I'm not the most prolific blogger. I used to think this made me in some way suck. But fuck that noise. When I can write, I do write. No one is waiting with baited breath to hear my latest personal discovery. So here I am, more than a year since my last entry. If you're still here with me great, if not - I get it. So cool, now that we have that out of the way I can talk about why I came back to this blog today. I am a busy woman. Not as busy as I used to be, but busy. I have a great job (OMG, do I!) that I love, I have two healthy and basically happy teenagers. My husband has a stable job, is an amazing partner - doing most of the heavy lifting with household tasks, loves me for me. My parents are alive and the damaged bond I've had with them for many years is in repair. I have a tribe of strong, independent, willful, kind, and just simply amazing women who I trust with the vulnerable parts of myself. I am healthy, despite living with chronic pain. I am loving and kind in a world that at present, tests my ability to remain so. I also live with depression, anxiety, and ADD. The effort to attempt to control these last few things about me has been overwhelming over the past 18 months. Some shit happened over the last year and a half that has left me, well -- it's left me a New April. This April has some shit to work through. She is raw. She is tender. She is working really, really hard. I'm here to call bull shit on healing. Fuck you healing. I have never ever ever, in my whole life understood healing in the way I do today. I am working my ass off to be normal. This is an absolute slug fest (to borrow from the wonderfully insightful Brene Brown) and on any given day, I can't tell who is winning. My pain vs. April. I've long had this zen-ish picture in my head of healing. It lives there in pink and yellow. It is soft and enveloping. Which by the way, is fucking garbage. Portions of days do exist on that plain, but most of it is busy work. Go here, do this. Go there, do that. Be Mom, be Wife, be Friend, be Daughter, be Employee. I function really well when I'm busy. Be all the things, do all the things. Hoping to fucking God, the Universe, SOMETHING that healing is happening along the way. I want so badly to play nice with healing. I want very much for the pink and yellow softness to sidle up next to me and lay it's head on my lap. I suppose then, I must surrender fully to it so that can happen.
If there is a healing Iron Man, I for sure am competing in it. I feel like I am in the swim portion and just cannot see the shore. Maybe I am swimming in circles? Because I feel no one around me. Despite my loving tribe, I feel deeply alone. I know I'm lagging behind. But I can't seem to find my way forward. There are days I feel like I am moving forward, as if there is a hint of shoreline. Then I have a bad day. Like today and feel disappointed in my progress. There is good news. This bad day isn't as bad as the last one I had. And that one was better than the one before that. So, I guess you could say I am making headway. It's hard not to beat myself up when I have a day like this. But I don't suppose healing is supposed to be linear. We are supposed to learn and you can't just rocket out of your bullshit and "be all better". You have to move through it, swim around it, tread water, and learn a new stroke to make your way forward. I've hated the "Just keep swimming" quote from Finding Nemo. For years. Because to me it over simplified the struggle of being. Of persevering. It's so not simple. It's deeply complex and challenging. However I do have to keep swimming to keep going. So.....April? Just.keep.swimming.
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People deal with stress in all kinds of ways. Some do yoga. Some go for a walk. Some have a beer. Some binge on Netflix and Pizza. Some shut.the.fuck.down. I've been in a state of extreme stress (please don't ask why, I don't compare stressors in other's lives to the stressors in mine) for several weeks. I've shut down. The funny and pervasive thing about being depressed (yeah, for the first time in a long time - I can admit that I'm depressed and not put on a show for y'all) for me at least, is that I simultaneously STOP caring about some things and OVER care about still more. It's like a numbness around the edges and stabbing pain in the middle. I don't feel like I deserve love or kindness or compassion when I am deep down in this. I've fought the urge to walk away from several major things in my life. Just quit. Done. Throw in the damn towel. No matter who it affected or hurt. A little like this --- But - well, instead of quitting everything - I'm going to look at it is as creating space for things that I need to take care of myself. It's going to involve ending some commitments and projects. It's going involve me saying "No thank you". It may look like I am being selfish. It's going to look like I'm more present with you. It's going to involve me asking how YOU are doing. It's going to be a challenge to create this space because I am very used to filling the space with REQUIREMENTS and not things I want to do. I'll be grateful for your kindness as I work on taking better care of myself. So I'm going to start doing some things that give me joy. Frankly, I've got to figure some of that out again.
I want to be around people who make me better and not make me doubt my worthiness. I want to find ways to grow, I want to find my peace. Wheel of Body Pos. It's like a game. Most of the time I live here. In this space. Solving the puzzle. Helping others to. I kindly dispute friends who shame themselves. I stand arm in arm with other like minded women.
