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.

Words and Rape Culture

Trigger warning:  Rape, racism, animal cruelty

This post, unfortunately, is not about kindness. It uses very foul language and context in order to make a point.

Late last night I received a text from a loved one who was dismayed with herself for having gotten into a toxic FB discussion, "for the first time since I was about 12." She reacted to someone who was defending cops for shooting and killing the dog of a cooperative, un-armed black man. There were apparently several messages exchanged and she sent me a screenshot of this guy's way-out-of-line response to one of her messages. The quote which follows is something he apparently thought was okay to say publicly to a young woman he doesn't know.

********TRIGGER WARNING********

"I bet you'd be really happy if your ass was getting gang raped by some thugs and a cop stopped it while you got 10 inches of thug cock barreling through your ass. YOU are what's wrong with today's society. You have no respect for authority, obviously. Which indicates you have poor intelligence. I love getting into arguments with stupid people on the internet because, in the end, I always make them look stupid. Grow the fuck up and stop bashing cops. Fucking ten to one bet you're a sanders (sic) supporter."

*********End of quoted trigger, but more potential triggers follow******

Where do I even start? This guy has made it very clear why I would never want to share his opinions on virtually anything. The very people who would claim that rape culture is not a thing and that male privilege is not a thing are the ones who write comments like this. His male privilege and our rape culture are what caused/allowed his mind to take an argument with a stranger and, completely out-of- context, picture a scene where this young, female stranger is being violently raped. Somehow, he believed that he would cause her, or someone, to change their minds and agree with him through this violent imagining. Or maybe he 'just' wanted to scare her.

Words. Words can be powerful. They can cause people to cringe. In this case, this guy was obviously intending to make women, or at least this particular woman, cringe. Reading his words leaves no doubt that he was intending to provoke a guttural, fearful response, just as if he was threatening her himself.. Denying the threat in these words is really not plausible to a reasonable person. Words can provoke fear, they can threaten directly, they can threaten indirectly.

Words can heal or hurt.

Last night, before carrying on this text / screenshot conversation, I had posted to Instagram: "We can try to teach kindness. We can try to model patience. But ultimately it is up to each of us to choose each sentence, each phrase that comes out of our mouths. It is only our own words and actions that we can scrutinize and have some control over. It is up to us to think and learn from our mistakes, and apologize sometimes, and choose kindness as often as possible. We must accept that our words can heal or hurt and that it is our responsibility to make right what we can. First, do no harm."

I think that the recipient of the violent message above thought that somehow I would be disappointed in her response because of my stance on kindness. Little did she know that I would be wanting to injure this guy personally, in her defense, until I read her response. Then I was laughing out loud at her foul and assertive response to his vitriol. I don't want to steal too many of her words, but let me just say that in between her opening sentence and her final sentence, there was plenty of coarse language that I believe may make him think twice before he threatens another young woman in this way just because she disagrees with him. Here are just a few of her words, which I'm sure were much more effective than any defense I could have attempted to offer on her behalf:

"Haha why does this have to turn into me getting gang raped and why are you so scared of black people?......how about you stop picking fights with girls who are ten years younger than you......and stop bringing up gang rape in a loosely veiled threat to a girl that you're arguing with hoping that it will make her feel scared enough to believe the bullshit that you're feeding her...Stay the fuck in ---- man - the 21st century doesn't want you here."

Yes. Words can have power. In this case, this young woman refused to cower and cringe at this attack. On behalf of all young women who have been sexually assaulted, verbally attacked or threatened, or just intimidated by cowardly, vicious words from strangers (or known individuals) on the internet, thank you, my daughter.  In this situation, you did the kindest and bravest thing you could do for other young women. I am not disappointed, I am proud.

Unexpected Questions

I'll get this out of the way first.  I'm fat.  I'm not plump or chubby.  I am fat.  (Or better yet, I have fat - as someone once said, "I have toenails, but I am not toenails."  So, I have fat but I am not fat.  Would I rather not be fat?  Sure.  But this is the meat suit I live in and I'm okay with who I am.  Bear with me.  This post isn't really about fat.  It's about being asked surprising questions.

Plus, if I went into the science of it, the fact that weight is not a simple, straightforward (calories in minus calories burned) number; the fact that mortality and morbidity really aren't higher for fat people; the fact that something upwards of 95% of dieters not only don't keep the weight off long term, they actually end up heavier than they were before; the fact that the stress of self-loathing is not worth the increase in GDP of the weight loss industry (Freudian slip:  I first typed "weight loss injury") -- you do know that an awfully big chunk of our economy counts on making us hate ourselves so that we'll waste money trying to change, right?  ANYway.... if I went into all of those things, I would have to deal with all of the arguments from people who really don't want to do their own research or think for themselves, and who want to feel better by thinking that fat people are less motivated, more lazy, less worthy, less determined, even less moral than they are.

Well, if I haven't made it clear, I'm not into the self-loathing and negativity and I don't want to argue with those people or field the haters' comments.  So that's not what this is about.  I want you to like yourself, love yourself, be kind to yourself.  I want you to be kind to yourself so that you can be kind to the people around you.  Anyway, I have digressed enough.  My post really isn't about fat...remember?  It's about unexpected questions.

What I was trying to lead into, in my own roundabout way, is that I went to the Wellness Coach at my work.  I wasn't sure what to expect, but I get "Wellness Points" toward a financial incentive for going to see her, so I thought, "What the heck?"  I expected that she would push me toward diet and exercise goals because she is a personal trainer AND a dietitian.  I expected on some level to feel judged about my weight.

What I didn't expect was for her to ask me, "What have you done in the last week for YOU?  What have you done that brings you joy?"  And what I also didn't expect was for my eyes to fill with tears at that question.  Because I don't get into self-pity any more than self-loathing.  I think self-pity is one of the most destructive emotions we have as humans.  It puts us in a rut and feeds us garbage.  So I didn't expect those unbidden tears.

See, I love my life.  I am happy-slash-content-slash-at peace.  But I wouldn't say I seek out or expect a lot of joy.  My life is pretty routine.  I have a complex blended family, with two non-driving teens still at home.  I get up, care for our menagerie of animals, try to make sure my teens eat, drive them to school, go to work, pick kids up, come home, make dinner, drive kids around, come home, go to bed.  I am really low maintenance.  So just having someone ask me a question which only had to do with me was eye-opening.  It has started me on the almost-uncomfortable journey of asking myself, "What have I done in the last week for me?  What have I done that brings me joy?"

As a mom, it almost feels guilt-inducing to ask those questions.  But I will continue to ask them until I get better at answering them.  Until I can say, "This week I finished a wonderful book."  "Today, I took photos of some spectacular scenery."  "Last weekend, I painted!"

So let me ask you... how kind have you been to yourself this week?  What have you done in the last week for YOU?  What have you done that brings you joy?  I look forward to reading your comments.