As parents, we become so consumed with our new little bundles of joy that the rest of the world disappears before our eyes. You walk, sleep and breathe your new baby, and your every thought is of that precious bundle of perfection. You dwell on how amazing they are and count their fingers and toes twenty times. This adoration and affection is very healthy and promotes solid bonding, but at what point does it take a decline and become less beneficial to you?

The first nerve-wracking days and sleepless nights turn into months of baby talk and feeding frenzies that will have you in tears, both from crying and laughing. Your free time is spent doing endless loads of laundry and picking up toys so you can vacuum. Your Sunday drives turn into carpooling and soccer games, and later your teenager borrowing your keys with a charming smile that you simply cannot refuse. After years of practice, you’ve mastered the art of mind reading and knowing what your children want or need, or what they are up to without even asking. You are totally confident that you are a pro at any situation your children can throw at you, so what’s left?

Someone asks you what you like to do, what you’re passionate about, and what you do in your free time. After moments of silence, you realize you haven’t got an answer. For the last chunk of time in your life, you have been “Mom” and you have forgotten who the “me” is that used to be. It happens to many parents, but fortunately there is a way to get yourself out of the rut. There is a perfect balance between dedicating your life to being a wonderful parent, and taking a few minutes of time out to recapture the great person you were before you became a parent. Keeping in touch with who you really are can be a life saver and will give you the tools to appreciate your children even more.

Taking a time out and making time for yourself should come naturally, but if you are a planner, pencil it in and make sure you take it. Tell your family when your time is going to be, and ask that they respect whatever limits you set forth. Never feel guilty for taking some time for yourself. It is absolutely necessary to keep you sane, and will make you a happier person in the long run. If you have spent the last several years dedicating every waking moment to your family, they may need to adjust to you taking some time for yourself. Explain to them what is happening and how they can help. Tell them what you are looking for, and be proud of yourself for expressing your needs. Your family may not even realize you need a break until you ask for one, and in most cases they will happily oblige given the right approach.

Taking time out for yourself doesn’t have to be a lengthy process, but it can be if that’s what you need. Here are some ideas for getting the time that you need and deserve:

- Get a manicure

- Take a bath

- Read a book

- Scrapbook

- Write in a journal or diary

- Take a walk

- Go shopping

- Take in a movie

- Eat at your favorite restaurant

- Call up an old friend

- Catch up on correspondence

There are a variety of things you can do without the company of your children and significant other. It may feel strange at first, but you will learn to love the time you take for yourself. If you have lost yourself, you will again find what it is that makes you tick. If you are lucky enough to have kept a sense of who you are outside of your family duties, embrace what it is that makes you different, and learn something about yourself that you never knew. Remember the saying that in order to love someone else, you must first love yourself. The same goes for parenting, in that in order to truly be able to meet your family’s needs, you must first be able to meet your own.

It is fascinating to see how easily the idea of beauty and the requirements on a woman are imposed by society. First, you had to have your feet bound or you were worthless. Later, if you bound your feet you were disgraced and punished. In other cultures, for instance among South American tribal women or African tribes, the elongating of the earlobes is a required sign of status and beauty. This too is a tradition begun at a very young age and “forced” upon the individual to keep them in the line of what is beautiful. Other tribes are known for other rituals of beauty like putting a rod through the lower lip and increasing the size over the years to have the biggest rod in your lip possible, therefor deforming your mouth.It’s easy to live in our society in
America and think these things are interesting facts at most. That these manipulations of the body have nothing to do with us and “isn’t it fascinating that a society would do that to women.” But is there really a distinction between the smallest feet, the longest earlobes and the most extended hipbones? Today, isn’t the sign of beauty in American women measured by the size of their waist, the largeness of their breasts, the point to which their hip bones jut from their bodies. Are we not today, just as these other cultures do, transforming our bodies from their natural state to one that is manipulated by disease (anorexia) and knives (surgeons)? Society is constantly placing a new definition on the beauty of women. We joke that, based on artistic masterpieces, there was a time when girth was a sign of beauty in women. We know that there are cultural icons from the past that were considered beautiful and didn’t fit the mold we have accepted today. Like the foot binding practices in
China, how long will it be before the manipulations we are putting our bodies through are no longer considered beautiful? We are already seeing a backlash on face-lifts and women who have received them to meet the standard of beauty are often ridiculed. In what other ways will this eventually come to out in our society? Science and surgical procedures are improving all the time, offering us things that were not available before. There is nothing wrong with self-improvement, on a moderate level and for the right reasons.
America is facing a crisis of obesity, and there is nothing “right” about letting ourselves become unhealthy. These are things to consider and let into our lives in the right proportion. However, there is a level of awareness that needs to be reached to discern between what is appropriate for you and what is appropriate to society. We are shocked at the way those bound feet look when the wrappings are taken off. We are shocked that any woman would put herself through the pain and deformity that that procedure entailed. What is really so different about creating ourselves into looking like our favorite celebrities, and allowing teens to do it as well? We are giving in to a societal picture of beauty. One that could change at any moment.Unlike the women in many tribes and in ancient
China, women in
America have a choice when it comes to beauty. We can draw a line for ourselves on what we will and will not do to ourselves. Before you change the natural you, make sure you are listening to your own voice and not the voice of the country. Be sure you know it is a choice, and not a requirement.

