are already a few days into their resolution and have already decided they have failed.  Depressing, indeed.

I wish only one thing for you in the new year.  If you must make changes in your lifestyle do so not to make yourself less but because you deserve so much more.  You deserve to be healthy.  You deserve to feel strong.  You deserve to make time for yourself.  You deserve to love yourself.

I made a couple of resolutions that have nothing to do with my weight or fitness level and everything to do with how I feel about my body.  While I have a lot of things I want to do and experience and achieve I wanted to name a couple of very quantifiable things that I could work on.  First, I'm going to continue on my path of taking back the power from the camera.  I feel very comfortable at this point with having my picture taken by a professional but it's the "selfies" and candid photos that scare me and have made me absent from my family's memories.  So, I have vowed to take more photos of myself and even post them "out there" in the interwebs.  In fact, I've committed to taking 30 days of selfies and even posting some of them in an effort to make the camera old hat.  I have some Facebook friends who have agreed to join me in this experiment and together I am hoping we can take some of the emotion out of photo avoidance and perfectionism so we can be more present.

I think selfies, as irritating and ridiculous as they can be, resonate with people. I decided to throw caution to the wind and start fulfilling my goal by posting a pic of me, post-workout, no make-up and tons of swass, right on my Facebook page in a post about sustainability.  Imagine my shock when it became the most viewed thing I've ever put on my page. By A LOT.  People want to see real pictures.  They want to see things they can relate to.  After I recovered from my vulnerability overdose I felt a change.  A shift in where I want to go with this blog.  I've struggled recently with my intentions and direction but I've got it now.  All because I posted a picture of myself in my sweaty clothes.

Did you know that the Word of the Year in 2013 was "selfie"?  It's true.  Because, regardless of what you say, you know you love them.  (Or you are lacking in photo buddies to hold the camera.)  Every one needs to selfie once in awhile.

(source)

A friend of mine suggested that rather than coming up with a New Year's Resolution she was going to pick a word or theme for the year.  I have my theme already.

Sustainability

It's not fancy.  It's not bedazzled.  It's not full of "lose 10 pounds in 5 days" or "blast that belly" promises.  Sustainability is real.  It's relatable.  It's bare faced and full of swass.  Sustainability is where it's at.  It's the word for 2014.  I promise.

I know we are already knee deep in resolutions and I wish I could write everything I'm thinking tonight but I can't so I'm going to divide it up.  I'm going to address the topic of sustainable change in relation to self-worth and body confidence over the next few blogs so you can see what I'm working on and what I'm hoping to achieve.  If it helps you, wonderful!  If not, maybe you'll get some duck lips out of the deal.

For now, I want to wish you a very Happy New Year and I'd like to post an oldie but a goodie.  Whatever changes you want to make in 2014 or whatever goals you hope to achieve, make sure they are in line with this Body Pledge I hope you'll take with me.

Parts is Parts

The long Thanksgiving weekend is over.  You're tired.  You're a little cranky about going back to work.  You may be a little grateful to have family all gone home.  And your pants are a little tight.  Oh, hell.  Who are you kidding?  You've nearly given birth to a food baby.

But your heart is full.

Most people spend a little time on Thanksgiving thinking about what they are grateful for.  After all, that is the essence of the holiday.  A lot of people these days go above and beyond that and spend the entire month of November being grateful with a new entry for thankfulness every day.  I think it's a fantastic trend that really has no down side.  But what happens after Thanksgiving?

Before the turkey carcass is even cold we are bombarded with messages that we don't have enough.  That we aren't giving enough.  That we can't rest until we take advantage of the biggest sale prices of the year.  These messages will continue right up until Christmas day, driving that frantic holiday timeline ticking down like a doomsday clock.  How many times have you already heard that our holiday shopping season is shortened more than usual this year?

I'm not a total scrooge.  I want to have a nice Christmas, too.  I love seeing the looks on my children's faces when they open their gifts.  I'll just do my shopping from the comfort of my own home and avoid the crazy out there.  And pants.  I'll avoid pants as well.  Which is just as well.  See: Food Baby.

The entire holiday season is supposed to be filled with joy and good-will but nine times out of ten I see my friends exhausted with the pace of it all, stress levels at an all time high.  We are told to be grateful for what we have for an entire month while we scour the ads for the best price per pound on turkey.  Then we are told we aren't enough for another 4 weeks.  Black Friday?  That sounds festive. Sale Sale Sale.  Buy Buy Buy. Shop Shop Shop.  By the time it's over we are tired, cranky (again) and most likely broke.  We are ripe for being picked off one by one in the next media battle.

