Dear Me

Dear Katie,

You’re a work in progress but your body isn’t. The only thing it has ever wanted was for you to love it but you have always seen as it as war zone, a thing to be changed, revolting you in the mirror even when it gave you three perfectly healthy children. It even successfully fed them and never buckled. You have starved it, eating only a bowl of Honey Combs and one banana for weeks on end. You have smoked countless cigarettes to stave off any trace of an appetite and worked out at absurd times of the morning, sometimes for hours even before drinking a glass of water. You couldn’t be too bloated before you stepped on the scale because a higher number on the scale could derail your day.

To be fair, you were programmed with messages that very much gave the perception that taking up too much physical space was a no- no. You love your family beyond measure with no addendum to that but there were some pretty significant messages about weight that were damaging.  Your Dad once told you you looked pregnant when you were 12 after eating a bowl of ice cream by the pool. You had on a turquoise swimsuit with a yellow and pink diagonal stripe and were so ashamed you cried behind the shed. In high school when you gained 10 lbs, your Grandpa made a comment about your weight during Thanksgiving dinner and you cried again, refused to eat and ran 5 miles in the snow. Does it matter now? I mean, you are an adult, right? You’ve been in therapy on and off for years, although when you did try to bring up issues with body dysmorphia with your last therapist, she recommended giving up carbs.

Here’s the thing,  Katie, you’re  tired of that shit.  Tired of thinking about it, worrying about it, obsessing about it, crying, dreading, fighting the one thing  belongs to you. Your body. No one can take it from you and this vessel that carries you through this life has not abandoned you, failed you or left you even when you’ve hated it with all your heart. What if you just looked in the mirror, stared in your eyes and realized God didn’t make another you and you were the the one and only snowflake in this world. You have age spots and a sagging stomach but you also have a good heart and a lap my kids still want to sit on.

I believe in you. Even if it takes so much work, self help books, good friends, a supportive family, you get one life, love yours. And whatever you don’t love be brave enough to change and start again. You got this mama!

Love,

Me

Vision Board

Good morning, Happy Sunday,

In two months I turn 40. I have lived half my life, at least the half where I will feel this young and in relatively good health and I still want to figure out my piece in this puzzle called life. Please read, maybe you can relate.

For me writing a  blog only works if it touches readers who I suspect think might be experiencing the same internal conflicts as me because selfishly it makes me feel better. I stared reading a book about a month ago by Marie Forleo called, “Everything is Figureoutable.” I am only half way through and it’s already changed my mindset in significant ways. The biggest one so far has been the amount of time I waste on activities that do not add value to my life and have made me stuck. I have a convenient little screen time app on my phone that logs how many hours a day/week you spend looking at your screen; it made me sick. Some weeks could be north of 20 hours! WHAT??!?? It would be easy to adopt a “herd” mentality where I say, “Well everyone else is doing it too, so what’s the big deal?” I have likely gone on like this for a long time, which, when I look at my current life, it’s easy to see why I haven’t put into motion dreams for my life I have had swirling in the back of my mind. Everyone gets the same amount of hours in a day, now I really had an answer for where they were going (separate from Netflix and my one hour weekend coffee time. This will never change for me).

So what now? Now that I have identified one of a host of issues my near 40 self is experiencing, do I shrug my shoulders and just say, “This time suck attached to a little computer box is going to dictate how I spend my free time because it has for so long?” I am excluding the ways cell phones help navigate modern day life; that convenience cannot be undercut. My question isn’t rhetorical either. I’m going to use an imperfect metaphor here: What if you’re in a car accident? Like an actual accident where you’re physically not injured but your car is totaled and you have to figure it out. The event has happened, just like this realization has happened for me. It can’t be ignored and must be “figured out”.

