being there

sometimes i have a conversation, an experience, a thought, a whatever and i realize just how far i've come.  realize how far i was, how distant that self hate is. how profound it is that something so distant can bounce back in an instant but how in this instant, it's so far i can't even see it, can't smell it, hear it, taste it, feel it. i need to savour these moments, to be in them and celebrate them. to have a conversation and realize the shit i've been through with my body and how we are one, so in tune, on good terms and hell, even in love. it's kind of incredible.

today i'm in that space and i need to take this space and revel in it. i need to do cartwheels in this space, jumping jacks, i need to rest in this space and yell in this space. i need to take every last bit of it and allow it to expand and take more of me. i need to continue moving with this space, away from the self hate and the body negativity.

it's fucking beautiful.

on body commentary, again.

i'm sure i've ranted about this here before, but here it comes again.

i hate body commentary. why? because it goes hand-in-hand with fat shaming and body policing. telling me i look good because you think i've lost weight DOES NOT FEEL GOOD and it never will. period. i'm not going to rehash the reasons for this or the assumptions implied here - i've done that in another post and am too amped up and angry to go looking for it to link here.

this morning i was out for brunch with two people who are very important to me. i'm not going to say who they are, but they are permanent fixtures in my life. i have really only seen them once this summer, and that was the day i moved, so they asked to see photos from my summer. i took out my phone and gladly let them scroll through my many photos - mostly of food, my cat, friends, and various trips i've taken alone and with friends. after looking through these photos, there was one of me taken by my friend's son, who is four. the person looking at the photos said "wow, it looks like you've lost weight this summer judging by these photos, particularly this one". now, the funny thing is that the particular photo was taken about FOUR DAYS ago, so no, i have not lost weight since that photo was taken. also, what the FUCK does it matter if i've lost weight (or not) this summer?? you say you are interested to know about my life, you see hundreds of photos of me smiling, exploring, camping, swimming, traveling, laughing with friends, and your ONLY comment is "it looks like you've lost weight". not only is this hurtful for me, it makes me sad for you. the fact that you can look at all of these photos of someone you claim to REALLY care about, and all you see is body size is absolutely heart-breaking to me.

but this is what my life seems to boil down to for this person. how big or small i am and how much and what types of food i decide to put in MY body (side note - this person also called me "an oinker" because the breakfast i ordered today was quite large). it just breaks my heart. i don't know HOW to stop this body commentary. i say "i actually prefer if you don't comment on my body and i will not comment on your body, ever", but that doesn't seem to make any difference. it's like hitting my head against a brick wall of judgment and fat-shame and i am so fucking sick of it.

NOLOSE 2012

so, fat camp.

for months i agonized about the decision to go. the expense, the social anxiety, the time off of work, the general oh-my-god-what-if-i-spend-all-this-money-and-it-sucks-and-everyone-hates-me. you know, the usual. eventually, i decided that i NEEDED to attend the nolose conference this year. i'm going to give a summary of my experiences here, but will definitely forget and miss things that happened, things that impacted me, etc.

GETTING THERE
leading up to the conference, i was a hot mess (see above). not only was i concerned about the practical side of getting TO the conference and finding my way from san francisco to oakland with shitty eyes and a barely working knowledge of the bay area transit system, but i was also overcome with social anxiety. i don't make friends easily. i tend to avoid people. on top of that, i have never been in a room with mostly/all queer fat folks before. hell, i don't even KNOW more than a handful of queer fat folks, and i don't have ANY queer, fat-loving folks with whom i am close. so yes, in some ways it felt like these were to be "my people", but i wasn't sure what that meant or how it would feel. i also have a deep, dark fear of summer camp and i was afraid that this conference would feel just like summer camp and by the second night i would end up calling my mom in tears, begging to come home. obviously, i was TOTALLY OPTIMISTIC.

i arrived in oakland with no trouble (unless 17 hours of travel on ZERO sleep counts as "trouble"), got a room at the econolodge, ordered the worst pizza i've ever tasted, and went to bed. that was my first day at the conference.

friday, i woke up and i could hear excitement outside my window. immediately, my heart jumped into my throat and my stomach tightened. it felt like the first day of highschool (i don't know anyone, i don't know my way around and OMG I AM FAT AND SCARED).  could hear fatties greeting each other, splashing in the pool, reminiscing about the past year since the last conference, comparing kick-ass tshirts and fashionable outfits. i immediately felt like the new kid who knows no one, but i put on my brave face, got dressed, and headed out the door.

at this point, i could give a play by play of the sessions and the activities at the conference, but that would be boring and i'm not going to do that. i am going to write some highlights, mostly for my own memory, and some observations on community.

