I’ll start by saying that, no, I’m not turning my site into a blog about religion, or solely my religion. Trust me, I have less than zero interest in debating theology with anyone at this point in my life. It’s still me writing here, though, and I still have my last posts on my mind, mostly due to a couple of emails I received. I am not sure why, but as I’ve told the story of the woman who yelled to me while I was running, telling me “God would catch me,” there are people who don’t agree with my reaction. (I didn’t say anything to the woman at the time, and later felt myself even having compassion for the whole thing.)

I am not sure I had a lot of other choices, though. I mean, did I? Could I have yelled back, “God does not have to chase me!”? Could I have somehow put her in her place? Could I still have said nothing but then went home and steamed over the whole thing? I could have done all of that. But all of that, well, none of it would have made any difference in how I felt. The sooner you treat something with a little compassion, the sooner you give people (yourself) a break, the sooner it’s out of your head. And I am all for not allowing unimportant things to take up space in my brain.

I am also all for love. To me it’s either where you’re coming from, or not. Yes, it’s a choice, and no it doesn’t mean you love things that are awful or evil, it simply means that love is what defines you. Not them, you. And so that’s how you orchestrate your behavior.

It takes practice, but when you do it, there are a couple of really great benefits. Okay, there are a lot of benefits, but two are immediately noticeable. First, as I mentioned, it frees up space in your brain. You don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to stew over things, give yourself a hard time, second guess yourself. You can let go. Simple, no-cost, liberation.

Second, you become a great detector of others with the same approach. A love detective. It’s a sort of sixth sense you have with people. Not everyone can see it, but to you, it’s glaringly obvious (or lacking). Sometimes, it’s those really crafty, talky people—the ones we feel uneasy with and don’t know why—and, just like that, you can see it. They’re not hiding anything from you. Other times, the most fun times, you can see it in people who can’t even see it in themselves. Maybe they don’t want to admit it, even. But you’ll be able to tell, because of their words or their work ethic or how they treat strangers, and a hundred other less obvious things. You’ll see it, because really, all you’re looking for is one thing: love.

And a third thing, which I’m really glad I thought of but not enough to go back and rearrange the content of this post, is that everything after you’ve seen or not seen love, after you’ve shown or not shown love, is easier. Decisions about people, opportunities, actions, all leaps and bounds easier. Of course I don’t have scientific proof, this is all my opinion, but I like when things are easier, and love does that.

One of the little things I’m taking on right now in this strange “period” of my life in which I don’t post it all on the Internet is counseling younger people in regard to volunteering. Last year I was contacted by a  national placement agency through a local organization that I’ve worked with for six or seven years about helping to guide younger people toward volunteer positions that will not only use their skills and personality well, but that they may also like.  That’s a mistake made often, and an unhappy volunteer isn’t a good one, obviously.

Throughout this time, though, I’ve spent a lot more time with people in their early twenties than I normally do, and the hardest part of that was accepting that I, Lesley, am not in my early twenties. Because most days that is exactly where I feel I am, apart from the achy body that greets me when I step out of bed each morning. Apparently that is a fun new Thirties thing.

But one of the things I didn’t really realize I had left back in my twenties is how much I was generally worried about expressing what I thought. And while, yes, the entire world and business of blogging can be attributed to that quality right there, that isn’t what I’m talking about. Blogging (and all social interaction on the Internet) generally contains the opportunity for feedback and conversation, but that isn’t necessarily the case when you’re younger, less experienced, and trying to find out who you really, really are in your life, in the world. (All the people older than me can laugh now, go ahead.)

Nonetheless, as I talk with these younger people, their energy is great, but it’s also so interesting to me to witness the actual process of coming to know what you know.  I’ve been able to see a person go from saying this is how I feel to realizing that, yes, most people know that. It was you who had to learn it. And maybe you had to learn it by saying it, which is fine. It happens to us all.

The thing is, it isn’t until much later, usually, that you realize this doesn’t make you unique or profound so much as it simply makes you better suited for your life. In both the very significant and hardly noticeable realizations or lessons, you’re bringing something new to the table, but it’s your table. It’s your make-up that’s changed, and hopefully been improved.  And it will continue to happen hundreds of times over, over and over again.