I had to drill down pretty deep and really ask myself what it is I wanted to do with my life. I am a mother, a wife, I work full time, but outside of that, what kinds of goals do I still have for me? What do I want to accomplish so that at the end of my life there are zero regrets? As hokie as this is going to sound, I truly believe we were all born with a preset of gifts given to us. I knew the minute I touched a typewriter in 1986, I was born to be a writer. Words would come to me faster than I could type them. I once wrote an old boyfriend a very detailed letter about how heart broken I was that he dumped me. He wrote me back to say my letter hadn’t changed his mind but that I was a very talented writer. We were 16 and all of a sudden I cared more that he said that, than I did about our foregone relationship.  Even if I never made one dime doing it, it wasn’t about making writing a career or chasing a deadline, although I did actually have a small corner in our local newspaper at 7! – and got paid! It was me being true to this gift I knew lived inside me. How many times did I say out loud to my friends, family and Facebook community I would write a book, and yet did I even start? No.  I have had other goals too of searching out new career options, working in doula work ( I love babies and being a support to new moms) and yet I just couldn’t seem to find the time to make those things happen.

To circle back, I named this blog “Vision Board,” because that is what I created on a craft board from Walmart. It’s a small 11×14 inch board with a few visual representations for what I am holding myself accountable for this month. Would I break a promise to my best friend? No I would not. This board is a contract, a promise to me and if you can’t keep a promise to you, how can you to anyone else? I crossed out my goals because some of those are personal and health related, but a big piece of my vision is making myself disciplined while not creating excuses. Excuses are only illusions you use to stop yourself from getting ahead. Anything you really want to make happen, you will. I promise.

Vision Board

Good morning, Happy Sunday,

In two months I turn 40. I have lived half my life, at least the half where I will feel this young and in relatively good health and I still want to figure out my piece in this puzzle called life. Please read, maybe you can relate.

For me writing a  blog only works if it touches readers who I suspect think might be experiencing the same internal conflicts as me because selfishly it makes me feel better. I stared reading a book about a month ago by Marie Forleo called, “Everything is Figureoutable.” I am only half way through and it’s already changed my mindset in significant ways. The biggest one so far has been the amount of time I waste on activities that do not add value to my life and have made me stuck. I have a convenient little screen time app on my phone that logs how many hours a day/week you spend looking at your screen; it made me sick. Some weeks could be north of 20 hours! WHAT??!?? It would be easy to adopt a “herd” mentality where I say, “Well everyone else is doing it too, so what’s the big deal?” I have likely gone on like this for a long time, which, when I look at my current life, it’s easy to see why I haven’t put into motion dreams for my life I have had swirling in the back of my mind. Everyone gets the same amount of hours in a day, now I really had an answer for where they were going (separate from Netflix and my one hour weekend coffee time. This will never change for me).

So what now? Now that I have identified one of a host of issues my near 40 self is experiencing, do I shrug my shoulders and just say, “This time suck attached to a little computer box is going to dictate how I spend my free time because it has for so long?” I am excluding the ways cell phones help navigate modern day life; that convenience cannot be undercut. My question isn’t rhetorical either. I’m going to use an imperfect metaphor here: What if you’re in a car accident? Like an actual accident where you’re physically not injured but your car is totaled and you have to figure it out. The event has happened, just like this realization has happened for me. It can’t be ignored and must be “figured out”.

I had to drill down pretty deep and really ask myself what it is I wanted to do with my life. I am a mother, a wife, I work full time, but outside of that, what kinds of goals do I still have for me? What do I want to accomplish so that at the end of my life there are zero regrets? As hokie as this is going to sound, I truly believe we were all born with a preset of gifts given to us. I knew the minute I touched a typewriter in 1986, I was born to be a writer. Words would come to me faster than I could type them. I once wrote an old boyfriend a very detailed letter about how heart broken I was that he dumped me. He wrote me back to say my letter hadn’t changed his mind but that I was a very talented writer. We were 16 and all of a sudden I cared more that he said that, than I did about our foregone relationship.  Even if I never made one dime doing it, it wasn’t about making writing a career or chasing a deadline, although I did actually have a small corner in our local newspaper at 7! – and got paid! It was me being true to this gift I knew lived inside me. How many times did I say out loud to my friends, family and Facebook community I would write a book, and yet did I even start? No.  I have had other goals too of searching out new career options, working in doula work ( I love babies and being a support to new moms) and yet I just couldn’t seem to find the time to make those things happen.

To circle back, I named this blog “Vision Board,” because that is what I created on a craft board from Walmart. It’s a small 11×14 inch board with a few visual representations for what I am holding myself accountable for this month. Would I break a promise to my best friend? No I would not. This board is a contract, a promise to me and if you can’t keep a promise to you, how can you to anyone else? I crossed out my goals because some of those are personal and health related, but a big piece of my vision is making myself disciplined while not creating excuses. Excuses are only illusions you use to stop yourself from getting ahead. Anything you really want to make happen, you will. I promise.

