between the drops

be brave. be authentic. be you.

i am not my body: i am me

it's always interesting to me, to experience the many different ways that others experience me.

does that make sense?

the way people respond to others is always very telling.  it tells so much about the person doing the responding, and i am fascinated by this from a sociological perspective.

this week i have had the privilege of learning a lot about this exact thing.

by last night i felt very much like i had been beaten down.  partly by people i know, and partly by people i didn't even know existed in this world.  judgment is a very interesting thing.

and you know what?  i felt this even though i stand by the following idea:

i am not my body.  i believe the words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:  "we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience."

anyone who knows me knows that i believe this to the fullest; and that i am often heard saying the words:  "i am not my outsides."

so this week a picture of me, in all my natural born nakedness, was posted on Facebook.  it was certainly not a sexual or pornographic photograph in any way.  it was just a straight forward body shot ... i am proud of it, and saddened by the truth of how some people responded to it.  not saddened for myself, but saddened for what it says about human nature and instinctive response.

here is how some of the thread went:

one comment: omg there is a picture of you naked on fb. thought i should tell you so you can delete it before anyone sees it!
me: why would i want to do that?

another comment: oh no. you must be so embarrassed.
me: why would i be embarrassed? embarrassed of what?

here are my thoughts:
1) i am not my body. i am my insides, i am not my outsides.
2) having said that, i am proud of my body. it has been pregnant multiple times, survived multiple miscarriages, and produced 2 healthy human beings. it kept those 2 human beings alive solely on the milk it created. it has scars, stretch marks, and the effects of aging. and i am proud to have it. it is not perfect and i don't care. i am grateful that in my 40s anyone at all wants to take a picture of it. 
3) nudity does not equal sex. if you think it does, that says a lot about you, not me. in fact, sex does not even require nudity (gasp!) i have seen profile pictures of women and girls who are not old enough to vote, that are more provocative and suggestive than this. my parents and my children were present at this shoot and my dad took pictures of me as well. in all of the modeling i have done i have never shot anything sexual in nature. any photographer i have worked with can attest to that and the fact that i work with integrity and respect.
4) if you are judging me, i am glad this is a picture of my outsides and not your insides.

i haven't always loved my body; i was teased when i was younger, and i have been on the receiving end of many insults regardless of my age, about being too thin, not having meat on my bones, assumptions that i never eat, or whatever anyone thinks is okay to say.  i was told once that nursing was ruining my body.  i have had times, as everyone has, of wishing my body were different.  it has taken me a long time to finally feel good about it and embrace it and be nothing but thankful for the miraculous healthy machine that it is.  whatever it looks like.  it is the only body i have to carry me around in this place, and i am not embarrassed of it.  i am grateful for it and respectful of it.

i was also told this week by more than one person that i should be ashamed.  that i should consider how my children will be affected by such a thing.  that i am inappropriate.  odd.  gross.     (gross? really?  don't we all have bodies?  human bodies?  made basically the same?)  again ... some of these were people i know and some were not; they were merely judging me and stating their opinion.  i know that this says everything about them, and not a thing about me.  if someone says i am inappropriate, that can be what they think, but that doesn't make it true any more than if they said i am a penguin.  their perspective is true for them.  not for me.  i know that the way we see things is according to the way we think and the things we believe and the experiences we have had.  and i also know that just because we think something, that doesn't make it true.  our opinions and beliefs are not necessarily "right" for everyone else.  we are no better for believing what we believe, and no one else is better than we are, for believing what they believe.  it is not our place to insist our beliefs on others, nor is it their place to push theirs on us.

"it's one thing to feel you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path." -Paulo Coelho

just because i am not embarrassed or modest about my outsides, i am not conservative nor shy, that doesn't have to translate into me being ugly on the inside or any of the other things that people threw at me this week.  i know this because i know who i am.  and i know that people will see what they choose to see.

the facebook thread continued and i responded:

i believe there is something for me to learn from every person, even when they are in disagreement with me or judgmental. i respect their right to their own opinion and i am grateful that they feel they can express it to me. but even though i am a peacekeeper, i have learned that i do not need to withhold my own thoughts in order to keep peace. i know that when others have opinions that they believe are "right" ... that doesn't mean i am wrong if i think differently. and likewise, they are not "wrong" if they don't believe as i do. i have learned to live with the judgments of others for whatever it is that they believe. i choose to stand as me, be the soul of where i stand, and believe in myself, you, others, love, and peace. i don't judge those who judge me. i go to sleep at night knowing who i am.

