Fat Girl Running.

The name of my blog, “See How She Runs” comes from a made for TV movie I saw as a child.  Joanne Woodward portrays a 40 year old divorcee who decides to take up running, eventually competing in the Boston Marathon.  Not sure why this movie has stayed with me so much, I only saw it once and I’ll be amazed if anyone else remembers it.  (Although it does have an entry on imdb.com and has two user reviews.)  Since you’ll probably never see this movie I’m going to spoil the ending for you.  Betty Quinn, the character played by Woodward doesn’t finish the race in the required time and is disqualified.  But her teenage daughters, who up to this point had not been supportive of her goal and training, create their own finish line for her to cross.  That ending still moves me today, and propels me on the days I don’t want to go out and run.

I considered calling this blog “Fat Girl Running” because it really gets to the point of what I’m trying to do.  My goal is to go 13.1 miles, not go 13.1 at my goal weight.  So much of my teenage and adult life has been lived with “I’ll do this when I lose weight” playing on a continuous loop in my head, all while going from heavier end of normal to clinically obese.  The “when I lose weight” demon didn’t steal all of my joy, I married an incredibly wonderful and supportive man, had two generally lovely children, travelled,  appeared in public in a swimsuit several summers in a row, hosted some pretty awesome parties and went to a few as well. 

Those events were very welcome highlights on my personal timeline, but they are just brief respites from the “life would be so much better for you if you lost weight” voice and his slightly more sarcastic twin sister, “you’re just not good enough.”  And I probably would have let these two live out their days, voicing their negativity, until I noticed that they seem to be trying to take up residence in my children’s minds as well.  What I want for my precious boys, more that good grades or athletic success or attractiveness, is emotional resilience.  But my teaching them emotional resilience would be about as effective as my teaching them Greek.

The first step in developing my own emotional resiliency was making peace with the word “fat.”  A small word, only three letters, can stop you dead in your tracks and ruin your day, ruin all your days.   But that word only has power if you let it.  I’ll never forget when a small child, maybe four years old, asked me why I was fat.  There was no judgment in his voice, it was a completely honest and non-emotionally loaded inquiry that kids have mastered so brilliantly and it just came out of the blue.

It was like the voice of God.  I don’t know that I’d ever thought about why I was fat without attaching ideas of unworthiness or failure.  It was so illuminating to be able to say “Well, I haven’t always made the healthiest choices when it comes to eating and exercise” and move on with what we were doing rather than marinate in my cesspool of self-loathing. 

This little event didn’t magically solve everything, it happened seven or eight years ago and I’m not much smaller now than I was then.  But it did open up a door in my mind that allowed me to look at my situation differently and to learn to think of myself in a more positive light.  “Life would be so much better for you if you lost weight” and “you’re just not good enough” still pop into my head more often than not, but now I can look at them with a critical eye and question why they are there.

And my family is having some interesting and productive conversations about that small word, those three letters.  About how that small word, those three letters, can have a lasting impact when used to shame others.  But also about how that small word, those three letters, can be diffused of their emotional charge when they've been used to describe us.

So I'm making my peace with "fat."  But things aren't so peaceful that I wouldn't unleash a torrent of curses and profanities (at the very least in my mind but quite possibly out of my mouth) if that small word, those three letters, are used in an effort to shame someone I love.  Including myself.