Monday, April 25, 2011

Real life barbie....

Just got back from a long chat with the therapist about my eating and why I am having such a hard time with it all today, and ironically a friend had posted a story on Facebook about a lifesize Barbie that was made to the proportions of the doll.... http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42595605

The bust is...... 39", the waist....18" and the hips....33". The picture is quite striking....


Tuesday, April 19, 2011

This be the verse - Thanks Thom....

My brother shared this with me as a response to my earlier post, and it made me smile so I am sharing it....

"This be the verse"
Philip Larkin


They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Monday, April 18, 2011

For Children Who Are Broken..

I was given a copy of this poem 15 years ago, and havent thought of it since. But a conversation today reminded me of it and I went and hunted it down. It explains me better than I ever could...


For Children Who Are Broken...
Elia Wise


For children who were broken
it is very hard to mend......
Our pain was rarely spoken
and we hid the truth from friends.

Our parents said they loved us,
but they didn't act that way.
They broke our hearts and stole our worth,
with the things that they would say.

We wanted them to love us.
We didn't know what we did
to make them yell at us and hit us,
and wish we weren't their kid.

They'd beat us up and scream at us
and blame us for their lives.
Then they'd hold us close inside their
arms and tell us confusing lies
of how they really loved us
-- even though we were BAD,
and how it was OUR fault they hit us,
OUR fault that they were mad.

When days were just beginning
we sometimes prayed for them to end,
and when the pain kept coming,
we learned to just pretend
that we were good and so were they
and this was just one of those days
...tomorrow we'd be friends.

We had to believe it so.
We had nowhere else to go.
Each day that we pretended,
we replaced reality
with lies, or dreams,
or angry schemes,
in search of dignity ....
until our lies got bigger
than the truth,
and we had no one real to be

Our bodies were forsaken.
With no safe place to hide,
we learned to stop
hearing and feeling
what they did to our outsides.

We tried to make them love us,
till we hated ourselves instead,
and couldn't see a way out,
and wished that they were dead.


We scared ourselves by thinking that
and scared ourselves to know,
that we were acting just like them
--and might ever more be so.

To be half the size of a grown-
up and trapped inside their pain....
To every day lose everything
with no savior or refrain...


To wonder how it is possible
that God could so forget
the worthy child you knew you were,
when you had not been damaged yet ...

To figure on your fingers
the years till you'd be grown
enough to leave the torment
and survive away from home,
were more than you could count to,
or more than you could bear,
was the reality we lived in
and we knew it wasn't fair.

We who grew up broken
are somewhat out of time,
struggling to mend our childhood,
when our peers are in their prime.


Where others find love and contentment,
we still often have to strive
to remember we are worthy,
and heroes just to be alive.

Some of us are healing.
some of us are stealing.
Most are passing the anger on.
Some give their lives away to drugs,
or the promise of life beyond.


Some still hide from society.
Some struggle to belong.
But all of us are wishing
the past would not hold on so long.

There's a lot of digging down to do
to find the child within,
to love away the ugly pain
and feel innocence again.


There is forgiveness worthy of angel's
wings for remembering those at all,
who abused our sacred childhood
and programmed us to fall.


To seek to understand them,
and how their pain became our own,
is to risk the ground we stand on
to climb the mountain home.

The journey is not so lonely
as in the past it has been ...
More of us are strong enough
to let the growth begin.


But while we're trekking up the mountain
we need everything we've got,
to face the adults we have become,
and all that we are not.

So when you see us weary
from the day's internal climb ...
When we find fault with your best efforts,
or treat imperfection as purposeful crime ...


When you see our quick defenses,
our efforts to control,
our readiness to form a
plan of unrealistic goals ...


When we run into a conflict
and fight to the bitter end,
remember ....
We think that winning means
we won't be hurt again.

When we abandon OUR thoughts and feelings,
to be what we believe YOU want us to,
or look at trouble we're having,
and want to blame it all on you...