Riptide of Peace… Come Find Me

I lost my Dad when I was 13 and it forever altered my notion that peace was something for me. In fact, quite the opposite. Something happens when you near 40 where you become more self aware of who you really are. I have noticed an enormous pattern in my life where I self sabotage not only happiness for myself,  which is always a fleeting thing, but I become quite addicted to living in a static state of conflict.

When something goes wrong, whether it’s a disagreement with my exchange student, or my teenager has a complete melt down and screams at me, or I have a falling out with my own mother, I hold on to it; that anger, the slow boil churning inside me and I oddly love it because it’s what I “deserve”.  The event  upsetting me, and it almost always involves my immediate family, becomes the “thing” I feel most close to. It’s the most unhealthy and self destructive pattern on my life because it does not allow for peace.

To my friends who occasionally seek my advice, I have talked a lot about simply finding peace. It’s what I always want for people and yet have never allowed for myself Happiness comes and goes as quick as the wind. Happiness is found in simple moments, like the smell of fresh brewed coffee, a walk along the beach at sunset, the first day of fall when you pull on your favorite hoodie. No one can live in a constant state of happiness, but generally people can live in peace. When the people you care about, care about you back and you feel safe and secure, peace is the jackpot of a life you can count on to mostly be fair and equitable. And yet, when someone you love so desperately, dies so soon it alters the way you look at life and what seems fair and just and most importantly safe, does not feel like it will ever be for you.

I share this, because I know I am not alone. If you’re reading this and can identify, you are also not alone. We’re seekers. We know peace is obtainable and we want it so badly, but we’re guarded. We swim in the tension of things others can seemingly let go of because it feels better than taking a chance of coming up for air only to have that sweet, fresh gulp of relief, stolen. Why? Because hearts are fragile things and you can only have it broken so many times before you’re afraid it won’t work if it breaks one more time.

Things that help, very very moderately: Naming out loud 3 things I am grateful for every day. On the way to dinner last night my husband asked me what I was most looking forward to. I actually had to sit there and think about it for a solid, and very uncomfortable five minutes. I have blessings around me and certainly things in my future that are bright, and yet because I have been in my own head so much, I couldn’t pull them into existence without some serious digging. So mindfulness, is I guess the next thing. Not getting too bogged down with the events of the past because you can’t change them, and not looking too far into the future, at least not as the place for finding your zen, but living in the exact moment you’re in. That’s where I landed when he asked me this. Finally exercise and I’m not talking something crazy like running a 5k, and yes I do them on the somewhat regular, but I walk 75% of the time and am always in the bottom 10%  of finishers. Let me live my life. Sometimes, simply moving your body moves the  negative energy a little less from being entirely in your head and literally moves it into a physical manifestation of sorts.

I am not a person unworthy of good things in my life because I don’t know how to let them in or appreciate them when they’re right in front of me. I am a forever guarded person living in the shadows of a hurt I’ll probably never heal from, knowing exactly who I am and why I am this way. I have hope for peace for myself, even if I never full exist in it… even if I find it in fleeting moments the way happiness comes in bursts for others.

 

It’s Gonna Be Alright

I have not written a blog post in almost two years. I have no idea if blogs are relevant anymore and if anyone reads them.  For me, writing a blog was never about getting clicks, followers or subscribers; it was about letting go of the baggage of my heart and hoping it gave others courage to put down theirs too.

Be gentle. Among many things, I am rusty, not technologically savvy and often tired. I shared a post last night on social media about soul crushing anxiety that had prompted me to seek medical attention (read: meds) and my subsequent decision not to take them. In the beginning, Zoloft let me see the blue of the sky. The anxiety and pain was still there, but less. It was a gentle lifting of a stone I had carried on my back for too long. But soon after taking them I started to feel worse.  This included exhaustion where I could not tolerate the hub-bub and noise of my house and  would retreat to my room sometimes as early as 6:30 PM to tune out.  I also had headaches, sometimes severe, and a “not quite right feeling”. The straw for me came when I watched a person in my family cry and I felt nothing for them.  I wanted to cry with them and for them but could not.

