Strength and Feeling

You think I am weak because I express feeling, because I admit to my anxiousnes. But you hate that part of me because you see it in yourself, because it reminds you of the feelings you try to deny. I am not weak. 

I have have carried inside and pushed out of my body 8, 9, 10 lb babies without an epidural and I've torn parts of my body apart doing it. I have nurtured my children's little bodies solely from my own. I have stuck with it. 

I have stuck with relationships that have damaged me and healed me and I have stuck with people who have worn me thin time and again and who have made me more and stronger. 

I've lost a sister when I was just a kid, been present for days with my dying mother, watched my grandmother have a stroke that put her in nursing care, watched my father have a heart attack, brought saltines and 7-up to my brother after his chemo, and held my husband through the rigors that came with his. 

I've held three of my dogs as they crossed to the next place, and spent many hours hand feeding one despite the tumor in his jaw. I've staunched blood flow from my smallest dog, while trying to reassure my teens that it was probably not as bad as it looked. It wasn't.  

I've drawn blood, euthanized animals, done hydrotherapy on a dog with feet skeletonized by frostbite and neglect, and brought home another which neglect left with an unbending leg.  I've given hundreds of shots, and cleaned up puke and blood and shit and vomit from thousands of animals and more than a handful of children. 

I've butchered my own food. I've washed a family's worth of clothing in our bathtub and pegged it all to dry without the help of a washing machine or dryer. I've cooked on a hibachi grill when our propane ran out. I've eaten tuna and sauerkraut burritos, and I've eaten lettuce and mustard sandwiches because that was the food we had when we couldn't afford to buy more. They aren't as bad as you'd think.

I've borne bitter cold and suffocating heat. I've carted my kids and pets out of our house as a fire bore down on us and I've stayed put when a flood surrounded us. I've pounded the backs of choking children, driven them to the ER, sat by them in the hospital and rocked them upright all night so they could sleep when they were sick. I've picked them up and held their heads when they were drunk and spent decades never getting tipsy myself so that I could drive anyone who needed me to at a moment's notice. 

I've finished a Bachelor's degree while working 3/4 time and taking 3/4 time classes and still been a mom to my three school-aged kids. 

I've faced down a roomful of scientists and veterinarians when no one else would speak up for what was right. And won.

I pay attention to how often I say "I", and just this one time, I allow myself to not limit it.

I've protected my children from animals and people that would have attacked them.  I've spoken up for the underdog, broken up a fight between two homeless men, confronted men over porn and teens over unkind behavior. 

I've learned from some of my mistakes and apologized when I recognized that I was wrong. 

I've sometimes been taken as an easy mark because of my demeanor, but I'm not a victim.

I've welcomed people into my life who have loved me and hated me and appreciated me and resented me. And I've made mistakes with them and sometimes been there for them and other times not. Because even though I've tried to do what's right, over and over, sometimes I've fallen short or had no good answers, and I've never been able to do it all. 

And I've had all kinds of feelings: anxiety, sadness and happiness, joy and grief along the way. And that doesn't make me weak. It makes me human. And if you don't like hearing about my feelings once in a while, learn to deal with it. Because I own my feelings. They are part of me.

Don't forget who you are. Make a list of the things that make you strong; that things that make you YOU. I guarantee that you have done things and survived things that have made you strong. Now move out of the way because I have life to live.

Taking care of Jack

My Jack isn't long for this world.  A few days, a few weeks.  Probably not more.  He has a tumor in his jawbone that has grown so that he looks like he has a bad case of the mumps.  He takes two prescriptions to manage his pain, and he needs help getting his food down.  But he still loves his food, his walks, his pets. He greets me at the gate with a brief, tired wag of his tail.   

I smash food between my fingers - a whole can, because he is a big dog. Each piece has to be very soft and flat. If it's too small and crumbled, he can't move it in his mouth and it eventually falls out. If it's too big or thick, he can't swallow it, because of the way this tumor has encroached into his mouth. Every day, it's harder to get his pain medication and food into him. It won't be long, probably no more than a week, before we have to make that one really hard decision.

Jack has never had monetary value. We got him for the price of the puppy shot that his mom's owners gave him. Their border collie had a brief romance with the neighbor's Bernese Mountain Dog, which left her with eight large puppies, each of whom was half her size by the time we took him home. 