Look at it this way: there’s a men’s baseball team, not a professional one, just one made up of a mix of men from an office; all different bodies, hairstyles, jobs, incomes, and skill on field. These men come out every week to practice and play ball against other teams. How often, while sitting on the bench talking to each other, are they saying, “Look at Mark, he’s just hit three home runs for the team, who does he think he is!” “Well, Sean over there just had his hair done and I swear it’s awful!” “I’m just glad I don’t have a gut like Tom! I can still fit in my high school jeans.” I’m not saying that men don’t feel insecure and competitive around other men, but generally they have learned through life to accept one another and “play together.” Women though have not only been impressed upon by the media to compete with each other, but also through the comments passed between each other. A brotherhood exists among men, but women are rapidly losing our sense of sisterhood. Men do make derogatory comments about women, they do pass judgement and have stereotypical views of what women should do and look like, but women are empowering them in these thoughts. We are creating stereotypical ideals with our verbal slander of our own sex. Women are influential teachers and leaders of our families and homes. Children learn the role of men and women at home first. When woman are bonded together it will teach them a correct view, one free from slander and false ideals. Women are in competition with women. Just look at the huge sensitivity over stay-at-home moms versus working moms. If a woman is too pretty she is often termed a “slut” or her negative qualities are brought out to downplay her attractiveness. If a woman is overweight or unattractive as compared with societal views, women talk behind her back about qualities they are thankful NOT to have. If a woman is successful she is often referred to as a “witch” or control freak. If she does “nothing” but be a lifetime mom, she is not making the most of her life. Women are in competition over everything, and when we voice these competitive thoughts, we are setting a precedent for everyone around us. I was discussing these feelings with a friend who works retail at the mall. She later said it made her think about the criticism they say and hear at work. “She must be sleeping with him..she only married him for the money..she needs to lose 10 pounds to wear that..she’s only a teacher / a housewife / a sales associate.” She wrote to me later that she had been thinking on these critical thoughts and said, “What you describe IS a sickness of our souls, surely. And I am convicted in my lack of sisterhood. You’ve made me very aware of something that ails us.” Awareness is the beginning to the end of anything that ails us.Labeling each other, calling each other names, creates separation and builds a sense of alienation. Loving means including, bringing into your heart every part of womanhood and respecting the choices, differences and beliefs we all have. Abuse creates low self-esteem, and when being abused, women internalize the criticism and outside behaviors as part of themselves. When we speak of other women in a slanderous way we are continuing a cycle of abuse instead of a cycle of sisterhood. We do not ask for or create abuse, but when we disrespect other women and ourselves we are opening the door for it.I know that society has set up some pretty high standards of what we should look like and what we should do with our lives, and these standards are not a true sense of reality. This false reality will only change once we change our thought and speech about each other. Most of
America has heard talk of “internal dialogue” and “self-image vs. body-image,” but let’s define them again here. Internal dialogue is how we speak of ourselves to ourselves. Self-image is often a result of internal dialogue – our impression of ourselves. Body image, which is how we feel our body looks, especially in comparison to others. Good internal dialogue results in good self-image, which often helps create good body image. Women as a whole need to improve our internal dialogue about each other, therefor improving our self image as a sex and with that will come a body image based on acceptance and compassion. I was watching The Apprentice where one of Trump’s advisors is a woman. My instant feeling was that I would rather have the male advisor than the female one because she looked so mean. In truth, Trump and both advisors are stern business people. Yet, my insecurities and social learning lead me toward the two men more than the woman. What kind of woman would you have to be to make it that far in the business world? Probably very smart, very quick, self-sacrificing, etc. And yet what goes through my mind: aggressive, uncompassionate, and mean spirited. When Hillary Clinton began getting politically strong, she was attacked in the same way by a lot of women. We fear women in power. We fear supermodels and the ideal they set. We fear heavy women and the idea that that could be us. We are ruled by this fear because of our insecurities as a sex. When we begin to see the feminine in the Divine, God, we will see the power, beauty and strength that is reflected in ourselves.We will never have the bodies presented on television – we’re not supposed to. We are supposed to be individual and beautiful in many different ways. I consider many of my friends to be attractive women and yet I know for a fact that my husband would still choose me as his wife if we were single because I am beautiful to him. We all look different, we all have different beliefs and different opinions on success and how to raise children, but we are supposed to have this. We should not only accept our differences, but also relish them and cherish them and embrace them. They are what make us women.
We could site various media for the images put out before us and how that has affected our lives, but what difference does that make? The media plays off the fear of the public and what are we as women more afraid of than each other. This slander will go on as long as we allow it. As long as we make comments behind each other’s backs to each other, our husbands, our kids, we are prolonging this situation. As so many of us begin looking toward our inner dialogue about ourselves and trying to correct the negativity we put on ourselves, we need to be including in that change the inner dialogue about others. We need to have compassion, a sense of sisterhood, a love and respect for all other women. When we love and respect each other, we are teaching our spouses and children and friends to do the same and over time this alone is what will begin to wipe about abuse and fear and society’s false ideals . We will create a strong sense of sisterhood and a safe environment for ourselves and women to come. With God as our Father and Mother, there is a reflection of both male and female qualities. These female qualities do not need to threaten or divide us as women, instead they can bond us with our one Mother as sisters in love and compassion.