Why did I need them to begin with? What was the layer underneath my skin that made me second guess even mundane decisions like where to grocery shop, what to wear- or worse, constantly wondering if I was saying the ‘right’ thing or enough of a person for those I loved?

Two years ago, right after Christmas of 2016, I had a health epiphany where I decided I hated how I looked. I have always struggled with my weight and self perceptions of how my body,  but that year was going to be MY year. I was going to be whole again; not insecure. I would buy clothes I never had to replace.  I started running and doing yoga and watching what I ate. It became an obsession that took over every waking hour of my life. I would weigh myself each morning, and the days those pounds came off, I felt like I was on top of the world because I had won, I had beaten back old fat shaming Katie. And people noticed! Oh, people noticed and I could not have been more proud.

But I was only working on the outer shell and what I thought other people wanted to see and, quite frankly, what I thought I should look like instead of who I was. And who I was, and am still today, is a person struggling through feeling vulnerable, you see because I never felt comfortable being vulnerable at any point in my life. Not when my Dad died, certainly the most tragic event of my entire life; I could not fully grieve or cry about this until I was much, much older. Not comfortably, because that made me feel vulnerable and if I felt that way, someone could  see the real me, the deep dark blackness of my grief that swallowed me so entirely and one fragile word or kindness would crack that open. And would I survive that exposure?

Instead,  I padded myself with pounds, with pets, with children, with more distractions than the average person can withstand and those things felt like my armor and protection against a world I never fully could trust. I tried to beat it back with extreme diets, anxiety meds and therapy but it never lasted because they were never fully FOR me. I could not let the honest and horrible things I had put myself through and the honest and horrible things I had been through come to the surface and breathe.

And then I realized I had to. The suffocation of keeping down a lifetime of pain that had etched its way into the soul of my life was holding me back and making me a very bitter and angry person. The only love I felt, I could only part and parcel out to those in my family I felt deserved it.  Nothing holds up the mirror to who you really are like your own children who start to push you away because they can’t hear the screech of your voice anymore and your husband, quite plainly and honestly, tells you that your “lording over the house” is a black cloud. I packed a bag and left my house and had every intention of taking a week away. My parents were gone and wouldn’t know if I slept in their spare room and so I went there and laid on the couch for four hours in the dark and cried and cried and cried and felt something in me shift ever so slightly like a little hug to myself.  A little begging for forgiveness and wholeness and love for me that had always felt  undeserving and had hidden from it, came through…and I went home.

Is it easy to see life with clear eyes that see the best and others and hope they see the best in me? No. It will take me a long time to not cover myself up with the security blankets of excess I have created for myself because crutches are hard to put down when you’ve relied on them so long to stumble through life. Even when you know you’re strong enough to stand on your own without them. Even when you know it’s going to hurt but it’s worth it.

John 1:5 The light shines in the darkness, And the darkness does not overcome it.

I’m gonna be alright. It’s gonna be alright.

 

 

Chicken Coop Time

I haven’t written my own blog entry in  a while but have used my wordpress account to publish a few items that my older son has written. Stellan, who I could describe in many ways, is also the least academically motivated; which isn’t to say less capable in any way. For him, school is a means to an end, unless of course he’s trying to convince his father and I of something that triggers a new obsession, passion or idea. After we picked up his brother from a sleepover this morning- a home that has an amazing, well crafted chicken coop, Stellan immediately came home and started researching. He wrote the below paper to try and convince us too.

 

*Side note- It’s very, very unlikely to happen but his efforts, nonetheless, are noble.

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xmD1jUZ2ZY8He0KQDtc2xX_kk4iFIKTxM4awR6mYW3M/edit

Revelation

I read a personal memoir recently and the truths spoken were so bare, intimate, inspiring. So truth-y, it breathed a kind of fire that could only scorch because it touched the seams of my soul. The…

Source: Revelation

Revelation

I read a personal memoir recently and the truths spoken were so bare, intimate, inspiring. So truth-y, it breathed a kind of fire that could only scorch because it touched the seams of my soul. The memoir was called “Love Warrior: A Memoir” by Glennon Doyle Melton and it was primarily about the authors own self discovery with her eating disorder , alcoholism– and her marriage. I have never backed away from sharing my own struggles with my personal body image “issues.” I cannot fathom a woman on this Earth who doesn’t dip their toe into that lie of self loathing and hate we all tell ourselves because being curvy, or plus size in a world that wants us to be hungry is the norm.