He will often eat a piece or two of bread torn into pieces after the can of food.  I soak them in water because we worry he isn't able to drink enough. As long as he wants food and takes pleasure in eating, I will help him get it down. It's a messy, smelly process, which leaves him drooling and the blanket that covers the couch is smeared with dog food and bloody saliva when he's done. He's still able to eat a full can of food in the morning and a full can in the evening, with his pills, as long as I can get the texture just right.

When we first got Jack, he would walk with me and my girls to the bus stop - they were all in elementary school then. Now one is engaged and out of the house, another getting ready to graduate from high school, and the third looking toward graduation next year. On one of those first mornings, when the girls were still little, the worn leash that I had clipped to his collar broke. Jack, only about ten weeks old, calmly turned, took the dangling end of the leash in his mouth, and led me home so that I wouldn't run off or get hit by a car.

Jack has been our calm dog, our gentle giant, who introduces new dogs to our home as a relaxed place where everyone is interested in meeting a new friend, but no one makes it stressful. He watches, unperturbed, when middle daughter's rabbit hops around the living room. The old cat bumps against him to remind him who the boss is.  He lets her think it's her.

Jack became a favorite of our Afghan daughter who arrived, terrified of dogs, to spend a school year with us. Toward the end of the year she told me, "when I grow up, I want to have two dogs, one big one like Jack, to take for runs and one little one like Chaco (our Chihuahua) to rub his ears.". Jack had introduced her to solo walks and runs, and helped her feel safe alone in public, something she had never experienced before.  

We could always count on Jack to behave appropriately for the situation.  Occasionally we loaned him to friends who wanted to hike in the mountains near our home.  We live in mountain lion territory and more than one of our friends has taken Jack for company and protection on a hike or run.  He pulled our youngest away from more than one dangerous situation, sometimes with threats we never saw.

At one of my jobs I had a client who was living in a nursing home.  He missed his dog and desperately hoped to get home to him.  When I would go to meet with him, I sometimes brought Jack with me, and Jack would navigate the halls of the nursing home with his usual grace, accepting pets and treats, to lean against the knee of the people who most needed him.

My husband, recently retired, takes Jack on a short walk almost every day.  They walk around the corner, across the creek and then into the nearby fish hatchery and along the tanks of fish before heading home. Jack's tail is up and he still shows mild interest in the tanks churning with fingerling trout. After one such walk,a neighbor called animal control.  This neighbor must not be a dog person. The officer showed up at our yard and watched Jack through the fence.  "Is your dog okay?" he asked my husband.  No, he's dying of cancer. The officer is kind and can see that this is a dog who is loved, even though Jack hasn't let me clean his forelegs and they are crusted with exudate from his mouth.

We've had a hard pet year.  Our Boo left us, gently, at the end of the summer and is buried in the shade outside the big living room window.  Boo was fifteen when she died and my youngest doesn't remember a time before she was part of the family. Jack hangs out near her burial spot sometimes, as though he knows he will be joining her soon.

My two daughters who are still at home tolerate the smell in the living room and I change the blankets on the furniture a couple of times a week. There's kind of a lot of laundry. Bloody drool is really smelly.  Death isn't always clean or gentle. It's a tricky dance that we avoid in our modern lives because we don't really know the steps.

It takes at least half an hour to feed Jack each morning and again each evening. I wrap his two pills in thin slices of butter and I help each small bite of food into the left side of his mouth and over the back of his tongue. He is hungry almost every day and eats gratefully, if not vigorously.  He trusts me with what must be at least an uncomfortable process. He drools and my hands need to be washed several times. I smell like wet dog food and approaching death for a while, even after my ablutions.

In a few days, in a week, whenever the time comes, I won't be remembering the smell.  I will be remembering the dignified way Jack would lay with his clean white paws crossed in front of him.  I will remember the way he would lean against the legs of a newcomer to our home, winning over almost everyone with his persistent attention.  I will remember his soft, intelligent brown eyes, and his way of putting a paw on my knee.  And I will hope against hope that we chose the best time for him to go.

In Memory of Jack

aka JackJack, aka Jackos, aka JackyJack, aka JackieChan

fall 2008 - February 19, 2018

Better Healthcare or Just Inhumanity?