HIGHLIGHT 1: FOOD TRUCKS
oh my god food trucks. dinner the first night was a food truck party and not only was it delicious, it sort of FORCED interaction outside of sitting at a table and having a guided discussion (as the sessions had been). i need this type of forced interaction, lest i sit in my room and order terrible pizza, so this was a great experience. oh so yummy.

HIGHLIGHT 2: THE SESSIONS
so, the sessions felt a great deal like group therapy. i mean, i've never gone to group therapy, but this is what i imagine it would feel like. and i don't mean this as a negative, it just contrasts my expectations of conferences, which isn't surprising given that part of my job is attending academic conferences. at those, we don't sit in circles and tell our stories/share our feelings. there was a lot of reflection, processing, sharing, and trusting that went on in these sessions. some of which i was not prepared for. there were things that came up for me that i was sort of blindsided by, but happy for. this space was very important for me, and sharing it with so many others who have some common experiences (and some vastly different) was profound.

HIGHLIGHT 3: FATTY SWIMMING
wearing a bathing suit is SUCH A THING. for years, i wore shorts AND a full sized tshirt over my bathing suit AT ALL TIMES. then i moved to shorts and a tank top, then just shorts. this year, for the first time since childhood, i've experimented with bathing suit-only swimming (but that was while camping in the middle of nowhere with one friend). at NOLOSE, swimming is nothing. everyone is fat, everyone is looking gorgeous in their bathing suits - one piece and two pieces, and no one gives a flying fuck that you are fat AND IN A BATHING SUIT. i can't quite describe this experience of freedom after more than 20 years of fear around wearing a bathing suit in public (or, hell, even in private). it may have been the most significant thing i experienced all weekend.

COMMUNITY?
i have a hard time with this. in some ways, getting together with a bunch of people with whom you have at least one thing in common feels like a bit of a forced community. at the same time, there are so many common threads to our stories. there were so many times i heard someone sharing a part of their story and thought "holy fuck that could be me talking". i rarely have that experience and it was very overwhelming. on top of that, i am an introvert, and a hardcore one at that. it really felt like EVERYONE else at this conference was an extrovert, and although i'm sure that's not the case, i didn't come across a single person who said "me too!" when i shared this. this made the community-building/social aspect of the conference very difficult for me, not surprisingly. i really look forward to seeing where this community settles in my life and how i continue (or don't continue) to be a part of/interact with it.

i found this

i am preparing to move (!) and was going through some old papers and photos today, purging and cleaning. i came across something that i wrote and printed eight years ago, while still living with my parents. i wrote this at a very interesting time in my life, when i was right on the cusp of a lot of change.  think it says a lot about me, growth, change, and also what a terrible writer i was (and likely still am - hi me in 8 more years! i bet you're cringing at this writing!). anyway, i'm going to type it here so that i have a digital record of it. also a sidenote: i remember distinctly after i printed this, i accidentally left it sitting on the kitchen table and my dad found it and read it and i was MORTIFIED. here's what i wrote:

Most things in life, you don't notice until they are gone or have changed, and this is true with the passage of time. It is as if one day you look over your shoulder and your life has passed without you being aware of it, how every year on your birthday, people ask you if you feel and different and you respond "no" with a shrug, but then when you actually reflect on the past, you realize how different you are compared to how you once were. You have to remember to look around once in a while, or life will happen without you noticing, or worse, life will pass you by altogether. It is necessary, therefore, to reassess yourself form time to time, not externally, but from within. You must think about the beliefs you hold and how they affect the binding decisions and promises you make, and may or may not keep. This fact is so true, that it is often taken for granted and therefore overlooked, and thus is the irony of human existence. 


