A Road Map to Successfully Interacting with the Infertile

Let’s talk about infertility.

If you have never experienced infertility, this might make you uncomfortable. You might squirm in your seat. You might have the urge to reassure me with a “I can feel it’s going to happen for you soon!” or to soothe with, “At least the trying is fun!” or maybe you will even think to yourself, “I should tell her the story of so and so who I know who got pregnant just as she was giving up!” When I start to talk about my particular journey, it may make you sad and you may want to comfort me when you hear about my miscarriage with, “At least it was early!” or “Well, that baby probably had some problems and would have had special needs, so it was a blessing in disguise.” Believe me, I know it is hard to hear and read about these sad things happening to people, so if you want to look away, it is ok. I will not judge you. However, if it is not too sad and you want to stay and you feel in your heart that you should say any of the things I mentioned above, I will make this journey much, much easier for you and give you a sort of guide, a Road Map for Interacting with the Infertile if you will.

1.       Do not under any circumstances say any of the things I mentioned above. If you are thinking of saying something else that resembles one of the things above, please do not say that either. Believe me, I know it is hard not to say any of these things. Before I personally was one of the Infertile, I said the above things and people were kind to me when I said those things to them and I still quietly ask for their forgiveness in my heart. You see, being one of the Infertile is hard. Really hard. Honestly, I do not know why I want to have a baby. I just really freaking do. And it makes me super sad that I cannot. Because reasons. And I do not need to know the reasons. They just exist. So, saying the above things makes me sadder. Because reasons.

2.       Please do not try to school me on the various options for growing my family. There are so many reasons why this is not a good idea. Unless you are my husband, you do not have access to my bank account and therefore, you are blissfully unaware of my financial status. The vast, vast majority of options outside of traditional “woman and man have sex and have baby” for growing my family are out of my reach financially. I know that maybe you heard some options were less expensive than others and that is great! Guess what: I know about those options! Y’all, we have scraped the barrel of the various ways in which people get babies and children. I swear to God, you are not bringing to my attention a way I have not heard of. There is adoption from foster care, fostering to adopt, domestic infant adoption, private adoption, invitro fertilization, embryo adoption/donation, international adoption, and on and on and on. There are even shady as hell Facebook groups where people put up their older children they no longer want for adoption and it is HORRIFYING. I promise you that I have looked into all kinds of ways. And considered all kinds of ways. And considered my life and my marriage and what both of those look like and consulted with my husband and decided ways that do and do not work for us. Additionally, I have the added bonus of ACTUALLY BEING A SOCIAL WORKER. I have worked for the state and within various steps of the process of adoption. I know of what I speak.

3.       Within the same vein, until you have walked this road, you do not get the judge the ways in which people grow their families. Let me say that again. YOU DO NOT GET TO JUDGE THE WAYS IN WHICH PEOPLE GROW THEIR FAMILIES. Y’all, this is a freaking hard decision. Doing any of the above named things is freaking hard. Wouldn’t consider IVF yourself? Thank God you never had to. Cannot imagine adopting? Congratulations on having fully functioning reproductive organs so you do not need to use your imagination. Think embryo adoption/donation is ridiculous when there are so many kids waiting for a home? Great, go start your own damn blog and let people know. Better yet, go adopt some of those children! Or volunteer with them! Or do anything you can to help them in some way instead of just sanctimoniously waving your bullshit opinions in my face! Judging like this, saying these things to people who are facing a situation about which you know nothing, it is fucking rude. I will not apologize for using profanity and getting pissed when I talk about this. Stop being fucking rude to people. Stop it right now.

4.       If you are one of the people reading this blog who knows me and loves me and you are pregnant or have children and you are thinking to yourself, “Oh Lord, I’ve hurt her by talking about my baby or my children and I can’t do that anymore,” STOP IT RIGHT NOW. I freaking love you! And I love your children! And I LOVE that you are the one having them and raising them because you are freaking awesome! Just stop it right now. The two are unrelated and that is a fact. Additionally, you know you will never have to wonder what I think, so if I need to take a step back or let you know that my ugly jealous side is getting the best of me and I need to take a break from talking about your baby and maybe talk about something else, I will definitely tell you. And there is no need to feel bad about that! It is ok! We are humans being vulnerable and we step on each other’s toes and we figure it out along the way. Nothing is irrevocably broken.

So what are some good things to say to us Infertiles?

“Man, that must be so hard! You two sure are some strong people.”