And the only good lesson there is that slowly, it won’t feel like such a revelation anymore. It’ll feel normal.

It is just like me, the part of me that likes to write on her blog, to come in all excited with resolutions and first-of-the-year posts and then go away for two weeks.  It has been a big two weeks, though. Big by my standards, anyway. For instance, there is now a Starbucks drink size that is bigger than even my own bladder, which is not difficult to achieve as anyone who’s been on a road trip with me will attest to.  And though I’m hardly one to blog immediately (if ever) about current events, it seems weird to have lived through the last couple weeks both as me and as an American and say that it hasn’t all been just a little overwhelming.

Being me isn’t relatively hard, of course, but over the last couple weeks of this still very new year, I’ve had to really think hard about what I want for my life. Which is not that different than other people, I understand. Many people of all ages have to tackle this, but there is still always that part of me nagging at me saying, “Really” At thirty-one this is your plan? This is your reality?” And I just have to step back, take a deep breath and say yes, yes it is.

Whether it is because of or in spite of the events that go on around you, at some point you have to either choose to ignore your instincts or get to know them closely and personally so much so that everything else fades to the background. While I cannot necessarily spell everything out here, I will say that making decisions that make others wonder, but meanwhile could very well be the thing that determines a trajectory for the rest of my life has been a very self-defining moment. I have this feeling in my gut that could be mistaken for nerves but that I know is much more than that.

It isn’t easy, it isn’t perfect, and it’s perhaps more frightening the further I get down the road, but it is also reassuring. I know right now, more than ever, that I am me. I am not everyone else. I have my own path, there is a plan just for me, and that I do not have these feelings and thoughts and dreams for no reason. While I’ve never really tried to convince anyone else I’m not crazy, what surprises me most is how much I’ve had to tell myself that about… well, myself.

So while I apologize at the vagueness here as it applies to my day-to-day life and plans, I also hope there’s a more prominent point. I hope that the idea that when YOU know what YOU are meant to be doing, when that feeling hits you and you research it and you practice it and you strive toward it, the moment comes when you realize it all happened because you trusted your instincts, your gut.

It must be independent from time lines, and ideals, and estimates of effort. It must be based on faith, opinions of a very select few (if even that), and a whole lot of willingness to do a lot of thinking, planning, and trying in the face of what may seem unreachable to anyone else.

I would never be so pompous to share something like this as advice, but a handful of times I have had someone tell me that something I did in my own life and then put on the Internet helped a person feel okay about their own instincts, and in turn that is something that always helps me. Whether we learn something for the first time, or are reminded of something we’ve always known, that stream should always be flowing.

The following is a part in a series of posts about weight, losing weight, and body image.  It is mostly my experience, in the frame of my own life and body, and in the frame of the people around me, many of them sharing similar feelings and experiences. It is not meant as professional advice, nor is it meant to be preachy. The words and information I share here have changed my life and made me a happier, healthier person, and all it took was for me to try to be ready; to practice.

Thank you for letting me share.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

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Part 4- The Thing Is

This THING that took up space in my brain, that stewed over 15 pounds, and a pooch-like belly and elephant knees, that I could never shake. It shadowed me at events, deciding which dress I could wear. It went with me on dates, judging for the poor guy before he’d even had a chance to see me. It went with me to the beach, wrestling between being confident and wanting to hide under a tree all day for fear of someone inadvertently getting a photo of the width of my butt. This thing would decide my worth based on the pants I was wearing, because a size 12 somehow made me less beautiful than a size 8. Because somehow, if I were a size 8, all my other insecurities would go away. (Sidebar: I’ll say this again but let me say right now, IT IS ALL RELATIVE. I realize a size 8 sounds like a problem to some people. I realize a size 12 sounds like a goal to some people. This is not the point. The point is that the numbers have power at all, at least power to determine how I was feeling about myself.)

This thing didn’t let me like myself in group photos, in marathon photos, and in a way very much has influenced why I am the one behind the camera. It has been the excuse for my attitude more often than not, for the way I treat others, and the way I judge them. It has told me that it didn’t matter if I ate a box of cereal for dinner, because nothing was ever going to change. It has told me to wait for everything… for the job, the people, the life that is sure to get better if I could somehow count what I put into my body. Which is ridiculous, because people with these thoughts never, never have a problem understanding numbers. We have stepped on too many scales, ripped out too many tags in jeans, to have a problem with numbers.  Counting is not the problem.