I never expected this blog to be about politics, but I never anticipated the craziness that would come out of our elections and elected leaders over the past year.  I have had to completely stop watching or listening to the news.  I read headlines a couple of times a day, usually from a neutral-ish source like Reuters, and even that is too much.  My friends are caring and passionate people who fill my Facebook feed with politics, so it's hard to get away from any of it, so I spend much less time on Facebook.  Even so, virtually every day includes some jaw-dropping act of dispassion that leaves me churning in frustration and helplessness.

The thing that appalled me almost speechless yesterday was a note that overnight, the Republican ACA replacement was modified to allow states to dump a new mother from her Medicaid benefits if she doesn't find a job within 60 days of giving birth.  Let me try to formulate why this is cruel, anti-child, anti-family and also ridiculous.

First, there is the breast-feeding consideration. If mothers are pushed to start work before even 2 months have passed, babies are much less likely to get the recommended minimum of 6 months of exclusive breast-feeding and all of the benefits that go along with that. It is common knowledge that babies are healthier when breastfed.  This reduces health care costs and employee absenteeism, not to mention improved bonding between mother and baby.  The breastfed baby has better cognitive development, better immunity to all kinds of illnesses, his/her risk of SIDS is cut in half and s/he has a lower lifetime risk of chronic diseases such as Crohn's Disease and diabetes.  Mom has lower risk of breast cancer, ovarian cancer and lower later life risk of osteoporosis.  Despite all of these benefits, though, returning to work early in the postpartum period significantly increases the chance that moms will wean their babies within the first month that they are back at work.  While jobs are legally supposed to support breastfeeding mothers, the reality is that this is much less likely to be the case in low wage jobs and that even in the best of circumstances pumping at work is challenging to establish and maintain through the first weeks of returning to a job.

Second, there is the hypocrisy involved in other policies pursued by mostly the same politicians who have put forth this replacement plan.  The very politicians who think this is a palatable idea are the ones who want to remove mandates for birth control and maternity care to be covered by insurance, the ones who want to keep women and their doctors from being able to make crucial and difficult decisions about whether to continue a pregnancy.  These are the politicians who are taking away education, housing, food and medical dollars in order to pour money into the military. And these are the politicians who oppose raising the federal minimum wage despite the fact that our population has become increasingly top-heavy, with dollars moving toward the upper crust, the middle class shrinking and the poor struggling as always on wages that don't keep pace with the cost of housing, healthcare and other necessities.

Third, let's just look at the financial reality of forcing a single mom in a minimum wage job to return to work despite all of the other arguments:

$7.25/ hour is federal minimum wage (21 states still use this as their minimum wage, while others have raised theirs with the highest being the District of Columbia at $11.50 and Washington and Massachusetts at $11.00)

*2080 which is the standard number of annual hours for a full time worker

= $15,080

Minus $934.96 for Social Security

Minus $218.66 for Medicare

Leaving $13926.38  (I did not count any income taxes, as this individual could adjust their exemptions to prevent any income taxes from being withheld, and would probably get a refund at tax time.  For many low income people, this refund is used to pay off payday loans, license plates, car repairs and other things that they have had to postpone because there just isn't the money to pay for any of it.)

Minus average infant childcare cost (from a nat’l assn of child care referral agencies - and this is assuming you can even find an opening for an infant because those openings are few and far between)

$11,666

leaving

$2260.38 / year

$188.36 / month

In Colorado the minimum wage is $9.30

*2080 hours for full time worker

= $19,344

 minus $1,199.33 for Social Security

 minus $280.49 for Medicare

$17,864.18

Minus Average infant childcare cost in Colorado:

$12,736

=$5,128.18 / year

Leaving

$427.35 / month

+$357 / month Food Stamps (which cannot be spent on anything but food, so no sanitary supplies, diapers, cleaning products, toilet paper, personal care items, etc.)

+$65 / WIC benefits

In my county, there is a constant waiting list for childcare assistance, and a waiting list with no likely openings in the near future for housing (this from our local housing authority, who recently told me that HUD is anticipating $6B in cuts in the new budget), and median cost for a 1 BR apartment in Denver is $1380.