Here the best (read: worst) part of the season starts.  Now we are told we are too much.  Can you believe the nerve of all our excess? After being instructed to consume in every way possible we are told we have gone too far and we have to change.  After all - 2014 is your year, right?  Time to get skinny.  Time to be better.

December 26th you will see the entire diet and industry machine roll out and begin to bombard you with reminders of all your inadequacies.  We see headless people everywhere with zoomed in bloated, muffin tops and plumber's cracks at every turn.  You have to change.  You should be ashamed.  Don't let another year go by.  Join now.  Save now.  Buy now.  Starve now.  And maybe, just maybe, you'll be good enough again.  Maybe. (But not really - that's not profitable for the machine.) Until it starts all over.

Goals are not the problem, not if they are reasonable and responsible.  There's nothing wrong with wanting to better yourself.  There is absolutely no down side to wanting to become healthier and stronger and happier.  But if you think for one second that this industry as a whole cares about you more than the power of the almighty dollar, you are fooling yourself.  There really isn't a lot of money to be made when it comes to body acceptance.  At least not until we demand something different.

Last year at this time I decided to publicly challenge myself with a month of body gratitude.  How would entering the season of New Year's Resolutions feel if I had already spent time being grateful and accepting of all of me, even the parts that were harder for me to love?  The result, which I wrote about, was not that it made me skinnier in 2013.  Sorry to disappoint you. But I've been skinnier and I can tell you without a single doubt in my mind that it didn't make me happier or love myself more.  No, what I got out of this challenge last year was appreciation for this gift of a body I have.  I completely changed my internal dialogue by focusing on the beauty I could see rather than the flaws.  Changing the way I think, removing that desperate feeling of "Oh my God, I have to lose weight NOW" and just appreciating where I was right that moment was life changing.  At least for me.

I've had a few requests to start this Body Gratitude Challenge again and I will be doing so starting today on my Facebook page.  I double dog dare you to try and come up with a new body part to be grateful for and accepting of every single day for 30 days so that you can start your New Year with a mindset of love and thankfulness for what you have rather than the feeling of inadequacy and imperfection that is shoved down your throat by an industry that actually benefits more from your failure than your success.  From your fabulous teeth and gorgeous hair to your too long toes and your dimply thighs - I want to hear about the easy parts and the more difficult parts to love. And I'm quite certain you DO have a winning personality and a breathtakingly sharp wit *cough* but that's not what I'm talking about here.  I want body parts and I want them all.  I know you're fabulous on the inside.  I want you to believe you are fabulous on the outside, too.

The only rule I have in the entire challenge is that you have to be positive.  No back-handed compliments to yourself.  No passive aggressive bullshit.  No self-deprecating nonsense.  If you think I won't call you out on it if I see it you are mistaken, my friend.  Do you even know me? Self-deprecation was almost a second language to me and I'll spot it every time.  You can't bullshit a bullshitter.

Join me on my Facebook page on my daily post if you'd like or start your own Body Gratitude on your own wall. Just promise me you'll go into 2014 with love for what you already have so that you can make loving, responsible choices for your health and your body rather than being motivated by shame and imperfection.  Shame doesn't motivate anyone.  But love does.  And so does acceptance.

You are so much more than all your parts, it's true.  And this may seem like a self-centered challenge to some.  But I promise you that only good can come from being grateful for the body you are in right now.  When you celebrate each and every part, even the ones you deem your "trouble spots", you lift up your entire being to a whole other level.  You are wonderfully made.  Join me in celebrating that.

"The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." - Aristotle

But you have some pretty fucking good parts.  I promise.

New Year's Evolution

Happy New Year!  Today is the first day of a brand new year where people feel the powerful lightness of new beginnings and clean slates.  Fresh commitments to be a better person, parent, spouse, employee.  To be organized and punctual and vice-free.  And, most commonly, thinner.

I hate New Year's Resolutions primarily because they don't last.  They have very little staying power.  Any decision made while suffering from a hangover and after being tagged in far too many NYE party photos making your duck lip face shouldn't be taken too seriously.  And very often it's not.  I've seen it time and time again in the gym - the place is packed the first few weeks in January.  You can't get a machine to save your life.  By early February there is a little more room in those classes you wanted to attend.  By the end of February you have the run of the place again.  And as quickly as that the Resolutioners disappear.

This is why I wanted to try my Body Gratitude experiment.  What would happen if I entered the New Year having already practiced for a month what I'm convinced is the secret to all successes?  What if I had already laid the ground work for a brand new tone for my life?  Would I feel differently at the end of 2013 than I felt about 2012?