so to anyone judging me in those ways, i only say i am sorry that you struggle with that which is different than yourself.  a lack of openness towards the differences in all of us only leads to a lack of growth and a smaller experience of this wonderful life.  you can wish that i were different ... because perhaps that would make you more comfortable in your own skin, but i am not going to change who i am due to your issues or your particular sensitivities.  i am not going to become what you want me to become.  it is not my responsibility to mold myself into what makes you feel good.  i am not here to satisfy you.  you do not have to like me or like to look at me, but you have every right to your opinion and every right to look or go the other way and get back to your own life.

if you are offended by my body, that's okay with me. you don't have to look at it. isn't that awesome??

be still my anxious heart

i grew up in a military family.  like many military families, we moved.  we moved a lot ...  almost every single year that i was in school.  one time we didn't, but then we made up for that by moving in the middle of another year. i went to 11 schools in my 11 academic years before college.

i left a lot of people over the years, and sadly that became the normal way of things for me.  i remember feeling that if i ever had children i would want them to be rooted someplace so they wouldn't have to go through that.  i easily cry when i see people graduating, even if i don't know them, or when i see the bonds of people who have grown up together ... even if it's on television and i know it isn't real, LOL ...  probably even if it's a cartoon.  it's just something i never experienced.  it has always been the case that when people ask me where i'm from, i don't know.

i could go on and on about the different ways in which this affected me, but tonight a couple of those ways are standing in front of me and staring at me like ghosts with no expressions on their faces.

one of these is the way that i became very quick and good at making friends and at taking people into my life.  i simply had no time to waste, and i learned not to bother with what anyone looked like or from where anyone came.  all people were equal friend opportunities to me.  and i jumped right in.  if i waited for something to grow and for trust to be built, i would never have had anyone.  i would have moved again before i had a chance to know what friendship was.  i am still this way in my adult life.   everyone i meet is an equal opportunity friend or value or gift to my life.  and then i go by instinct, i go by feeling. and i dive in.  and i open my true self.  i open my home.  i open my heart.  i am transparent and i feel free to start out by being me.

the other of these ways is that i separated from a lot of people.  and it always ripped me apart, to part with anyone.  i learned that even with the best of intentions, and promises that we would always remain as close as we were that day, eventually ... i would lose them.  it was only a matter of time, and it was only life.  it wasn't anyone's fault.  they were not to blame, i was not to blame, the military was not to blame.  i got used to it.  that isn't to say it stopped hurting.  i just somehow adapted.

like everyone else, i have lost people who have passed away, and some who have drifted in and out of my life, but tonight i have that familiar sadness of losing someone to a move ... yet unfamiliar because of different circumstances ... and i am not the one leaving ... but i feel that same fear of loss, and the breaking feeling of something like when you rip a piece of paper and then put it on top of itself and rip it again, and then put those pieces together and rip again, and again, and again.

i do believe that we are all connected, and that through space and time we remain together.

yet my heart hurts and it is through a physical ache in my chest and tears and sticky mascara laden eyelashes that i can barely see to write this, because someone so close to me will soon no longer be in my daily world.  or at least it feels that way.  someone who changed my life.  someone i love, in a true heart to heart, human to human, spirit to spirit, #thispersonissuchagoodpersonicanhardlystandit  kind of way.

do you know the feeling of when someone passes away, the sky looks different the next day ... the air looks different ... things sound different ...you wonder how anyone in their right mind can be going through the McDonald's drive thru and laughing and listening to the radio ...  it's a change like that.

i know that everyone is on their own journey, and each person walks their own path.  i am happy for this person's path, no matter where it goes, i am proud of each step and overjoyed knowing of the adventure that lies ahead.  i know peace is there.  i know it is right.  i know it is true.  and i wouldn't want it not to be.

still i lay myself down tonight with eyes that hurt,  a heart that's heavy, and a soul that sighs.

it's just a move, a relocation, and as my oldest son says, "at least nowadays mom you have email and text and skype and facetime and google hangouts..."

and as my youngest son says, "remember what you said mommy.  at the end of the day, my heart looks like your heart..."