Going back to work for a single parent (without someone they know who can watch their child for free or very cheaply) is not only not financially feasible, it is just plain impossible.  Forcing a new parent to go back to work without supporting the services that would make that possible, or at the very least, supporting a living minimum wage is cruel and inhumane.  You simply cannot claim to hold family values or to be pro-child if these are the things you support.

Selected sources:

https://www.babycenter.com/0_how-much-youll-spend-on-childcare_1199776.bc

http://coloradoparent.com/article/the-high-cost-of-childcare.html

http://minimum-wage.insidegov.com/

https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/national-rent-data/https://aix-xweb1p.state.or.us/caf_xweb/SNAP_Estimate/frmEstimate.cfm

http://taxformcalculator.com/tax/

https://www.fns.usda.gov/wic/wic-food-packages-maximum-monthly-allowances

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020209/

The Scarlet Letter "A"

The abortion question is connected to everything.  A mother is connected to her child before and after the child's birth, for better or for worse, and abortion is connected to a woman's place in the world for better or for worse.  My opinions about abortion are informed by my experiences and opinions about sexuality.  They are connected to my relationship with my mom and with my children.  They are affected by my experiences with men.  They are influenced by the stories of my friends and loved ones.

I grew up in the Midwest and attended Catholic schools for most of my childhood and teen years.  In 8th grade, as I remember it, we actually had a semester-long class on abortion.  They taught us about fetal development, the different abortion methods, and the Catholic morality of abortion.  

I wish they had spent even half as much time talking to us about healthy relationships, consent, how our OWN bodies work, and birth control.  Even if they hadn't talked about birth control, knowing and thinking about those other concepts would have been so helpful and could potentially have had as great or greater an effect on our likelihood of ever considering an abortion.  Sex was a topic I would never have brought up with parents or teachers.  I got limited information from friends who were almost as uninformed as I was, and I attempted to fill in my knowledge gaps with books from the public library.  The answers I most needed were not in the books.

I was raised to be polite and nice.  I was raised to not hurt people's feelings.  I was raised to not tell adults 'no.'  I am a rape survivor.  My upbringing played a part in this, which is why I have always told my girls that they have a right to their own bodies.  They have a right to be respected, to say 'no' at any time, and to scream and fight if they need to.  I have told them that I will always back them if they have to hurt someone else in order to defend themselves.  They have voices that are heard when they say 'no', when they say, 'don't kiss me' and when they say 'get the f*&% out of here and leave me alone!"  I was too nice to say these things when I most needed to.  I have been exceedingly lucky in my life to have never been faced with an unwanted pregnancy.  I have always believed that I couldn't consider abortion for myself, but who knows, since I never had to face it?

When my step-daughters were twelve, we watched one of their favorite movies, Dirty Dancing.  They asked why the one dancer was so sick that Jennifer Grey's character has to get her doctor father to help.  I explained that she had an abortion and got an infection from it.  They asked how she got an infection and I dredged up my knowledge of how abortions are performed and explained what I knew as it applied to the movie.  One of them asked, "but isn't that killing a baby?"  I told them that I believed it was, but that other people feel differently and that the girl in the movie felt that she didn't have a choice...if she was pregnant she couldn't make a living and support herself, let alone a baby.

From the time my birth daughters were little, I have had ongoing conversations with them about the things that my own mother was too uncomfortable to discuss with me.  I talked to them about bodies and sex and consent and birth control and abortion.  I talked to them about ethical issues and how I feel about different things.  There was nothing I wouldn't answer if they were old enough to express curiosity.  

Many of my friends have had abortions, a couple of them at very young ages.  One friend was required by her mother to have an abortion against her will at age fourteen.  She has never told her other children about that baby, but still considers herself to be a mother of one more child than most people know she has.  She is a devout born-again Christian who believes that non-Christians like myself will go to hell.

Another friend, a conservative, got pregnant when my youngest daughter was an infant.  She told me she was planning an abortion because she had been having an affair and wasn't sure if the baby was her husband's child or the other man's.  I was the only friend she told because she believed I (a bleeding-heart liberal) was the only friend who wouldn't judge her.  She told her husband about the pregnancy and the affair and he (also a conservative) seemed to support her in her plan to abort.  I offered to adopt the baby if she would have it rather than aborting.  She wouldn't consider it and went ahead with the abortion.

