Thinking about this running journey led me to read some mom
running blogs. I wanted to see if it was
a realistic goal. A lot of them were
very inspirational, some were rather aspirational. One blog really struck a chord with me and in
a pretty uncomfortable way. The post I
read from this mom talked about how thankful she was to take up running and
lose 40 pounds, and that she hated that body and the person she used to
be. Ouch! I composed a response to this person in my
head, but didn’t have nerve to post it since this woman was a total
stranger. But here’s what I wanted to
say:
I’m so sorry that you “hate” the
way your body used to be, but in my opinion, that body is pretty badass. That body made the decision to start running
even though it was hard and it hurt.
That body ran even though there were no cute running clothes in its
size. You should embrace that body and
say thank you to it every day because that body is the one that took the first
step.
I had such an emotional reaction to what this woman wrote
because at the time I was working my way through Marianne Williamson’s “A
Course on Weight Loss” which is supposed to guide you through 21 spiritual
lessons for “surrendering your weight forever.”
This is my “brass ring” - what I want for myself more than anything is
to be at peace with food and my body. Williamson
(and others) support a philosophy in the weight loss/self-help world that
believes that if you are at peace with yourself you will be drawn to foods that
are nourishing and satisfying and that you will naturally settle at the weight
you are supposed to be. This approach is
very appealing to me because the discussions in my head about food and weight
are exhausting. I’m so tired of
classifying foods as “good” and “bad” and having my self worth tied to what I
ate on a particular day.
But here’s the funny thing.
Marianne Williamson has 21 steps to surrendering your weight and I got
hung up on lesson two. So much so that I
abandoned the whole process. What did
the second spiritual lesson ask of me that I was unable to do? She asks readers to reconcile “thin you” to
“not thin you.” In her example, “thin
you” and “not thin you” write some brutally honest letters to each other, and I
just don’t have it in me to be that mean to myself, even if the result is to
realize that “thin me” and “not thin me” are the same person.
See, I’ve hated “not thin me” for so long, I’ve cursed the
size of my upper arms, my stomach, my butt.
I’ve felt hopeless when I’ve gone shopping for dresses or
swimsuits. I’ve skirted around doctor’s
appointments so that I don’t have to be weighed, and suck in my stomach when I
do have to be weighed, as if that will make a difference in the number on the
scale. I’ve scrolled through cameras and
phones, quickly deleting pictures that aren’t very flattering (and there are an
awful lot of those) and attempted to position myself behind something or
someone when I don’t have control of the camera to delete the unattractive
shots. And I wince when a picture of me
shows up on Facebook that I didn’t know was being taken .
But I’ve also come to sort of love “not thin me.” She’s incredibly brave. She just paid $160 to run the Disney Princess
Half Marathon even though she hasn’t run farther than three miles after five
months of training. She wore plus-size
maternity clothes for two pregnancies, and was pretty darn stylish given that
strike one was plus size and strike two was maternity. She’s given a couple of professional
presentations at conferences, and plays in the pool with her kids. She’s read scripture in a televised church
service and teaches 4 & 5 year old kids in choir.
Here’s another funny thing.
“Not Thin Me” deserves to run the Disney Princess Half Marathon, but I
don’t think she can physically or “physics”-ly do it in the required amount of
time. So I’m going to have to do what I
originally didn’t want to do, which is to reconcile “not thin me” with “thin
me.” And while the usual course of
action is that your head knows something that your heart doesn’t, in this case
I think my heart knows that they are one and the same, henceforth known as “Brave
Elizabeth,” I just have to convince my head.
Elizabeth,
ReplyDeleteI can SO relate to every single thing you have said in this post. Especially the comparison of "thin me" to "not thin me". It is truly as if they are separate people in my life during separate periods in my life. I find myself using it as a time reference that seems to be the basis of how I see things and refer to them. Outside the births of my children and the death of my brother, it is the primary source of recalling events in the recent past for me. (i.e. "That picture must have been taken around December of 2007 because I see Christmas lights, Delaney is there and I was still skinny.") or ("We must have gotten that last year because I remember that I couldn't use it because I was already fat again.") I spend SO much time every day mentally cataloging everything that I have eaten or drank that day, that I get angry at myself. I truly have this arguement with myself on a daily basis "I really want to eat that. But if I do, I will feel fat and totally defeated and failed for the rest of the night. If I just walk away now, I get to feel good and be proud of myself for the rest of the night." I see moms of my kids friends that are a size 0, have adorable, hip haircuts, their makeup is flawless, and then I look at myself and hope my kids aren't embarrassed because I do good to get a shower and get out the door. But you know what?? We spend good, QUALITY time with our kids. I don't know if those other moms do or not. Maybe they do. I don't know and it's not for me to say. But in 10 years, it won't matter what size we wore during these formative years for our kids. What WILL matter is that we will have the wonderful peace of knowing that we gave our kids our TIME and our LOVE. I don't mean to imply that others don't, but it is obvious that our children come first and that's how it should be. The time we've put into being with them will pay dividends when we have great relationships with them when they are all grown up. They won't remember what we wore or how cute our haircut was or whose mom had the most beautiful eyelashes. They will remember that we were together and know that we LOVE them. With all that said, I want you to know that you are INCREDIBLY brave. Much more so that I am. I have seen you walking in the neighborhood regularly and admire you SO much. I think it's AWESOME that you have registered for the Princess Half Marathon on Tuesday and I wish you all the luck in the world. I also believe that the "Two Elizabeths" are the same person. And maybe, just maybe, BOTH of them will accompany you to the marathon next week to be your biggest cheerleaders. Perhaps if they spend some time together in your mind, cheering for a common goal, they just might reconcile their differences without any convincing at all. I hope so. :-)