Ask Moxie

Bodies, selves

(Next week it'll be all reader questions, and none of this week's self-indulgent navel gazing from me.)

I knew the body post would hit a nerve. I went to a women's college (the same one Enu went to, which is how we know each other even though we've never met IRL) and distinctly remember the first time I realized that everyone else I know there had the same feelings of inadequacy about her body that I did. And that the women who I thought had the most amazing bodies ever still felt like there were things wrong with them.

That's why I never post about what my actual weight/size is. Because it doesn't matter. I think a size 4 who used to be a 2 feels the same self-loathing that a size 28 who used to be a 20 does. Part of the conditioning is instilling the dysmorphia so that no matter what we look like we still think it isn't enough. Which makes the problem, at least for me, a two-parter: Stop hating my body is the first (and more important) part. The second part is make my body the best I can.

I had this big realization earlier today that I'm going to have a happy life. I've certainly put enough time and work into living a miserable mediocre life that if I can apply even a fraction of that to making good decisions and accepting love and grace, everything's going to work out. (I'm sure I'll still keep a healthy amount of my Lucy-in-the-chocolate-factory-ness, though. It seems to just be part of me.) So it behooves me to shake off this body loathing. Because what good is it to be exactly where you're supposed to be, doing what you're supposed to be doing, if you can't really let go because you hate your body?

I don't want anyone to misunderstand yesterday's post and think that I'm all "La la la--I loooove my stretchmarks!" But I think now I see my body truly as a work in progress. So I can look at it now and say "I look better now than I did in December, and I feel better, too." And that makes me think that today's feelings about my thighs are just another point on the line. That's something I had no sense of when I was 20. I thought what I had was what I had, and it was only going to get worse.

It's late and I'm stuffed full of delicious, delicious Thai food, so I may not do this next part justice, but here goes: Anonymous, I'm so sorry. And my initial reaction was that Bridget was being harsh and callous. But it's my suspicion that Bridget doesn't have the same experience with weight being a function of emotional issues that Anonymous and anonforthis and I do. If it's just gaining extra weight, then dieting and exercise are going to take it off, and Bridget's right--Just do it. And Enu's right, too, that people fall in love with the person, so often extra weight/baldness/whatever doesn't matter.

But sometimes it's way more complex. I realized that I gained weight after having my second son to hide and protect myself. (Other hiding mechanism: Clutter--I could hide in plain sight. That was a humdinger when I figured it out.) Which is why I felt so much better doing T-Tapp for a year, but never dropped any weight or changed my body at all. I needed to have that weight on to stay emotionally safe. The problem now is that just knowing why I put on that weight doesn't make it drop off--I'm still having to do the work. Sigh.

If Anonymous is in the middle of the horrible feelings, then it's not just as simple as losing the weight. Especially if a teeny part of her is so angry at her husband for his truly horrendous behavior (I have NO sympathy for turning her down to surf porn) that she's keeping the weight on to protect herself from him wanting her once she's thin again.

Any thoughts?

Body talk

I've been thinking a lot about my body lately. What it's good for, what it looks like. How I feel about it, and how someone else is going to feel about it. How I'm taking care of it better than I ever have before.

One of the things I've been feeling sad about is how back when I was young and had a stunning body I still hated it. Back before I got married I was actually pretty (I can say that now, looking at photos from back then) and there was not a single thing wrong with my body. I can't believe I wasted all those years hating it and wishing I looked different. All my imagined flaws.

Now, post-kids and on cortisol overload for a decade, my body really does have flaws. And it's been a struggle and journey for me to feel like I don't need to punish myself for having this body. One of my friends on the T-Tapp message boards recently had this huge insight that working out isn't a punishment because she's fat. Instead, it's just what she needs to do to take care of her body, no matter what size she is.

I'm amazed at the changes I'm seeing in my body since I've actually been doing T-Tapp on a regular basis (3 times a week since January). It's interesting to me that I feel better about myself and my own physical attractiveness now than I did back when my body was truly beautiful. But there's still so much work for me to do, both in caring for my body and in accepting it.

Do you guys want to talk about this? I feel like body image is the shadow of so many things that we experience as mothers and as women.

Thinking

Thanks for the great thoughts on my first book. I haven't had a chance to read more than the first 20 or so, but will tonight. I wanted to clarify a few things, so it helps you come up with ideas. For readers comments, I'd put up posts asking people to post things specifically that they gave permission to be used, along with the way they wanted to be attributed. Trying to get permission in retrospect is a hot mess.

Also, hedra's right that I can't do this right now. I technically have the time (subscribing to the "write your dissertation in 15 minutes a day" theory--I could be writing a book instead of watching that sweet David Cook sing. Yes, I feel like Mrs. Robinson). But until this process is through I just have a big psychic weight on me that's kind of keeping me in first gear.