Another friend, also a conservative, has had more than one abortion.  See, she and her husband weren't real consistent about birth control, so abortion filled in when their habits got sloppy.  They campaigned for one of the most conservative candidates ever to run for office in our area, a candidate who was against every program than might help a young desperate pregnant woman.  A candidate who was rabidly anti-gay.  This friend wanted abortion available when it was convenient for her, but wouldn't vote in a way to support either abortion or supportive services for women.

I know a young woman who was pushed into abortion when she was dating a 'man' who didn't like the idea of becoming a dad.  He pushed her toward abortion rather than shoulder his share of the responsibility.  She spent a lot of time afterward studying various spiritual traditions, trying to find answers that... I don't know... would help confirm whether her decision was bad?  Whether she would be punished for it somehow?

I know of another conservative Christian family who, when their teenaged daughter got pregnant, lost no time in kicking her out of the house.  Do you suppose she was more likely to have an abortion if she was welcomed into a loving home or kicked out because of the pregnancy?  I don't know what happened to her.

And one 17-year-old I encountered was completely unmoored when she told her family about her pregnancy.  Not only were her parents giving her only a few weeks to get out of the house, but they were removing her from their health insurance.  Wow.  Nice.

In some countries, we see low abortion rates and low teen pregnancy rates.  In the Netherlands, the country that has the lowest verifiable rates, sex education, open discussion of sexuality and low barrier access to family planning services are credited for the low numbers. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7971545  A comprehensive study of abortion rates and legality across the globe concluded that rates are comparable regardless of legality, indicating that laws against abortion do not deter the practice.  In addition, abortions are generally safe in the countries where abortion is legal, and generally unsafe in countries where it is illegal. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/world/12abortion.html

In Afghanistan, abortion is extremely restricted, but birth control is also difficult to access. Women are not valued and have little education and few rights. https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-09-06/afghan-women-largely-lack-healthcare-education Women's healthcare is almost non-existent and the top cause of death among women of child-bearing age is childbirth. Violence toward women is commonplace, and infanticide is not uncommon.  Even in educated families, little or no information is available on biology, human sexuality or human reproduction.  Girls grow up believing that all sex is rape, with no understanding of how their own bodies work or that women can enjoy sex, too.  The whole climate toward women in these countries shapes the issue.  Rates of clinical depression for women are extremely high.

Historically in many times, places and cultures, life was not considered to begin at conception or at birth.  In some places and times, abortion was legal and accepted until the "quickening", when the mom was first able to feel the baby's movement.  Until then, the baby wasn't considered a separate, live person.  In other cultures, life began not at birth, but after birth... when the baby was a week old, or when it first cried, or when it was a month old or when it was named. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/legal/history_1.shtml These beliefs are stymying.  

Beliefs about infanticide are almost equally inconsistent throughout time and place.  http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/anthropology-and-archaeology/customs-and-artifacts/infanticide  Like abortion, laws about infanticide throughout history have attempted to control women, punishing them differently and generally much more harshly for the crime than men are punished for the same crime.  Infanticide is horrendous and yet, is infuriatingly full of historic double standards.  The most extreme example I saw in this evening's research was ancient Rome, where a father had the full right to kill his child at will, but a mother would be put to death for doing the very same thing.

In early Christianity, a number of writers condemn abortion, but others offer penance or suggest that no crime is committed before certain points in gestation.  http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_hist.htm

I've even read an article http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133_Page3.html#.WIlw0VMrLIU that proposes that Christian conservatives coalesced into a political agenda not around abortion, but around racism.  I don't have enough historical context (or brain space, after the rest of this essay) to think critically about whether I agree with this, but it's interesting to think that abortion might have been a more morally palatable, marketable cause than the racism that was (in this proposition) the real unifier for conservatives.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133_Page3.html#.WIlw0VMrLIU

This may seem like a string of barely connected paragraphs but for me the connections are strong.  All of these facts and stories and relationships have contributed to my beliefs about abortion.  So, here are my beliefs:

1.  Abortion is both a human rights issue for the women involved, and a morality issue with regard to the fetus.

2. Until we can agree on #1 we will never be able to bring the two sides of the abortion debate together, because in no other circumstance is one life (yes, I realize there are those who argue that it is not a life yet -- which the morality/ethics piece of the puzzle) completely dependent on another life for its very being.