“I know that getting there is hard, but I am so excited that two awesome people want to become parents!”

“Would you like to get coffee and talk about it?”

“I just know that when it happens for you two, you will be great parents.”

“Please do not feel like you have to downplay the difficulty in this journey. It does not make me uncomfortable and even though I do not understand how it feels, I love you and I can imagine it is really hard. How can I help you feel better?”

And that is all it takes, people! That is how you do it! As usual, with a heart of vulnerability and by practicing empathy and drawing on the love you feel for that person, you too can interact successfully with the Infertile.

In which I embrace my deeply un-cool nature

Yesterday, A Practical Wedding ran an essay I wrote and submitted. Like a crazy person, I also listed this blog in my bio. Y’all, OMG. I have no other words because people actually read and were touched by something I wrote. And that is truly, really awesome because I have been writing for some time now and I have not been very brave and talked about it or shown my writing to people and part of that is being scared of vulnerability (having all my feelings out there is not as easy as it seems!), but a bigger part of that is a touch of embarrassment.

If you have met me in real life, well, I honestly have no idea what you think. I am going to guess you have recognized my passion, maybe you have been the unfortunate recipient of my fiery indictments, perhaps you have looked at me and thought to yourself, “Why is that woman yelling?” And it is not because I am an angry person, but because I am passionate about things. I freaking care a whole lot and I love that part of myself and I do not want to let it go. I like to debate with people and argue with them and bring up points and counter points and I do not shy away from tough conversations, like those about race and class and gender.

Yet for all my wanting very hard to be “hardcore” and above touchy-feely feelings, to be that cool person who just puts the truth out there and drops the mic, I am hopelessly un-cool. It is not an easy job, but at the end of the day, I am a touchy-feely, empathizing, “call me when you’re feeling sad,” social worker. I want to have that aloof, “I could take him or leave him,” cool approach to my marriage, but I am hopelessly, ridiculously in love with my husband in a decidedly un-cool way. And I would love to sit down and write an original, scathing indictment of the way our society systematically denies people of color, poor people, LGBT people their rights, but when I sit down to write, out comes feelings and empathy and vulnerability and body acceptance.

I wish the first thing someone had ever looked at and said was worth publishing on their website or in their magazine or anywhere really was something cooler than an essay about how much I love my husband, our wedding day, and my mommy dying, but it is not. So, I was a little bit embarrassed.

But I have been doing some thinking in the last 24 hours and I have come to a certain realization: these two halves of me are not on opposite ends of some personality, badass spectrum. We do not have the touchy-feely and the staunch battling each other out for the soul of humanity. I am not Black or poor or a lesbian or transgender, so why do I care so passionately about the fates of people who are? That right there is empathy. People marching in Ferguson, Missouri because one of their neighbors, an un-armed teenager on his way to college was shot dead in the street, reminding everyone of the immense pain that comes from the lack of safety for Black children (and adults) in this country? That right there is a hugely admirable amount of vulnerability. Here in Kentucky, people talking to their city councils and pleading for ordinances that would ensure gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people cannot be fired from their jobs or kicked out of their homes for being who they are and loving who they love? That is taking the conversation to an uncomfortable level of honesty and speaking the truth to bring a whole community to a higher level of understanding and unity. This kind of work (dismantling the structures of oppression within our society) is heart work. It IS vulnerability and empathy and truthfulness.

So what does that mean for me personally? Well, for starters, it means I am not going to be embarrassed my first published piece of writing was not a scathing indictment of society. Mostly because it is not what I want to write, but also because I do not think that is the part I want to play in this work. 

I think that people of color and poor people and LGBT people have demonstrated an incredible amount of vulnerability. People have spoken up and said, “This is what it’s like for me living here in this country.” Many people with privilege (white people, straight people, people who have enough money) have listened. Still many more of those same people have heard that vulnerability, doubled down, and refused to listen. Or worse, viewed that vulnerability as their own oppression, which is just ridiculous.  

What I am trying to say is these kinds of conversations require all those touchy-feely feelings. These are not non-essential things. These are vital traits and tools of interaction. They get at the very ways in which we understand one another. So, I vow to stop pretending like they do not matter and to stop being embarrassed when I re-read my blog posts and feel like a motivational poster because I have decided it is not un-cool to be genuine, to authentically listen and express one’s self, to be vulnerable and make yourself available for another person to be safely vulnerable. And if it is un-cool, oh well. I have gone this far being un-cool, maybe it is time I accept it.  