This quote is taped to my refrigerator to remind me of my new goal: Embracing Pleasure. Like a lot of moms in today’s society I let pleasure escape my life. I developed guilt over taking opportunities for myself to feel fulfilled, especially if it cost money or time that could be devoted to family. Over the last year I began to realize that I could not and should not allow this deprivation to happen. Not only is it detrimental to my state of self, but it is not what God intended for me when He gave me this wonderful family.

We have all heard that we can be better moms and wives by taking care of ourselves first. But, at least for me, this is easier said than done. When I first read that quote, I was finally getting to a point where I realized how much I had been denying myself, and how angry and frustrated it was leaving me. To think that God is wondering why I am denying myself the happiness and pleasure that He is putting here for me was a wake up call. I imagined that each and every day tiny moments of pleasure are being laid before me, but I am being too stoic and noble in my quest for pleasing my family to notice them and participate. Not only is this unfair to myself, but in the end it is unfair to the loving God who has provided these moments for my pleasure. I wouldn’t turn away a gift from a friend or relative, and yet every day I’ve been turning away from the biggest

gift of all – myself. Whether it was skipping haircuts or putting cleaning the house ahead of taking a walk, or refusing to go see a movie because that $5.50 could go toward something (what I don’t know) for my husband or son’s happiness, I was denying my God given right to have pleasure!

Once I realized what had been going on, I resolved to make some changes. I am determined to live a happy and fulfilled life within myself. Happiness comes in so many forms when you start looking for it. I have decided to force myself to go ahead and do and enjoy some things I wouldn’t have before. If the sun is shining on my cleaning day, I take a walk and clean the house later. Since the only thing I enjoy about dinnertime is being with my family, I finally feel it’s ok if once in awhile we have waffles! I have put in the budget to get my haircut twice a year, and I’m going to stick to it. I have discovered that being in the city is one of my greatest joys, and so I am going to go once a month – no matter what.