3.  Women would be absolutely unstoppable in the world if they could come together on this one crucial gut issue.  And this is possibly the most crucial issue to women on both sides of the debate, because it is one of the only issues that applies only to women.

4.  Abortion should be rare, legal, and safe so that women's lives are not valued less than the fetuses they carry.

5. I believe that life is magic.  I don't know for sure when it begins, but it might begin at conception. But since I believe in reincarnation, I fully believe every creature goes on to something else after this life, and that lessons are learned along the way.  I don't claim to know exactly how all of that works, but I fully believe that we get to keep coming back until we learn everything we need to know.  In some lifetimes, someone else has to do most of the learning and in some lifetimes we have to do most of the learning.  

6. I believe in a loving God/dess (bigger and more inexplicable than gender), and any deity worth worshiping wouldn't give us just one chance to get it right.  Just because we don't understand the plan doesn't mean there isn't one.

7.  It's not my job to tell you what to do with your body.  It's certainly shouldn't be the job of a bunch of white male politicians to tell women what they can do with their bodies.

8. If we believe that abortion is not a good thing, then we can not ignore causative factors and...

9. ... we are morally obligated to provide those things which prevent unwanted pregnancies and which support pregnant women and families with young children.  This includes comprehensive sex education for boys AND girls (including discussion of consent, healthy relationships, reproductive biology and birth control information), free easy access to birth control, affordable high quality childcare, free high-quality medical care including comprehensive prenatal and postnatal care, and education programs for young parents including parenting education and job training.

10. Abortion does not exist in a vacuum... it exists in a human context where sexual assault is rarely and inconsistently punished, where women are still treated as 'less than', and where economic factors such as health care, child care and housing are out of the reach of many.  In no major city in the US can an individual afford decent housing on a full-time minimum wage job.  THIS is one of the many factors that affects abortion decisions.

I used to believe that if I could just find the perfect set of words that I could bring anybody together on any issue.  I'm no longer so naive.  I have just spent five hours writing this and I still don't feel like I said anything clearly.  The bigger the issue is, the more of a jumble it ends up, even after hours of thinking and writing and research.  I would love to hear your comments as long as they are kind.

Get into the pool, into the picture! Go enjoy life.

Today, the actions of Playboy Bunny Dani Mathers crossed my Facebook feed, and I knew that it was the right time to post about this.  Mathers took a photo, without permission, of a naked stranger, captioned it unkindly and posted it to Snapchat.  There are no circumstances under which this would be okay.  It doesn't matter whether she was sharing it with one friend or the whole world. It doesn't matter whether she understood how Snapchat works (good try, though).  If she spent half a second in self-reflection, she would have realized that the photo was not hers to take, that she literally victimized the stranger, and that her actions had no intent other than to feel superior by cruel fat-shaming.  That woman's body was not hers to photograph.  I hope there will be criminal charges involved.

This brings me around to what I was considering blogging about before I had ever heard Mathers' name (and whose name, actions and face I hope to forget as soon as I'm done writing this.) Virgie Tovar wrote of Mather's actions,

"Fat women already opt out of public spaces like malls, beaches, restaurants and yes gyms because we feel unsafe. This is not a product of paranoia. It is a product of the behavior we have observed again and again."  

Yes.  Many do.  But we shouldn't.  

Too often, we listen to the voices in our head that tell us to cover up, not to do anything that will draw attention to our larger-than-average bodies.  Many of us have personally experienced bullying actions and words like those from the model named above.  Sometimes those cruel words have even come from people who are supposed to love us, or who believe they're helping us somehow by pointing out the obvious. Listening to those voices can prevent us from doing things we love, spending time with people we love, and even from enjoying life.  I can't say this strongly enough.  You deserve to swim if you enjoy swimming, to feel the breeze on your naked arms and legs in the springtime, and to do all of the other things that your body is capable of doing and enjoying. You deserve to spend time with people you love, unencumbered by some baggage that someone else or your own thoughts would heap on you. You deserve to enjoy life.