2012 was personally one of the hardest years I've had in awhile.  Not the hardest, mind you.  I've been through much worse.  But this one really got to me.  By mid-year I was beat down physically, emotionally and spiritually and it took the rest of the year to try and climb back out of that hole.  The worst of it all was not what people did or said to me.  It's what I did and said to myself.  I was a horrible friend to myself.  And like a lot of women I let all that self-hatred manifest itself in hatred for my body.

So, enter 30 Days of Body Gratitude.  Today is day 30. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.  I was able to come up with 29 separate entries for physical attributes I loved, liked or was ok with.  Contrary to what many thought it wasn't about complimenting or bragging about myself.  It was about making a conscious effort to say nice things to myself and change that internal dialogue.

And you know what?  It kind of worked.  I spent a lot of time each day thinking about what I wanted to post about or how I could spin something that normally was a negative thing for me and change it to a positive one.  I felt responsibility in living up to what I was preaching about so any time I felt those "ugly" thoughts or "fat" thoughts coming on I quickly changed those words in my head or, more importantly, thought about what emotion I was feeling that made me want to say those things and I tried to deal with the real issue.

The best part of all of this wasn't what I said to myself each day.  It was the feedback I got from others and the gratitude posts from them.  There weren't a lot of people that went the distance with me.  I had quite a few that started strong and didn't make it.  I had a few that just popped in once in awhile to contribute on days when they were probably feeling pretty decent about themselves.  I had a few surprises from people who never posted but at the end said they were sad to see it go as it made a difference in how they looked at their own bodies each day.  How amazing is that?  That made it totally worth it to feel so vulnerable and exposed most days when I posted, wondering when someone was going to call bullshit on me.  And one gorgeous friend has decided to put her scale away for a year because of this project.  Fantastic!  I am truly inspired by all that came out to play with me.

Sadly, I had some friends who gave up quickly or couldn't contribute at all, saying that there was nothing they were grateful for on their own body.  That kind of self-loathing for their own bodies speaks to a much, much greater problem which was the real root of what I was trying to accomplish for myself.  It's what I believe is the secret to all successes or goals.  It's love for yourself.

So many think they will love themselves when they get to their goal weight.  Or when they find the right person to spend their lives with.  Or perhaps when they find that perfect job that will finally make them feel like a success in their professional lives.  But what if they have it all backwards?  What if the only way to get to those points is to love yourself first, thereby inviting all those things into your life because you are DESERVING and WORTHY of all good things.  What if the key to your resolution of being a better person, parent, spouse, employee is all about knowing, first and foremost, that you "are worthy because you were born"?

I'm still going to struggle with worthiness on a daily basis.  Even through all this gratitude I've been practicing I have still been battling with that which should be my birthright.  It doesn't help that I'm still hurting from losing friendships that I thought I'd have forever just because I made a career choice that was better for me and my family.  And just a couple of weeks ago I was reminded, yet again, that I was "a stupid mistake" (not my words).  It all takes it's toll.  But I didn't manifest those feelings into calling myself ugly or disgusting these past 30 days.  And that's worth it because those were my weapons of choice.  Instead I dealt with the real issues and feelings and felt what I had to feel instead of beating up on my body just to take it out on someone.  It was painful but I did it.

So what is my plan for the New Year?  I'm going to keep practicing loving myself and I'm going to find a way to focus on worthiness.  And I will not let a number on the scale dictate my worth any longer.  I know the issues are bigger than that and I will not shrink away from them and hide under a bathroom appliance.  This doesn't mean I won't try to be healthy.  I will still try to eat better and exercise smarter and feel stronger and leaner because I like feeling that way and I like being able to participate in activities that require me to take care of my body.  And there are still things that I would change about my body. But I will do my best to try to approach my body with the intention of love and gratitude for what it can do for me rather than trying to fit it in to some mold before I can love it.  Love first, change second. And I'm not calling this a resolution because those come every year.  I'm hoping to evolve to a point where I never again have to start over on this project.

I no longer have a goal weight or a goal size.  I really don't.  I do have a couple of other goals, though.  First, I'm going to try my hardest to never say anything to myself that I wouldn't say to one of my best friends.  Next, I will no longer wait for the perfect weight or size before I try new things or new activities. It's time to start living and achieving all the things I want for myself. And finally, my last goal is a line from one of my favorite Brandi Carlile songs - "Do I make myself a blessing to everyone I meet?".  This includes being a blessing to myself.  And unless there is some new way to measure blessings I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with a god damned scale. 

May your 2013 and forever after be filled with all the blessings and worth that you are entitled to just because you were born.