When I was four years old, I came to the conclusion that people in general care about others; that in most situations, the average person would help out their fellow human, even if the reward is not great. This belief carried through with me until even now, when I realize that even if perhaps this is not true, I can't simply let it go. I can't give up home that people are generally good, even if on the surface some seem to have no regard for anyone but themselves, and perhaps their offspring, although I am finding more and more often that even this isn't true. It is absurd, but factual that there are people in this world who have no regard for even their own children, the supposed product of their love for another human being. However, even in the face of this dire uncertainty, I find myself clinging to the desperate hope that people are, by nature, generally good. It is necessary to define "good", even if for no other reason than to justify my belief. My belief that people are generally good simply means that human beings have some innate capacity for compassion, honesty and respect even if these same people will rape, murder, and torment their fellow humans given the right amount of provocation. This definition may seem contradictory to some, but it must be observed that the capacity for compassion, honesty and respect is not the same in all people, and is ecen skewed or distorted in some. There are some people who lack these innate capabilities, but they are the exception to the rule. So suited with my belief in the goodness of people and equipped with just the right amount of naivety, I was ready to take on the world, overcoming obstacles and facing uncertainty, all at the tender age of four.


By ten, I had realized that even though all humans have the innate capacity for "goodness", some were not willing to admit to this capacity, and required the unconditional love and acceptance of those around them. The unfortunate thing is that some people do not have the means by which to acquire this love and acceptance, and therefore spend the majority of their lives masking their innate goodness with a veil of hate and anger. These are the people we hear about on the news, who murder, rape, steal and lie. It isn't that these people can't love, it is that they learned at a very early age that showing love will hurt you and is a sign of weakness to predators. So, it became my personal mission to seek out these people and give them what the needed in order to develop and show compassion for their fellow beings. With this belief, I set out on the mission of a lifetime, equipped with my beliefs and the advantage of ten years of experience in the field called life. 


Now, ten years after I set out on my brave mission, I realize that it is not necessarily foolish to believe that people can be changed with only the right amount of love and acceptance, but that it is naive to think that at the tender age of ten, or even now at the age of twenty I am ready to take on such a daring feat. So now I embark on a new journey, one of learning rather than ambition to change the world, with the hope that by educating myself in the ways of the world, I will in some way provide a sliver of light in the perpetual darkness that is human suffering

Right? I want to write a "where I'm at 8 years later in this journey" update, but I'll do that in the next post because this is long enough.

PS - I corrected a few minor typos, but kept all of the spine-tingling run on sentences and comma splices.

camping was fantastic

see?

i've thought about and written (and then deleted) a number of posts since i returned. which means more coming soon, probably.

unplugging

this weekend i'm going on a camping trip that has potential to be rather physically challenging. i went on a similar trip two years ago and that was my first time in a canoe since about 1995 (and that time was a terrible experience, after which i swore i would never get in another canoe). on this trip two years ago, i started out feeling unsure but excited and ended the trip feeling FUCKING peaceful and powerful and happy with my physical strength. as we came to the end of the last lake and pulled our canoe into the pier to return it and end our trip, there were two young men making extremely inappropriate and loud fat jokes directed at me. at first, it was extremely upsetting. here i had just had this amazing trip and my first interaction with human beings (aside from the one friend i was camping with) was fatphobia. awesome. i did my best to not let it impact me, though, and reflected on the trip positively.

we didn't get a chance to go out last year, which was heart-breaking, but this weekend, we are headed out again. except that this year we are going further in the same amount of time. which means more intense travel and portaging. part of me is feeling a bit intimidated and unprepared for this, but there's another part of me screaming FUCKING RIGHT WE'RE GONNA DO THIS. there are just two of us going, so it is sure to be both peaceful and taxing at the same time.

i really wish i could turn off the part of my brain that tells me i'm not strong enough to do this. i wish i didn't have a nagging "what the fuck are you doing?" feeling in my gut.

this should be interesting

happy friday

get yo bake on

(this photo was taken with my phone by a 4-year-old who was standing on a chair and dancing, so please excuse the poor quality)

