I’m overweight and old. In a society that values petite, young women, I am discarded… as many of us are. And, when we become outcasts — trodden down by our society’s collective unconscious — we personally take part in the attack and erosion of our self-belief and self-esteem. The mind churns out a repetitive tape of negative criticism regarding our looks. We counter-attack our own thoughts as best we can, but as we step out of our doors completely aware of what strangers and friends alike will see when they look at us, the looped tape begins again.
And how does one get off this hellish circular ride? By truly seeing beauty: the laughter, the love, the eternal potential that lies in all of us.  This is not an easy thing to do — to see past the apparent — and certainly not one that I have mastered. But it’s a hope. And a promise.
We really all are beautiful if you open your heart. And that’s a true statement, not just a New Age, self-help Pollyanna platitude. So look at those photos of yourself and see yourself again for the first time; see the laughter and love and finally — finally – be free.
How did this philosophical introspection begin, you ask? We just got back from England and I am in a lot of the photos with my round body and my red cherub face full of wrinkles. I look like Mrs Clause in a short skirt. Like many people, my immediate thought was, “I need to lose weight. I look terrible.” But instead of quickly skipping past the photos in shame, I decided to actually look at myself. And in the end, I liked what I saw. What matters in this life is our connection with people and our shared experiences, and that is what I saw underneath the extra weight and wrinkles. For the first time, I saw me.
Lindsey and I in London
18 June 2008
Ben and Allison’s Wedding
21 June 2008
At Ben and Allison’s Wedding
21 June 2008
Eating ice cream at the wedding breakfast
21 June 2008
At the park
Wells-next-the-sea, England
22 June 2008
At the park
Wells-next-the-sea, England
22 June 2008
In the back garden
Wells-next-the-sea, England
22 June 2008
At Sandringham
24 June 2008
At Sandringham
24 June 2008
In the car driving back from Sandringham
24 June 2008
And that’s my challenge to the folks who read this blog entry. Find your self in your photos. You’re there, waiting to be seen.
The kids and I
08 June 2008
Everytime I see this wall plaque, I think of my husband:
He is the kind of boy that won’t make you cry. 🙂
Lily in the computer room.
29 May 2008
Daddy and Lily at Destiny’s birthday party.
31 May 2008
No entry today. Just a couple of pictures for Grannie and Grandpa over the sea. 🙂
My mom is still down for her visit, and my Aunt Deb is here now as well. She came down for a few days of “girlfriend time” with Mom, Carla and I. Also, we just spent this past weekend at Surfside Beach with my siblings and their families, the Pipkin family, and Dad and Donna. Since I’m still so busy with my family, I’m afraid the posts will continue to be sparse for awhile.
But I have a couple of pictures to post. One is a surprise picture for Donna. 😉 I title these photos “Lovers at the Beach”:
Dad and Donna (aka Papa and Nan)
Surfside Beach, Texas
19 April 2008
Bruce and Deb
Surfside Beach, Texas
20 April 2008
We had an excellent time at the beach. Thanks, Papa and Nan! 😀
Mom is visiting from Kentucky. I’ve been spending all of my time with her. Here’s a photo until we resume our regularly-scheduled blog:
Look at those rosy cheeks!
That child definitely has English in him.
14 April 2008
Matt and Lily in the playhouse.
Matt is actually asleep in this photo.
11 April 2008
Recently in my never-ending search for the mythical fool-proof organizational system, I found the FlyLady site. It’s a lovely site full of affirmation and hope. I am definitely going to try this system.
But the FlyLady’s system is not what this blog entry is about. This blog entry is about an anonymous letter sent to the FlyLady. First, I must explain that in her system, you begin simply by making your sink shine everyday. She said, even if your entire house is a mess, if your sink is shiny, you feel hope. And from that small shiny sink, the cleanliness will spread. As I continued to surf her site, I found this testimonial. It is very moving. And short.  So go read it real quick and come back.  I’ll wait.