So a few weeks ago, my mother and I were driving to a grocery store and she remarked about how much she loved my hair when it was a shorter. For naturally curly-haired people like me, shorter hairs means a daily tug-o-war with hair that has it’s own separate personality… and landing space when the the humidity spikes north of 50%. But shorter hair also means a rounder face and I told my mom so. We had a rather open dialogue that went like this:

Mom: So you’re letting your weight dictate your hairstyle?

Me: No. Not really at all, I just like it longer right now.

Mom: (More rhetorically, than actually) Why don’t people like you and I want to do something about it?

**meaning, women like her and I who love food more than we love exercise on stationary equipment.

Me: Because I’m tired of believing this world doesn’t or won’t accept me for who I am and quite frankly what my jeans size or scale says shouldn’t dictate that either.

As someone who has literally been all over the place body size-wise, where am I today might and likely won’t always be where I am. But in the times where I’m not hungry, I want to feel just as beautiful, worthy and confident as the times I am. I know that getting to a different shape, doesn’t necessarily mean “you’re hungry,” but I also know it means you can’t eat a full on Chinese buffet two times in one week.

High school

In the size I am, which I have been for a little over a year, I  have actually started to truly like some things about it. #1) I like having an actual ass. Like a real booty that’s more wide than bodacious, but nevertheless, it’s there. #2) I have bought some super cute clothes that are flattering and make me feel good. When I used to gain weight, I never would buy myself anything new- and by new, I mean from Goodwill, because thick or thin, that is my game. But I buy just as many clothes for myself now and I don’t care what # is on the tag. The size does not tell me I’m a good person or a bad person or a good mother, employee, wife, friend. #3) I have more insulation to keep me warm, because Michigan; we need it. #4) I literally feel like my lap can hold more children. Who can complain about that, especially since all 3 of my now humongous BOYS still like to pile drive the cuddle time. #5- and maybe the most important of all) I just DGAF…Like literally I- don’t. give. a. f%^k. Maybe that’s more the blessing of being 36 and happily married. I keep wondering if I should get on an anti-depressant because maybe then I would GAF. But, naw.

So yesterday, I did get my haircut. I walked in to a very swanky salon with stunning women waiting for the feeling of unworthiness to wash over me as I looked at thin, fashionable stylists and guests go about their daily beautifying rituals with ease. But it never came. I looked straight in the mirror, smiled, and said, “Take about 6 inches off please.”

 

Hello, Good-Bye

I have written you a thousand letters in my head, Peter since the day  you were born. Sometimes I actually put them to paper. Sometimes I say them out loud to you. Sometimes I keep them close just for me, because parenting is so impossibly and wonderfully hard and you are my first. My parental insecurities do not need to become your childhood insecurities. The tides of change are coming again, not just because you have light facial hair, grew another 3 inches and wear men’s shoes. Not because deodorant is not just a ‘maybe if you remember’ but a ‘must so we can breathe without a gas mask’. You are leaving the comfort and familiarity of a school you’ve known since you were 5, a place I thought you would surely know until you were 15, until this wonderful opportunity came your way to learn in a place I know you’ll learn best and find your wings. This is my letter to you.

Dear Peter,

I found Cross Creek through a co-worker and friend. You were only 2 when she told me how much she loved it for her second grader and how when you became school age, I should pursue it for you. I kept that information in my back pocket and when you turned the golden age I went on a tour and fell in love with it just as she had promised. The teachers were so kind, and the walls were full of vibrant artwork. The Young 5’s teacher you would have was energetic, renowned for her teaching habits, beyond experienced and passionate. Everything you want in a person who will spend 35 hours a week with your baby. Every teacher you have had has been equally wonderful to you. Your 5th grade teacher called you her bright star. Your third grade teacher cried when she told me how well you did on your essay about perseverance. This is where you went. This is where you have been. This has where you lost all your baby teeth, had your first crush, ran your first race, played your first instrument. This is where I have met half of my friends. This has been your learning home away from home. A place I knew you’d never be bullied or unsafe.