On inclusion

how do we define oppression? even more complicated, how do we define the boundaries of oppression and privilege? are there boundaries? and how do we do this without playing the Oppression Olympics? i have no idea, but i've been thinking about this a lot, specifically how it relates to experiences of fat phobia and sizeism. let me tell you a story:

every year i go into a second-year university community psychology class and give a lecture on power, oppression, and privilege (next month i'm doing this lecture in a first-year pharmacy program core course. holy crap! nerves!). in the first slide, i display a messy image of all sorts of forms of oppression/privilege. two forms of oppression that are not in the students' textbook are "sizeism" and "cissexism", so when i display this image and ask if there are any terms the students are unfamiliar with, inevitable, someone points out these two terms. i then give a description of what these terms mean, with examples of each. next, i ask students to take a few minutes, think about how privilege and oppression play out in their lives, share with a neighbour (to the extent that they feel safe and comfortable sharing), then we come back to a larger class discussion. every time i give this lecture, when i ask students to share what they discussed with their classmates, a petite woman puts up her hand and says "i experience sizeism because i am short and people always pat me on the head and it's really annoying". huh. i NEVER know how to respond to this.

now, there are many things happening all at the same time here. i imagine this woman's experience would be different if she were a man (almost always, they comment that it is their boyfriend/brother/male friends who pat them on the head). i usually respnd to this and get students to start thinking about intersectionality, which i discuss later in the lecture. BUT - is this an experience of sizeism?  does sizeism include height diversity?

similarly, the other day i posted on facebook something about shopping as a fat person, and a vert petite acquaintance from my past commented about how small her feet are and how hard it is to find shoes. now, i GET this. i can only imagine that it is really frustrating to have size 5 or 6 feet and never be able to find shoes (my feet are size 9, so i don't have this experience). but is it the same as being fat and having a choice of three stores that carry your size? when the average size for women is about 14/16 in north america (that's from memory - i could be slightly off on that), why do stores carry sizes 0 - 12? this is a systemic problem - even the AVERAGE size woman can't shop in some stores, and anyone even *slightly* above average has very few shops to chose from (note: i am a 2x/size 18 and so this is my experience).

now, let's go back to the issue of inclusion. is this short student experiencing sizeism? in my opinion, no. she is not. maybe this is just me being protective of something i experience every damn day, but a slim, short woman does not have the experience of not fitting into seats, being too terrified to fly in case she has to buy two seats, not being able to get clothes that fit and make her feel comfortable, being told by health "professionals" and the media ALL.THE.TIME. that she is going to die an early and painful, self-inflicted death because of her choices, because she is lazy and eats too much. yes, her "friends" who pat her on the head are patronizing douchebags and need to be told that. i would argue that she is experiencing some negative gender-related stereotypes ("oh, you little, dainty woman, you aren't smart enough to understand what we're talking about" *pat, pat, pat*).

in that moment, when this student shares her experiences, i don't correct her. i don't give my opinion about this definition of sizeism. i don't want to invalidate someone's experiences, but at the same time, i have just introduced this group of (about 120) students to this concept moments before, so is it my responsibility to make sure they *get* it? am i an "expert" because i am knowledgeable about this stuff? because i read about it? because i'm fat? i don't know. i haven't come across this discussion before, but it really interests me. i WANT to be able to say "actually, when i say 'sizeism', i mean THIS, not THAT". i want them to understand. i want them to understand that when they look in the mirror and think or say "ugh, i am so FAT", not only are they alienating their fat friends (or just passersby), but they are also experiencing the societal pressure to be thin and reject (abhor, even) fat. THAT'S the core of this. height, in this context, although not TOTALLY irrelevant, is not the core factor. and i don't want the point of this to be lost on them with an off-topic example. i want these students to be allies, not just in terms of fat acceptance, but in other ways, too. i just don't know how to do that without alienating them.

sometimes you can't

in trying to understand some possible food sensitivities and my body's reactions, i decided at the beginning of may to go a month without sugar, gluten, and other inflammatory foods (tomatoes, etc) while increasing my intake of anti-inflammatory foods (organic berries, omega 3s, turmeric, etc). this seemed straight forward enough. i knew it wouldn't be easy - i like bread, i like ice cream, and i like beer - but i also knew it was short term and i felt committed to figuring out what was happening with my body (most notably digestions issues, stomach pain, and acne).

now, let me back up a bit and say (again) that i am firmly anti-dieting. i have a long history with dieting and it is just not a healthy approach. not for me and, i would argue, not for most. i am a strong believer in intuitive eating - eat what you want, when you want it. give your body what it needs and also what it wants when you need to. i've been through all sorts of up and down phases with restricting my food - from extreme food restriction, to obsessing over points on weight watchers. restricting my food makes me very, VERY uncomfortable. BUT (i told myself), this was not a diet (or a "lifestyle change", as the popular euphemism goes). this was necessary. this was a way to give my body what it needed and to feel good - physically and mentally. once i figured things out, i would be more able to make informed food decisions (and i would hopefully FINALLY have a clear-ish face. made it through puberty and my 20s with almost no zits. now, as i approach 30, my face is a fucking mess).  well, here's how that went....

