self-acceptance

Inhabitant

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 1 Comment

This body o’mine

Through her I’ve met the world

She’s been gentle with me

But her, I’ve pushed and hurled

She’s taken hard knocks

From without and within

I’ve treated her rough

Lived a life full of sin

She’s asked little of me

Given me all that I’ve asked

Less-than-loving I’ve been

At times, she’s been trashed

I’ve wasted so much time

Hating parts I deemed flawed

The time has come to make peace

And to treat her with awe

I see her now as she is

A miraculous home for my soul

I thank her daily and nurture her

She’s a beautiful part of my whole

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: inhabit

Pathfinder

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 6 Comments

Perhaps my way’s not been graceful

I’ve done my best, and that’s not for nothing

At times I’ve lurched or been wasteful

But it’s been my way, and that is something

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: lurch

Homecoming

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 4 Comments

I’m emerging from my center

More confident

More curious

Something’s unfurling deep within

A knowing

A joy in being

A releasing of what’s seemed lost

So missed

So welcome

So…mine

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: unfurl

Anti-glare

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 3 Comments

Some time ago, I decided it was time to eradicate the “glare” from my roster of habitual modes of communication.

Let me back up a bit.

I come from the sorta South, Texas. Between my southern upbringing and being a female, early-on I developed-through-osmosis the skill of passive-aggression.

Being that I grew up in a family of Olympian-level champion passive-aggressors, I became quite an expert-level practitioner this behavior myself.

Then I married a man who cannot tolerate passive-aggression. He highly values directness and being able to “feel” a person and match that to what they are communicating in words and actions. It is really important to him, for various reasons that are his own to explore and not mine to share.

He challenged this in me, and I rose to the occasion. I began to own this learned and honed behavior, to forgive myself for it, and then to make different choices.

In due time, I decided that I wanted to eradicate it as best I could from my palate of expressions. I decided that I wanted to be direct in my conflicts.

Gone would be the days that I would silently glare at someone, hoping that my glance would convey all that was burning within me.

Like all those times to the person who just cut me off in traffic. I’d drive by and give them “the look.” (Didn’t seem to really have an affect…but then again, I’d already passed by and was speeding off…) Now I also know that if someone is an asshole driver, nothing anyone else does is going to change them. If they could care about it, they would. The glare will never translate to them.

Or those times somebody is having a very loud (and annoying) conversation on their phone on the bus/street/train/restaurant. Boy, did I give them a look, and more than once, at that. (Yet they never got off that phone…) These people also fall into the category of being incapable of really “getting” it. If they could “get” why it is rude to do that, they wouldn’t do it in the first place. My glare? They won’t be able to take it in.

See the problem? That glare just doesn’t do it.

In such circumstances, it is time to use my outside voice.

To say, hey. You almost killed me there. Be careful.

Hey. You are making us all hostage on this bus.

Hey, man. You are man-spreading. Make room.

No more glaring, for this recovering PG’er.

Here I go.

 

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: glaring

Taste Bud

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 2 Comments

When I think of those years,

The spicy and the dicey years

of my long-since past misspent lost youth,

I no longer have regrets.

I’m now seasoned, steady, sublime

I embrace it all as a part of my truth.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: spicy

Fun fact: Did you know that someone just recently decided to make “hot and spicy condoms?” Yep. Hmmm. Really?

Mull on that one a while…

 

Rebel Without a Cause

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 6 Comments

Confession: I often poo-poo fads or things that get really popular really fast without even trying them firsthand.

I won't go see a movie that everyone is talking about, for example. Like The Revenant. Wouldn't go see it in the theatre.

It is an annoying habit. A strange, stubborn character trait that I both wear like a badge and admit is pretty ridiculous at the same time.

It's like I just have to go the opposite way because everyone else is all-over a thing.

Like when electric toothbrushes came out.

I had so much judgement around them!

I prided myself on staying old school. I harshly judged those who bought them as "Suckers fallen prey to marketing schemes of money-hungry dentists!"

I mean, come on! Does anybody really need a frigging electric toothbrush? Jeez! Lazy much?