I've loved to swim since I took my first lessons when I was ten, and I always wanted my kids to love the water.  We spent many happy days at the river when they were little, them covered with mud, me chatting with friends on the bank, them poking sticks in the water, me doling out snacks.  But when it came to going to a pool, I wanted to be in the water with them.  I wasn't going to deny myself that enjoyment of swimming or the feeling of weightlessness and grace that comes with being borne up, senses muted by ears full of water.  More importantly, I wanted to teach the girls to love water, and to not be put off by what society would tell us about who is worthy of wearing a swimsuit in public.  So, I would put on my swimsuit and get out there with them, piggy-backing them, catching them when they jumped off the edge, playing Marco Polo and as they became more confident, following them off the diving board into the deep end.  Was I self-conscious?  Sometimes.  But I ignored it the best I could and still enjoyed the water.

I want my kids to have those memories of me actively engaged in playing in the water.  I want them to know that my size didn't keep me from doing things I loved, and that it was not a barrier to me loving being their mom.  I also didn't want to encourage the vicious cycle that is body hatred, the thing that tells us that until we lose weight we should avoid a whole list of activities, especially those that put our physical selves out in the public eye.

I could spend my whole fat adulthood telling my children the importance of physical activity, telling them they are beautiful, telling them that people don't have to meet some certain body type or shape or size, and telling them that people's value has nothing to do with appearance.  But if my actions belie those words because I am sitting on the bench fully-clothed, then everything I just tried to tell them is undone.  My actions will tell them what I really believe.

Before having kids and occasionally since then, I would sometimes avoid a camera.  Gradually it dawned on me that I don't want photos of myself, for myself.  When I am in a photo, I'm in it so that my family has something to look back on.  I have never once looked at old photos of my ancestors and thought, "wow, Grandma is fat in that picture.  I wish she had stayed out of it!" That was when I knew that I would no longer shy away from having my photo taken or from smiling broadly in those photos... because I'm not doing it for me, I'm doing it for the people who come after me, and they don't care what I look like, but if I'm lucky, they will be grateful to have photos with me in them.

You can't ignore those messages in your head, because they will float through no matter how hard you try to stop them.  But you CAN make sure that you behave in line with your priorities instead of letting those judgmental, critical voices push you to behave in ways that are unhealthy and inconsistent with your beliefs.  Get into the pool, or onto the horse or bike, and for heaven's sake, stop avoiding the camera!!  You and your family will be glad you did, and doing this is the first step to quieting those voices that have never helped you anyway.

There will always be those who shame and it only reflects who they are, not who we are.  I challenge you to follow some blogs, Twitter feeds, Instagram accounts and other media that will help you change or at least reconsider those messages out in society and inside your head.  Don't deny yourself the things you want to do or the way you want to be remembered: confident, un-self-conscious, enjoying life.  What have you been denying yourself?  Go do it.  Do you, despite the haters and the thoughts you can't avoid. Do you and have fun.  You deserve it.  

Virgie Tovar's blog
Some suggestions of social media to follow:  Ragen Chastain's Dances with Fat 
ChooseLifeWarrior on Instagram and YouTube
Cynthia's blog at FlightoftheFatGirl
And as a lesson in enjoying life, just dance like this 88-year old!  What a great example she sets!

Please share your thoughts in the comments below.  Hateful ones will not be published.
P.S. "Fat" is not a bad word.  It's just a descriptor, like blond or tall.

Things I know...

There's really not a lot I know for sure.  I think I know a lot of stuff, but I'm just not SURE about that much. Out of many years of parenting experience, I have come away with a few things that I'm pretty sure about, though.

Things I know about parenting:

1. What works for me and my family may not work for you and yours.

2. Pick your battles because you really don't have as much control as you think you do.

3. You can't love your kids too much, but you can protect them too much. And too little.

4. At some point (possibly not abruptly at age 18 or when they go off to college or move into their own apartment) you will have to relinquish almost all of the control that you (thought you) had.

5. When that happens, you have to hope/trust that you gave them the tools they need to make good decisions.

6. They will not allow you to vicariously make their mistakes. They will mostly want to make their own mistakes. Firsthand.

7. Therefore, your time is best spent while they are young- coaching, reasoning, explaining, giving lots of information and even more love, and sharing experiences and lessons even if you think they aren't listening. Because they're listening more than you think they are.  This is not the same as coaxing and cajoling. 

