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.

Whatcha huntin'?

A week into my Body Gratitude project and I find that I'm quickly running out of body parts that I feel really good about.  This doesn't mean I should quit, though I am certain there are Facebook friends out there who are ready for me to shut the hell up.  It's even more proof that I need to continue, even if all those people need to "hide" me until January 1st.  But what do you do when, after seven days, you run out of things to feel beautiful about?  Maybe you make lemonade from lemons.  Or in this case from cankles.

It's time to start choosing some body parts that I'm less fond of and make the most of them.  After all, it's not much of a challenge if I only give a shout out to the things that I've actually always loved about my appearance, right?  I mean "hair"?  Really? Hair was my first entry.  Hair is the one talent I have.  Lame answer.

You know what is not my talent?  My legs.  And this is largely due to my cankles. Did you know that the word "cankles" was the July 26, 2009 Word of the Day according to Urban Dictionary?  I didn't either.  But if you are one of the two people on this earth who do not yet know what a cankle is, I will give you the official Urban Dictionary definition:

The area in affected female legs where the calf meets the foot in an abrupt, nontapering terminus; medical cause: adipose tissue surrounding the soleus tendon, probably congenital, worsened by weight gain and improved in appearance only by boots. From the English "calf" meaning wide portion of the lower leg, and "ankle" meaning slender joint of leg with foot.

Call them what you want, but I have them.  My leg is pretty thick all the way down but my cankles are why I don't wear dresses often. They are not my best asset so I cover them up.  But they come with a lot of history.

I'm an only child and my mother had me very young.  She raised me on her own but there were times when she needed help and because of that we lived with my grandmother for awhile.  My mother's younger siblings that were still at home were more like brothers and sisters to me than anything else.  In fact, I have one uncle who is actually twelve days younger than me.  Try explaining that on the school bus.

As much as I was exposed to the "big family" experience, I never quite felt like part of the family.  I was never entirely included.  I viewed them as my closest of siblings but in reality I was never more than a niece to them.  I was devastated when my grandmother got remarried and moved the remaining younger kids out of state. I felt like I lost my whole family. And then again about eight years ago when the two aunts that I cared for so deeply completely cut me off after telling me in no uncertain terms that I was never actually one of them.  It took me a long time to recover and I still find myself struggling to get really close to people at times.

It didn't help that while growing up I didn't look like anyone in the family.  I really don't even look like my mother.  I've only seen a few pictures of my father here and there so I can't even comment as to whether I look like him.  Do you remember that Sesame Street sketch with the song, "One of these things is not like the other...".  That was me.  "Belonging" is not a feeling I ever remember growing up.

Oh, but I digress. Back to cankles. In addition to this huge extended family was my great-grandmother, Pauline.  I can't remember a time when she wasn't around while I was growing up.  I remember going to her apartment when I was little and she would give us circus peanuts (um, worst candy ever) and tell us not to rock in the kitchen chair or we may "upset something".  She saved all bacon fat in a can by the stove and she made the best cinnamon rolls in the entire universe, a recipe she took with her when she passed away.

Pauline was born in 1909 and later was pretty much raised by a single father, unheard of at that time, after her mother left, taking only one of the kids with her.  From what I've been told, she adored her father, Hamilton.  She married a little late, too.  I believe she was in her late twenties when she married and had four daughters.

There were days she would open up the mysterious trunk in her room and show me pictures from when she was in her twenties and the one thing I always noticed were her cankles.  She had them in the most literal sense.  There was no difference in her leg circumference starting just above the knee and going all the way down to her foot.  It was actually pretty amazing.

Pauline moved in with my mother and me after my grandma moved away with the other kids. (Ok, by now I'm sure you are confused.  In my world my grandmother was "Grammy" and my great-grandmother was "Grandma". Does that help?)  I'm sure it worked out well sometimes for my mom because Grandma Pauline could always be there for me before and after school but I know she was hard to handle sometimes. You couldn't appear to be looking for anything in the house without her asking, "Whatcha huntin?"  She couldn't sleep much at night and would wake us up with the sounds of shuffling cards on a glass table so she could play solitaire. She started nearly every story with, "When I worked at the state school..." (She worked at a state mental hospital in her youth and the stories, though I'm sure she held some back from me as a kid, were amazing.) She also worked at a hatchery and I'll never forget the time she told me about the three legged chick that was born with it's third leg coming out of where it's butt should be.  It would run around like crazy and then sit back on that middle leg, the other two "normal" legs sticking out straight in front.  Of course it died because, you know, it couldn't go to the bathroom.  But I still wanted a three legged chick for my own.