When life calls for new beginnings,
and we fear they re doomed to end,
remember...


Wounded trust is like a wounded knee--
It is very hard to bend.

Please remember this
when we are out of sorts.
Tell us the truth, and be our friend.

For children who were broken...
it is very hard to mend.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Monsters Under the Bed...

Monster spray and flashlights, the weapons we are given by our parents for fighting the monster who lives under our bed. But what are the weapons when our parents were the monster under the bed?

Safe seems to be the big word in my life lately. How often I don't feel safe and how much I long for that safety. It is something as children we should be entitled to and not have to question, but somehow I never got there. And have no clue how to get there...

How does one feel safe in being able to trust others to protect them, when the people who were supposed to protect us as a child never did....

How does one feel safe in who we are, when the people who made us who we are never saw a single good in anythng we did or said....

How does one feel safe in reaching out to others for help, love or support, when those who claimed to love us used and withdrew love as a weapon to control and to punish.....

How does one feel safe in their own body, when that body has turned against you and failed you on such a catastrophic level, when your legs have not held you and your feet have tripped you to the point of broken bones and painful bruises....

How does one feel safe in eating, when food has been dictated as the enemy and the cause of so much bad in your life...

How does one feel safe in their own judgement, when you have been proven a fool and used so many times....

How does one feel safe to show who we truly are, when the world has done little but laugh, criticize and condemn...

How does one feel safe in the words of others, when those words have lied, schemed and hurt more times than they have healed or comforted...

My mother used to tell me over and over again, the past is the past, what she did has no impact on me, that I was now responsible for my own future, to stop living in the past, it's done and it's over, move on...! And I believed her, just like I believed there weren't monsters under the bed!

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Stuck in reverse....

I had a really interesting shopping experience yesterday, I was looking for business clothes appropriate for giving presentations in front of large groups, so dress or skirt or suit type clothes. With where I am at these days with my views on my body shopping is not something I really enjoy, but it had to be done. As usual that meant a trip to the outlet mall. It was probably the least enjoyable shopping I have done in the last 16 months (well of course except for the shoe shopping part *smile* nothing messes up shoe shopping).



I just am not happy with where I am at physically, how I look and that mindset makes clothes look a lot worse to me, no matter how good they look to other people.

In the end I found a dress, a pair of pink capris, a few pairs of pants (all the same style but different colors) and a shirt. They work, others think they look ok. But I am really struggling with them, because of the size. The pants/capris were a 16. A year ago getting into a 16 was a dream I never thought I would reach, the day I got there I felt I had won the lottery. I blogged on here about it http://totallypredictableunpredictability.blogspot.com/2010/07/forwardregardlessrelentlessthat-is.html . Pictures went up on Facebook. It fle like a miracle. But 8 months later, it doesnt feel so great. I have made no real progress in that time, and while my body is somewhat in the same place (I have lost about 30 lbs since then, but not around my waist which is why I am the same size) my brain feels like I have gone backwards!

As I looked today at the clothes today that I bought I was really struggling trying to be happy about them, I logically know I should be so thrilled to be able to buy that size. But I just couldn't get there. So I decided to drag out my "before clothes" thinking maybe if I laid the new clothes on top of them I could see it. It has worked before. Today, not so much. I found myself slipping into "there isnt that much difference" or "there isnt enough difference" instead of that "wow" I used to get at comparisons.

Its so frustrating. I know on one level how hard I have worked, how far I have come, but on the emotional level I am not connecting to it any more. Its funny, I always thought if I found the theoretical genie in a bottle my wishes would be to move my life forward, but I think instead right now, I would wish to go back 16 months...just for one day....to remember how hard life was, how miserable I was then, to reconnect to where I came from, in hopes it would help me refind the value in where I am today, because I have lost hold of it. And my greatest fear, if I dont find a way to value where I am at now, I will start slipping back physically to where I was then!!!!!