Barnmaven

You're Beautiful. No, Really.

Jane Devin wrote another great thought-provoking blog post yesterday about beauty.  I'm a huge fan of Jane's writing.  Her book Elephant Girl was as haunting a memoir as I have ever read, but her use of language as an art form makes it impossible not to read her, even when what she's written about is ugly and painful.

So anyway, beauty.  Jane writes, "We’re never going to make it okay to not be physically beautiful if we don’t get off this beauty kick we’ve been on for so long. We’re not going to change our futures and those of other women as long as “beautiful” remains a priority. We’re not going to change the culture that places such an inordinately high premium on female attractiveness as long we keep promoting beauty myths through the lies we tell ourselves and each other."

  I posted on her FB wall that I wasn't sure I agreed, and I mentioned my now-deceased friend Peg, who was morbidly obese and losing her hair thanks to Rheumatoid Arthritis and a cupboard filled with medications both toxic and ill-suited toward maintaining one's weight and hair volume.   Whenever I saw Peg, or when I think of her now in my mind's eye, I see beauty.  I see large brown eyes with impossibly long lashes and I hear the softest, most soothing voice imaginable.  I hear her tinkling laughter as she regales me with yet another story about her Boston catholic family. 

I concede the point that we give too much emphasis and value to the concept of beauty when we try to compliment someone or try to boost their self esteem.  But I also believe we misuse the word "beautiful." The term has been warped by our media to mean an almost impossibly achievable standard of physical appearance.  And Jane isn't really talking about the people who miss this standard by some small or even medium mark, she's talking about when the whole person doesn't come close due to physical deformity or flaw and that the act of trying to make someone feel beautiful when they aren't phsyically attractive is to her a disservice.

I know Jane's opinion comes from experience and from her own sense of self, her dedication to speaking the truth as she sees and feels it.  We talked about it back and forth on Facebood a little, and to a large extent I agree with her...but there is a space between that extent and my own feelings about looks and attractiveness.

What I wish were possible was for the propensity toward shallowness to somehow disappear from the human gene pool.  Its not ever likely to happen, but I can still dream about it.  I'm raising a girl, and there's no doubt that females are held to much stricter standards than the male population.  (In general, that is, because there are certainly men and women who possess no such incremental measurements of beauty when appreciating one another or their partners. )  It starts so young, with the TV shows for tweens that have mostly very attractive and thin lead characters, and their not-so-cute and maybe-a-little-dorky and often a little fat sidekicks.   Its pretty easy to decide which character you'd rather be -- and pretty easy to look at yourself and see all the reasons why you could never be her. 

It only gets worse as we get older.  Movies and television use all the tricks of makeup and lighting, props and camera position to disguise that which is unacceptable and magazines taking it a step better and photoshopping models and movie stars to the point where the real person and the picture no longer resemble one another.  And these are the people we are supposed to emulate?  How can we emulate them?  Trust me, if I could photoshop my ass for real to make it a couple sizes smaller, I would.  Well, maybe I would.

I'll never forget the really average-looking guy who came up to me in a bar when I was in my very early twenties, and said (right to my face!) "You'd be a really attractive girl if you didn't have such a big butt."  I spent every day of my life from that day forward feeling horrible about the size of my posterior.  One doesn't forget that sort of comment. 

How do we teach people to value themselves and others by non-physical standards?  How do we teach people that diversity in size and color are not marks of shame but badges of uniqueness?  How do we get human beings to learn how to give a compliment that doesn't include the words except, but, if only and however?

To address Jane's point, what about those who fall far short of the current physical standard of beauty?  Is it a disservice to seek beauty in those who feel they have none?  Do we need to know we are beautiful?  What is beauty anyway? 

And maybe that's where I see the difference in people -- my definition of "beauty" is subjective.  It isn't necessarily the same as others.  I see people as a whole picture.  I look at my husband and even though I could give you a short checklist of things about him that aren't what might be considered conventionally handsome, those aren't the things I see.  The things I see are the things that make him handsome to me -- his big smile, his broad shoulders, his warm brown eyes, and the one thing I can't see but I can hear it the moment he opens his mouth -- his intelligence and his sense of humor.  I'm NOT LOOKING for the other things.  I suppose its the same for him -- when he looks at me he sees the things he likes and discards the rest as unimportant.