That thing hanging over me, traveling with me to the beach, and the mountains and through more miles of running than I can count never went away. It was a fifteen, sometimes ten, sometimes twenty-pound thing that appeared wherever I was, made up of all those little holes from all those little anchors. And it had become too big.

As many long-time readers here will know, about a year ago I quit my full-time, stable, benefits-laden job because, to save words, it was killing me. I had become more stressed in the year prior, and it was leading to some form of depression, of that I was sure. Upon leaving that job, an enormous weight was lifted off my shoulders, and for the first time in maybe… ever, I was able to look at my life for what it really was, undefined by the position I held or how much money I could make. Since I left that job without a concrete “next step” I was wading into the unknown voluntarily, and for the first time. I was allowed to step back, take stock, and know nothing about what tomorrow would bring. I had no where to go but in… in my mind and heart.

A few months later, I read Women Food and God and it was like a repeat of the day I quit my horrible, no good, very stressful 9-5 job; a weight was lifted. I felt a sense of, wow, this is what life is like when something you hate no longer has power over your mind. A new world opens.

Note: Part 5 to come very soon! I’m in the midst of floor installation at my house right now, and nothing else is going as it should, nothing is on time. But the floors are nice!

The following is a part in a series of posts about weight, losing weight, and body image.  It is mostly my experience, in the frame of my own life and body, and in the frame of the people around me, many of them sharing similar feelings and experiences. It is not meant as professional advice, nor is it meant to be preachy. The words and information I share here have changed my life and made me a happier, healthier person, and all it took was for me to try to be ready; to practice.

Thank you for letting me share.

__________

Part 3- Inside, Outside

As I got older, I would learn that a lot of things can cause holes. It’s not just comments about your body directly that cause a reaction. I don’t have to analyze all our lives between the ages of, say, childhood and… 30 (40? 50?) to be able to tell you that we begin to treat ourselves in a way that reflects our surroundings, our lives. This is where Women Food and God really shook me, and made me feel like I was awake to an entirely new concept to what I’d previously practiced regarding my body.

The way I was eating, or reactively eating in some cases, was my way of handling all things in my life. All things.  This is beyond the behavior that is eating a pint of ice cream after you’re dumped. This is beyond eating too many passed hor d’oeuvres at the office Christmas party after you didn’t get a bonus.

The way I was living was such that every decision I made about food was a direct reaction of how I was dealing with my life. I was dieting, trying new plans, counting calories and points, occasionally skipping meals, drinking green tea and black tea and white tea and cleansing tea. Working out. Running. Running marathons (which, ironically, made me gain weight). I was reading cookbooks and measuring and losing sleep over bread baskets and chips and salsa and cookies in the break room. I was praying and hoping and asking for guidance and begging myself more times than I’d like to admit to, please, this time, make it work.  The real estate it was occupying in my brain was unimaginable.

It was in my twenties when all of this was hardest. Yes, there was high school, and college, and everything that comes with being a teenager and a student and a person who is essentially clueless as to who they are and what they’re going to be. I was lucky, though, in that I had a few close friends I’d kept with me since very early on in life, and that I found my place to fit in. Even if inside I was insecure and unsure inside, I got through it.

When I was in my twenties, though, and graduated college and went out into the world and got a big girl job and lived in my own apartment and bought my own home, there was a resounding message that it was now time to live! To be who you’re meant to be! To fulfill a picture that no one is really clear about, yet we must nonetheless get there! Where ever there was.

I did this a lot of ways, I ran marathons, I made new friends, I traveled to new places and cities and places I’d never heard of before. I made memories and fell in love, and got dumped and did some dumping. I tried new food, went back to school, and interviewed for new jobs and negotiated raises and volunteered and served on committees. I did stuff.

The thing is, in my own heart, often where no one else would be able to see or even care to, there was this struggle. There seemed to be two different parts of me: the struggle on the inside, to fulfill not just an image but a being on the outside. It rarely, if ever, occurred to me that these two things might have to match.