I posted back in November about becoming stuck in a cycle of self-loathing that was bleeding through to everything in my life. I constantly struggle with the feeling of regret, this notion of shame that I allowed myself to be obese for so many years. Shame on me for ruining my body. When I function in this space, I'm barely functioning. I can't take a compliment. I see everything through a clouded, dirty lens. It takes over everything. I'll get to my point. If you think that having weight loss surgery is the "easy" way to take off lots of weight, you just could not be more wrong. This mental combat is real. I don't expect you to understand it. If I pause after you compliment me, it means I'm digging really really deep into my vulnerability to accept your kind words because I'm really struggling to believe your words are true. Dirty lens. The good news, I'm working hard on feeling better. I'm 24 days into Whole 30 and ran for 10 consecutive minutes on my treadmill today. My BMI is nearly 20 points less than it was 2 years ago. I didn't put make up on when I visited friends on Sunday night. I am really, truly trying. I find it hard to write when I'm doing really good. This itch to discharge discomfort often comes in the form of a blog post. But honestly, that is why this exists at all. If you are reading this, it's a total fluke. If it touches you in any small way, then awesome. My currency is me - not what this body looks like - so with that may I buy an E? I'm stuck. I did not plan for getting stuck. I don't have studded snows, or kitty litter or tire chains. I don't have a winch. I do not have 3 linebackers in my back seat. When I was legit fat (pre-surgery) I understood my place in the hierarchy of atheistics. I was allowed to be pretty and somewhat attractive but I was firmly ensconced in the Such A Pretty Face world. It's all I knew. I didn't like it most of the time, but it's how I understood life. I was losing weight at a good clip for months on end in 2015. Cruising through sizes as the number of the scale dropped and dropped. I struggled to accept that reality too. After one of the toughest months in years (September 2016) and 9 months of sitting at a desk 40 hours a week (new job) I managed to gain 10-15 pounds. The shame I feel is overwhelming. What's funny is that I actually feel more shame for feeling shame about it. What the fuck? Who does this to themselves? My 'right now' body is the body I longed to have for years and years. I looked at women who were a 14/16 and envied them more than the size 6/8s. Maybe because it was never in my belief system that I could be any smaller than that. So here I am. Spinning my wheels. Knowing what I need to do and feeling impotent. Knowing that if I'm going to continue down this path it's going to get harder before it gets easier. Knowing that my value as a human being has ZERO to do with weather I gain or lose a few pounds. But the question remains....how to I make myself believe? How do I summon the line bakers out of the backseat to push me out of this embankment? I am more verbally self critical than I have EVER been. It pains me when Ella asks me not to speak in such ways about myself. It violates what I consider to be one of my core virtues. So I must stop. I must. I cannot continue to pepper myself with self loathing. It is acute. It is unhealthy. I'm calling it out in the open. It can't live in the shadows anymore. This is not how I would speak to anyone I love, care about or even simply know. And if I wouldn't do that to someone else, why on earth is it okay to baste April with it? It's not okay. I won't blame this on 2016 - LOL - I'd like to but I own this. As it's owner it's my responsibility to figure it out and fix it. Or at least try to fix it. @leo.christopher #LeoChristopher
A little more than 6 years ago I decided it would be fun start a business and get out of the house from time to time. That little business put me in front of many women (a few men here and there as well) on a weekly basis. They fed me, poured me glasses of wine, told me I looked beautiful, and trusted me with their personal stories of love, pleasure, and loss. They greeted me in public with hugs and smiles. I felt truly helpful. They recommended me to their friends. They became my friends. When I decided I would be a purveyor of carnal niceties I had no idea that it would completely change my life. My business allowed me to stretch my leadership legs. I honed my ability to be patient and organized. I found that in front of people was my favorite place to be. I became The Mood Mistress. My alter ego. The Mood Mistress was enchanting, hilarious, humble and compassionate. She was celebratory, deep, and successful. I decided a few months ago that I was going to follow my heart and close the doors of my luxury bedroom accessories business. It wasn't as hard of a decision as I thought it would be - it was time. While the decision was somewhat fluid and felt very right to me I have been unable to delete my business page. I worked 6 long years to establish a following of 700+. I carefully selected articles, stories, and photos that represented my "brand". This was a place I could freely talk to you about sex and intimacy and I loved every second of it. I've given a lot of thought to why I am having such a hard time letting it go. And then it came to me. I could not bear the thought of The Mood Mistress ceasing to exist. I thought and I thought. I mourned her. Was I deleting her voice? Who was I without her? I talked to a couple of friends, and mused upon it some more. Then I stopped being sad about this. Because The Mood Mistress doesn't exist in a vacuum. Creating her voice was just a conduit for my self expression. A safe way to be completely myself. I was worried that without TMM I wouldn't be interesting. That I would cease to be this passionate, wild, lover of love and pleasure. I couldn't be rid of her if I tried. I am her. She is me. My garden, is not really MY garden. My garden is my Grandmother's garden. I've had the good fortune to wind up owning the home my Grandparents retired to after 50 years of dairy farming. It is a modest home, in a wonderful village - with a sense of community that is second to none. We moved here in June of 2005, following the passing one of the greatest human beings I will ever know. My Grandmother, my friend - Margaret Chapman.