I am making these big and small commitments to myself, and as I stick to them I discover joy all around me. The other day I was driving when I saw a young man with jeans around his knees on the corner swinging his arms in the air. Normally I would have averted my eyes but on this day I took a closer look, saw the earphones he was wearing and the look of shear joy on his face as he sang and danced. A smile crossed my face to see such unhidden joy! He was expressing what I am beginning to feel!

I have learned that in no way did denying myself joy and pleasure increase these things in the lives of those around me. Pleasure is a gift given openly. There are no strings attached, no guilt, and no reasons to deny it. Slowly I am learning to re-embrace

pleasure and joy for myself. Slowly I am rediscovering my right to sheer happiness within myself. And you know what, the saying is true, it does make you a better wife and mother!

Why do we over eat things when we know we’re not supposed to? People talk about learning to eat properly and I have trouble with that statement. I think we all know how to eat from a logical standpoint. We know our food groups, we know fruits and veggies are supposed to fill our days. We know we need protein and a little fat to keep us healthy. We know fast food is bad for us. We know everything should be in moderation. Even if we were brought up in a cave, our bodies know, they tell us through our weight, our blood, our energy levels and so on. Why do we do it then? Why do we put more and more inside ourselves? I have learned that it all comes down to one thing: Love. Our ability to feel love is what effects the way we treat our bodies. Whether we are overweight or have an eating disorder, it all comes down to our ability to feel love. I am talking about both the love of the outside world, and the love we have for ourselves (or in this case often don’t have). When we feel loved, I mean really feel it, we don’t want to abuse ourselves in any way. When we feel loved, we cherish ourselves, we protect ourselves, we hold ourselves in high esteem. The world can be a lonely place right now. It isn’t the way it was in the past with neighborhood get togethers and stay at home moms. (Though many people are beginning to try to regain this.) Families aren’t together in the same town anymore. People lose touch. People keep to themselves and are less likely today than ever before to really reach out and take in new friends. People are lonely. The world can be full of judgement right now. The media (including television and movies) portrays an image of women (and men too) that is physically impossible for most people to reach. Why do you think many celebrities, men and women, suffer from eating disorders? Even they cannot reach the standards that so many of us are holding ourselves and each other to at this time. We hear all the time that only 2% of the population can look the way we think we all should look. At the same time, obesity rates are gaining at a rapid pace, and more individuals are finding themselves faced with eating disorders in many forms. The two are definitely tied together. Most of us spend so much time in our heads thinking of the things we dislike about our bodies, more than we think good thoughts toward ourselves. We’re lonely, making us feel disconnected and therefor unloved. We’re ashamed because our bodies don’t look like the cookie-cutter mold that they’re supposed to, a mold that in most of our eyes would definitely bring more love into our lives. There is no miracle cure for this. It all comes down to the individual, as it always does. We can’t sit and wait for others to come to us and love us. We have to learn how to love ourselves and to feel loved even in our loneliest moments. More than relearning how to eat, we need to relearn how to think about ourselves. This is a time of individuals more than groups. People stand on their own these days more than ever before. If you can get to the point where you feel love within yourself, no matter what is going outside of you, you will find peace with yourself, your body, and no longer have the urge to hurt yourself. Whether we are overeating or purging, we are hurting ourselves. We are punishing ourselves for not being good enough, for not being strong enough, appealing