The following is a part in a series of posts about weight, losing weight, and body image.  It is mostly my experience, in the frame of my own life and body, and in the frame of the people around me, many of them sharing similar feelings and experiences. It is not meant as professional advice, nor is it meant to be preachy. The words and information I share here have changed my life and made me a happier, healthier person, and all it took was for me to try to be ready; to practice.

Thank you for letting me share.

__________

Part 2- Holes

When I say you were meant for so much more, I’m talking about those little moments, those things that happen that we allow to define us much more than they should. Five minutes is a hair of our lives, yet we hold onto it as if it’s our true self.  It is not. We are meant to go far beyond a moment or period of hurt, pain, or struggle.

When I was a kid, I was in a day camp program during the summer. During a usual sunny Colorado morning, because in Colorado in the summer it is always nice, sunny, and warm in the morning, I was on a play ground with a lot of other kids. I was wearing a white t-shirt with pink, yellow, and aqua horizontal stripes and matching pink shorts. The shorts were sort of a teri-cloth fabric (it was the 80’s, after all) and although they had an elastic waist, they were a little loose on me. I took great care to not moon anyone as we ran around the park, playing on slides and swings.

At lunchtime, we all ran inside to sit at round tables with short plastic chairs wherein the plastic seemed to have cracked in every one just enough to lightly cut into your leg if you shifted even so much as an inch to either side. On this particular day, I couldn’t get my shorts positioned just right so the cracked plastic wouldn’t scratch my legs, and I swayed a little, adjusting my shorts, and the boy next to me said, “Wow! Your legs are fat! Look at how they spread across the chair!”  I was seven.

I was seven and I can recall the scenes from that day clearly 23 years later. Because that’s the first time anyone called me fat, or noted anything negative about my body, ever. And part of that stayed partly in me always. In spite of me being an extremely active child, in spite of people at home telling me I was beautiful, in spite of most clothes made for a girl my age being too loose. It stayed with me.

Of course that day at the lunch table isn’t solely to blame for every body image hang-up I’ve ever had. Of course that one incident didn’t ruin me. People, though, and women especially, are like harbors when it comes to our bodies. We hold it all, we weather every storm, and when it looks as though it might be too much, the sun comes out the next morning and we recover. All the while, under the surface there is evidence of it all. There’s rust, and waste. There are holes where the anchors were dropped, holes that will be filled and look fine soon enough, but nonetheless will always be holes.

That day at the lunch table at summer camp was just my first anchor, and the first hole. The first sign of rust, the first remnants of waste. And this is what most of us know, that we somehow have to find a way to make room for the holes, whatever causes them. What many of us seem to miss, or forget, or perhaps never learn is that we are more than the sum of what’s leftover. The power is not in the incident but in emerging afterward.

Part 3 on Monday!

The following is a part in a series of posts about weight, losing weight, and body image.  It is mostly my experience, in the frame of my own life and body, and in the frame of the people around me, many of them sharing similar feelings and experiences. It is not meant as professional advice, nor is it meant to be preachy. The words and information I share here has changed my life and made me a happier, healthier person, and all it took was for me to try to be ready; to practice.

Thank you for letting me share.

__________

Part One- Getting to Here

This is a post that’s been on my list to write for a while now. It’s always floating around in my head, rearranging itself, trying to figure out which points are really most important—there are many, many points. The thing about ideas floating around in your head, though, is the obvious: they will stay in your head unless you do something about it. So, this post is about doing something about it.

Sort of.

This post is about weight. It’s a little about weight loss. It’s a little about weight gain. It’s a lot about body image. And it’s mostly about many of us, myself included and then some, believing in ourselves enough. Finally.

I know no one, not one of the women I know (and most of the men, albeit sometimes differently), that hasn’t spent a large portion of her life thinking about her body and her weight. For me, if I had all the time back that I have spent critiquing by body, trying to change it, sometimes punishing it, lamenting over what I put in it, crying over it’s imperfection, worrying about it, and more, I would effectively be about 14. I’m 31. I am sure most of you know what I mean.