That summer was chaos - I did my best not to kill her flowers and my best to keep my toddlers alive too. A few years later I found what I thought might be peony "bushes" (in quotes because they were so so so sad, not bushes at all) in the back yard. Their roots were encased in thick clay(ish) soil and in the shade. In the 3 years we had lived there they had never flowered or even attempted to. So naturally, I moved them. They landed in the garden that lines my driveway behind an adorable stone wall. I planted them. They took. And year after year they came up, produced leaves and then......nothing. No buds. No flowers. Nada. The years passed. I considered pulling them out and replacing them with something else. However, I liked the simplicity of their plumage - their leaves green all summer and blushing in the autumn. Just as soon as I decided I was okay with peonies that never flowered - 7 years after I transplanted them - I got my first petite buds! That year I got a few small flowers, and some buds that didn't do anything. With each successive year they have become stronger and more hardy and the blossoms are now showstoppers! They are stunning to look at and their fragrance heady. So I moved onto a different plant that was not flowering. My irises. I noticed that the rhizomes were really too close to the surface of the soil, they were just sitting there - mostly exposed to the elements. They had become so enmeshed there was no room for air or nutrient flow. I dug them up, broke them apart, tilled the soil and replanted them with space to groove. And there they sat. Spring came, and the stately sword-like greenery did as well. The blossoms did not. For 3 springs, nothing. Spring 2016 is here and guess what? I have irises! Yes, I do. So here is where I say something about life...because how can I not. I was outside weeding and pulling out sticks from my 'winter garden' as Amy Chess and I like to call it. I was thinking rather deeply as I tend to do (it's a gift and a curse, trust me), and something sort of struck me. There are all kinds of way we get stuck. Sometimes we are stuck because our roots are not where they need to be. We aren't getting something we need to flourish so we aren't at our best. That could look like a lot of things. In the wrong job, the wrong relationship, stuck in a loop of harmful habits, or just plain unwilling to see that staying put makes us stagnant. Sometimes we are stuck because we are too crowded. That might mean taking space and time for what makes us tick, what enriches us - so we can breathe and grow and be better than we were yesterday or last season or last year. I feel a little like the peony and the iris for different reasons. I hope to keep doing the things that propel me to grow and blossom a little more lavishly, a little more strong, a little more bright every day. I fancy myself a pretty handy woman.
When I was hired as a Personal Assistant in 2007, I fixed my boss' bathroom sink - my first day on the job. Not really very Personal Assisty, just...well - I saw a need and fixed it. Achieving a nearly perfect score on the Mechanical Engineering-ish section of the ASVAB aptitude test http://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/asvab in High School, I understand how mechanical things go together, how the cogs line up to make something move. I deconstruct items mentally, it satisfies me to know how things work. My need and drive to fix is very central to who I am as a human being. I enjoy systems that chug along the track - making their appointed stops - and then continue on. I find myself near certain that almost anything can be fixed and if it's too far gone -- toss it -- get a new one. I spend a lot of time thinking about relationships between people. Myself : others and others : others. Thinking about how certain parts don't work, and how they can be repaired. I'm highly communicative when my need to fix is stimulated. I often wonder if it's exhausting to be in any type of relationship with me when I am in this mode. I talk and I process and I dig for clues. I research. I attempt to find common ground. My compass for what works in relationships is flawed. At least that's what my therapist tells me. Not flawed = wrong. Just flawed to the extent that I soon need to accept that I cannot fix you. I cannot fix the relationship problems in my family, I cannot fix the problems in my marriage, I cannot fix my kids, or my coworkers, or my friends. I deeply crave peace and understanding. Tolerance over speaking one's every thought. My empathy meter is painfully sensitive. There is only one person on the planet I have control over, and she is typing this right now. The stress I feel over things that are outside of my sphere of influence is absurd. The discomfort I feel when I observe people not listening to each other is all encompassing. Know that while I observe you from my own lens; it's focus adjusted for my own eyes - I am listening. Even if it's outside of what I understand. I'm listening. Because I want to help. I want to fix. But some shit just isn't fixable. Perfectionism is absolutely exhausting and I think I'm finally ready to hang it up. I just want to be better than I was yesterday. More loving, more understanding, more kind, more enlightened. That's all. It's that simple. The rest will fall away as it will. I cannot tend everyone's garden because it's a full time job keeping the weeds out of mine. I'm putting away my toolbox and sticking my hands into the dirt. I was working 12 hour nights at IBM in 1999. I was 22, newly married, and fat. IBM was hiring a lot of new employees and we were in a constant state of training. We hired many different kinds of people from new grads to folks who had spent 30 years in another vocation, had retired and were looking for something "to do". One night, I was standing at a multi-million dollar piece of test equipment - making adjustments to run a box of product when a guy my age began chatting with me. At a certain point in the conversation (we were talking about training) he said "OH! SoAndSo complimented you the other night" Skeptical, I raised an eyebrow in a cue for more information. He excitedly went on to tell me that a man he was training said to him.... "April would be the prettiest woman here if she wasn't so BIG" So. BIG. Let that percolate. 