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.

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.

Thick Girl Couture, Part Deux: Minecraft Strikes Back

Yep, I'm going to talk about my kids again.  Why?  Because I don't get out much.  This is my life.  Mom by day, Badass by, um, I think the remaining 7 minutes and 34 seconds.

My kids are pretty average boys at 11 1/2 and almost 13. (Well, other than their inherited above-average intelligence, but enough about me.)  And like most adolescent boys they love video games.  This includes an old PC game called Minecraft that's been around for ages.  If you have a kid around the same age as mine you've heard of it.  If you haven't heard of Minecraft, can I please come live with you?

So back in August we were back-to-school shopping and my kids saw some Minecraft t-shirts and lost their damn minds.  Lost them.  I gave in and got them each two of these coveted shirts after spending nearly thirty minutes deciding who gets which design.  $10 a shirt.  No biggie, right?  It made them happy.

My oldest wore one of his shirts on the first day of school.  When they came home from school my youngest proceeded to tell me that "everyone" (read: one kid) totally made fun of his brother for his shirt, calling him a nerd and a gamer. My oldest quickly piped up and said, "I don't care who likes my shirt.  I like my shirt and I'll wear what I want."  Yay!  Good for him!  ASD continues to be a life saver in the self-esteem department.

My youngest son flat out refused to wear the shirts.  Refused.  I tried to talk him into it.  I tried to guilt him into it.  I tried everything.  Mostly I was ticked off that I spent $20 on shirts he'd never wear but I also hated the fact that he could be so easily influenced to just toss away something he was so excited about.

He finally decided to wear one of the shirts this week I think in an effort to either make me happy or prove a point to me, which in any case was a win-win for him.  He got off the bus, came in the house and said, "See!!  I knew this would happen!"  This same kid that likes to pick on my kids for everything they do and overshare all kinds of explicit sex mis-information that I then have to correct (without the benefit of wine, mind you) decided to call my kid names and make fun of his shirt, including calling his shirt "gay".

I lost my shit.  I really did.  I told the boys that they should not be worried about what other people think.  That this kid wasn't the end all, be all in fashion choices.  That maybe they should consider not hanging out with someone that made them feel bad about themselves all the time. That if I ever heard them use the word "gay" as if it was some kind of insult that embodied wrongness I would tear their Minecraft world apart, block by block. Then the doorbell rang about three minutes later.  That kid wanting the boys to come out and play.

I didn't yell.  I didn't cuss (gold star for me).  But I told this kid in no uncertain terms what I would and would not accept from him if he wants to play with my kids.  Mostly I scared the scrap out of him.  Could have been the fact that I hadn't showered all day but I think it was my fierce Mom-tude.

Any way, the kids still went out to play with him, my kid will wear the shirts, the mean kid stopped himself from being a turd and apologized to my kids mid-insult.  I win, right?

Except I don't.  All of this crap reminded me of junior high and peer pressure and all that.  It sucks, right?  It's horrible for everyone and I can totally sympathize with my son for wanting to fit in or at least not stand out in a negative way.  I get it.  I wanted those things, too.  I wasn't usually successful at them but I wanted them.  I don't blame him for feeling that way but, God, I want it to be different for him.  I want that so badly.  So much so I would give up all the Guess jeans I ever fit in to in order to make it different for him.  Oh, wait.

Here's the deal.  I have really spent the last year getting my shit together.  I'm not there yet but I'm so much better than I was.  Working on body confidence has been a HUGE eye opener and I know I've come a long way.  But God damn if I didn't fuck it all up when I first started this blog.

To date one of my most widely read blogs is my blog on fashion for the thick girl.  I basically tried to tell you what and what not to wear.  I've had so much guilt (my number 2 talent, shame being number 1) over this stupid blog in the last few months it's made me crazy.  Do you people not like me?  Do you not care enough about me to tell me when I'm talking shit?  Seriously, what's a girl gotta do to get you to smack some sense into her?

I don't know a God damned thing about fashion and I admitted as such.  Everything I told you came from a place of, "You can't get away with wearing that" or "You're too fat to wear that" or "Don't draw attention to yourself or any of your imperfections".  That's how I have lived my life in regards to fashion.  Well fuck that.  To quote one of my very favorite internet personalities, Fit Mama Training, "What you think of my body is none of my business."  And that applies to what I'm wearing.  And it applies to what you are wearing, too.

So lets just break this down, bit by bit, and revise my previous rules on fashion:

Jeans:

I tried to give you advice on pocket flaps vs. no pocket flaps, bedazzling, whiskering, wash, skinny legs vs. bootcut.  Jesus.  This from the girl who can't find one pair of jeans to fit her right to save her life.

Revised rule:  Wear whatever the fuck you like.  You don't owe it to anybody but yourself to like your own damn jeans.

Shapewear:

I didn't so much as give you instructions to wear Spanx as I did bitch about it but this still bears mentioning:

Revised rule: You are not obligated to smooth anything.  Real women have lumps and bumps and cellulite is not a defect but a perfectly normal part of the body, especially the female body.  If you feel confident in some shapewear, do it.  But don't you dare do it for someone else.

Ankle Straps:

For real?  I wrote about this?  I have talked about what I have perceived to be my "cankles" many times but I know I said this: "Your fat ankle does NOT need a belt."  Sigh.

Revised rule: First, I'm a moron.  Second, wear whatever the fuck shoes you like.  Third, I'm having a love affair with a man named Vince Camuto who made the first ever wide width strappy high heel shoe that makes me feel like I'm walking on air.  And guess what?  It has a fucking ankle strap.  And it even fits around my ankle.  Booyah.

Bras:

Ok, I'm not budging on this one.  If you want to wear a bra and I'm certainly not going to be the person who says you have to, you really should make sure it fits right.  You owe it to yourself.  The right size bra can make you feel like hot shit.

I recently had a woman from Nordstrom size me.  I had it done before but it seems the recent weight I've gained has landed on my chest.  She asked what I thought I was and I told her and she immediately said, "No you're not."  Um, ok.  She took me to a dressing room, measured my band and told me my band size and then said, "Now take off your bra and let me see your breasts."  I immediately followed her directions without her even giving me so much as a cocktail and she sized me by sight.  That's some damn good skills.  And she was right and the bras were amazing.

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I talked about not showing too much skin. I talked about not having words on your ass.  I talked about not wearing big, baggy clothes.  And not one damn person told me to shut the fuck up.  You all are on notice.

Here's what I want you to know.  What you wear is your business, no one else's.  How it makes you feel is the only thing that matters.  You don't owe it to anyone to hide from what you think are your imperfections or live up to other people's preconceived notions as to how you should dress based on your weight or your body or your interests.  Go on and wear your Minecraft shirt, damn-it!  That's how I'm going to make this different for my kid.  I have to be different first.

This right here, from my another of my favorite online self-love advocates, The Militant Baker, is from here on the only thing that matters when it comes to others judging what we wear.

And for the love of God, next time I'm talking out the side of my neck give a girl a heads up, ok?  Sheesh.

Oh, that reminds me.  You need this.  Just because I said so.