Toddlers in Rainbow Tiaras at Gay Pride

Yea.  I took my two year old to San Francisco's Gay Pride Parade this last Sunday.

It's funny; I didn't even think twice about it until people responded with such shocked expressions.  Not shocked as in disgusted, just shocked as in "wow!  really?! I'm not sure what to say next."

I did not even realize the parade was coming up until I invited my friend to dinner Sunday night and he told me he would be at Pride.

"Oh, cool.  We'll probably take Celaya this year."  That's what I thought.  And that's what we did.

We woke up, we had breakfast, we packed up some light gear, and we took BART from Hayward to San Francisco.  We arrived around 10:15 AM with the parade schedule to kick off at 10:30.  We got off at Embarcadero, the first San Francisco stop, because we wanted to wander from one end of the parade toward the other until we decided to head home.  We left around 1:00 P.M. when all the party people had begun arriving and lighting up their joints in the middle of the crowded sidewalk.  When it was obvious that things were about to take a turn for the drunken and stoned, we took our cue that family time was over.  It was time to leave.

And that's what we did.

It was all very matter of fact for us.  We told Celaya we were going to the Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco.  And I have to admit, it was very cute to hear her say, "Gay Pride Parade" in her nasal little voice.  I explained to her that sometimes boys marry boys and girls marry girls, and we were going to celebrate those differences.  I told her the parade was about love.  About acceptance.  We had long conversations about Gay Pride all day long.

And for two days now my daughter has been talking about the BART train.

What did I expect?  A highly evolved conversation with a two year old on civil rights and equality?

Not exactly.

This morning:  "The speaker says, 'your train is coming soon,' and we don't go on other people's trains, and don't go past the bumps because the train goes 'VROOM!'"

Yep.  Boys love boys.  Girls love girls.  And my daughter loves BART.

She did enjoy the parade of balloon people and giant balloons that clapped their hands.  She danced to the fun music as giant speakers rolled by.  She completely missed the enormous, fully erect penis that walked right past her father while she was on his shoulders.  Her father did not miss it, however.

He freaked out a little.

It was a beautiful day and a beautiful celebration of love, of happiness, and of difference.

Difference.

This lesson is one I struggle to get across to Celaya on a daily basis.  Celebrate difference.  We examine different leaves, different bugs, different flowers, different cars, different body parts, different body parts on different genders:  "boys have a penis, and girls have a vagina," she is quite fond of repeating.

Yes, Kindergarden Cop, they do.

We do also recognize different ages, sizes, "baby is small.  Mama is large."  Hey, hey, slow down there with all that "large" talk, kid.

We talk about countries and regions, Papa is from Mexico, one of her books is set somewhere in Africa.

And yes, we talk about color and sexual orientation.

Celaya has very brown skin.  Many of the other children and parents at the playground when we are there have very white skin.  Our friends and family also range from very dark brown to very white.  Her dolls range the color and ethnic spectrum.  Her dolls kiss.  Her animals kiss.  Her cups kiss.  Everybody and thing in our house kisses and hugs.  All the time.

So I take every opportunity I can to have discussions centered around celebrating difference.

Because we don't live in a world yet like the one Martin Luther King, Jr. foresaw when he said,

"One day youngsters will learn words they will not understand.
Children from India will ask:
What is hunger?
Children from Alabama will ask:
What is racial segregation?
Children from Hiroshima will ask:
What is the atomic bomb?
Children at school will ask:
What is war?

You will answer them.
You will tell them:

Those words are not used anymore,
Like stage-coaches, galleys, or slavery.

Words no longer meaningful.

That is why they have been removed from dictionaries."

I long for that day.  I live for that day.  And I prepare my child to live for that day.

But I also prepare her to fight for it.  Because she will not grow up in it.
Children still go hungry.
Children are still segregated.
The atomic bomb still has lasting effects.
We are still at war.
Racism is alive and thriving.
And hate crimes are still a daily occurrence.

So my child will have to reach across the aisle.  To work to not be consumed by ignorance.  She will have to work to make a difference in the name of difference.