Grandma crocheted while she watched her "programs" and she even taught me how to crochet a little.  I still have a couple of zig-zag afghans that she made for me in that Charlie Brown pattern that she preferred.  I can still hear the way she said afghan.  Af-a-gan.  

Pauline had the thickest, strongest fingernails and she would file them to nearly a point.  It's really no wonder the babies would never come to her when she waggled her fingers at them to get their attention.  Unfortunately her thick fingernails meant she also had thick toenails.  Literally, it took two hands squeezing on the clipper to get through them. Guess who got asked to trim them for her?  Have I told you how I don't like feet?  Yeah, I don't.  Perhaps this is why.  I also used to roll her hair in curlers for her.  She had the softest, whitest hair that I've ever seen.

I got the call that Grandma passed away at about 6:30am one morning, literally moments after peeing on a stick and finding out that I was pregnant with Ethan.  There was a lot of emotion that day.  I was so sad that my children would never meet the grandmother that I had spent the most time with.  They would never hear her crazy stories.  I wanted to do something to give her some kind of tribute but I just couldn't think of naming my child Pauline. (Actually her name was Mattie Pauline but she hated the name Mattie.)  And if we were to have a boy the name was already chosen anyway.

We drove out to Missouri to go to the funeral and while there we went through all of my Grandma Pauline's old photos.  So many pictures of her with her dark hair and cankles.  One picture in that box stopped me short.  There was a picture of her father, Hamilton, whom she loved so much.  Only it was my face staring back.  Here was the missing link.  Finally, I had proof that I did actually belong in this big, dysfunctional family.

We decided to name our second son Sean Hamilton in honor of my grandmother and her father whom she loved so dearly and whose face I share.  I had no clue that he would grow to have the same face, further solidifying our place here in this world.  We do belong and we do have history.

I can't wear heels with ankle straps and the whole ankle bracelet fad of my youth was frustrating as hell.  But today I am grateful for my cankles and the connection it gives me to my family history.  And there is always extra-wide calf boots so life isn't so bad.

I still want a three-legged chick, though.

Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough...

I haven't written in a few weeks.  Frankly, I wasn't sure what I wanted to say next and honestly I had my hands full with the one goal I had given myself which was posting 30 days of gratitude statuses on Facebook for the month of November.  As hokey as it may sound, I thought this was a good project for me because being full of love and gratitude and all kinds of hand-holding, kumbaya feelings is not my strong suit.  But I gave it my best shot and I think I did ok.  Some were half-assed on my least gracious days, I'm not going to lie.  And some were genuinely full of feeling.  But the final post of the month is probably my favorite.  I wrote:

Gratitude Day 30: This one is difficult to write because I have a real hard time believing it most days. In fact it seems like total self-absorbed BS to even write it and if you think it's obnoxious, trust me when I tell you that fact is not lost on me. But today and every day from now on I'm going to try and be really grateful for myself. This body, mind and heart have put up with a lot of abuse, physical and emotional, for 38 years and yet they continue on. This imperfect shell I'm living in has had the opportunity to create two beautiful boys that, for right now and hopefully forever, seem to authentically love and take pride in themselves. I've done lots of things wrong but I've done a few things really right, too, and I'm thankful for all of those experiences.

My goal for the New Year is to improve and grow internally, reducing the "weight" of my own self-criticism until, with constant practice, my internal dialogue is one of love and thankfulness for myself and my body. We all deserve to care for ourselves as much as we care for all those whom we hold precious.

I'm also thankful that this is the last gratitude that I'm obligated to write as, I'm sure, are you. Bring on December!"

The very next day the body that I was trying to be so eternally grateful for decided to gift me with a stomach virus, leaving me laid up in bed (I'm actually still there), giving me plenty of time to think on my new blog subject. I have a lofty goal mentioned in that gratitude post but no clear path on how to get there.  I've been reading body-accepting blogs and curvy-loving Facebook pages and sadly, a lot of those still end with people debating via comments, nastily mind you, the difference between beautiful and just plain fat.  Sigh.  Not helping.

I've also read a memoir by successful "anti-diet, pro-body acceptance" blogger Kim Brittingham called Read My Hips.  While I have found her thought provoking, hilarious, entertaining and compelling, I still don't agree with her 100% on some topics. However, here was a passage that struck me early on.  She was remembering a frumpy, chubby, awkward classmate who, after one mysterious Summer break, came back to school transformed into someone sophisticated, stylish, graceful and outgoing.  Kim tried to coax the secret from this friend who seemed altogether ignorant of this miracle that had happened, one that Kim wanted for herself.  Finally, Kim decides, "Maybe all that happened was that someone told her she was beautiful, and maybe for once she believed it."