In Defense of the Uncomfortable Level of Honesty

There is a quote from the Baha’i writings that I really love: “Truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues.” I love it because it is so all-encompassing, yet simple. Think about it: how can we really, truly develop kindness, empathy, love, knowledge without truthfulness? If we are being honest, many of the teachings of the Faith I hold dear do not come easily and naturally to me. I am almost proud of my level of ongoing personal rebellion, I typically live my life in excess, I come by honestly my disgusting propensity for picking out what I dislike about others, it takes me a fairly long amount of time to forgive…in many respects, my belief in the Baha’i faith is in spite of my less than sterling qualities, not because of.

HOWEVER, truthfulness I can get behind pretty easily. It comes naturally. I am a terrible liar. It makes me all clammy and sick to my stomach and I inevitably end up smiling when I do not mean too. Plus, my eyes well up with tears for no reason. What kind of a reaction even is that?! I am also in possession of an inability to not be heard, so speaking my mind (a form of truthfulness) is not something with which I struggle.

I typically get one of two opposite reactions to my speaking the uncomfortable truth: “Do you really have to rock the boat? Maybe it’s just you.” or “I’m so glad you said something! Now I know where I stand.” Is there a place and time for holding your tongue out of politeness? You bet! Am I referring to the words that rise immediately out of anger, the ones that taste so ugly in your mouth you know you should not let them out? Hell no. That is not the kind of honesty I am talking about. That is self-serving honesty. That is not speaking the truth or even your truth, it is being childish. You may feel better having spoken them, but they do not contribute to the overall good. I am talking about the honesty that comes from reflecting on how you feel and understanding that even if what you have to say will be difficult to say and hear, it will contribute to the greater unity and understanding of the group or the relationship.

It is a little harder for me to be honest with members of my faith community, mostly because I am deeply self-conscious of my own ability to be a “good Baha’i” and in the last few years, I am finding it harder to fit a particular mold I see. I desperately want my faith to grow and change with the needs of the society in which it exists. I want it to welcome all people and experiences and just plain be better. But we are learning. We do not always get it right, but we are learning and I think that is why I stick with it: because in was other religion am I able to speak the way I do to those in power, say “I disagree,” and be heard and consulted with love? How often do we admit our mistakes as a community and move forward? We are still learning how to do that, but it is the ultimate goal, which I appreciate. We value the process, not just the product. So I stick with it and I speak up. I speak out when something is not right, when I get a feeling in my gut. I (try) to do it kindly and I am not always successful, but I do not walk away from the discomfort because I care about what happens.

Sadly, in all that community learning and growing, my heart has been hurt fairly often. As Baha’is, we have a lot of teachings about the life of the soul and life after death and the importance of detachment and sacrifice and how tests help us grow. It is also a wonderful ideal and standard, but in the day to day, we are still human being struggling to do what human being try to do: live successfully. And losing your mother…dude. It’ll test that very human of human things we do.

On the day my mother died, I posted on Facebook and a Baha’i literally commented, “I’m so happy for her!” Another Baha’i who had called to ask me to be on a committee told me to take all the time I needed, but decided a couple weeks was enough and why wasn’t I doing what I needed to do? Other Baha’is asked too many personal questions of me and my family, feeling entitled to details. I was told she would not want me to grieve, that I should be thankful I had her at all. Once I confided in someone I love very much about four months after my mom died that I was having a hard, sad day and she said to me, “Why? Oh, you’re still sad about that?” I have talked a lot about empathy here, so there is that and blah blah blah, but I am just trying to say that it hurt. And I so, so want us as Baha’is to do better! So after months of saying nothing, I got a comment, fairly innocuous, that I could not let go. I chewed on it for two weeks and then I wrote an email.

I explained that my feelings were hurt and why and my concern at even sharing my hurt feelings, but that I want people to do better so I share. And you know what I got back? The most genuine, loving apology via email and then a phone call with another genuine apology and time spent consulting with me about how things could go better and how I could feel better about my role and what should have been said and again, a heartfelt apology and embarrassment at having said what was said. Honestly, the grace, compassion, empathy, and humility this person displayed was breath-taking. She should teach classes on how to do what she did. And I felt so heard and understood.