I will continue to teach her about ladybugs and saw bugs, about pine needles and oak leaves.

I will continue to teach her about black skin and white skin.  About homosexuality and heterosexuality, and that there is much that comes in between.

I will also teach her about the effects of black skin and white skin on society, and of society on those skins.  About the fight for equality that the LGBT movement has carried on for decades, and that still needs to carried on.  If I want change in the world, I begin with me, which means I continue with my daughter.  She must be a warrior for change.  What is the alternative?

So, yes, I will take her to pride parades.  I will take her to inner city parks and neighborhoods.  I will not flee my urban area for the suburbs.  And I will not think twice about it.

I will teach her to recognize difference, and to find the beauty therein, and then, hopefully, to reveal that beauty to others.

Beautifully Broken

What does that even mean?

I have been broken so many times in so many ways, by so many people that I have loved and trusted.  I do not look back on the breaking and think it was beautiful.  I certainly didn't think it was a beautiful breaking at the time.

I am patched back together broken.  In some ways I will never fully heal.  The scars are deep.  And yes, I have a horrible tendency to lash out viciously when my scars get grazed, or even glanced.

But I do not think this brokenness is beautiful.  Or anything to be proud of.  I do not bear my scars with pride.

The first time I heard this expression, "beautifully broken," was in a song by Government Mule.  The lead singer sings in a low voice about seeing "the way she plays her man," and that he knows he's "got to know her name."  He goes on, through whiskey tinted lyrics, to note that "she's so dangerously twisted, shaped by the wind."  He wants to know why he lies to himself, "pretend that I can break her, when she's already been so beautifully broken."

I know this woman.  In an alternate reality, I am this woman.  Hurting men because she's been so badly hurt.  Hardening to the world of love, using sex as a tool, never opening up to anyone, feeling dark and alone and, yes, dangerous.  I was well on my way there when I met Carlos.  She haunts me.

In one of our few intense fights, which means I used words like knives to cut at my husband, Carlos asked me, calmly, incredulously, "why do you hate men so much?  Who hurt you so bad?"  Hmmm... Where do I begin?

But no, that is not where I want to go here.  The point is that in those moments, there are always two Shannas.  There is the one that says, "fuck off," walks out of the room, the house, gets into the car, finds a bar, finds a new guy, finds a way to close off, close down, shut out.

And there is the Shanna that asks herself what makes someone think that about me, especially someone who knows me so well, and knows that I love him.

Do I hate men?

No.

But that other Shanna surely does.

And I have to acknowledge the path not taken.  I have to recognize that there are myriad choices I made and did not make that got me here, to this point, a healthier place emotionally and psychologically, but that the perpetually broken path is the slippery one I can always slip back onto.

It is not beautiful.  It is dark.  It is lonely.  It is constantly painful.  It is a path I nod at when it beckons me, and I look at my husband, I look at my darling daughter, who has no reason to hate men, and I look in the mirror.  I do not want to be Miss Havisham.

I get that men find that unavailability attractive, in the same way so many women drool over the "bad boy" who always hurts them because they too are closed off and empty inside from selling away their souls piece by broken piece.  Darkness is tempting, it is alluring, it beckons.

What I do not understand is women want to be known as beautifully broken.

I googled the term after a coworker yesterday told me that her sister has a tattoo across her lower back that bears that insignia, "beautifully broken."

First of all, I do not think you are supposed to refer to yourself that way.  I think it only works when someone else uses it to describe you.

Second of all, apparently Ashlee Simpson, the incredibly vapid pop singer has a song with the same title.  So, scratch my first of all; I guess it is okay now to refer to yourself that way.

What is the appeal then?  I am broken, but I am beautiful, please fix me?  Or I am so broken that I am beautiful, please fix me?  Or better yet, I am broken in such a beautiful way; oh yea, and please fix me?

Or use me?  Or break me some more?

For me, it connects quite cleanly with the Marilyn Monroe quote women are so fond of adopting:

"I'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure.  I make mistakes, I am out of control, and at times hard to handle.  But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."