And then, one day, years after they'd been out, I tried one.

And I finally discovered what all the fuss is about.

And now, it is one of my must-have items.

I still haven't passed over into the truly high-end versions.

I love a particular brand, the Colgate Optic White Battery Powered toothbrush. (Full disclosure: a big plus is that it matches my bathroom wall color, a detail that greatly influenced my choice.)

And so just as was the case with jalapeños, Diet Sierra Mist, Tab and QuestBars, I became a convert once I actually tried it for myself.

Sometimes, a fad is just a fad. (I finally did see The Revenant and still think it was way overrated and was not happy when Leo Di Caprio won the Oscar that year for it.)

But sometimes, a fad is a fad for good reason.

And sometimes, I eventually "get it," despite myself.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: toothbrush

Lust Life

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 14 Comments

Much of my adult life has been about coming to terms with lust.

Having grown up in a fairly conservative family with mainly Protestant roots, I learned early on to deny and repress my lust: for life, for sex, for fame, for love, for food.

So much so that I lived a kind of double life from my teens into my twenties.

I hid many behaviors that all revolved around my various appetites. Somewhere in my somewhat stunted emotional development, I had learned that being seen as having a need (be it physical or otherwise) was weak, unattractive.

And so I learned to pretend I did not have them.

And yet, at the same time, I also had a very strong need to be seen as a sexual object. (See Sexual Healing, my previous post on this issue.) This presented quite a war within me. I desperately wanted to be seen and treated like a sexually desirable woman – that was sort of the ultimate need. At the same time, I had shame and embarrassment around this and had strong messaging that that was bad, and that I should be a good girl with no sexuality, appetites, strong opinions or feelings.

And so I pretended to be one one way while in secret I acted in other ways.

I invested a great deal of time into creating the illusion that I was chaste, a normal eater, and had  a very neutral opinion on just about everything. I monitored my emotions and watched myself around people, carefully choosing mannerisms and tones to project a good girl.

Meanwhile, I was living quite another kind of life, a life I hid from my family, my friends. A life of appetite and lust and danger.

There were certainly angels watching over me. I was often in the wrong places at the wrong time. Somehow, I survived.

At a certain point in my twenties, the jig was up, as they say.

My psyche demanded that I heal the split, and I began the process of recovering wholeness again.

Of uncovering my own genuine appetites from a place of love, curiosity and acceptance. Of letting go of the urge to keep my appetites hidden.

I began a process of embracing of my true nature and wants and needs as beautiful reflections of my own humanity. I began the shedding of the shaming nature that I inherited.

An unlearning of the social pressure that happens in middle school to put a damper on enthusiasm, to keep a lid on want to look cool.

I learned to let myself eat as I really wanted to in front of others.

I learned to let myself be seen trying, excited, wanting, sexy, hungry, angry, hopeful, happy, disappointed, frightened, messy, unhappy, empty, full, vulnerable, awkward, lonely, blissful.

I learned to let myself be seen. As I really am.

Today I value the self-honesty that I live from. Truth is of huge importance to me.

Though I am still in awe of the capacity I had within my own psyche to maintain such a dichotomy the way I did – that I could compartmentalize two such distinct worlds at once – I am so grateful that that is just a chapter in my story.

Today, I have one world with many parts: parts that co-mingle and bring me great joy in their diversity.

I celebrate my appetites, I revel in my enthusiasms and passions.

I love my lust. It is what lets me know I am human. And alive.

So today, I try to wear my lust like a smile.

 

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: lust

 

Shallow Depths

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 7 Comments

Deep within
There is a certain part of me
Who stills believes
Life would be so much better
If I'd been born beautiful:
A super model, a movie star

Shallow, I know,
But that part of me's convinced
Nothing sways her
She doesn't care that you
Can't cherrypick and you'd get
All their shit too (and that we all have shit)

She is absolutely sure
To be adored for your looks
Would beat the rest
That being loved for a face or body
Is more than enough for her
And she won't hear otherwise

This part of me
Would make a deal with a thousand devils
It would sell my soul
For the chance to find out
If life really is better for the super stars and models

I've given up trying
To win her over to Self-Love Land
She cannot comprehend adult logic
So I hold her hand
And I say "I hear you," then lead her into the deeper waters to play

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: shallow

Aural Fixation

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 16 Comments

For as long as I remember, I’ve had a hard time with people making certain sounds.