I have realized in recent months that speaking uncomfortable truths is actually one of my life missions. It is my goal to bring to the forefront the things of which people are uncomfortable to talk, endure a moment’s awkwardness, then feel the relief of everything being at the surface and begin the work of muddling through it. Because if we cannot acknowledge those uncomfortable truths, are we ever really being genuine with one another. And if not, what is even the point?   

On Missing and Being Human

Today is #throwbackthursday, which is a thing the kids do these days, apparently. As I am desperately clinging to the last two years of my twenties (while, of course, effortlessly embracing the divine thirties because I am completely self-actualized), I also often participate. Through the magic of that fancy TimeHop app, I am able to see all my Facebook posts on this day since the beginning of my account. The thing is that around this time two years ago, my mom was diagnosed with cancer and around this time one year ago, her short five month remission ended and the cancer came roaring back to life, ultimately ending hers five months later. I look back at TimeHop every day for clues about how I was feeling, how much I let slip in public, a sense of how I must have been feeling because to be honest, I do not know that I remember it accurately. I remember a lot of crying, many nights of being angry, an inability to process, and a ton of loneliness settled thick over every aspect of my life.

I have been missing my mother lately. When I was a kid, from around the age of eight to fourteen, I got homesick. I would plan a sleepover with a friend, have a great time, and once it came time to get in bed, become an absolute wreck. A giant knot would form in my throat and without fail, I would call my mom and she would explain to me that she would pick me up in the morning and everything would be ok and it was just one night. And then, as always, she would get in the car and come pick me up right then. This was quite an ordeal, as I was usually at my best friend’s house who lived an hour from me. Mom did not complain or get angry about getting up in the middle of the night or tell me to tough it out. The truth was that she wanted me to be home as much as I wanted to be home.

That homesickness is a very specific feeling and one I remember well. I missed my sisters and my dad and my bed and everything being familiar, but most of all, as embarrassing as it was to admit, I missed my mommy. Like a toddler, I wanted to go home because I missed my mommy and nothing was ok without her. I have felt that way every night for almost a week now. I go to work, come home, make dinner, spend time with my husband, get ready for bed and everything is fine until my head hits that pillow. Suddenly, that knot forms in my throat and I get that distinct feeling in my heart and I want to go home because I miss my mommy and nothing is ok without her. It is the feeling I had when I got the call that she had died, while I got ready to fly to Alaska, as I took multiple plane rides there and sat on the airplane, tears streaming down my face. I want to go home because I miss my mommy and nothing will ever be ok again without her. 

So what is a girl to do? How do I, as a full grown adult woman, console the little toddler Lizzy when even grown up me knows it is never going to be ok again, at least not in that way? And I guess that is what I am trying to figure out. For the rest of my life, there will be a mommy-sized hole in every life event. One day, I will give birth to my own little baby (or, as the case may be, get the call that someone else has given birth to my child and he or she is waiting) and there will be a mommy-sized hole. I will start new jobs or change careers and there will be a mommy-sized hole. My kids will have kids and the mommy-sized hole will remain. There will be new homes, new experiences, new hard things that will happen and mommy will never come pick me up again. And there is absolutely nothing to do about it. 

So why am I putting all of these deeply, awfully sad feelings out here for the entire world to see? Here is the thing: I want you to know what this feels like. I have come to three understandings in the last two years:

1. We as a society are absolutely terrified of genuinely engaging with people in their sad, angry, negative feelings. We are awful at it. We live in a culture of relentless positivity and pulling up by bootstraps. Frankly, we deny ourselves the full range of human experience because sadness and grief is part of the rent we pay for the ability and privilege of loving and being connected to other human beings. We are not very good at empathy and in the face of genuine pain, we often shout useless platitudes because we are so uncomfortable with the plain, raw sadness of it all.

2. Vulnerability is the most empowering thing ever. Not only that, it empowers people around me, which is just beautiful. Am I the easiest person in the world to be around right now? Probably not. Will I say sad things that make you feel awkward? Yes, probably so. Will you feel safe telling me that you too have felt sad things and safe in the knowledge that I will not judge you for telling me you feel those things? Hell yes. And that, my friends, is a beautiful thing. It turns out once you share your demons, they lose some of their power and other people can share theirs too. It has made me a better friend, better wife, a much better social worker. This is not to say I let my grief overpower others, but that it has made me a more empathetic human being. And I absolutely love that.

