Potato Salad is a gift to mankind that I have recently realized I can happily eat every day. Fight me.
After many years of struggling with horrifically negative body self talk, restrictive dieting, borderline eating disorders, and insecurity – I have finally begun to make progress in learning to honor, even love, my body. I have rolls and cellulite. I’m 20lbs heavier than I have ever been in my entire life. And when you’re 5’4″ (and have been the skinny bitch of every friend group since you were 10) it’s noticeable. I have confronted the fears. My partners are not going to leave me because I went up a size. And if they did – those are not the kind of partners I want. My kids praise my squishiness literally all the time. To them, I am a soft place to land. It’s been a year of me just breathing through. I want to be stronger, but I have given up being thinner. It’s not worth it. My body has done too much, given me too much, for me to ever wonder if I have earned my dinner ever, ever again.
Baked chips are not chips. They are the love child of chips and crackers and I am not mad about it.
Today, while trying to keep myself out of a panic attack, I became suddenly aware of a sound that I currently and will always cherish (and someday, miss with an awful ache) the slap of kid feet running in and out of the house and shouting “MOM!” to show me something. These few years will go so fast.
Get the gap insurance. Just do it. You never, ever know when life is just going to… drop a fucking global pandemic on your ass.
We don’t play in the rain enough. Today, my daughter and I played in the rain. Well, we moved bricks in the rain but it felt like playing. It was a light rain, no storm, nice and warm. We got soaked. There was no dry clothing by the time we got in. Every layer was drenched. But it was perfect. And it felt amazing. And I’m done with letting anything other than ‘perfect’ weather dictate my outdoor time.
Dive in. Do the thing you don’t know how to do. Make mistakes. Look ridiculous. It’s so much better than never trying. And it’s so good for my kids to see me doing it. Today my daughter watched me fail in my first 11 attempts to fold dumplings. Yesterday my son watched me lose a fight with a can of spray paint. Next weekend they are going to watch me figure out how to use a tiller. But importantly, they watch me want to do something. They watch me not have any idea how to do it. They watch me research (a little). They watch me try. They watch me fail. They watch me keep trying until I succeed. I can now fold a dumpling confidently. I know how to use upside down spray paint cans. And soon I’ll be able to use a tiller. And every time it gets a little easier to fail and feels a little better to succeed. Understanding that one naturally follows the other, rather than it being an either/or situation.
What is one thing about people that you have a preference about that everyone else thinks is weird? I’ll go first. I love my partner’s feet. My male partner has wide feet and his toes all end at the same length like a rectangle. It is ridiculously attractive to me.
Aaaaaand there is your daily peek inside my mind. You’re welcome.
The Book of Her 