16
Sep

The Skill of “Good Enough” – Being Great, Just As You Are

So…  I’m kind of a perfectionist.

[I can hear the people who know me best, snorting and laughing.  My brother’s guffaws are loudest.  JUST SHUSH, BROTHER.  I KNOW.]

Really though, JUST KIND OF.  I’m kind of a perfectionist.

My brother’s laughter is not without warrant.  I used to be an over-the-top, anal retentive, angry, bossy, OCD, anxiety ridden, control freak perfectionist.  I’m not anymore.  [Seriously guys, really.]  

After years and years of driving myself into the dirt, setting personal goals to deliver the world and then feeling like a failure if I didn’t OVERdeliver the whole effing universe, hating myself for never living up to what I could be instead of what I AM, I got tired of it.

Sure, there are still things that I get clenchy about.

Like making my bed.  I can go from zero to bitchface in the same amount of time it takes a small child to jump into my halfway-made bed, which (I have found) is less than one second.  I like straight, tight sheets and covers, pillows plumped just right, cases clean and all facing the same direction.  Once the bed is made I don’t expect it to stay that way, but while I’m making it, BACK OFF.

I like my closet arranged “just so.”  I arrange all the shirts on matching hangers, facing the same direction, in order of sleeve length and sub-categorized by color, partially because it makes me happy, but also because I can tell simply by looking which shirts are in the laundry, and what color laundry needs to be done next.

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20
Jul

The Body Image Project – “the eyes have it”

July 19.

It’s tough to tell by looking at me, but I am half Japanese.

Most of the time, people can tell I’m “something else.”  I don’t look Japanese, but I don’t look particularly Caucasian, either.  As a teen and in my early twenties, the go-to-guess of my heritage was Native American.  Women generally didn’t ask me why I looked the way I did (it doesn’t seem we ask each other such questions, out of intelligence, respect, or fear of comparison), but men did.

“Hey, you look like Pocahontas.  Are you Indian or something?”

Classy.

And tactful, right?

**rolling eyes**

My answer to their boorish question:  Yeah.  “Or something.””

Despite the occasional rudeness and clumsy question, I have never been offended when people ask “what are you.”  We were raised with great pride in our culture.  We wore kimonos and danced Obon.  I learned to eat with chopsticks before I learned to use a fork.  I make sushi as easily as I make a sandwich.  I learned to write and speak Japanese (although I’m terribly out of practice).  My lunchbox held strange treats, and I had a great deal of fun sharing them with my classmates.

As Japanese-Americans, we were encouraged to fulfill the best Japanese stereotypes.  Intelligence, high level academic achievement, respect, hospitality, and honor were part of our family culture.  We were encouraged to take the best part of what it meant to be Japanese, and be that.  BE THAT, and be that as hard as you can.  I don’t know that it was ever said out loud, but we were raised to lean into the differences that set us apart from everyone else.  We were taught to stand out, stand up, and do what we were taught was right.

For the most part, an excellent lesson.

Except then I grew up, I attempted to become my own person, and I realized that neat and tidy suitcase of stereotypes, the one I unquestioningly picked up and took pride in because it was part of our culture?

It wasn’t just full of good things, there was some bad stuff in there too.Read More

30
Jun

5 Tips to Setting Great Weight Loss Goals

I consider myself to be an expert-level goal setter.

This makes me sound arrogant and kind of like an asshole, but it’s true.

I’m not super good at a lot of stuff.  I can’t dance to save my life.  I can’t twerk (my kids groan when I try, and I threw my back out once).  I can’t sing well, so I make up for lack of pitch with volume.  I can’t lie without twitching and folding (horrible at poker), I don’t play a musical instrument, I don’t sit still long enough to tolerate knitting, cross stitch, or crochet.

GOALS, though.  I can do goals.

As a go-big-or-go-home kind of person, I LIKE goals.  Goals get me efficiently where I want to go.  I like BIG goals.  I like setting a goal that makes me a little bit afraid, because I know I’m going to have to dig deep to crush it.  I have a pretty active and brilliant imagination, so the goals I come up with in my head are quite detailed.

And, as far as execution goes, I almost always hit the goals I set for myself.  I can’t remember the last time I set a goal and didn’t accomplish it.  My cycle of success is (finally) established, and I don’t fail often.

EXCEPT WITH WEIGHT LOSS.Read More

06
Apr

When the Bad Stuff Keeps Coming Back – PTSD and Survival

Last night, I had a bad dream.

It was a lucid dream.  It was a dream that was so real, I woke up in a daze.  The lines between sleep and reality were blurred for a long while after the alarm went off, and even after I was up and walking around, the dream clung to me like sticky, wet fog.  It clogged up my brain like cotton wool, and stuck behind my eyes like the brightness-burn you get after staring at your computer for too long, when every blink illuminates against the inside of your eyelids a perfect, colorless, reverse image of real life.

The dream I had was about real life, and it still burns.