There is no real exception to this except that as time has gone by my sweet boy, you grew to be a solemn person who thought deeply and on a different level and didn’t understand when others didn’t process those same feelings. You’ve always been happiest in your own world, on your own terms and with the comfort of your own thoughts but it’s been hard to find the safety net of acceptance among your peers in that.  Not everyone, especially 12 year olds, like to lay down in the snow and look up at the clouds and wonder about life’s existentialism.  You ask thorough questions about how meth is manufactured, how babies are actually born and the area of a prism… You ask these things on a level I can barely answer yet understand without my best friend Google. Peter, you always want to know more.

I have found a school where your big questions, thoughts and dreams will likely come true. You may never want a gaggle of friends around you to discuss the land features of Egypt or the political unrest in Iraq, but if you do want that you’ll find them in this new place. A place that won’t just answer your questions, but understand why they’re asked to begin with because 99% of the kids that go this school are just like you. This school is big, intimidating and with the brightest minds in West Michigan, but you will thrive there because you’ll be challenged to always do your best and lifted up when you feel like you can’t. These next years may be hard but they will build upon the wonderful years you’ve had.

I want you to always know that watching you grow up has been one of my life’s absolute joys. You are not just special because you’re my son but because this world is better for having people like you in it who want to contribute and discovers life’s mysteries. I will not hold you by two hands anymore but always in my heart. Don’t look back on leaving your school with sadness but with fond eyes and a grateful heart that it has brought you to a place where you can confidently springboard to your next chapter. I love you more than words could ever describe and I will always find and look for what is best for you. I’m more than your mom, I’m your biggest fan and I can’t wait to see what you do next.

xo,

Mom

Mental Health Day

Back in the day, as in 20 years ago, I was a self proclaimed extrovert. I needed people around me all the time helping me process my emotions and affirming my existence. True story. Apart from using the bathroom, I did not seek or care for “alone” time. Not only would I talk endlessly to my friends at school all day, but I’d come home and talk to friends and boyfriends all hours of the night; literally sometimes until 1 A.M and about everything, nothing, love, hate and all emotions in between. I needed to be plugged in, hashtag #allthetime. My mother, on the other hand, is private and reserved and I believe often took my openness to her quieter stance on life, personally.

But I get that part of her now in a way I never could and I place that change squarely on the shoulders of motherhood. Living out loud takes on a whole need meaning when babies/toddlers/children place new things in your life like the Disney Channel, Caillou, temper tantrums that have literally pierced my eardrums, wrestling tournaments that include so much screaming (mine included) Madden games and a real life drum set. As in, inside my house. (Side eyeing my husband so hard). I  have to take  10 deep breaths when my kids are all screaming over each other in a fight for the TV remote, or all simultaneously requesting ketchup with their fish sticks or calling each other penis heads because so and so kicked my seat. Lord help me- THE NOISE.

If mothering is not a verb, it should be, because it’s a constant stream of motion either in the literal sense or the figurative band-aiding of children’s (e)motions. Adulting should be a verb second to that. In my job, I spend a good deal of my day putting out other people’s fires; fires they sometimes create themselves, sometimes not, but I have to show up with a professional face and demeanor and be polite, courteous and understanding all at once. Basically, what I am telling you dear friends, is that sometimes when the shit storm of life that comes by way of #1 -my kids never ending demands and keeping three small humans alive, and #2- a job with never ending demands and #3- trying to fit the husband, pets, running a household, keeping groceries in the fridge, and my very own teeth brushed every.single.day- it is wise and safe to take a mental health day. A day whre you can literally do nothing but eat 15 leftover chicken wings doused in hot sauce and not have to feel guilty and piggish in front of anyone, or more importantly share. A day when you can go the store without children begging for sour cream Pringles and Mamba candies at the check out lane. A day where you can spend 1 hour in the shower and not worry that someone else needs that hot water.

I am not ungrateful for the beautiful noisiness of my life. There is nothing or no one in or out of my life I would change or take away. I know, I KNOW, somewhere, someone is praying for the very things I have and take for granted daily. But I also know we all need a break from the things we have and the things we love and the things we wouldn’t trade for the world, to take care of ourselves. If that means hiding from the world, taking one mental health day on occasion to regroup and hear nothing but the sounds of own brains coming back to peace, I promise on my death bed I won’t regret it. And neither will you.