Marilyn Monroe was an asshole.  She could not stay in a relationship.  She slept with the president of the United States, and his brother, behind their wives backs.  She was selfish, needy, thoughtless, and moronic.  And hot.  Ergo beautifully broken?

There is a great blog about this mentality on Huffpost that I read months ago.  It really struck home.  The basic point:  If I can't handle you at your worst then maybe you should stop being so horrible.

Being broken is not a license to be an asshole.  My past hurts do not give me the right to go around hurting everyone else.  Intentionally!

When I hurt my husband through my own pain, when I nip and bite at him because of my own twisted psyche, I do not say, or even think, "yea, well, deal with it.  You're lucky to have me."

I apologize.  I am ashamed.  And I hope one day that I don't push him too far.  Right out of my life.  So I work on healing, on making better choices, on (wait for it) thinking before I speak or act.

How about this:  break the cycle.  Do not aim to scratch and bleed out the same scars on someone else that have been etched into the timeline of your skin.

To be clear.  I am proud that I survived.  I am not ashamed of my scars.  But I do not claim to be beautifully broken.  There is no dignity in that calling card.  Marilyn was wounded.  Open, bleeding, weeping, seeping, wounded.  She killed herself.  She was a living, breathing, dying, tragedy.

I want to be a success story.  I want to continue to heal.

I want the other Shanna to move further and further away, for our paths to diverge so widely that mountains and rivers would have to be traversed for me to become her again.

No, don't call me beautifully broken.  That woman moves "from star to star."  She "casts her spell.  It's like drowning in moonlight..."

Rather, call me hauntingly healed.

Lose 15 Pounds in 15 Weeks!

Okay, actually it's 14 pounds in 16 weeks, but let's be honest, this title sounds better.  I'm a writer; what do you expect?

I keep seeing these ads scroll up my Facebook page and hearing about celebrities that lose weight for a part (and wow! they lose it so fast!) and listening to friends and family members talk about losing weight for the summer.

Here's my disclaimer:  I have never tried actually dieting as a verb.

If you're looking for a "diet" plan, you've come to the wrong place.

If you're interested in how I began the move toward a healthy lifestyle and a healthier weight, please read on.

I have always been active.  Thank the gods for that because if that were not the case, I easily would have ballooned well up over 200 pounds and into the 250 range considering my past relationship with food.

I did not love food.  I abused it.  As a teenager and a young woman in my twenties I would have seconds for dinner on a regular basis and then polish off a bowl of ice cream or a piece of cake.  As I got further into my twenties, this lifestyle caught up to me; my metabolism slowed down and my weight went up.  But because of my build, I tend to gain weight everywhere gradually, I convinced myself that I was, as Winnie the Pooh says, "short, fat, and proud of that."

I have never really had body issues.  I never thin shamed people, or fat shamed people.  I have never really been "unhappy" with my weight.  I simply always knew I was heavier than it was healthy to be for my height, and I simply ate my way around that knowledge.  I never looked for a way to lose weight fast.  But I have tried different life long approaches to food when I have been able to acknowledge my sick relationship with food.

Once, right before moving back to the San Francisco Bay Area from Humboldt County (an area quite proud of its large, well cushioned women) I tried out the Atkins Diet, thinking I could make that a lifestyle change.  I read Dr. Atkins book.  He convinced me that high fat, lots of meat, no carbs was the way to go, for life.  I lived that way for about a year.  It did help me drop from pushing 200 pounds down closer to the 150 range.  And I loved the lifestyle!  I exercised, walking on a daily basis.  I ate salami and cream cheese for breakfast.  I drank lots of water.

And I smelled bad.

There's something about the high meat diet that releases ketones from your system, and you always smell like a warm ham sandwich.  Without the bread of course.

Not sexy.

Then one day I walked into Whole Foods and asked an associate where I could find the Atkins bars I was so dependent on to get me through the day.  The nice girl kindly explained to me that Atkins bars were not made from whole food.  They were loaded with processed, synthesized gods-know-what, so Whole Foods did not carry them.

I realized then that what I was doing to my body was fundamentally unhealthy, and more than losing weight what I was looking for was living healthily.