i started on a wednesday, after spending much time reading and understanding the relationship between food - mostly gluten and sugar - and acne (and other things, but mostly acne).  i felt so good about my decision, i felt at peace, and i felt like i was finally going to feel awesome and figure out what was going on. i don't generally eat a WHOLE lot of gluten, and i am generally mindful of the sugar i take in, simply because i'm not a fan of the sugar high and resulting crash. so this should be easy, right? for the first day, it was. i got some gluten free wraps and other than that, my diet didn't really change. the second day was also fine. i felt very hungry, but i snacked all day and told myself that the hunger was just a mask for the sugar cravings.

then friday night hit. almost every friday night, i have a beer. i couldn't have my beer. i was upset, i was hungry all day long no matter how many snacks i ate. i felt irritable and restricted and EXTREMELY insecure about my body. i mentioned this month-long food trial to a friend and she referred to it as "my diet" (that actually happened twice) and i got very upset and defensive. this was NOT A DIET. but man, it sure felt like one.

on saturday, i had a wedding to attend. i had had insomnia the night before and the idea of spending an evening in a social setting was not at all appealing to me. i determined that there was no way i could attend this wedding and not have a glass of wine, so i decided just to enjoy myself and not worry too much about sugar and gluten and everything. i couldn't just NOT eat, and the menu was set, so i wasn't going to obsess over it.

after the wedding, i got sick with a cold. i was miserable, tired, hungry, and sick.  still hadn't quite made the connection with how this food restriction was affecting me psychlogically, but i knew that i just needed to do what i needed to do to get through the day with a cold that was settling in my chest. for the rest of the week, i focused on getting better more than anything else. my up and down mood was explained away by the fact that i wasn't feeling well.  eventually, though, i was able to think critically about it and realized that restricting my food intake, even just for a few days, really fucked me up. it wasn't a big deal, it SHOULDN'T be a big deal. it was a short-term situation and i was doing it for good reason. unfortunately, none of this mattered. mentally, i simply couldn't do it.

what did i learn from all of this? food is serious business. a person's history can really fuck them up. every person is different and something that is no big deal for one person, can cause serious problems for another, and that is TOTALLY OKAY. it is important to listen to my body AND my mind and make decisions that contribute to feelings of overall wellness. yeah, there are still zits on my face and yeah, that still drives me nuts. unfortunately, i am just not in a place where i can restrict my food and be okay with it. i'll take some time with it, try to understand it, and maybe make a decision about trying again in the future, but for now, it's just not an option for me. and that's just fine. i need to give body and food issues the space they deserve in my life while not giving them power over me and my decisions/experiences. this is a near-impossible balance to strike, but so, so important.

want

I WANT TO GO TO THIS.

and maybe i even want to present something. no idea what, but their presentation format seems pretty open and OMG I WANT TO GO.

sunday

soup

sitting 

 sleeping

 sunset strolling

and, unfortunately, sadness at the news of a friend's loss. 

new directions

i really miss blogging.

i realize that this is a blog, and i write here from time to time, but so far it has all had a very specific focus. yes, this is a 'fat' blog, but being fat is not the only (or the most important, central) part of my identity or my life. it's one of those things that impacts a lot of areas of my life, but it doesn't define it.

i used to (and still do, actually) have a personal blog where i just wrote and posted photos, almost daily. that other blog has been on lockdown for a couple of years after some unfortunate bullying and harassment. i miss what the blog used to be and i want to have that again. i know that some day i am going to look back on this period as a really good time in my life. my life is pretty full right now and i want to take more time to document all aspects of this life, not just the ones related to body image and size acceptance.

so, my intent from here on out will be to use this blog in a more general sense. i will still write posts on particular and focused topics, but i will also write general updates, more for my own memory than anything else. i'm not sure that anyone even reads this blog, so maybe i'm just writing this post for myself, as a reminder to actually use this space (and that's okay, i don't need an audience).