I think I could look at anyone, even someone I don't particularly care for or someone who copes with a serious lack of conventional attractiveness and I could still see beauty in them.  Beauty and ugliness coexist in all of us, and they can't always be seen with the naked eye.  No human being who has ever lived is immune to the ugliness of that petty, selfish little voice in our heads, and no human exists who doesn't display physical and emotional moments of pure, unadulterated beauty. 

Childbirth -- not the prettiest sight imaginable.  And yet, that slime-covered, squalling purplish red infant with the pulsing cord still attached is beautiful in a way that cannot be described in words.  The physicality of the act of giving birth - blood, fluid, poop on the table, maybe an emergency cesaerean with intestines being pulled onto the table to get them out of the way!  There is ugliness but the spiritual and emotional experience of expelling life into the world was for me and for many women as beautiful as it was painful.

I postulate that we are all - every one of us - both beautiful and ugly.  The outside may lean far more one way than the other, but to deny the existence of beautfy at all is to deny that inside this flesh wrapper is tethered a being made up of nothing but spirit.  We are not our bodies.

Like Jane, I tend to find things other than physical appearance to compliment others on, regardless of how physically attractive they might be - or not.   But I'm going to politely, compassionately and lovingly disagree that we do service to another by refraining from letting a person know we find something about them beautiful.  Insincerity is in itself not at all useful, but a sincerely meant compliment is another thing entirely.  I compliment my daughter on her sense of humor and her strength, her sensitive and loving heart, her ability to write amazing stories and her fierce protectiveness of all things  furred and feathered.  I try to compliment her on these things more than her beauty, because I want her to always have those messages in her mind when she remembers what her mother thought of her, but she also knows I think she is stunningly beautiful. 

Jane of the amazing large eyes, I only know you from your photos on your blog and your book, but know that I do see beauty when I look at you.  We both have voices in our heads that spit out reminders of the things we know about ourselves that are the antithesis of "pretty."  Nonetheless, you have beauty that is not limited to the inner you.  Its there on the exterior as well.

 

 

Coming soon to Barnmaven.com:  My colonoscopy!  And yes, even THAT is beautiful!  I KID YOU NOT.

 

 

Family drama

I've seen two kinds of "dear birthmother" letters -- those written by hopeful couples wanting to adopt, and those written by hopeful adoptees to a possible found birthparent. 

I wanted to write a completely different "dear birthmother" letter today.  I actually did write it, but then I deleted it. 

Instead, I have chosen to write about forgiveness.  Or at the very least, a "dear birthmother" letter masked as an essay on forgiveness.

I've posted my sister Vicki's story in bits and pieces here on this blog and elsewhere.  I'm not sure the parts of it that she and I have written together even begin to cover the depth of what happened to her as a child. 

I've seen different responses in families to abuse.  Sometimes the victims draw closer to their victimizers, in some attempt to finally receive approval and love from the people who have hurt them so badly.  I've seen victims lapse into hatred, drug and alcohol problems, and sometimes perpetuate the abuse cycle. 

There's another thing that happens, rarely:  The abuser admitted their wrongs, made amends, and their victim forgave them and they were able to reconcile their relationship.

Its possible to forgive someone, even if they never acknowledge the nature of their wrongs.  That kind of forgiveness doesn't actually require you to let the person know you've forgiven them.  You make a choice to let go of the past in order to save your own soul, and you move on.  It doesn't make things right and it doesn't absolve the person of guilt, it is simply a way to stop being poisoned by what was done to you.  Very often, especially when the person who has hurt us is in denial over what they have done, this is the only way for the person who was harmed to remove the toxic bitterness from their lives and find healing.

But in order to offer the kind of forgiveness that leads to reconciliation, the offender needs to accept responsibility and makes amends for what it is they did to cause harm to the other. 

I have held my sister while she sobbed uncontrollably, wracked with the  remembrance of yet another incidence of abuse from her mother or her stepfather or from one of the friends my birthmother traded her to for a weekend for a rack of BEER.