A few years later I was trying to get pregnant and not having much success.  I was about 40 pounds overweight BMI-wise, and I kept reading that weight could be an issue.  This time I was going to lose weight the healthy way, and keep it off.

I joined Weight Watchers and lost the weight.  They teach the basics that every person should know.  Eat fewer calories.  Make most of your calories come from plants, grains, and lean meats.  Exercise regularly.

At 32 I was in the best shape of my life and I felt great.  I smelled great too!

It worked.

Then I got pregnant.  And relapsed.  I ate all the Jack in the Box, all the Taco Bell, all the Coldstone, all the chips and dips and fries and fritters I could get my hands on.

I gained 75 pounds.  I tipped the scale the day I gave birth at 213 pounds.  I'm 5'2".

My baby came out looking like a swollen, sumo wrestling panda.

After Celaya was born I wanted so desperately to breast feed successfully for a year that I didn't bother to even think about trying to take the weight off.  I lost 45 pounds in the first months after she was born and then hovered for two years at about 165.

As her second birthday approached I realized that I was not modeling the life I wanted her to live.  Sure, we ate healthy.  I walked every day.  But I was still eating way more than I needed (going to bed stuffed at night most nights) and my "walking" was usually down to the park two blocks away.

Armed with what I had learned at Weight Watchers, but knowing that I had no time or patience for calculating the points of every bite or step I took, I slowly moved our entire household toward a healthier food and exercise lifestyle.

And here I sit.  Down from 166.4 to 152.4 in 16 weeks.  I get on the scale every Monday to check in with myself and write the number on a pad on my fridge.  I know that the number is arbitrary.  I know that 152 for me is different than 152 for someone else.  I know that muscle is denser than fat.  I know that the fit of my clothes and the energy I now have to climb the five flights of stairs to my apartment is a far better measure of success than the number change on a scale.  I know all this.  I also know that scientifically, medically, being dramatically overweight, or obese, is detrimental to my health.  I know that more children are born diabetic (mine could have been one of them). I know that more children get diabetes at a younger age.  I know that an increasing number of people in the world, and particularly this country, is getting fatter and fatter in a really unhealthy way.

I know that I do not want my child to be one of those people.  I want her relationship to food and exercise to be about fuel and energy, about love and life.  And treats!

Here's what I've come up with:

Fruit should be the regular sweet in life.

Sugar should be a treat, i.e. let's go get an ice cream!

Vegetables should be a constant, at every meal.

Fat should be a condiment, not the main course.

Whole grains and nuts should be daily staples.

Exercise should be an every day matter of life.  Whatever it is you love to do physically, do that an hour a day most days of the week, on average.  For example, my brother golfs a couple times a week, which takes three to four hours at a time, so there's his average.

And enjoy food, do not abuse it.

Those are the rules I have lived by for the last four months.  And I feel truly healthy down to my bones.  And I am having a love affair (as opposed to an abusive relationship) with food and drink.  I drink wine every night I'm home, but only two glasses.  I have dark chocolate (85% cocoa dark) and greek yogurt for dessert every single night.  I eat grains and protein for breakfast every morning (dry honey wheat toast and a fried egg and grapes, or almond butter on bread with an apple, or oatmeal with slivered almonds and a banana).  I have a salad for lunch every day, a delicious, sinful salad with spinach and avocado and black olives and tomatoes and cucumbers and anything else I happen to feel like throwing in their that is a plant with an awesome full fat red wine vinegar and olive oil dressing from Trader Joe's.  And for dinner I eat whatever we have that night.  My husband cooks one night (usually Mexican), my brother cooks one night (usually something with sauce or gravy) and I cook four nights (it varies from Mexican to American to Italian, to Greek, to Chinese).  Nothing is off limits.  We eat beef one night, pork one night, we eat a vegetarian meal one night, and chicken, turkey, or fish the other nights.  I always use real butter, olive oil, canola oil.  I put bacon in my refried beans.  I put full fat sour cream on my fajitas. We eat a lot of cheese.  A lot!  The big trick for me is variety.  I don't make two heavy meals two nights in a row.  The heavier the meal, i.e. beef stroganoff, the smaller portion I eat.  And I try never to eat until I'm stuffed.  I stop when I'm satisfied, reminding myself that I still want to drink one more glass of wine, and that I've got dark chocolate and greek yogurt waiting for me around the corner.