That sounds like an exaggeration and that’s fine, but if you remember one thing about this post, one single thing I’ve said in nearly five years writing on this site, remember this: you are meant for so much more.

I tried to put this early on, in case you were bored and stopped reading, so allow me to say it again. In bold:

YOU ARE MEANT FOR SO MUCH MORE.

It’s true.

This is what I know now. As I sit here typing, both for me and for the even minor chance of helping someone else, I know this absolutely. And this is not news to me, knowing that I’m meant for more. I knew this is a place inside myself all along. Many of us know it, right? We feel it, it’s just that feeling is pushed aside and buried and saved for later.

About seven or eight months ago, I read the book Women Food and God by Geneen Roth. This post is not a book review, but I know that when I read that book, the timing with which it entered my life was perfect. I was ready to read it, because of all other things in life I’ve ever grown tired and weary, thinking about my body was at the top of the list. I had never heard of Geneen Roth, and for all I know there are other authors out there willing and able to tell the very same thing in another book. But, this is the book that came into my life, and it was the right thing for me to hear.

The following is a quote from the book and Roth’s website, and I think it sums up very well the purpose of this book:

The way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive. No matter how sophisticated or wise or enlightened you believe you are, how you eat tells all. The world is on your plate. When you begin to understand what prompts you to use food as a way to numb or distract yourself, the process takes you deeper into realms of spirit and to the bright center of your own life. Rather than getting rid of or instantly changing your conflicted relationship with food, Women Food and God is about welcoming what is already here, and contacting the part of yourself that is already whole—divinity itself. — Geneen Roth

That said, the book itself covers areas that didn’t necessarily apply for me in this process. I could argue that parts of it weren’t even what brought me to where I am today, but that would be arguable itself, not to mention pointless.  Because I am where I am today, and that, for me, is worth all. It is enough.

The reality, the bottom line, is that there are a million things that brought me to this point. Some of them really difficult experiences, some really beautiful experiences. I’ll bet you can say the same. At once, I can say that in spite of its many, many words, the concept of my message here is quite simple: the peace and kindness I wished for and tried to provide for others somehow stopped just short of applying to me. And as it turned out, I was the one holding myself back, not believing there was another, newer, more compassionate normal in which to exist. Essentially, I believed mostly in terms of lacking.

Part Two still to come!

I have a family member— related to me by marriage only, but still, family— who has always known what he’s wanted to do. Or, at least, from a very young age he has always known. He is a dancer, and he’s so very good that, honestly, even though I’m far from the closest person to him, it’s hard to imagine him doing anything else in this world. It’s nothing short of amazing to watch. He loves what he does, he is extremely good at it, and he knew it a long time ago it was where he is meant to be. And, he’s successful and will likely continue to be even more so.

I know several people like this, people gifted in a lot of different ways, who have always known what they wanted to do, what they were good at doing. I know landscapers and designers and doctors who are all, essentially, in their place. Their calling. It’s pretty remarkable when you see someone who’s doing just what they’re meant to do. It’s amazing. I mean, I have seen a software developer so absolutely, unarguably skilled at his job that he literally invented things right before my very eyes.  It does not have to be glamorous to be amazing, people.

As I write this, though, I know I’m only talking about some people. A relatively small percentage of us really have truly looked at ourselves, seen what we’re capable of, believed, and somehow had the perfect storm of life events occur enough so that we could make it there, to that place where we’re doing what we should be doing. Some of us are on our way. We have an idea. We know what we’re good at, but we’re just not sure how to make a life within that space. More of us still are not even on the road. We feel clueless and bound to what we know, or what is working for the moment, what has worked in the past.

And I truly believe that within our own space, we can turn into something bigger, better, and more incredible than we often try to achieve. There are not limits. Once we get real, are still, and listen, there are no bounds. We are the opposite of the goldfish that can only grow to the size of his bowl. We are both the fish and the bowl.

