Battling the B Word

on the journey

Last week I talked about settling. How I had hoped to settle IN to a routine, into a new space.

Instead, I ended up in a verbal dueling with my inner critic.

Once he starts, he is a loaded semi headed down Mosquito Pass. Which means I am stuck on the theme of settling. I’m picking it apart to dismantle the critic’s argument.

How can I accept one thing and not end up settling for its twin sister too?

Settling can be giving up–even if it is an exchange of one idea for another, reasonable idea.

Accepting is another letting go.

I have to choose my body, as it is, but not stay here.

This is where I sat, with these words “choose my body”, until another loaded word sat up, raised its hand, and said, “I volunteer! I can make this journey more complex. Pick me!!”

Beautiful.

That B word.

Beautiful is the scale tipper. The battle shifter. Beautiful is like flanking in this mental combat zone. A risky undertaking but always a means to shift a stagnate, weary thought process.

Oh. So you didn’t take military history with Maxie? Ok. Let me explain.

Beautiful is the word that comes to me out of left field. A head snap to catch the unbelievable moment. The unexpected, yet necessary, shift to force through the lines of my story.

Beautiful is the key to pushing acceptance away from the edge. It keeps acceptance from falling off and becoming settling.

I’m working on beautiful.

Beauty is not final. It is not a size. A number. Or a place to sit down.

Beautiful is a grace to accept, to carry on the journey.

Now if I could round up a small army (Men in uniform…squirrel!), train them to chant loud. Sing out. Beautiful.

Because real change matters and even in this desert, no one has to be subject to my body in a bikini 24/7. They might, however, have to sit beside me at work, on the bus or at the dinner table.

A beautiful person beats thin thighs in my book.

***************************************************

A note:

I cannot just be my body. Sometimes my brain thinks we would be better off without it. This twelve weeks and beyond will be for me every ounce an emotional and relational transformation. My body is charged with doing the footwork–literally–to get me there.

a night of feeling beautiful

This may not be your journey. If you need some encouragement from photographs, or people who can cheerlead you into better eating habits, or pushing through workouts, please check out the blogger section of the website. There are good people there, and every one is telling their own story.

This week there is a freebie on the website. Go, check it out, it’s a simple sign up at the bottom of the page. Give it a try. You have nothing to lose but inches and regret.

***Revolt Now Fitness blindly chose me to complete a 12 week fitness challenge and share my experience with you. I didn’t promise to be positive. They didn’t give me a magic pill to forget that cookies exist. I’m not sure why I didn’t get that request in writing from the beginning. You can follow along on this summertime journey by visiting on Tuesdays, or scrolling to the bottom of the blog, ie Antarctica, and clicking on the “follow the blog by email” section under my soon-to-be-slimmer face! ***

Introduction:   Revolt Now, Later May Not Be an Option
Week 2:  I’ve Got Your Number
Week 3: Sunday Struggles
Week 4: Settling In

Settling In

The English language confounds me. I will be the first one to confess I could use an ongoing vocabulary lesson. I should also select a side of grammar before I hit “Submit my order.”

I wanted to tell you all this week was about settling in, finding your footing in a new routine.

Then at 6:05 a.m. yesterday morning I stepped on the scale.

I could no longer write you a post about settling in. I fumbled for words. Settling in, did settle in and block the view of any other title, another way to move, a route to be revealed around this confession.

I’ve read statistics about the English language that illustrate the number of meanings of a single word and how this contributes to misunderstandings in abbreviated non-verbal communication.

Like, say, here for instance.

I title the post Settling In. You might just catch “settling”, like I did. It was a twist of words courtesy of my inner critic. The one who is fast enough to get a hit in before I could step my toes onto the tile.

Too many versions of settling sitting down around me. (But you see I still titled the post Settling In, man, am I stubborn!)

This lifestyle shift is a journey. For some the distance to the first mile marker might seem too far. Others of us know we can only handle one step, the next right, one thing.