A healthcare worker on the train incessantly popping her gum. The man behind me in line jangling the change in his pants’ pocket. A toddler at the grocery kicking at the back of my shopping cart. Some street vender guy whistling on the street.

These have the capacity to drive me crazy.

I am not talking mildly bothered. I mean, they make me feel homicidal.

(Disclaimer: I have not nor would I ever act on those impulses. But I do have them.)

What is it about these sounds that gets my goat? I mean, I am a singer, after all. I love music. I am an actress. I love and study voice and vocal expression.

I have very acute hearing, and I process quite aurally. My sense of hearing is a very rich source of sense memory for me in my work. Having the sense of a person’s voice will flood me with my experience of them. Recalling a song will take me back to all the sensations I was having at the time when I was first living with it.

I believe in the healing powers of sound and have benefited from and used them in my healing work.

With such a powerful connection to sound, you’d think that I would love ’em all. Nope.

There’s something about a repetitive sound that is out of my power to affect being generated by someone else that just gets to me.

Sometimes I think it is because I am the youngest, and grew up in a household with a workaholic, rageaholic father. I learned to listen to the house to pick up on cues and signals so that I could navigate the often-dangerous waters of our family dynamics.

I have a strong need for freedom as a result. It is way up there on my needs list. I need to feel free to express myself and to act freely over just about anything else. Cannot stand to feel suppressed or contained.

So you would think I’d applaud the free sound-making of others. Live and let live!

But, well, no. Just no. To certain sounds. The repetition doesn’t have to be steady. It can be slow and constant, like Chinese water-torture. It can be an intermittent or random pattern. (That can be worse!)

Having to hear someone else’s music on the subway, either when they blast it from their phone (without ear buds!) or so loud that you can hear it through the earbuds isvery  aggravating for me.

The worst is the sound of slurping soup or smacking eating sounds. (Chewing or crunching for some reason is OK.) I had a dear ex-boyfriend who loved soup and loved to slurp it. It gave him such joy. I could not stand it. It was one of a few deal breakers. He offered to change it, but I didn’t want that. He got such pleasure eating it that way. Just because I happened to have a problem with it didn’t mean he should give it up. It was sad, but we were not to be.

There’s a song in the musical “Chicago” called “Cell Block Tango” where the women in jail sing about why they killed their husbands/boyfriends. One does it because he popped his gum. “He Had it Coming.”

“You know how people
have these little habits
That get you down. Like Bernie.
Bernie like to chew gum.
No, not chew. POP.
So I came home this one day
And I am really irritated, and I’m
looking for a bit of sympathy
and there’s Bernie layin’
on the couch, drinkin’ a beer
and chewin’. No, not chewin’.
Poppin’. So, I said to him,
I said, “you pop that
gum one more time…”
and he did.
So I took the shotgun off the wall
and I fired two warning shots…
…into his head.”

I so get it.

I have done a bit of research, and apparently there are others like me. There is something called misophonia that unfortunately sounds a bit too close to home on this.

Misophonia: “also known as selective sound sensitivity syndrome, starts with a trigger. It’s often an oral sound — the noise someone makes when they eat, breathe, chew, yawn, or whistle. Sometimes a small repetitive motion is the cause — someone fidgets, jostles you, or wiggles their foot.

Interestingly: “This lifelong condition usually starts between the ages of 9 and 13 and is more common with girls. It comes on quickly, but isn’t related to any one event. Doctors aren’t sure what causes misophonia, but it’s not a problem with your ears. They think it’s part mental, part physical. It could be related to how sound affects your brain and triggers automatic responses in your body.”

Source: http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what-is-misophonia

I’ve never sought a diagnosis or treatment. I assume if I do have misophonia, it is pretty mild.