Me, I am somewhere in between the person that knows and the person who’s clinging to the familiar. Of course I am fine with that on most levels (the bank account level not being one of them. Ahem!). I am fine that I’m learning, that since leaving my last full-time job I have learned and grown every single day. That I am fine with. That I hadn’t done in a really long time. I figure, though, that for those of us that aren’t dancers, or that once were dancers and now have to find ourselves on another path, there is hope.  I figure that learning and growing every day and feeling closer and more comfortable with that place you’re getting to—even if that “place” is just another road—is probably one of the greatest kinds of hope there is. But I also figure there is a breaking point. There is a point where the tides will turn, where you will know, where I WILL KNOW just enough to push through to something else, something that’s waiting. And then, the space will become bigger.

And hopefully, like now, that space will contain a beach. Which is where you’ll find me for the next few days.

We are both the fish and the bowl.

There is a theory out there—I’m not sure what it’s called—about finite energy. Supposedly, in this world or universe or whatever you believe/perceive to be the bounds of creation and existence, within that space there is a certain amount of energy that is static. It’s measure remains the same no matter what time it is, no matter how many life forms are in existence, and no matter what is happening within the space. There is an unseen, often unnoticed balance that exists, has always existed, and will continue to exist no matter what. I am assuming there are mathematical equations for this theory, too, written out on a chalkboard down some very long hallway with cinder block walls, just waiting for some night janitor to come along and solve something no card-carrying genius ever could.

But because I’m not that night janitor, nor the card-carrying genius, I’m forced to think of this theory within my own terms, my own experience.  Apparently, the basis of this theory is energy comes in many, many forms, and travels in many, many different styles, but the amount of it that is available is constant. There is only enough energy to sustain that which consumes, recycles, and passes on energy within our space here, living in this space and time. Am I getting too science-y? Yes, I think I am. (Along with not being a huge fan of math, science was not really my deal, either. Thank God I can spell. Mostly.)

Basically, everything that occurs, be it large or small, is to either give way to energy for something else, or to take the energy from something else. This is the reason for all things, big and small. From babies being born, to a car breaking down. Things we see no reason for, things that seem awful and wrong and altogether cruel, too, have a reason for being given space within this finite field of energy.

I don’t say this to try to make myself or anyone feel okay about awful things. Oil spills, earthquakes, death, these are not things that can be made okay by some theory. But the thing about this theory is that energy, the kind that essentially is the basis for existence, is not particular. It is not about good occurring because there is want or even a need, and it is not about being able to stop bad from happening because there is a want or need. What it is about, though, is a greater, defined path on which everything will eventually unfold, irrespective of opinion. It means that something is always giving way to something else, and whether that something be twenty minutes or 20 years into the future, there is always something else.

What I’m getting at, if have haven’t lost everyone by now, is that so often I have found myself looking for an explanation of why something is the way it is, or why something isn’t the way it used to be. If I had a dollar for every time I did that in my twenties, for example, you’d be reading the words of a multi-millionaire right now. But what I find now is that along with this finite amount of energy available comes only a finite amount available to me, and fighting hard for more only seems to make it harder to get.

Sometimes, this sounds a lot like giving up. Sometimes, this sounds a lot like simply turning over things out of my control.  To me right now though, it sounds a lot like acceptance. Because bad things, or unpredictable things, or wrong things never seem to ask permission to interrupt, and whether you use it or fight it, it still happens. I believe that is how the energy theory works. And I will continue believing that, until maybe some janitor tells me otherwise.

The thing about making a decision that I can always appreciate is the almost instant relief that follows. Somewhere in those 10 or 20 seconds after I feel completely reassured and optimistic. Sometimes that feeling lasts longer, but not often. Usually my mind will drift toward thoughts of “What if?” and “What now?”

Today, though, I just want to make the effort to live in those 10 to 20 seconds for as long as I can.  I want to appreciate them for what they are, my ability to make a choice, or exercise my free will you might say, while still having faith that it will all work out without worrying about what’s next. One thing I don’t usually do is second guess myself. I make a decision and commit to it and move forward.  Sometimes it is completely right, and sometimes not so much, but either way I make it and own it. And then move on.

I am probably rambling right now, and not making enough sense to qualify for a coherent post, but I guess what I am trying to say is that I feel pretty great. These 10 to 20 seconds are so joyful, so okay.  And right now, maybe even all day, I’m going to live in these 10 to 20 seconds and feel reassured that these seconds, along with everything that led up to them, is just what is meant to be.