So I'm not making any moves for a few months. Keep walking through this with me. I'm not expecting a perfect solution, just a workable one.

San Antonio, Texas

I'll be in San Antonio the evenings of Monday, June 30 and Tuesday, July 1. Anyone want to meet up one of those nights? With or without kids? 6:30 or 7-ish?

Book ideas

So let's talk a little bit about an Ask Moxie book.

I'm not into the idea of just taking the stuff I've already written and packaging it up. I don't think this site is about my sparkling prose or poignant turn of phrase, so I'm not sure that that's the kind of book that I would read. I'd rather read something more focused. I'd also rather read something that wasn't just me writing, but also had comments from you guys, too. (I think the reader comments and interaction is what makes Ask Moxie good in the first place.)

So I've been thinking about doing a book I've nicknamed in my mind "What Sucks When" that would combine info about the developmental spurts, growth spurts, movement milestones, teething, sleeping, and all the stuff that makes babies act strange in the first two years, along with how that makes parents feel. At the end of each section, or maybe sprinkled in, would be comments from you guys about those stages, how you made it through, tips, or just commiseration (because sometimes time is the only thing that helps). It wouldn't be a how-to book, but rather a "you're totally normal and your baby's normal and this too will pass and you're doing a good job so please don't stick that pencil through your eye" book.

Do you guys think that would be useful? Would it sell?

My other issue is whether or not to self-publish. Even five years ago self-publishing would have been a sign that no publisher wanted me, which meant my book wasn't worth it. But I have so many reservations about writing for a traditional publisher. For one thing, I'm not sure that they'll really get what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to become famous or a name. I'm not trying to promote my method* or really promote anything except having parents know what's going on so they have the mental and emotional space needed to make decisions that they feel good about for their families. (I haven't figured out the elevator pitch on that one yet.) I'm not a sound bite, and I don't think Elisabeth Hasselback would know what questions to ask me on The View.

Anyway, I'm not sure traditional publishing would get me. And you have to do all your own publicity and promotion these days anyway, so I'm not sure I know what the benefit would be to be with a publisher. I saw a couple of parenting books on the bookstore shelf last week that looked really interesting, but I'd never heard a thing about them, and that makes me worry that if I went with a publisher my book could sink like a rock and never be heard of again if it didn't make a splash in the first few months.

Also, if I self-publish my book will never go out of print, which the whole Wonder Weeks arbitrage scandal made me aware of as a potential negative event. And I could revise whenever I wanted to. And the people I know who've self-published recently have been super-happy with it.

Thoughts?

* My "method," let's recall, is "By Any Means Necessary." I'm just not sure a publishing house is going to know what to do with something that's a play on a phrase coined to foment political unrest for radical justice, you know?

Near miss

Yesterday, I had a scare. And also learned that my instincts aren't called instincts for nothing.

As the boys and I were walking home from our special Mothers' Day dinner (local Japanese restaurant: edamame, avocado rolls, and veggie tempura for them, eel kinuta roll and spicy salmon roll for me), I let them do their usual thing. They can run as far ahead on the sidewalk as they like, but the stop at the curb and wait for me. I'm not sure exactly why they always do stop--maybe because I only have a few rules that I enforce absolutely, and this is one of them?--but they always do stop and wait. So they ran ahead, then stopped and waited for me, and when the light turned green and we got the walking guy (instead of the red hand), I took the younger one's hand and the three of us started across the street.

Suddenly, the black Lexus parked right in front of the crosswalk started backing up! It was almost touching the kids, and I saw it in my peripheral vision, and before I realized consciously what was happening I screamed this high-pitched, anguished-sounding scream that scared the living crap out of the people walking a few feet ahead of us. But it also, fortunately, caught the attention of the driver of the car, who stopped backing up.

So no one was touched. I hope the driver of the car (who looked remarkably like Larry David) is more than a little freaked out that he could have killed a mother and her two children on Mothers' Day, and is anal about checking behind him before he backs up in the future. I don't want him to feel bad forever, but use this near miss as a chance to be more aware of his surroundings and his place in the human ecosystem.

I also hope that I can stay in touch with that instinct that made me scream. I haven't felt that purely animal since I was in labor with my second and had the thought that I wished I had something to pull down on, and my mom put out her hands for me to pull on even though I hadn't spoken that thought out loud. Whatever that animal level that my mom picked up on was is the animal level that sensed the danger and responded to it.

I can't be the only one that's thought about "What would I do if" thousands of times since my kids were born. I know I've thought about a car jumping the sidewalk and crashing into them, someone trying to steal them at a store, their falling onto the subway tracks, etc. I'd never thought about a geezer backing into them at 20 miles per hour a block from my apartment.

