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Blog Spotlight: Can You Stay For Dinner

December 6, 2011

We'll get back to paint colors, kitchen plans and art work tomorrow.  In fact, I had every intention to write a gift guide for a 22 month old today.  But then this morning, during Greta's nap, I came across a blog so inspiring I have to (HAVE to) share it with you.

I haven't ever really battled with weight, but I have had moments of insecurities.  Who hasn't?  I have uttered the words "pre-baby" and "post-baby" too many times.  I cling on to pictures of myself from years and years ago when I was working out hard for 90 minutes a day, promising myself I'll get there again even though I know that's not true.  I found this blog through Pinterest (surprise) and she has lost 135 lbs, but even more importantly, she talks about the feelings she has about herself.  She talks about loving herself and how she stopped working out because it became an abusive relationship with herself.  She talks about loving life and even the things she misses about pushing 300 pounds.  The whole message is about peace.

She is gorgeous.  She is eloquent.  And I can't stop reading.  For your reading pleasure:

(There is a menu on the left side all about her story.  I started there.)


An Excerpt:
When you’re big for twenty years, the only twenty you’ve ever known, you’ll kindly not frown upon two decades. You’ll know that who you are was formed in there, and that’s beautiful.
Hear me.
Beautiful.
I hear accounts of those who’ve lost a tremendous amount of weight. Maybe they were on the Biggest Loser; maybe the cover of People. Most often, they speak about their former selves, the bigger ones, in a very detached way. As if the here and now is infinitely better and more lovely than the past. And maybe it is in lots of ways. But here’s the thing: it was you all along.
I don’t think back on my past and want to redo it. I don’t flip pages of my baby book and think, ‘dear, what cankles you had.’ I don’t see my adolescent self, my teenage self, and wish those pictures, scrapbooked and framed, would disappear. Mom, really, with the Glamour Shots? Really? My life, big, was always all I knew. And that is perfect in its own right.
Yes, I know now that with 135 extra pounds, something more was wrong than my weight. The scales I tipped should have tipped me off to emotional suffering. But not all of it was sad, or scared.
Some of the weight was happy and as well rounded as it came across.
Some of it meant that I developed a personality first.
A sense of humor before a sense of entitlement.
Empathy before ego.
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