3. The pain I feel now is the rent I pay for being fully human and for having and getting to love my mom. Maybe if my mom were a bad person or a bad mother, I could be happy to be rid of her. If I had known what this feels like, would I have prepared myself by loving her less? Absolutely not. And this is the crux of grief: the more you allow yourself to love people, the more you are going to feel it, so get used to it. Get used to the idea that you will feel pain, that life is impermanent and fleeting and that you only get someone for so long. And that is ok. Do not deny this part, the grieving part, or push yourself through it because this is also part of loving: the losing. 

It may never be “ok” again. I will miss my mommy for the rest of my life, every single day. Some days, I will think of her and smile. Some days, even the smallest remembering will send me into hysterics. I am a new person now, a different person because I have experienced more of the range of being human and allowed myself to live it. Do I wish that were not the case? Oh hell yes, but it is. So here I am.

On vulnerability fatigue

Emboldened by my in-laws’ and husband’s encouragement and subtle prompting, I have decided it is time to come clean and start blogging again. The reason behind why I have not been blogging is very simple and it is something I have been saying to my husband and best friend and sisters for about the last two years: I am so very tired of being so irretrievably broken. We social workers sometimes get “compassion fatigue,” meaning we get so tired of caring about other people that we cannot care about other people. I read about something called “meaning fatigue,” where someone with a life-threatening illness gets so tired of considering the greater plan and the shortness of time that he or she has to take a mental break from assigning meaning to so many things. So, rather than yelling at those I love that I am tired of being so broken, I am trying out another, more eloquent term: “vulnerability fatigue.”

According to dictionary.com, the word vulnerable means, “capable of or susceptible to being wounded or hurt, as by a weapon.” Thus, vulnerability is one’s ability to be so. I also find another definition to be especially descriptive of the emotion I am trying to describe: “open to assault; difficult to defend.” I can practically feel the places in my heart where I am difficult to defend and open to assault. “Fatigue” is the exhaustion that comes after specific, deliberate, repeated exertion. Physiologically speaking, it is when organs essentially give out.

Obviously, my ideas about vulnerability are not totally original. For much more researched and eloquent information about the importance of vulnerability, you should look up Brene Brown. Honestly, the extent of my knowledge of her work with vulnerability is the knowledge that she has written books about its importance and quotes of hers about vulnerability that have resonated with me. Here is a whole collection of her quotes and I really believe they are absolutely spot on. 

So we are in agreement: to achieve true humanity, we have to engage in this act of being vulnerable, own our capability of being hurt, own that we are difficult to defend in places and breakable in others. That is great and so very true. I loved sharing my last blog post and the love I received and not feeling alone and the relief of just being myself all out in the open.

Now where is the guide to doing that day in and day out; to authentically being yourself and allowing the gaps in your armor to show; to “owning your story” and telling it to others in a way that does not sugar coat, but does not make you some kind of martyr who has found the great wisdom in your own truth? Better yet, where is the guide for your husband, who has been taking care of you and considering your own broken heart over and over again since your mother was diagnosed with cancer three months into your relationship; or your best friend who has worked a very hard, very stressful job for the last two years and settled into a new home and gotten engaged and begun to plan a wedding and listened to you cry or fuss or yell or minimize big feelings repeatedly, often without you even having the where with all to ask how she is coping with her own significant life changes; or your sisters who have never been pregnant and never lost a pregnancy and have no idea what to say except “I love you,” but the experience hurts so badly you get angry and tell them they are not being supportive even though there is literally nothing else to say? In short, where is the guide book for the people around me? And how do I maintain my composure and dignity in the face of all this very important authenticity and vulnerability? And at what point is my mere company and the fact that my life keeps falling apart in some big ways make me just too much for people? These wonderful people in my life have never said these things to me, but these are the things that come to my mind over and over at the end of yet another day when I just cannot hack it and I feel like there are tears in my skin and all my inside sad thoughts will come spilling out, soaking everything else when, admittedly, it is kind of exactly what I need and want to happen. In short, how does one maintain themselves in the face of all this life-giving vulnerability?

I spent Christmas in California with my husband and his mothers. One morning at breakfast, my mother in law asked me when I would be blogging again, as though it is a matter of course that I would continue. I thanked her for the compliment and then made some self-deprecating comment about my writing, that who needs another white lady blogging out into the universe? My mother in law pointed out the point of writing is that it might help someone else, it might contribute to their journey or their understanding, or that it just might make them feel a little less alone. So, I suppose that must be why I am looking my vulnerability fatigue in the face and writing a little bit more. My hope is that, through my vulnerability, maybe you can let a little bit of your own out. Because it really does make you a more beautiful person. There is nothing I love more than someone letting their genuine self out. I hope this is true for you too.  