I realize this week the scale went in the wrong direction. The scale, however, does not get to be the boss of me.

If I forget the lesson, there are others to remind me. If I refuse to listen, there are pictures, other tools to measure progress.

And if all that fails, there is the never ending lesson in grace, which I signed up for long before the vocabulary lessons.

***Revolt Now Fitness blindly chose me to complete a 12 week fitness challenge and share my experience with you. I didn’t promise to be positive. They didn’t give me a magic pill to forget that cookies exist. I’m not sure why I didn’t get that request in writing from the beginning. Instead of cookies, I got this link.***

The rest of the story:

Revolt Now, Later May Not Be an Option

Week 2:  I’ve Got Your Number

Week 3: Sunday Struggles

The Same Story

Mothering is a prolonged goodbye. For many it lasts 18 years. Others have an abrupt ending at 5 years or 23.

trying to avoid group photos

My grandma called me a child when I was maybe 22. I defensively retorted I was not a baby. Grandma, in her wisdom, shared what I would learn to be true—7 or 72, I would always be her child.

laughing too hard to run away

I have a grand selection of fine friends who forgive me my dislike of this day. They forgive my bland vanilla wishes. My mother grieves along with me.

And a little girl who believes mommies are the gift, brings a rose to me for reasons she can’t yet grasp. A mama’s thin smile is all the conversation needed, one that is whispered above the child’s head.

This is my third attempt to fulfill a request to tell a story. Usually I can give it a day to breathe; ruminate a bit. Come at the theme sideways, talking low in an attempt not to startle my memory or the subject matter.

This is as good as it gets with this crew.

Not this time.

I cannot tell a lie, especially not today. Today is not the day to disappoint my mother. So I can’t tell you what it is like to be a mother in extreme poverty. My heart won’t let me walk that road.

Fifteen years ago, I put a tiny baby back in her bassinet and walked out the door of the Missionaries of Charity in Chennai. I called my mother from the deck of the Universe Explorer and I cried. She told me I couldn’t leave the ship and fly home with a baby. She was right.

On that day, I was no more ready to raise a child alone in the US than I would have been to stay in India to serve at the orphanage. Though I wanted both.

I’d share with you the photo of me and baby M., but the snapshot, like most of my life is buried in a storage unit across town. First world problem.

I can’t paint a picture of life as a mother in Uganda or Guatemala, and I can’t tell you what Mother’s Day means to me. I’ll have to believe that my own mother will forgive my failing an assignment and these three will forgive me for not understanding their world.

Jospeh, Uganda

Silvana, Guatemala

Nelson, Ecuador

Sunday Struggles

The scale says this week was a struggle.

Not a start over. Not a failure. For this, I am grateful.

Triumph is buoyant.

You can float through a week, or maybe just a day on those 3 pounds you lost. As if you were able to pack away those pounds in a nifty inner tube, and now it is smooth sailing for you.

I am not a slap on the bottom, go get em tiger type. I am not a Bill! Bill! He’s out man! If he can’t do it, no one can! type either.

Here is the truth I stand on when the scale I stood on talks to me like Dennis Leary.

I am not my pants size. I am not a failure because I love browned butter. I am not better than you because I consumed fewer calories on cheat day. I’m not less than you because my success is measured in ounces and not pounds.

This uprising has a group story and my story. Diet plans and exercise videos are designed to help you write a new sentence at the start of a new chapter.

I find that when my core is strong (read abs), my voice is stronger too. When I make it to the literal mountain top, I can hoot and holler. I have the breath and the volume to put my inner critic in her place.

I know this to be true. When I value this truth, I act.

Last night, I met with my real life accountability partners. They do dishes and cook real food. Sometimes we cheat together–multiplying joy and dividing pain. Revolt has online support that goes beyond, “I can’t view your video.” It matters.