It seems to me that shining the sink and making the bed were starting points. From these two measurable beginnings, you slowly progressed. And if you had a bad day, you always had a reset point: shining the sink and making the bed.
I don’t have a habitual reset point. But if today was the first day — if today was my beginning — where would I start? Would it be shining the sink? What small task would I repeat every day, even if I managed to get nothing else done? It’s fun — and exciting — to make a beginning. Turning it into habit… well, that’s another matter. 😉
Damian
04 April 2008
These past two weeks have been very hard. The whole family got sick — I personally was sick for an entire week — and Matt has been working long hours. And I can’t seem to recover. It’s like someone has punched me in the gut, and I can’t get my breath back. I still don’t feel good.
I had read that when you age, you recover much slower from illnesses, that you don’t spring back into action immediately as you once did. But I hate being low…. hate it!
The accepted wisdom is to learn from obstacles and adversity, but sometimes, you just want to feel better. You want to shake your fist at the heavens and cry, “Hey! I’m not really in the mood for character-building! Can’t we just do that later… or maybe never? I’m cool with being shallow. I don’t really feel the need to navigate the depths of the human experience.”
Even if you don’t mean it, you still want to say it.
I do feel like crap though. But, hey, I guess at least I’m not shallow. 😉
Babies playing with bubbles.
02 April 2008
A nasty cold has been working its way through the whole family. We each fell, one by one, over the past week and a half. The baby was the last to get it. He developed a fever last night, and today he has been lethargic and feverish.
I hate being sick. It gets in the way of my plans. However, there is one positive side: when I’m sick, I have nothing else to do while lieing in bed, moaning in pain, except go over ideas and plans. So, by the time I am better, I am excited, motivated, and ready to start working on all the things I had been thinking about in my head.
It has been overcast as well. Maybe the baby and the sun will both shine tomorrow, and our household will not be so gloomy.
Lily and Clara on the swing.
28 March 2008
The baby went to bed at 7pm last night. At first, this made us really happy as both children were asleep in bed by 9pm (a rare thing in our household). But when Damian woke up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, at 2am, then we were not so happy.
To pass the time through the long, dark night with a wide-awake baby, I wanted to watch a romantic comedy (my favorite genre) but I have seen all the romances in our DVD collection many many times… except for my husband’s favorite romance, The Cutting Edge.
A couple of thoughts about The Cutting Edge:
- It’s actually quite good.
- Exercise montages, ala Flashdance and Rocky, make me laugh. I wish exercising was that fun and/or sexy, and had upbeat and/or heroic background music. But, alas, it is often simply tedious.
- I love the fact that my husband has a favorite romance movie — one that he has seen so many times (he estimates around fifty) that his family tease him about it. It shows that he really is a romantic at heart.
Lily having a tea party with Jasmine.
25 March 2008
I have a secret which only my husband knows, but I am willing to share as long as you promise to not think of me too badly afterwards: I was not very fond of The Incredibles. There. I’ve said it.
Since our society loves Pixar, I’m sure I’ll be a pariah after this entry, but it needed to be said. Someone had to come forth and be counted. The Ayn Rand Objectivist subtext in The Incredibles was annoying.
But to be fair, I must admit a prejudice. My first boyfriend was an Objectivist, and I found his “I’m better than you and it’s okay because I have an entire philosophical movement to back my opinion” attitude both irritating and cruel (he treated other people very badly and this was his justification). So to see his sentiments mirrored in a Pixar movie really did put me off the movie.
But the secret is out now. I hope you still respect me in the morning.
Ps. I googled “The Incredibles Ayn Rand” and I was definitely not the only one that picked up on that annoying philosophy weaving its way throughout the movie. In case you haven’t met any real-life Objectivists, let me clue you in. Theoretical “rational self-interest” very often translates into real world “asshole.” The theory does not translate well into reality.
Okay, I’m done ranting now… I f*ckin’ hate that philosophy… no, really, I’m done ranting…