Hmmm... A place to start perhaps?  But as I've already explained I don't receive compliments well so it doesn't matter what anyone says if I don't believe it.  So it has to come from me.  And there you have it.  Affirmations.

No offense, Senator Franken, but you will always be Stuart Smalley to me.

My first exposure to affirmations came from my Grammy. My mother and I moved back in with my Grandmother and all my mother's siblings when I was around 5 or 6 and on occasion I slept in Grammy's room with her.  She didn't mind because I slept like the dead with no moving or sounds at all.  My Grammy was one of those people obsessed with the newest in holistic type medicines and concepts. (That's not a bad thing - I prefer holistic and homepathic paths myself)  However, she didn't do anything in less than it's extreme. She was a mini-trampoline using (hysterical if you had the pleasure of knowing her bra size), Neo-Life vitamin selling, protein powder consuming Bible beater. And she read every self-help book known to man.

One morning after staying in her room I woke up to her talking to herself.  She would spread her arms wide and bring them together to a centering point, touching her nose with both tips of her index fingers while saying her daily affirmations in a low, monotone voice. "I am smaaaarrrttt"  "I am successssful" "I am callllm" "I am beauuuuuutiful".  At this point, I cracked one eye open and in my most snarky, dead pan, 6 year old voice said, "I wouldn't go that far".  She laughed and laughed at my quick wit, which probably wasn't the best idea.  It only encouraged my ongoing habit to say what ever sarcastic, dry humored thought came to my head just to get a laugh.  But sarcasm was a language of love in our family.  I was fluent at a very young age.

I didn't give much thought to affirmations for awhile.  And when Stuart Smalley came on the scene I was mostly just reminded of my kooky grandmother. The idea of positive internal dialogue was pretty much lost on me seeing how I eventually became fluent in self-deprecation in addition to sarcasm.

During my years online in the Weight Watchers community my friend, Marylyn, would surprise us with a post out of the blue saying, "Quick! Name something you love about yourself!".  I loved those posts and the idea still sticks with me today.  How wonderful it was to see a hundred women or more post something positive about themselves or their bodies. It wasn't always easy to add to the thread but almost everyone did so.

We are coming up on the New Year soon.  Time for resolutions and new gym memberships.  For "This time I'm going to actually do it!" and "Wait till you see me next Summer"  This is a very profitable time for weight loss companies and fitness centers to capitalize on your big plans.  January is the cash-cow (I promise this is not a fat joke) for the industry.  But it's all a bunch of bullshit and I'll tell you why.

I was a certified personal trainer and group fitness instructor. I had lost 130 lbs. with no medical intervention. I had a pretty decent knowledge of nutrition and a pretty flexible schedule to get in all my workouts. I worked in a gym, for God's sake. And I still managed to gain back nearly 50 lbs in 4 years knowing all that I know and having the time to prevent it.  The answer doesn't lie with a specific eating plan, exercise class, bootcamp, personal trainer, or corporate weight loss center telling you when to eat and how much.  Those are all tools and very good ones.  But if you don't fix what's in your head, if you don't find a way to love yourself and tell yourself that you are beautiful and worthy and actually BELIEVE it, you won't succeed.  Maybe for a while you will. Maybe for a while you'll think you have it beat and you'll think you can help others beat it but it will come back around to you.  I promise you that.

I'm going to try something harder for me than my 30 Days of Gratitude in November.  Leading up to this New Year's Resolution time I'm going to attempt 30 Days of Body Gratitude.  I'm going to try and post something positive specifically about my body or my appearance every day with the final post on January 1st. I could post about all the other things I believe about my character and my personality but those are not where I'm lacking.  I like myself in those categories.  But, like most other women, I cluster most of my thoughts of self-worth with my physical appearance and I do so in a negative way.  Time to change that.

Will this fix everything? No.  I'm a long way off from that.  But I'm going to baby step into 2013 focusing on changing the one thing I really have control over, how I view myself, instead of that stupid number on the scale.  I will post something every day for 30 days and I will attempt to do so without any self-deprecation.  I hope you will join me.  If you are my Facebook friend, post what you are grateful about your body right on my status. "Quick! Name something you love about yourself!". (Please, please comment with your own gratitude on my status or I'll look like that asshole who can't stop talking about how hot she is.) If we aren't friends yet, post something in your own status or post something here, even if you have to do it every day on this one blog post.  This is what it's here for.

I'm hoping to enter 2013 with a new thought process.  I want each of you to wake up and have your first thought (before you think of your specific body gratitude of course) be, "I'm beauuuuutiful"  Touch your nose if you  have to, I don't care.  And don't ever say to yourself, "I wouldn't go that far".

I'm hoping that soon each of us can say "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and, doggone it, I like me."