enough, and lovable enough. But we are. Every one of us is beautiful, sexy, strong, appealing and lovable. We’re not supposed to look or be like each other. We are individual reflections of God, and we are what He wants us to be. Finding your way back to love can be easy or hard, depending on how much you doubt your worth, how long you’ve let yourself think badly about you. This is how I began my process. For everyone it will be a little different, but this can be a sort of guide on your way to rediscovering that self-love we are all born with. The realization that I didn’t feel love took awhile to come upon. I don’t have a lot of family, but what I have is very important to me. My mother, two younger brothers, my husband and my son are all important and close to me. And yet I often had trouble believing in their love as well. I had convinced myself so much that I was unlovable, that I didn’t always trust what they said, their motives for saying or doing things, or their stability in my future. Two things played big roles in discovering I was worthy of love. One was my son. As he grew into a toddler I was able to see more and more the love he held for me. He saw me as beautiful, wonderful, extremely loving and lovable. He didn’t know about anything in my past, he didn’t see my mistakes or pain. He just saw me, the real core of me. Most importantly, he felt my unconditional love for him and responded to it in kind.The second thing was my dad. After a bitter divorce between my parents when I was 27, my dad separated from all of us and started a new life with a new woman. He was often very unkind in things he said of us to others, and even to us. The couple years after the divorce were really only a magnification of what had been going on subtly for years. I know he loved us all, but he was never good at love. He didn’t trust people’s love and I had learned this from him. He also didn’t really know what love is and seemed to think it was made up of pity and the ability to lean on others. Because of these things I had to do something I would have never thought I’d have to do with my dad – take him out of my life, step away from him and move on. It was painful and extremely disappointing. But through it I had the opportunity to learn that the idea of a father is not limited to one man in our lives. I learned that God is our one true parent. God is our Father and our Mother. God is not some distant spirit, but is right here with me every single day. He has plans for me, dreams for me, bigger than anything I could imagine. And most importantly, His love for me is beyond anything I could ever fathom. That love is there every moment for every
one of us, filling us up. I hope that I never find myself in the position of having to spend every moment of every day for the rest of my life without any human companionship. But if that would happen, I now know that I would never really be alone. My Father and Mother, my Best Friend, my true Companion would be there every second of every day loving me. Knowing that someone as big and powerful as God loves me, knowing it to my core, has allowed me to begin to see how lovable, beautiful and wonderful I really am. There are still moments when I question these things, but these questions and moments of self-doubt and self-destruction are getting fewer and farther between. By exploring my worth and my innate love, I am beginning to find my passions and my purpose in life. All these things are pointing me on a path to self-fulfillment in which I am full of love more than I have been in a long time. Now that I am feeling more loved within myself, I am not looking as much to the people around me for that love. I am finding more peace around others, more ability to trust them and their love for me, more moments of happiness and joy and fulfillment than of self-loathing. All abusive eating habits are self-punishment. When we love ourselves, no matter our size, shape, look, we no longer feel the need to punish. Instead we feel the need to inspire, to lift up, to stand strong and proud. I want this for everyone out there who has ever felt a moment of self-loathing. You are loved beyond your wildest dreams. You are cared for, you are protected and you are beautiful and strong. Embrace it and learn to believe it.