An honest look

I’m five years old. I love to run. I can’t think of any single thing more fun than feeling myself fly around the playground, outrunning everyone else.

I’m ten years old. We've moved to a new town. Everyone’s southern accents are thicker and everyone is blonde and whiter than me. I hit my growth spurt early, sprout breasts and hips, shoot up six inches in as many months. My mom signs my sisters and me up for dance classes. The teacher looks at me in my leotard and tap shoes, in tights at the top of the little girls’ sizes, and pronounces me too large. I stop going to dance class.

I’m twelve years old. I've discovered I have a lot of loud opinions on things and they’re usually the opposite of what my teachers and class mates think. I don’t have much of a filter and things generally come flying out of my mouth. I’m taller than everyone else at school, boys included. My hair has realized it’s half Persian and it grows puffier every day. I think I’m fat because no one else in my class has hips or a butt. I dress in baggy clothes. Boys discover there are two ways to quiet an opinionated girl: call her a lesbian or a fat bitch. They employ both tactics, but neither seems to work. I just get madder and louder. Exercise is running myself ragged on the stair climber, blasting loud music in my ears, until I stop being so pissed off. I make it onto the basketball team and my coach tells me on the first day that I’m not good, but I am taller than everyone else, so that’s enough.

I’m seventeen years old. I am even taller with even bigger hips and larger breasts and better thought out opinions. I am louder. I tell myself I care less when boys call me a fat bitch. I stop playing basketball. I don’t participate in gym. I decide that if I can’t be skinny, I’ll be really, really smart.

And I am really, really smart. I go to college and get even smarter. I fall in love and get my heart broken. I have internships and take hard classes and do the right things. I even get a Master’s degree. I have a job I hate. I meet my husband who loves me completely and tells me so. I move across the country twice. I have four jobs in between. I lose and gain about fifteen pounds and I have a love-hate relationship with my body. I am champion of the “is she fatter than me” game. I realize after a while that usually, no, she is not fatter than me.

I’m twenty seven. I’m larger since my mom was diagnosed with cancer a year ago. I see two pink lines on a pregnancy test. My husband and I dance around our tiny apartment. I cry because I cannot believe our good fortune. We tell our families. Everyone is elated. My mama cries. Two days later my back starts to hurt. Five days after that, I start bleeding. A week later, the midwife confirms there’s no more baby. I feel like a complete failure and I tell my body it’s worthless.

I am twenty seven, nine months, and two days. I’m larger since my mother died four months ago this week. My weight gathers in different places and I realize in the middle of a Zumba class in front of the giant mirror that I don’t like my body, that I kind of hate it. That’s odd for me because despite an entire life of people reinforcing that I should definitely hate my body, that it’s fat and that makes it ugly, that there’s something wrong with it, I still love it. So it’s weird for me to look in the mirror and feel such terrible things about it. I suddenly realize I've been punishing my body. I've been punishing it for not holding onto a baby I desperately wanted, for not giving me another one, for never quite going back to normal. I've told it, “I’ll love you when you give me what I want,” which isn't really love at all. I realize I've been telling it that it’s fat and not as pretty as it used to be and unsuccessfully trying to put it on a diet because it’s been bad and must be punished. I realize that I have not been practicing self-love. And I don’t want to do that anymore.

So, here I am. I've decided there are going to be rules.

1.  I love my body. You should know that I am very good at love. When I love someone, it doesn't go away. I give them almost infinite chances. I believe that absolute best of them. I tell them frequently and with abandon that I love them. I give them everything I've got and I listen to them. I have most certainly not been loving my body.

2.  Loving my body means I’m not trying to change it. I will take it for what it is and love it in exactly that way, no hidden agendas, no secretly wishing it were different. Just pure love.

3.  I will give my body what I would give someone I love. On bad days, I will encourage my body. On good days, I will cheer it on. I will accept when it wants to do something I don’t necessarily agree with (like eat lots of chocolate if it’s sad). I will give it fresh air and sunshine and exercise.

4.  I do good things for my body BECAUSE I love it. I will not exercise because it’s been “bad.” I will exercise and eat delicious things because that’s what you give someone you love: the very best you have to give.

And because this is America, I’m blogging about it.