I also run 5 miles a day 5 days a week.  Because of that level of intensity, I never feel bad for a heavy meal, I never worry about counting points or calories, and I never question how quickly or slowly I'm losing weight.

To be clear, if you do not want to exercise that much, and I understand some people consider themselves allergic to strenuous physical exertion, you must eat less.  As my mother said to me yesterday morning, "You and Breezy [my sister] run 5 miles so you can enjoy your food, Tammy [my other sister] and I watch carefully what we eat and eat way less so we can enjoy not exercising."

This way works for me because I do love food, but I also love running.  I am by nature an anxious person and running helps me control my anxiety quite a bit as well.

I plan to live this way for the rest of my life.  If it takes me another 16 weeks to lose the last 14 pounds to get me into a healthy BMI, fine.  If my body decides this is my new set weight, fine.

I feel healthy.  And my daughter sees me living a healthy life.  I'm happy to move forward this way with very few changes.

Though I will likely need a double jogging stroller at some point.

A Love Letter to the Best Father I Know

I sat last night thinking about what I wanted to say today.  I sit here now typing words, knowing that there is no chance I will find the right ones.  Still, I have to try.

There are no words.  There are in-between words.  There are smiles.  There are laughs.  There are sighs and shrugs and head shakes and winces.  There is a welling up of emotion.  There is, of course, because it's me, a chilling sense of foreboding if the unthinkable were to happen.  But the words do not exist, have not been invented to describe, to express, to reveal the type of father my husband is to my daughter.

I knew it from the moment we started talking about children.  He wanted so badly to be a great father, the kind he never had, the kind I never had, the kind neither of us had ever really seen.

My dad and my stepdad, I can truly say at this point in my life, did the best they could with what they were given.  They were never evil, never absentee, never "bad" fathers.  They were young and stupid when they had kids, and made the best of the chaos of parenthood.

We were not young, and a little less stupid, when we decided to have Celaya, and two years later, when we finally had her, we were even less young, and hopefully even less stupid.

My husband works at being a father.  He tries to teach her letters and numbers, colors and shapes.  He plays in the sand and the dirt.  He makes the dinosaurs attack the village and throws balls around (usually avoiding breaking things).  He dances with my daughter, and he even dances with her giant panda bear when she insists.  He plays with her and snuggles her and dreams big dreams for her.

And that's just the fun stuff.  Three nights a week my daughter's father comes home from work and usually doesn't even have a chance to change out of his work clothes until after he puts her to bed hours later.  He engages with her as she leaps into his arms.  He feeds her, bathes her, reads her stories, rocks her gently and sings her songs when she implores him to "snuggle for a minute," and he puts her to bed.  He is as much a father as I am a mother.  And even today in this progressive society of equality between men and women, I think that is rare.

Sure, he makes mistakes.

He almost drowned her in her own breast milk once.

I was at work, he was feeding her a bottle of breast milk, and, to clear her nasal passages that were stuffed up from a cold, he gave her a dropper of breast milk in her nose, as we had been doing for a few days.  Except he couldn't find the usual tiny dropper we had been using, so he improvised with a dropper easily five times as large.

You can imagine the rest.

In many ways he is a typical dad.

I come home from working all day on Saturdays to find Celaya in an orange top, lime green leggings, purple socks, an off center top ponytail, two crooked ponytails in the back, or just her crazy hair free flying around a dirty face, with paint on her toes and paint on my walls.  Toys are everywhere, the music is too loud, and the kitchen is a mess, because, "man, she's a lot of work!"

And that's what keeps me from wondering if this is all just a dream, too good to be true, too perfect to be real.

Nope.  It's real.  My husband's old hiking backpack stocked (by him) and ready (just in case they decide to take off somewhere) with diapers, wipes, a few toys, a bag of fruit snacks, and an extra outfit is there to prove it.