The life and the dream.

When I was six or seven, I was the target of sexual assault.  The abuse lasted almost three years.  I don’t think of it often, and until I had a daughter that hit the age I was when it happened, I never thought of it at all.  Those memories were dark and ugly, denied and decidedly irrelevant, tucked away in the back-most corners of my head.  I didn’t drag them out, I didn’t talk about them, and the armed guard in front of the closet door where they lived knew to not let anyone inside.

There they sat.Read More

28
Aug

The Danger of Comparison – Building Your Worth On The Backs Of Others

I wonder if Eve thought she was fat.

You know, THE Eve.  Adam’s love, the woman that lived in the Garden of Eden.  THAT Eve.  The first woman around, the first woman created.  I wonder if she thought she was fat.

Regardless of your religious stance, whether you believe the story to be God breathed or purely fiction, take a minute to think about it.  I can see it perfectly in my head.

Eve wakes up for the first time, freshly formed from Adam’s rib, formed by the hand of God Himself, takes her first breath of God-filled air, looks down at her body, and says, “HOLY HIPS, GOD.  WTF.  Looook at how fat I am.  And this pudge.  (grabs skin around middle)  I am SO ANGRY.  THIS is what you dealt me?  I could have been ANY SHAPE, and THIS is the one you pick.  ARE YOU BLIND?  LOOK AT ME.  No one in the world is ever going to want me, I’m DISGUSTING.  You might as well name me the same as that thing over there.  (points to brand new cow)  (looks around, sees Adam)  Hey you, what’s your name?  Adam?  Hey, Adam, do you think these leaves make me look fat?”

[And yes, I know the leaves came later, but you get my point.]

In my mind I can see Eve, acting out the words and thoughts I’ve had with regard to myself and my body, and I can’t stop shaking my head.

I just don’t think she’d do that.
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29
Apr

Saying Goodbye to Bulimia, FOR REALS – Owning Your Body

Okay guys, here we go.

(This is Mace, by the way.  He’s my trusty sidekick.)  :)

mace is the best support ever.

mace is the best support ever.

I’m embarrassed to post this picture. I’m ashamed to post it. Not because I’m ashamed of how I look, but because I feel like I’m letting all of you down.

I’m so, so sorry.  I’m sorry that this is what I look like.  After nine months on the program, I’m sorry that my physical self does not represent my progress.  I feel like I need to confess, ask for forgiveness, and repent.
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18
Sep

How to Feel Good About What You’ve Got – The Power of Perspective

In an earlier part of my life I served as a missionary.  The experience crushed me and left me shattered and hollowed out.

But in a really good way.

Nkule, the day we took him in.

Nkule, the day we took him in.

This is Nkule.  He was born in Winterton, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Well, technically he was born OUTSIDE of Winterton, since the ACTUAL place he was born was a tiny hut made of mud and straw well outside of civilization.  No electricity, no running water, no plumbing of any kind.  At least a one hour hike to the nearest hand-pump well.  The clothes you see him wearing are the only clothes he owned.

I had seen Nkule for the first time about a week prior to the time of this photograph.  When I saw him he was clean and sitting with his sister, his two cousins, and his grandmother.  His grandma sought a meeting with “the missionaries” to seek counsel, and we had agreed to meet with her.
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04
Sep

Lessons for My Younger Self – Regret and Growth

I was thinking.

If you could travel back in time and find the younger version of yourself, what would you say?  What would you tell younger-you?

There are movies about such things.  A guy is older and hates his life, then goes back to talk to the younger version of himself to set things straight.  There are books and blogs that tell the same story, varied in one way or another.  I’m positive that almost every older person has daydreamed and wished for the ability to teach their younger-selves a lesson and prevent pain, or mistakes, or regret.

I don’t usually check the rear view, but every once in a while I think about “MAN, how awesome would it have been to know this-or-that when I was seventeen.”  I think about how differently things would have been for me as a kid if I’d known then what I know now.  Or how different my world would be right now if I’d made a different choice for school, or work, or relationships.  Like a line of dominoes, the first few tipping in a different direction would have laid down a whole separate path.

MAN I wish I would have known.
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03
Sep

Goodbye, My Dearest Ana – Quitting Anorexia

We met when I was really young.  I was really small when I heard my mom say she was fat, when I heard my dad tell me how lazy and gross people were that HAD fat.  Ana was there, then.  She held my hand tight and told me that no matter what, if I was with her I would never be THAT.  “Stick with me.  We’ll never be fat.”  Even though I didn’t need her help then, I always knew she was there.  She was my safety net.

At age seven and eight I started hearing praise for how skinny I was.  “You’re so small.  You’re so THIN.  LOOK AT HOW SKINNY YOUR LEGS ARE.”  Ana didn’t do much at that point to earn that praise, but she liked it.  It FED her.  She felt happiest when I heard such things.  I felt happiest when I heard such things.
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