i'm not OVERweight

i am fat.
i am large.
i am chubby.
I AM NOT OVERweight.

now, i'm sure that some fat folks identify with this term, and that is totally fine. but i hate it.

what does overweight mean? what weight am i over? this term implies that there is some ideal weight and that being over (or under) it is hazardous. yes, being extremely over or under the 'average' weight CAN be dangerous, but these things are not linked in an essential way. to me, the term overweight implies that until one's weight is no longer "over" something (the ideal), there is a problem, a risk to one's health.

i just spent four days at a conference called "community-campus partnerships for health" and although this conference was fabulous and inclusive, because it was related to health, there was a lot of talk of "the obesity epidemic". in fact, in one session when the presenter asked folks to shout out 'the -isms', there was confusion when i said 'sizeism' (although not nearly as much confusion as when i said 'cissexism', but that's a conversation for another day). being in such an atmosphere had me feeling rather ranty a lot of the time, but it was the use of this term - overweight - that really got me.

i'm not sure if the term overweight is hated by other fatties, but it really rubs me the wrong way.

some days

some days i want to say you know what? maybe they're right.
some days i want to listen.
some days i feel ashamed of my body.
and some days i think about food as "good" and "bad"

some days i feel so fucking weak.
some days i hate myself for letting Them get to me.
(whoever "Them" is)
some days i don't want to give a fuck.
some days i want to yell and curse.
some days i look at my body and i cringe and i feel sadness.

i know i'm not the only one, but some days, i tell you. some days.

adele, fat-shaming, and other disappointments.

last week i was in a bookstore with a friend when she approached me, holding this, and said "look what they did to Adele". my first response was "i can't live in a world where Adele isn't fat", followed by a good 5 minutes of denial, until we flipped through approximately 100 pages of advertisements to find the article. at which point i realized that this was, indeed, an extremely photoshopped image of Adele.

why did i have this reaction? well, because these photos are not Adele. yes, i realize that this happens to EVERYONE who is on the cover of any mainstream magazine. that doesn't come anywhere near making it okay. to me (and, i assume, to many other people), Adele is a perfect example of an extremely talented, beautiful, successful woman who falls outside the norm, who doesn't look the way society tells us we should all look. vogue went and made Adele into what we are told we should all be - slim, with big tits and sexy, pouty lips.

what's more heart-wrenching is this video, where Adele talks about the importance of confidence and being yourself, interspersed with video footage from the shoot and photos. the juxtaposition of these things (Adele's words, her actual-size-and-shape shown in video footage, and the photos that some photoshop genius produced) cannot go unnoticed. i understand that this was a big ol' line for Adele's CV, and a big ol' pay cheque in her bank account. i also realize that she likely didn't have any control over the final edits. but the fact remains that Adele chose to work with Vogue. she chose a high-paying gig that, if she had done any critical thinking about her image and the magazine's image, she could have known would make her into something she is very much not.

the same evening i first saw this photo, as i was walking home for the night, some douchefuck standing outside of a bar called me a "fat cunt" and told me to go home and kill myself. the next day, as i was walking to a friend's birthday party, some other disappointment of a human being said, from a car stopped at a stoplight, "look at this thing. i wouldn't fuck her for ANYTHING". my direct reaction to this second person was to make eye contact and shout "THANK FUCKING GOD". now, normally this type of street harassment doesn't get to me. it provides fodder for funny stories and reminds me how important things like self respect and dignity are. but all at once like that, after seeing these vogue images, i felt so fucking burdened by messages of "you are not okay". and it fucking sucked.

i'm still processing the effect that these experiences have on me. i've also had some really disheartening conversations with fat phobic friends recently (the same day as some of the street harassment described above, actually). despite feeling good and feeling strong and knowing that what others say has no bearing on my self worth, it still affects me. it affects me profoundly when those who i call my friends, my safety, those who i think know me so well and, more importantly, those who i think respect me, continue to make fat phobic comments. over. and. over. again (and FUCK YES it still "counts" when these comments aren't directed at me personally). media and strangers can suck it, but those who i respect? family members? friends? that causes something inside me to begin to break. who's the bad guy here? the media? assholes yelling from cars? assholes who i trust, who continue to just not get it? oppressive systems? me, for not just giving up, shutting up, and laughing it off? i have no idea, but i do know that i have no control over the bad guy. i can only control my actions and in this case, that means processing by writing and cursing and maybe even a little ranting. oh, and making chili (more on emotional eating at a later date. teaser: ALL EATING IS EMOTIONAL).