By the time you're reading this, I've started rereading Gavin DeBecker's Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe (and Parents Sane).

60-Day Challenge Check-In Post 5/12-5/18

Storytime

Man, this is some crappy weather we're having. To cheer you up, let me tell you a story. Unfortunately, it's a story I've told before, otherwise I'd never get out of the house to leave for work. Plus, it's one of my favorite stories ever:

One morning when my older son was 2, he and I were playing with construction paper. He went through a major construction paper phase. He started out drawing on it, then moved on to cutting it (yes, I let my 2-year-old use scissors, which turned out to be kind of dumb because he got very good at them very quickly), then to cutting and gluing it. We'd work on our living room floor on the rug with a big stash of newspapers down as a work area.

On this particular morning, we'd run out of Elmer's glue and had to break out the backup bottle of glue, the Pentel stuff that's that vaguely blue translucent color. It wasn't flowing at all, so I unscrewed the top so he could get it out of the bottle*. He glued some cut construction paper. I got up to go to the bathroom**.

When I came back, he was coloring his glued paper. Then he asked me, "Mama, where's the glue?" Uh, oh. "Where did you put it?" I asked. "On the chair!" he replied helpfully. Then I turned my head (in slooooow moootion) to see that he had, indeed, carefully placed the topless glue bottle on the cushion of the armchair, but the armchair seat tilted toward the back of the chair. So the glue bottle had tipped over, and almost an entire bottle of glue had flowed out of the bottle, forming a translucent blue puddle all around our elderly, sleeping, long-furred cat.

At that moment, only one thought went through my head:

"Why am I the only adult here right now?"

I spent about 5 seconds assessing the situation. If the cat woke up, she'd freak out and track glue all over the entire apartment. My only hope was to get her into the tub and wash out the glue without getting glue anywhere else, and then come back to clean the chair. So I turned on the TV and said (in my least concerned voice), "Hey, would you like to watch a kids' show?" Of course my son did, so I put him on the couch and turned on Noggin. Then I went into the bathroom and filled the tub halfway with tepid water and stacked two clean towels by the tub. I got another towel and snuck up on the cat, grabbed her and rolled her in the towel so she couldn't escape, hustled her to the bathroom, and unrolled her into the tub of water.

Here was where the plan could have fallen apart: I'm not that familiar with the properties of Pentel glue. If it had been Elmer's I wouldn't have been worried. But I was a little scared that Pentel wouldn't wash out of the cat's fur without a big fight. I was ready to do a bunch of shampoos with the health food store baby shampoo if I had to. I'm not a big fan of declawing cats, but I was suddenly very glad that my cat's first human servants had declawed her.

When she hit the water she was pissed off. And not in a good way. She fought me like only a 4-pound, declawed, geriatric cat with a thyroid condition can. By fighting so hard, though, she helped wash the glue out of her fur more quickly and the traumatic degluing only took a few minutes. (In hindsight I think the Pentel probably washed out more easily than Elmer's would have. So remember that if you need to glue any cat fur.) Then I toweled her off (she looked like a drowned rat, poor thing) and let her go sulk near the radiator.

The hardest part was over, so I got a bunch of rags and a bucket of water to go attack the glue on the armchair.

When I got back to the living room, my son had forgotten about the mess and moved closer to the TV. He was sitting smack dab in the puddle of glue.

* I am the kind of person who can't watch movies such as Jurassic Park because I get so angry at the plot points that are so clearly bad ideas. When they decided to inject the dinosaur DNA into the fly I was screaming "This is a bad idea! It will not end well!" at the screen. My friend made me leave the theater (I've still never seen the movie all the way through). So you'd think I would have stopped myself from unscrewing the top of the glue bottle for a 2 1/2 year-old. And yet, somehow I didn't.

** See * above.

Anyone else like to share a story?

Group hug

Holy crap, but you guys are dealing with a ton of stress!

I put up that post yesterday feeling bad about wussing out on a real post, but too fried because of this thing with my friend (and my internet access being down at home for several hours). I had no idea so many of you were going through so much.

I guess this is a real lesson. I know lots of you were really shocked when I announced the divorce, because you thought I had it all together. And I was so nervous about announcing it, because I thought all of you had everything under control in your own lives and would be disappointed in me. And then I thought I was the only one trying to tread water yesterday, but some of you are dealing with so much more than the rest of us had any idea about.

I think it's astounding that we're all doing such a good job holding it together the way we are. It's a testament to how strong we are, even when we don't realize it about ourselves. And I'm glad to be able to make a place where you guys can unload some of it.

It's Primal Scream Wednesday

Having huge friend crisis (friend is having crisis, not crisis between us) that makes me realize that people can be mean. Really pointlessly mean.

And about a million other stressors of big and small varieties.

Post your stress here!