8. Oh, also, don't expect better behavior from them than you can model for them yourself.  If you lose your temper, expect that they will, too.  If you act sarcastic or snotty to them, they're probably going to do the same to you.  Remember, you are the parent and the adult.  These things aren't necessarily bad, we just can't hold our kids to a standard higher than we hold ourselves to.

9. I really don't know very much. We're always just doing the best we can with what we have. Beating ourselves up about potential mistakes really is pointless. In the long run, the things you fear are/were mistakes may be the best things you ever do as a parent.  You're doing better than you think you are, and if you second-guess at least every other decision you make, then you're probably doing great!

10. See number 1.

I have a lot of experience in the parenting arena.  I have a wonderful, complicated, crazy mess of a family that includes 5 stepkids, 3 biological kids, a bunch of grandkids, 4 exchange daughters from 3 different countries (at different times), and myriad pets. The age range from oldest stepdaughter to youngest biological child spans 20 years, and the oldest grandkid is only 2 years younger than the youngest kid.  I've co-facilitated about ten 14-week parenting groups with teen parents, court-ordered parents, and every other family configuration you can think of.  I helped moderate some of the first step-mom/step-parenting resources on the internet, including the original "Stepmoms' Retreat" and the step-parenting page on ParentSoup, which later became part of iVillage. 

Passages

Over the last few weeks, a nephew and several family friends have graduated from college or high school.  For me this has the same bittersweet excitement as the beginning of a new school year... full of potential and also a little full of dread.  I both love and fear a new round of responsibility, especially while it's shiny and fresh and appealing.  The graduates are surely feeling a mix of those same things.

Also within recent days, I've been preparing one of my offspring for her driving test.  We have jumped through all of the state hoops, paid the fees, dredged the tea-stained driving log out of her wallet, spent hours driving from one end of town to the other, pulling in and out of parking spaces and finally, I waited alone (only a little anxiously) while she took her driving test.  She is a hands-on learner and easily passed on her first try (as opposed to the written test, which will not be mentioned again.) Today, we bounded through the last round of hoops.  That is, if you can count waiting an hour and a half at the State Department of Revenue bounding.

But these are all external things... these are rites of passage that government agencies or schools have devised, not the ones that signify real learning.  The one passage that seemed more real than any of these this spring was Friday afternoon.  Middle offspring was looking forward to her test on Sunday and hopefully her license on Monday, but while she waited, she was part of a camping trip with seven other teens.

As she stuffed things into her daypack, I called repeatedly from the living room.
"Did you pack yoga pants to sleep in?"
"Yes, mom."
"Did you pack a rain poncho?"
"Yes, mom."
"Good socks?"
"Yes, mom." Only slightly annoyed.
"You and your friends know how important it is to keep your food where it won't attract bears, right?  Do they have a way to deal with that?"
"YES, mom."
We went to the store for her share of supplies.  She listed for me over and over what she was to bring.  We rounded up the food, and I started my questioning again.
"What about water.  Is someone bringing water?"
"Yes, mom.  Mi--- is."
"What about paper towels?  Do you want to bring some paper towels?"
"No, mom.  Ma--- is bringing those."
Somewhere at the edge of my mind, it began occur to me that she not only knew her portion of the list of needed items, she also knew what each of her friends had been assigned.  Then, slowly, I realized that these were not lists that a parent had made. Parents had no part in creating lists, dividing them up among this informal group of participants, or checking off the items to make sure nothing was left out.  The teens were responsible for all of this.  They knew what they needed and they knew how to make this trip happen, successfully.
Soon after, we reached the park where she was meeting up with her friends.  Two cars were already there, one was a Subaru wagon (requisite car for the Colorado outdoors) with a canoe safely secured on top.  The driver of the Subaru deftly whisked bags of groceries out of my daughter's hands, snugging them into the back of her car, careful to leave space on top for the chips and hot dog buns.
"Strawberries, yum!" she commented with the last bag.
I visited with the friends for just a moment before I left them to their adventures.  Strains of "Sunrise, Sunset" whispered in the back of my mind, as I wondered how these young women and men suddenly seemed like they could be on their way to, well... anywhere.  And they were ready to handle it.  I didn't need to worry.  They knew more about how to do this than I did.

Travel well, my children.

On Children
 Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.