food is beautiful

the chubby side of awesome

yesterday i posted this photo on facebook with the caption "this reminds me that i must always strive to be as awesome as my ~8 year old self". and it's true - this kid is pretty awesome in her dad's sunglasses, that wicked plaid/denim jacket, and a christmas dress that she was forced to wear. but after i posted this photo, i got to thinking. i thought about not only how awesome this kid is, but also all of the things i want to say to this child, who was already concerned about how "fat" she was. so i thought i'd write her a letter. write myself a letter, i guess.






dear me-as-a-child-being-awesome:

first of all, good on ya for defying your mother and putting a hat over that french braid she knotted into your hair while you squirmed and complained. it goes quite nicely with the jean jacket and sunglasses that i know you'd rather be wearing with your jeans and NY rangers jersey instead of those god-awful, too-hot tights and that itchy dress. just bear with your mom - you are her only girl and she wants so badly for you to look like her version of a "little girl" - at least on christmas and easter.

i want you to know that you don't need to cover yourself up with loose-fitting denim. your body is just fine the way it is. and when you sit in church looking at your legs in that dress and wonder how you can stop those legs from looking so fat, i want to sit beside you and tell you that you are just perfect, those legs are strong. i want to tell you that fat is not a bad word and that when you hit puberty, you will get fat. but, let's take it a step back from puberty because a lot will happen before then.

in a couple of years, your friends will change. heck, you will change, too. the boys will start to bully you the year after next and you will hate every moment of everything for a few years. the only time you will not hate yourself is when you are babysitting because the kids don't taunt, don't call you fatty, and don't seem to care how big or small you are, as long as you can make them laugh. cherish this time. know that when you go to school, you will face ugliness and hatred every day, but don't face this hatred with anger in your heart. the little boy who will be the leader of the bullies is hurting. heck, all of those kids are hurting. they are assholes, yes, douchebags of the grandest kind (don't worry - "douchebag" will be added to your vocabulary in about 10 years), but they aren't worth the number of tears you will cry over them. they won't be worth the pain that you will inflict on yourself because of them, and they won't be worth the years of terribly frumpy oversized sweaters you will wear to hide that perfect, beautiful, lovely body of yours.

if i could hug you, i would. i would tell you that it's all going to be okay. i know you don't like hearing it, but it's true - there is SO much you don't understand right now. remember that your brother, when he calls you a cow, is just being an asshole. try not to yell so much, just go into your room, put on your mariah carey tape, and tune him out. some day, he will show you that he does, indeed, respect you, even if he has a hard time showing it.

continue to use your sense of humour and your ability to make people laugh. know that even when they are laughing at you, as long as you can laugh at yourself too, it's okay. don't use your humour to keep people away from you, use it to bring them close to you, to build relationships that are built on comfort, laughter, respect, silliness, and most importantly, trust. some day, you will find people who you can laugh with in ways that you didn't even know were possible and it will make your heart happy, truly happy.

know that when your mother confronts you about your weight, she truly means well. she wants what she thinks is best for you. she will convince you to join weight watchers with her, and you will do it. this will become an important part of your history, and it will teach you a lot about your mind and body, so just play along. you have a lot to teach your mother about beauty and body love, but that will come later. just try not to get too mad at her when she makes you hate your fat.

in this moment, as a child, you have the ability to teach people about respect and laughter. it will take you a long, long time to feel good in your skin. i know that you are so very shy and that's okay. this will teach you to read people, to get a feel for people before you even open your mouth. this will serve you well in detecting the assholes of the world (and in finding the beautiful, wonderful ones, too). what you have to say is important, even if saying it is so damn hard sometimes. it's okay to be quiet, to stay inside yourself.

most of all, i just want you to know that you are beautiful. when you gain weight and then later when you lose it (and gain it back, and lose it...), know that it doesn't define you. you are so vibrant, so funny, so sweet, and so kind and you need to know that folks who don't see that? the ones who bully you? they will grow up to be unhappy adults. and you? you will find joy and love for yourself that right now doesn't even seem possible. you will find this joy and love on the chubby side of awesome.

keep your head up.