I love him more now as the father of my daughter than I ever did as merely the man I fell in love with and chose to spend the rest of my life with.

I love him because I truly believe he strives to be a better husband to me because he know his daughter will grow up to choose a man like her father, and he wants her treated the way he treats me.

I love him because he will fight for her in a way I would never think to.

I love him because he will teach her things I would never be able to.

I love him because he is the knight who will slay her dragons.  He is the warrior who will battle her demons.  He is the astronaut who will help her reach the stars.  He is the light that will chase away the dark for her.  He is.  He is.  He is.

And finally, and most importantly, I love him so much, as much as I do, because I see how much she loves him, and just how much she does.  He has become such an irreplaceable part of my world because he is such an irreplaceable part of hers.

Every Day Most Certainly Is Not Mother's Day

Every day is kids' day.  Every day is husbands' day.  Every day is a work day.  Every day is definitely not Mother's Day.

I read a very nice Facebook post by Isabel Allende, a favorite author of mine, that began that way:  "Let's remember that every day is Mother's Day."

It was a lovely sentiment.  I understand what she was saying:  in short, every day should be Mother's Day.  We should recognize the hard work mothers do every day.

Yes, we should.

On my way home from work yesterday I listened to an interview on KQED Forum with author Sandra Tsing Loh about her menopausal breakdown at the age of 46.  She cited studies that show the most depressed group of people in America is mothers raising children.  She noted that we try to do it all.  Apparently full time working mothers today spend more time with their children than stay at home mothers did in the 1950s.

We are working hard to engage.  Did I read enough books to my child?  Is she getting too many GMOs?  Too many non organic foods?  Too much sugar?  Should I home school?  Private school?

And mine is only 2!  I can only imagine what will be keeping me up at night in ten years.

Add to that the anxieties I have as a wife.

Then add to that the anxieties I have about myself.

I lay in bed the other night almost on the verge of tears wondering what Celaya would do if I died.  Nobody will ever love her the way I do.  She would be that poor girl that everyone feels sorry for, and they would all tell her how much her mother loved her, if only she could have grown up knowing her mother.

Why am I dying?  What am I dying of?

I have no idea!

But it could happen.

It happens.

Right?

Yes.  Every single day is something new.  A new anxiety.  A new hurdle to jump.  A new task to incorporate into my ever growing pile of things to do each day.  And I must get them all done.  I must, or I won't be a good mother.

And because, for the most part, I do think I am a good mother, I planned and prepared for one day of spoiling, free of anxiety, free of stress, just eating, shopping, pampering.

I had a wonderful Mother's Day today.  I woke up to hot coffee and a happy baby.  I enjoyed a nice long run.  I enjoyed my brunch on fancy Santana Row, and shopping along the boulevard and across the street at the Westfield Shopping center.  As I strolled around the mall with the Starbucks coffee my husband stood in line for 20 minutes to buy for me, I reflected on how blessed I am to have so much love and to have come to such a satisfying place in my life.  We have been pondering the idea of having another baby lately, and I was thinking how well that happy event would fit into our lives.

And for once, the mountainous rock of doubt and what if did not loom large above my head.  I am only realizing now that I did not once think about all that could go wrong.  My child could get Leukemia, my next baby could have Down's Syndrome (because I am sooo old).  My happy marriage could fall apart.  My boss could decide he hates me and fire me.

Oh, see?  There.  I'm doing it again.

I don't know what a good mother is.  My sister called me a role model today.  And I laugh to myself and think, "ha, she has no idea I laid on the bathroom floor last night for fifteen minutes feeling hurt and angry and ignoring my precious daughter whom I have been away from all day."  Why?  Over a petty argument with my adoring husband.  Crazy.

My mother has been crazy for as long as I can remember.  I love her dearly. But she is in all honesty crazy.

In fact, all the women that have been mother figures to me in my life have a little bit of crazy in them.