I'm not sure how one begins to forgive that kind of thing, or how one might make amends for such horrible abuse, but I do know this:  Forgiveness itself may not require amends, but I'm pretty sure that reconciliation does.

And that's all I have to say about that.

 

 

 

Survivor

 

 

A few years back, my sister Vicki sent me a draft copy of what was meant to be the beginnings of a book.  She's spent a good number of years exorcising her demons, and she knew that the act of telling her story would be a valuable tool in the healing process.

In all honesty, the first time I read through her account of what happened to her as a child, I threw up.  I cried.  I raged.  I HATED.  Vicki and I have talked so much over the years, usually into the wee hours of the morning and well into several bottles of wine (mine) and whiskey (hers) about what she and my other birth siblings endured, the impact it has had on her life, her relationships, how to deal with it in ways that were useful.  I've expressed to her the survivor's guilt that gnaws at the core of me, the guilt of having escaped what happened to the rest of my siblings.  We've talked about these stories, about how to tell them.  i know that one day she and I are going to sit down together and the entire story will be told.  We'll write the book and we'll get it to a publisher.  For now, its mostly in her head and partially on paper.  Several months ago I reread some of what I had edited for her and decided to at least get the beginnings of it out there.

My sister has survived things the weight of which would crumple most people.  Much of what she has endured is practically unspeakable.  It is the kind of abuse you never want to imagine happens to children, the stuff of nightmare and denial.  It is the kind of abuse that once exposed to the light causes you to never look at another human being in the same way again, because you realize that people who walk around looking like normal men and women very well could be, in the privacy of their own homes, horrible monsters.

The first step to publicising Vicki's story was published today at Violence Unsilenced. 

It is graphic.  It is true.  It is one reason among many that I choose to have no relationship with my birthmother.

Please honor my sister.  Read her story, leave a comment over at VU.  Thank her for being a voice for other survivors, for being courageous enough to let her personal truth be public in hopes that it will encourage other victims of violence to speak up.  To know that they do not suffer alone, that there are people out there who understand, who have been there or are there right now, people who want to help.

If you or anyone you know is a victim of domestic violence or abuse, I encourage you to call your local domestic violence hotline or call the national hotline at 1−800−799−SAFE(7233) or TTY 1−800−787−3224.

 

What you think of me is none of my business

Really, its not.  So I continue to remind myself, with ever-increasing frequency.

The post about the incident with my nutsack-punching daughter garnered a lot of comments when BlogHer picked it up, so I was curious to see the reaction from a larger pool of perfect strangers when TodayMom's picked it up.  As I expected, it caused a stir. 

The biggest part of recovering from codependency for me has been to learn to see myself through my own eyes and not the eyes of others.  Other people are not mirrors of my self - not my partner, my parents, my children.  Other people are separate and discrete and while its affirming to have people agree with me, like me, its not realistic to expect that to be the case.  My sense of self-worth can't be dictated by public opinion, and the moment that it is I might as well slink back into the morass of codependent self-loathing that my life used to be.

So I'm not over there commenting back to the commenters on my post.   I did over at BlogHer where the forum was smaller, more select and more comfortable.  It is easy to have a discussion with people when even where the opinions differ, they are offered with a coating of respect.  We can talk about anything in the world as long as we remember, you and I, that we don't have to agree with one another.  What we need to keep in mind is that as human beings we have differences and similarities - we probably have many things in common - and that our opinions are shaped by our experiences.  Just because you have a different experience than I do doesn't mean we should not treat one another with dignity.

Ultimately, I'm not going to change anyone's mind with the things I blog about.  This isn't a political blog or an activist blog.  Its just me working on making the words come out and seeking to make sense of my life and my world.  Its an outlet for my particular creative drive.  Some people paint, some people make music, some people sew and knit and craft.  Some of us write.  Not for profit, not for a living, but simply to engage in the act of putting together words and sentences to set free a thought that is begging to be expressed.  I have no expectation that the thoughts I share here are going to be universally agreed upon, nor that they will, in contrast, be praised.  But I realize, more so today than ever, that when by placing my words and my thoughts in the public domain, I am inviting people to respond.  To affirm or to negate.