Tonight, I sat at a table of new faces, moved my freebie food day up in the week to accommodate my life (because I’m the boss of me, thank you very much!). I came home and sorted through the week, trying to put perspective to the numbers that showed up in flashing red this morning. As the critics lined up to cast their vote of which past failure most closely relates to this experience, because they want me to believe there is nothing beyond their voice, their opinion, I heard the voice that matters.

That is not your today.

Whether it is Sunday, or July 17, 1978, or the one day when….may you remember, that day is NOT your TODAY.

Welcome to today dear one. I’m glad you made it this far. I hope to point you towards people and a program that is helping people recognize their today is not their yesterday.

Check out the details and consider joining the June Uprising? Listen in on what is being said–#revoltnowfit.

PS Nichole was right. The proof is in the pictures.

News Flash: Those wrinkles are just in the fabric.
Two weeks ago the more substantial wrinkles had some undergirding–a rather squishy support system, I did not want to acknowledge.

Posts in this series:

Introduction                                     Week 2

***Revolt Now Fitness blindly chose me to complete a 12 week fitness challenge and share my experience with you. I didn’t promise to be positive. They didn’t give me a magic pill to forget that cookies exist. I’m not sure why I didn’t get that request in writing from the beginning. You can follow along on this summertime journey by visiting on Tuesdays, or scrolling to the bottom of the blog, i.e. Antarctica, and clicking on the “follow the blog by email” section under my soon-to-be-slimmer face! ***

Share this:

Here in the Southwest, spring is a breath. One you run to catch, only pushing it out too quickly in your efforts.

Back home, friends of mine treated sunburns on the same day they sent their children out the door in snow boots.

How do you catch up with days like this?

I took these photos as deep breath in. Wanting to catch it in a jar and bring it home. I knew on this night home, once again, would be far from the sea. I tried to squeeze greedy and peace in one box and expected them to behave.

You can imagine the results.

I watched through the tiny square of a view finder the expanse of space that takes more than one eye squeezed shut to see.

I’m grateful for the images. Grateful for the knowing, remembering of feet on asphalt at the edge of green and sky and sea.

As the weekend hit like a March storm in Kansas, I searched these memories out. Stretched long into the breath that would pull in the shoreline. Tug hard and tuck in tight this story line that is mine. All of it. Kelly green and coral peach. Rain in the sunshine and creating while at rest.

Breathe in.

Old Chapstick and a New Job

Coffee. Pen. Ten minutes until go time. Add all of it up and it is unlikely to equal 3 pages.

I feel it. I feel the lack of pages. Like the words have rubbed the inside of my skull raw. this week there has been extra ones cramming in, sitting on each others laps unwelcomed. Some spill out like a child’s confession to grandma of what daddy told mommy last night.

My mind, and the play place at the fast food joint are in a race. Which one can tally up the most tantrums? Who will fill the seats fastest and have marker on the wall first?

a new place to step off an edge

New does this.

Promotions, with their step-up, elevated mentality are essentially another square one. Climbing the ladder has its own altitude sickness–the arrogance which comes from declaring their position in the past as now anecdotal, a trifle that someone surely misconstrued.

For others, maybe.

I see my 3rd grade picture as I walk into the new office. Not my first frozen posed school record. It is the one with my lips pouty from Jodi’s carmex; applied in a rush as we stood, single-file on the out-of-bounds line in the gym.

It is my first day, and I’m waiting for them to notice my lips swelling from the allergic reaction, a mistake with no blame. My eight-year-old self looks out of my thirty-something eyes and sees faces not looking for faults, or chapstick fiascoes. Because, honestly, chapstick doesn’t last 33 years no matter what the fine print on my ego says.

_______________________________________

*Technically I should ask for forgiveness…I wrote this in my journal this morning, in something less than ten minutes..all but the last two sentences which didn’t fit on the page and just had to be coaxed out from a darkened corner to wrap it all up nice. I’m usually a rule player. Today I’m a rule breaker.