1. I have a problem with verbally ranking anyone based on appearance. It's human nature to size up a room, make mental notes - I get that. But no...let's not go there ok? 2. This person chatting with me truly thought that I would be pleased to hear this message. I mean, really? 3. This comment pierced my self confidence. I let it get under my skin. I let it rule me. Already, I felt like it was a miracle anyone would ever want me. Let alone marry me. I panicked if I left my house without my wedding rings on. They shouted to anyone who might see me out and about that someone wanted me enough to marry me. Miss Such A Pretty Face found her voice years later. Thank GOD. Beauty can't be defined by an IF statement. It just can't. I was FAT. AND beautiful, AND kind, AND funny, AND empathetic, AND creative, AND a hard worker AND a lot of things. NOT if. Never if. You know, I just love Brené Brown and her TED talk about vulnerability. I have the MP3 downloaded to my phone. I listen to it when I feel fragile & adrift or strong & stable. Or pretty much every emotion in between. I think everyone needs to see it. So I'll save you the Google.... https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability?language=en There is no perfect. Only perfect intentions. She says it well, we are "wired for struggle". So I practice hard - giving the benefit of the doubt. I'm nowhere near perfect. I yell, I throw temper tantrums, I say *fuck* and *shit* and *asshole*. I'm super hard on this kid. Being a Mom of a teenager is rough. Being a teenager is rougher. He is so NOT like me, and yet JUST like me. He manages to push buttons I didn't know existed. I chose not to attend his teacher conference today because it was a painful enough weekend. Privileges revoked, disappointed kid and parents. Traditional school just isn't really working for him in the traditional way. I'm very involved, I've heard the feedback. I'm just exhausted. I can't hear it anymore this school year. I'm tapping out. When we focus on the good, we see that he is an incredibly gifted writer - despite me having to harass him about reading every.single.day.
He excels in art. He sees how things go together in innovative ways. His school work is atrocious. His heart is good. He mentors a 6th grader. He's good at it. They have a great connection. The relationship is of value. Letting go of the societal standards of success is extremely difficult, but what I want you to know is what I have to tell myself constantly -- success looks different on different people. There is no One Size Fits All. My child can hear because of a tiny device that sits in his ear. That is a god damn miracle. My child is healthy and compassionate and kind and strong and wonderful. And he will be okay even if he fails the shit out of Spanish. Last week I bought my very very beautiful pictures and wrote a blog post. Then I proceeded to have a little crisis. A few hours after I posted the blog link to my Facebook I became extremely self-conscious. The Stuck in Vermont piece was incredibly well received and I was overwhelmed with feedback about how brave I am/was to expose myself in that way. Suddenly however, I felt extreme worry that continuing to talk about body positivity was starting to feel like The April Show. That was not my intent, and I'm very sensitive to the thought that I could be coming off as attention seeking. So from my phone, laying in my bed late at night I hid that link to that blog post. And you know what, hiding it felt really shitty too. There was nothing I could do to mitigate that feeling. Then this week, out of the clear blue --- just when I was feeling like I really needed to just shut up for a while and be more quiet about my life and journey (P to the S, I hate that fucking word "journey" - it's stupid and feels trite) some very peripheral people in my life sort of came out of the woodwork. They messaged me for advice. They messaged me to tell me that what I have to say and what I put out into the world has made a difference in their life and how they treat themselves. The messaged me to say 'this is hard, but I'm going to keep trying'. So --- because of that, because people are watching, because even if it feels a little self indulgent to talk about myself --- I guess I'm going to keep doing it. A couple of side notes: 1 - Body Pos is not strictly for large women. Body pos is for EVERYONE. Self awareness is too. 2 - I'm not 'cured' - I have bad days, but I put in the hard work to lessen the frequency of those bad days. 3 - If you're going to work on this then it's important to assess your level of personalization. If you're still paranoid and personalizing ALL THE THINGS, please check yourself. I will talk about this in depth - but for now, just try to be mindful. I don't feel brave. I feel unencumbered. I feel honored to have a plethora of truly caring, interesting, just as messed up as me - people in my life. |
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July 2018
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