Over there, on the TodayMom's blog, I'm not responding to comments.  I'm letting the dialogue happen without me.  There are some thoughtfully written opinions over there, both for and against, and there are a large number of trolls.    About halfway through the day yesterday I discarded my curiosity about what was being said and I stopped reading.   Really, its all happening in a delightful cacophony of words and opinions that don't need my presence to pollute the water.  Its a big bucket full of what makes the internet such a fascinating place to inhabit. And considering that in the not long ago past I would likely be wringing my hands and letting the negative voices be the loudest voices I hear - and letting those voices dictate my state of mind and sense of self-worth - I realize how far I have come and how grateful I am for my recovery.  I'm able to just exist side by side with this controversy.  I realize that more than ever, I KNOW who I am.  I don't need other people to be mirrors of myself.  With the knowing that I am both perfect and imperfect, that I exist as a child of God, loved regardless of anything I or others might do or think, I can choose my level of engagement with the controversy based on what I feel and need, not on others expectations.  (Ouch, that was a long sentence).

The journey to release my fear so that I could stop trying to control others in order to cope with it has been, second to being a mother, the most amazing journey of my life. 

 

.....

 

Note:  While I don't have any editorial control over at BlogHer or at TodayMoms, I DO have editorial control here.  I have never moderated comments on this blog and I hope that will never be the case.  I delete comments from spammers, but to this point have never deleted a legitimate comment from a reader, positive or negative. I welcome dissenting opinion, provided it is delivered with respect. Trolls will not be ignored, they will be summarily dismissed and, if overly persistent, blocked, not because anything they say might hurt my feelings but because attack without the expectation of reasonable dialogue isn't useful.

 

Glee

Not the show.  MINE.

My post that Blogher syndicated has now been picked up by TodayMoms!!

Can someone come over and pick me up off the floor?

On a more serious note, there will be a lot of comments, both negative and positive.  I encourage respectful dialogue, but I'd love it if some of my readers would pop over there and drop their two cents in. 

Now I'm going back to jumping up and down and screaming. 

Acceptance, then (maybe) love

At the very least, acceptance.

How do you feel about your body?

Love it?

Hate it?

Live with it?

Our lives are saturated by the images and messages that insinuate themselves into the fabric of our being.  "Thinner," whisper the voices.  "Bigger there.  Smaller there.  Cap those teeth, whiten them, whittle down those cheeks and plump the lips."  Wrinkles and gray hair and the inevitable trail map of life -- are they marks of wisdom and beauty or blemishes to be ashamed of?

I'll never be twenty again, or even thirty.  I'll be forty-five in less than a month.  My face and my body bear the marks of everything I've done to myself, both good and bad.  The scar on my left shin where the pointy end of a piece of driftwood punctured my leg walking on the beach in the dark.  The waistline where the chaps my mom made for me in high school for horse shows, the chaps that still zip up on my thighs, won't quite buckle after two babies did a number on my hips.  The freckles, the age spots, the wrinkles. The hands that are covered in tiny scars from so many accidents with kitchen knives. The scar in my palm where I learned the hard way that the best way to get frozen peppermint ice cream out of the bottom of a carton is NOT by prying it with a butter knife.  The scar on my lip where the bad mole had to come off.  The skin between my belly button and...well, you know...that wrinkles when I bend over because it never quite regained its elasticity after being so hugely pregnant.  Breasts that nursed two babies, not quite as perky as they used to be, but they still point in the right direction.  The other stuff that was always there - the junk in my trunk and the wonderfully strong and sturdy legs I inherited from my birthmother.  Peasant legs, I call them.  My hair, not quite as thick as it was ten years ago but still thick enough, graying on the sides.  Short now, because I no longer have the desire to maintain a long hairstyle for the simple sake of vanity. 

Do I love my body?  I don't know, honestly.  Some parts of it I love.  Some parts I used to hate, but somewhere in between the years of fighting it, hating it, exercising it and getting older in it, I grew to accept it.  It is mine, with all of its beauty and all of its sags, wrinkles, dimples and bags.  I work it out to keep it healthy and strong.  I keep it really super reasonably clean. It could stand to be thinner and stronger, but I'll be happy with strong enough.  I don't need to climb mountains or run marathons, but I want to ride horses, play with my children (and my someday grandchildren), ski, swim, walk, run, stretch and do my own yardwork until the day I die.  If I treat it right, it will get me there and I'll be grateful.