Because I like to do what Lisa Jo says:

Meet the #FMFParty Writers:

And did you know there’s a whole community of writers that connect online before the prompt goes live on Friday nights? They use the Twitter hashtag #FMFParty and are about the most encouraging group around.

Now, set your timer, clear your head, for five minutes of free writing without worrying about getting it right.

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is, like, the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community..

Poetry Fragment

April was National Poetry Month.

In another life, in another state, I did write poetry. In this iteration of days, I have left a blank post in my drafts folder for 3 weeks waiting for inspiration.

Inspiration or time, because there is work eo dig through. Not laundry work. The work of writing, herding words into the corrals of blue lines above and blue lines below, right beside the gate of one long red line.

Fragments assert themselves between coconut milk and mail letter to Grandma in the notebook that is for tasks and not phrases.

I held this space here, a holding pen before shipping a small family of words to the market of my front page.

Stuck my finger in the book to mark my place until the numb wears off in tingles and jars me into this square of the calendar which begins a new month.

I haven’t disappointed you with all of this waiting and squaring off of my virtual ranch. Only me, in my knowing, that once I sat and did not fish for or finish a snippet. I did not fashion it into a poem. Did not type it out under the photograph that I took–my first response, but only by seconds, as the stanza came into the world the fraternal twin of light kissing silver halides.

Here, at last, is the morsel that took longer to introduce than to conceive.

the sky by the sea

dusk smudged pines

feather themselves

straight into the

darkening skies

I’ve Got Your Number

This is the thing. My hang up.

I do not want to be a number.

Not even a one in a million number.

I have never given out my digits, and I don’t plan on doing that now–not my phone number, my pants size or my bottom line. My response to someone inquiring of my age is, “Old.”

That’s just me.

Other bloggers on this journey are sharing their numbers. They are counting down to something special and racking up their losses to prove they are winning the battle.

I applaud them all. Their bravery, it astounds me. They are being accountable in ways I simply cannot be. May never be.

1224 Trail
the activity room

Some will be accountable in a private online group. In this seclusion, there is a screen between us all–a feeble shield, or for me, it can be the making of a glass house. I am grateful for the option to be included. I am blessed because they are sharing. My goals for my own transformation, when printed out before others, may seem laughable, meager. It is important to keep them close, to sign my name all over them. My photo may not be on a wall, but I am still in the room.

Revolt’s owner shared with us bloggers a few words that epitomize my heart on this journey.

We have a huge issue in the US today….75% of us are overweight or obese, and that is a miserable way to live! The solution is not complicated, and is not as difficult as some people believe. We need to rise up and educate people about how the body works and how the solution is something anyone can work into their lives.

There isn’t a lot in life I do believing it is for me alone. I have learned, in good ways and hard ways, someone is always watching.

Someone does have my number. Or, more accurately, because of my hesitation to share my life in inches and pounds, someone will relate. Their numbers are written in code, in a book, hidden under layers of winter socks in a bottom drawer.

May my silence here be space for you to hear the calling of enough.

You are enough. Enough as you are, yet enough to push through to better.

You are more than a number–no matter the number.

If you are ready for life beyond the number that has held you captive, take a look at the program offered by Nicole at Revolt Now Fitness. Follow the tweets (#revoltnowfit). Read up. Find out who you are when you embrace enough and not a number.

(In an incredibly ironic turn of events, I could not find the recipe for the COOKIES that I was supposed to get to eat this week on the diet plan. I kid you not. Life being what it is, I am unlikely to get to make, and therefore eat, said cookies until Wednesday. That is a full 2 days of cookies I am missing out on. God might just call this a knee-slapper but you can probably see my pout from where you are sitting. And since I know the suspense was keeping you up all these 7 long nights, I had to share the real news of what happens when I let someone else choose my food.)