I suppose that, in the end, mothering is like anything else in life.  I take what I want to do, what I do not want to do, and put that together with what I admire about what the mothers who came before me did and the what the mothers alongside me are doing.  I do my best to avoid doing what I do not agree with (while at the same time reserving judgment in recognition of the fact that I may have to eat my words someday), and I work at it, every day.  I work at it, and I do not get discouraged when my kid throws milk at me, pitches a fit in the grocery store, refuses to eat her vegetables, scatters marbles and tiny dinosaurs from one end of the house to the other, or any other insanity that is entirely age appropriate.

"She's crazy,"  I tell myself.

And someday, if I do everything exactly right, with only a few tiny missteps, if I struggle, and work, and love, and laugh, if I focus, and protect, and encourage, and embrace, if I get through the child rearing, adolescence enduring part of this journey called motherhood with an A+ on my scorecard, I just might be lucky enough to have my happy, well balanced, fully grown daughter say, shaking her head,

"My mom's crazy."

Walking For Others' Lives

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

That's what we're told right?

But it's the thought that counts.

No.  Not really.  No it isn't.

If you could have done better, could have put in more effort, intended to do more, but you didn't, so you just grabbed something really quick for that friend's birthday party, gave your $1 at Safeway to end childhood hunger, and then went home and felt better about yourself, you're going to hell.

Just kidding.

I actually don't believe in hell, not the red devil with a pitchfork in eternal flames hell, anyway.

I do believe that heaven and hell are here.  Children are molested.  Women are raped.  Innocent, good people are murdered in the streets completely randomly.  Every day.  Meanwhile, children are born into lives of privilege, never knowing suffering.  Women go to good colleges and become top executives or doctors with proud middle class families.  And innocent, and not so innocent people live out their lives without harm or pain coming to them, ever.

I do believe that it is the job of those who either have never known suffering or who have survived suffering and come out of it to help those still suffering.

I come from the latter category.  I have lived a life painted in both bleak and bright colors, in both vibrant reds and violent ones.  During some periods of my life I suffered greatly and, turning to my left and my right, only saw others who suffered alongside me.  There seemed to be no end.  There seemed to be no help.

But I got up each day, I worked through my darkness, and others did come along who were able to help push me up and out of a dark cave.  

Now, having survived, having found a firm footing, I have wondered what I can do to turn around, reach down, and lift others up.  I have wanted the cause I fight for to be a personal one.  Abused children?  Maybe.  Abused women?  Perhaps.  Uneducated people looking for a chance at education.  Definitely, and I made that my career choice.

In terms of volunteer work though, something to which I could purely give, without asking anything in return, nothing had spoken to me.  Honestly, I did not look as hard as I could have.

Then a friend at work happened to ask me if I wanted to do the Avon walk for breast cancer with her.  And a light came on.

This could be the beginning of volunteer and charity work for me, I thought.  I can do this.  I can fight for this.  This is real to me.

Breast cancer, and cancer in general, has been a constant in my life.  When I was still a teenager my grandmother had a breast removed because of breast cancer.   Around the same time, I myself had to have a benign lump removed.  My mother has been through two bouts of cancer.  An aunt is now recovering from a double mastectomy.  Yes, breast cancer was something I could take on with an open heart and a fighting spirit.

Why Avon and not Susan G. Komen?

Avon is another constant for me.  It rang true when my friend spoke its name.  My mother discovered Avon sales and depended on the profits from those sales while she was recovering from cancer surgeries and chemotherapy.  Avon felt right.

I also had only just begun to run five miles daily again (after taking more than two years off to have a baby)  when my friend asked.  Running and walking have also been constants in my life.  They are my favorite forms of exercise.  Yes.  Yes, I could do this.

And so I will.  I run daily for my life and my health.  In three months I will walk for the lives of others. I have already received the support from those closest to me and received financial commitments from many others.  I have never fundraised before, and the idea of harassing people for money is terrifying to me.  But the idea of actually accomplishing my goal, $1800 by July 11 in order to be able to participate in the 40 mile walk, is exhilarating.

So I make the calls.  I send the messages.  I train daily.  I face my fear.