I always have choices. I can move away, change cars, practice breathing exercises, put on headphones and listen to music myself to drown out the other’s.

I try to remain curious, compassionate with myself and others, and also find some humor around it.

After all, the making of the sounds is out of my control in the end, isn’t it? All I can control is how I choose to live with my response to them.

In the words of good ole Autry:

“I got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle
As I go ridin’ merrily along
And they sing, ‘Oh ain’t you glad you’re single’
And that song ain’t so very far from wrong”

Read more: Gene Autry – (I’ve Got Spurs That) Jingle Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: jangle

Constant Craving

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 10 Comments

When I was a girl, I lived for food.

The promise of the after-school snack kept me going through the grueling days of my youth. I’d race home to find sweet and savory relief from the confusion of adolescence.

I’d eat from a box of graham crackers, spreading layers of vanillla chocolate chip canned frosting. Or I’d slice up a Snickers bar the way they did in a commercial on at the time, pretending I was in it. Then maybe some Lay’s potato chips. Maybe a Wonder Bread/Gulden’s Mustard/Kraft cheese and baloney sandwich.

I was on my own, so I could eat like I wanted to. No father home yet to bring tension and self-consciousness to the air.

I’d fill myself, quelling the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings that haunted me at any other time of my day. This was all mine. My time free from criticism, pressure or fear.

Over the years, I became desperate around this intimate connection with food. Protective of the rituals. The private pleasure I found in food and the act of eating it.

I knew something was off about how I related to food. I felt ashamed and like there was something wrong with me, while at the same time feeling like it was crucial to my very existence. That trichotomy created a painful struggle inside me of shame and appetite and need.

I became secretive around it, knowing on some level that I was not like other people.

I now understand that somewhere along the way, I learned to equate food with so many things I needed: love, attention, security, connectedness, relief, quiet, peace, pleasure, a sense of having something for myself, a way to feel like I had control of one thing in the world.

I believe that some of this relationship to food was learned, familial. My mother, too, sought refuge in her treats. She loved candy, and when I came home from school, she was usually lying in her bed, reading mystery novels, eating candy from a stash she kept in her bedside table. She, too, at some point in her life, reached for food to solve and resolve being on this planet.

I understood her for this. I feel such compassion for her. For her huge needs and the dysfunctional way she had developed to cope with getting them met.

It has taken many years of unraveling this connection for me to find a new relationship to food. There’s been tremendous loss in it. A loss of my friend, my savior, my companion, my sidekick.

But it has been so freeing, too. I have  been learning how to give myself what I had asked for from food all those years: love.

Sounds easy, and obvious, right? But what does that actually look like?

It looks like this: giving myself The Five A’s of Love: Attention, Acceptance, Appreciation, Affection, and Allowing.

(The Five A’s concept is from the wonderful book How To Be An Adult in Relationships – Five Keys to Mindful Loving by psychotherapist, David Richo, PhD.)

Those Five A’s satisfy the snack craving every time. I’m not saying I don’t still crave and even miss that snack eating ritual. I do. That’s a deeply embedded habit. I got pretty hard-wired around it.

But today, I take the snack-seeking girl inside by the hand, and I ask her what she really needs. 

Sometimes it is some appreciation for all I have been doing all day.

Sometimes it is affection. Maybe a bath. Some demonstration of loving care.

Maybe it is the need to be allowed to really acknowledge feeling afraid, or spent, or angry.

It took awhile for that part of myself to trust that my needs could be met in new ways. To trust in something other than food.

To trust life. To trust love. To trust loving myself, in life.

It is an every day practice, this mindfulness of love. I pour the energy I used to hold for food into other things. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t gotten my wires crossed, that food wasn’t so complicated for me.
But it is.

And so I accept this truth as if I were diabetic, and I do what I need to do to care for myself.

Mostly, as I said, I feel free.

I no longer carry that shame I felt around it. I am literally lighter in spirit. That feeling is the prize I keep my sights on. It is what makes it all worth it.

I may no longer “have” snacks. But I have me.

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: snack