_____________________________________________________

***Revolt Now Fitness blindly chose me to complete a 12 week fitness challenge and share my experience with you. I didn’t promise to be positive. They didn’t give me a magic pill to forget that cookies exist. I’m not sure why I didn’t get that request in writing from the beginning. You can follow along on this summertime journey by visiting on Tuesdays, or scrolling to the bottom of the blog, ie Antarctica, and clicking on the “follow the blog by email” section under my soon-to-be-slimmer face! ***

Related articles

• Revolt Now, Later May Not Be an Option (shegetztheshot.wordpress.com)

Lessons From the Pool

I’m humming it but I don’t want to write it.

The truth is, there is a lot that can happen, that needs to happen, between the edge of the pool and Dory’s mesmerizing ditty.

What I hear this morning above the swirl of lyrics is you can’t swim away, or walk away while still holding onto the railing.

I see the child in the pool screaming. Holding onto my neck, or the railing by the steps. Refusing to let go because he knows letting go means going under. Unknown. It requires effort opposite to all of the life he has known.

Before today, before a lesson in swimming or life, breathing wasn’t a thought. Now it is something to consider, to control. You don’t have to say to the child that inhaling under water causes death. He knows.

A Cry Stolen from the portfolio: Show You Yours

Now, on the edge of the pool, you have been asked to stop what you know keeps you alive. This is a lot to ask of a child, regardless of age.

I love being in the water.

I am not good at holding my breath. Which probably says a lot about me.

Holding your breath is one part control, one part letting go. It is knowing that you can’t live holding onto the railing. It is suspending one belief for a deeper knowing.

Today I want to find a way to be in the water. To believe that letting go of the railing will mean I get to do one of my favorite things–be held by strong arms that spin me around like a 4 year old princess.

Because you can’t laugh and feel fear at the same time.

Revolt Now, Later May Not Be an Option

I was picked. It amazes me each time it happens.

This time my amazement made me laugh. Did they know they picked a girl who was always chosen last for kickball? For everything that involved dividing in to teams? Unless the teams were for a science quiz or writing assignment.

Either Nicole was sure of her product, or she wanted to test the products limits when I was chosen.

I read through the material. I made a plan to do a preview week. (See my inner chicken looking around to be fully aware of each and every exit and the path to it.) I’ve committed to posting my ordeal progress through the program on a weekly basis. Which for now will be Tuesdays. Mondays have expectations and Tuesdays usually reveal the difficulties with such expectations. So Tuesday posts it shall be, I think.

Grocery shopping was easy. I watched a video on meal prep in an hour because that interests me much more than instructions on how to do a plank jack. The cooking video was a safe spot, like a base, or a rung on a ladder where I felt I belonged and wasn’t fearful of falling down.

Then I watched to see how to do said plank jack.

And mountain climbers.

Which is precisely when the little girl who is both relieved and unnerved at being picked last (because seriously, if I was overlooked, I may not have to play) uttered a tiny prayer under her breath. helpme.

This is not the point in the story when the first glimmer of hope appears. Sorry to report, and since I don’t know the end it can’t be a spoiler alert.

This is where preparations turn to the uphill ascent. Because what investigation, what trial would be complete and scientific without recording the starting point?

In other words, I was supposed to don a bikini and stand in front of a camera. In 3 different poses.

Again, heavenhelpme.

Standing in front of the camera is what I do, often. But I control the scene. The frame. The story. I also am there to bare an emotion, not my muffin top.

I took the photos. I am a rule follower, you know.

I took 3 images and promptly removed the memory card from my camera.

And no, I did not miss the blatant symbolism of such an action.

If this post had sound, you would now hear:

dundun dun…Tune in next week when we find out what happens when LolaGirl faces off with the tape measure after spending a week without cookies.

I know you are on the edge of your seat. A week without cookies. It could be touch and go.

To get through my cookie-less days, I will turn to this video to remind me why I even asked to get picked.

***Revolt Now Fitness blindly chose me to complete a 12 week fitness challenge and share my experience with you. I didn’t promise to be positive. They didn’t give me a magic pill to forget that cookies exist. I’m not sure why I didn’t get that request in writing from the beginning.***