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.