less than everyone around me. When we begin to hate ourselves for whatever reason, the result tends to be the same – we want to disappear. Some do this by trying to take up as little space as possible through disorders like anorexia or bulimia; others try to take up so much space that people will take one look and instantly dismiss them as someone who doesn’t matter.

One day it occurred to me that there was a difference between body image and self-image, though they were definitely connected. I began looking at my self-image and correcting my view about my body. I began trying to see what my body had to say about me, the story it told, it’s strengths instead of its weaknesses. Slowly my self-image became less critical. Then one day I was reading Oprah’s “What I Know For Sure” in her February, 2003 issue of O, and she said, “You are not built to shrink down to less but to blossom into more.” I wanted to be full – not with possessions or food, but with myself! Full of myself to the brim – and proud of it! After slight changes such as this in thought, I was ready to begin adjusting what I ate and the way I used my body. I began concentrating on my food intake as to what made my body feel good and useful and productive. I began exercising as much as possible. Soon, watching my body’s strength and endurance increase became more important than the pounds that were slowly dropping off. But there was another key to this puzzle for me – one that I discovered quite by accident. The key of forgiveness. Forgiving others is something I have worked on and fairly mastered: the only thing to remember is that their thoughts and actions have nothing to do with the real me. The key was self-forgiveness. No one talks much about self-forgiveness, but it has proved vital in my life. There was a lot of baggage and self-anger I was carrying around with me over mistakes and decisions I had made in the past. The things I had chosen to do that had not worked out, the reactions I’d had to things I wish I could retract, all these things were still inside me feeding my feelings of self-doubt and worthlessness. Finally I sat down to look at these things and began to realize that, though I might regret some things, I learned a lot and grew from every one of those mistakes and decisions and through that growth ended up happily married with a wonderful son. I then realized it was time to forgive myself, to have compassion and understanding for myself, and to love myself again instead of turning away from who I really am in criticism and denial. This sense of self-forgiveness really helped eliminate a lot of the trash talk in my head. I have come a long way in how I look at myself, but this doesn’t mean I never think a bad thought because unfortunately I do. It is almost like an addiction, this disliking yourself. It keeps you down, it keeps you hidden and it keeps you in a constant state of excuse. How can anyone, even you, expect great things of yourself when you are: Fat? Worthless? Unattractive? Nothing? They can’t, you don’t and you won’t. There are still many times when suddenly the same person I saw in the mirror yesterday who looked fine, the same person who was active and useful and moved with purpose is now the person I despise. I will look in the mirror and see a saggy woman who is a failure. I will think these things until I am quite unable to do anything. And then I will cry. But now, a small voice comes through reminding me that I have begun to rediscover the real me, and she is just waiting for me to look in her direction again. This voice reminds me that God created me, and that by diminishing myself, I am really diminishing Him. I am saying that He is not powerful and loving and full of life, but is small and ugly and worthless. In the Bible, God announces Himself as the great I AM. Since we’re His reflection, it follows that when we use the term, “I am..” to describe ourselves, we are attaching those labels not only to us, but to Him as well. And don’t we deserve more than that from ourselves? There is no need for guilt when it comes to body image or lifestyle or career when the choices we are making are ones that make us feel good. But as women we have a part of ourselves that often believes we are unworthy and so are guilty for exactly what we deserve / need / makes us happy. Recently I lost track of the good steps I’d made and was falling into a pit of despair all over again. I knew what I needed was some perspective, a change of scene. I needed to get out of the house and responsibilities that were keeping me locked in and be quiet and alone long enough to rediscover what I knew to be true about myself. My husband and mother graciously stepped in to help make a weekend alone possible. It was exactly what I needed to get some balance back in my life. But I almost cancelled the trip out of guilt for taking the time for myself, because for some reason I believed I did not deserve it. I brought this up to my mom a couple days before I left and she told me how when she was first divorced from my dad and finally living on her own she felt such an overwhelming sense of freedom. Immediately on its heel came guilt. She was talking with an older woman friend of hers one day and told her about this guilt, and the woman said, isn’t it a shame that we have to feel guilty for what we deserve? This woman owns a large home that she loves and uses every room in, yet she said she finds herself constantly defending her ownership since it is only her living there. We have to remember that God created men and women and so we are all an equal reflection of Him. Society since the beginning has placed women into the Adam dream – the idea that we came from a man and therefor owe something to man. God is our only creator and it is only to Him that we owe anything – and all He wants from us is everything: happiness, success, freedom, love, independence, active lives and spirits. And most of all a love for who we are and with that the ability to live as fully and wonderfully as possible. As women we need to listen to ourselves more. We get so busy listening to everyone else – their needs and opinions – that we often forget the sound of our own inner voice. This is the voice that gave you your dreams, your loves, your own valuable opinions and ideas. Taking time to truly hear what your voice has to say again will open the channels to knowing who you are, and what you deserve and truly desire. Writer John Hargreaves explains that we are never given a desire that God hasn’t already fulfilled. This does not mean that if you want a yacht one will magically appear on your doorstep. What it means is, if you have a true desire for the openness and freedom and power that a yacht would bring, you are recognizing this desire because God has already established a way for those things to be present in your l
ife. Writer Richard Bach says something very similar, “You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true.” But to fulfill these wishes and desires we must be open to seeing them as they present themselves in our lives and to do this, we must be in touch with ourselves. Taking the time to care for your needs – putting yourself at the top of the list instead of the bottom – is not a selfish thing to do. In fact, quite the opposite. It is a gift we give to our family and friends. Dr. Phil says that we teach people how to treat us. Teaching people the correct way to treat us is not only a gift to ourselves, but is a gift for

them since it brings into their experience respect and understanding. It teaches our daughters to grow with self-respect, it teaches our sons how to be wonderful and loving men, and it gives the gift to our husbands and relationships of keeping alive the true woman you are, the one they truly love and know is there. So whatever that means in your life at this moment – demand and expect it. From yourself first. Live life full of yourself and see how it feels to remember you.

2007-03-22