Put it in a line with a million other almost forty-five year old bodies and it'll just blend right in. (Unless you sandwich me in between Cindy Craword and Claudia Schiffer, then I'm screwed).

Beauty is not a number on a scale.  Beauty is fluid, individual, constant and timeless.   For every one of you that does not think that I'm beautiful, there is another who does. 

It really does matter that you are beautiful in the who of you.  Beautiful in the how and the why.  Your physical self, in its imperfections, its glory, its strength and weakness, all of it adds up to beautiful.

My wish for every girl, for every woman, is to celebrate and acknowledge her unique beauty.  To enjoy her body in all the ways she can, in loving, in caring for others, in working hard, in play and in rest.  To treat herself in the way that we treat someone we love, by being good to herself, caring for herself.   Whether she is a professional athlete or a mall-walker, lean or curvacious, tall or short, whether her skin is brown, bronze, freckled, pale or olive, I want her to know that she is beautiful.  I want YOU to know that YOU are beautiful.

 

This year an inspired group of bloggers, mostly women, came together to join their creative forces in a really wonderful project. 12 women of all different shapes and sizes bared it all to show just how diverse and unique and beautiful women are.  The proceeds from this project will (after printing costs) will benefit the National Eating Disorders Association.

I ordered my Blogger Body Calendar today.  Go.  Check it out.  If you have a daughter or a niece or a grandchild or a partner or a woman in your life that you care about, won't you order one too?

I weep for the girls

This post was:

Until we had monumental changes in life leading us away from group daycare, my daughter attended an aftercare program that had housing in a portable at her school.  Every day after class she would go there, play with other kids, do arts and crafts, and generally have fun.  Every once in a while she would get herself in a little trouble and get a write-up that her dad or I had to sign when we picked her up.

One day when I arrived to pick her up after work, there was a report for me to sign.  It stated that my daughter had punched a boy in the privates.

Wow.  Apparently we teach them early, here.

Before I signed the report, I wanted to understand what had happened.  I asked the young lady in charge if she knew why my daughter had done this.  "No, I didn't ask her," she shrugged.  I asked my daughter to come over to talk with us.  "A, this report says you punched _____ in the privates.  Did you do that?"  She looked me straight in the eye.  "Yes, I did, Mommy."  "Ok.  Can you tell me WHY you punched him in the privates?"

"Well, I was sitting over there," she pointed at one of the long tables, "drawing, and he came over to me and put his hips in my face and wiggled them," she demonstrated, "and said to me "TALK TO MR. WIENER!!! So I punched him."

I looked at the now-pale face of the young lady in charge as I ripped up the report.  "I'm not signing this, and unless you want me to start a stink about why you let my daughter be the recipient of sexual harassment on your premises, you will not only write up that boy but you will make sure that his family understands that if it ever happens again and he is allowed back here I will report you."

My daughter seems to know, instinctively, that her body is hers and not to be messed with.  We talk about the uncomfortable subjects - unwanted touching, what is an "Ok" touch and a "not ok" touch.  She and my son have my unwavering promise that if anyone ever does something to them that they are not comfortable with, if they tell me about it I will take care of it.  If someone tells them that if they tell me then that person will hurt me, I assure them that I am bigger and stronger and meaner than ANYONE and NO ONE is going to kill me if they tell me about unwanted touching.

They will not always be here for me to protect.  Already, as they go to school, get bigger, do more things outside the safety of my eyes watching them, the possibility of harm looms bigger and more frightening. 

Tonight I read this post over at Karen Sugarpants' blog, and I can't even begin to express how disheartened and upset I am.  That any young woman would tolerate such blatant harassment disturbs me more than I can put into words. 

Tonight I look at my privates-punching daughter, and I think, "Don't change.  Don't ever EVER change.  Punch that guy in the dick for all its worth, sweetie."