I have been described in the past as not very outwardly empathetic.  I do not deal with others' pain well emotively.  I do not know how to sit with someone while they cry, while they suffer.  I am bad at commiserating over hurts and harms.  I tend to address my own painful past very matter of factly, and as a result I address the pains of others in the same way.  What can we do?  How can I help?  What do you need?  Let's act.  Let's do.  Let's get up and go.  Oh, you just want me to sit and listen?  To offer kind words.  Ugh.  I'm horrible at that.

But I can walk.  I can raise funds.  I can spread the word.  I can fight.

I am great at fighting.

Running For My Life

I run four days a week, sometimes five, five miles a day.  I walk or hike one or two days a week.  I take one day off.  Saturday.  Because I leave home for work at 7 AM and get home at 6 PM.  And I'm freaking tired.

I run for my life.  I was in the best shape of my over thirty years of life when I got pregnant with Celaya.  I was running five days a week, five miles a day, and biking or hiking on the weekends with my husband.  I felt awesome.  I got pregnant.  After two years of trying.  Two years of being overweight, generally nonchalant about intentional, regular exercise, and making excuses about why when,  I finally changed it all about six months before I got pregnant. I buckled down and took a healthy (Weight Watchers) approach to eating and exercising.  My body had been unhealthy.  My health had been out of balance.  I had an unhealthy relationship with food, and an unhealthy relationship with exercise.  It took a long time to retrain my brain.

Case in point,
Tonight when I got home:
"How many enchiladas do you want, Shanna."
"One."
"One!?"
"Yea.  One.  I'm having beans and broccoli, too.  I had a half a cheeseburger, french fries, and half an ice cream cone last night.  I don't need a plate full of enchiladas tonight."
"Ohhhhhh!  You had half a cheeseburger twenty four hours ago, so you can only have one enchilada tonight?"

Just a few months ago I would have eaten the whole damn cheeseburger, all the fries, the whole ice cream cone, the bagel I had for breakfast at work, two slices of pizza I had for lunch today (I probably would have added a sparkling juice and a cookie), and still had two enchiladas, twice the beans, none of the broccoli, and two or three glasses of wine tonight.  Because I have lived a life of eating until I'm more than full.

I would walk a lot.  I have always been active, walk, bike, swim, hike, but never intentionally, aggressively, purposefully, for my life.  I have simply always enjoyed being active.  But never active enough to counteract all my eating.

I really should have gone into competitive eating.

Instead, I realized I have always eaten way too much.  I haven't necessarily been eating the wrong things.  I have always loved fruits and vegetables, lean meats, and whole grains.  But I have also always eaten at least double portions, and added all the ice cream, pastries, sour gummy bears, and the occasional fried food on top.  I loved food to the point of sick obsession.

It's the way I grew up.  We went grocery shopping on pay day, splurged on all the cheap, fatty foods, bought meat and carbohydrates in bulk, and threw in some apples, oranges, and bananas for good measure.  All of our vegetables came in a can, except iceberg lettuce and tomatoes for the infrequent ranch dressing topped salad.  My mother cooked the way her mother cooked the way her mother cooked.  My great grandmother was raising a family during the depression.  You filled up on starch and gravy.  So that's what we did.  We were working class, and we made do with what we had.

I has taken me decades to break those bad habits.  I was doing great before I got pregnant.  Then I went crazy with fattening up like a Thanksgiving turkey; I put on 75 pounds, and my daughter was born showing signs of diabetes.

Then I was afraid to lose too much weight too fast and lose my breastmilk, a problem rampant in my family history.

Well, I breastfed for the full year, maintaining a healthy weight for my baby, and a (ahem) more than healthy weight for myself.

So here I sat, more than a year after weaning my baby, staring her second birthday in the face, still weighing in at more than thirty pounds over my BMI.

Because that is what this has always been about:  a healthy weight.  I do not care about my weight per se.  I look at super skinny women and think, "poor thing.  Have a sandwich."  My brother and I argue about "hot" women that I think are far too thin to be healthy.  I never aimed to be skinny, and I still don't.

I do want my daughter to see me as a role model of health, in contrast to the yo-yo dieting women I grew up watching depriving themselves of treats, taking diet pills, looking for the next get thin quick fix to lose weight fast to fit into those jeans even if it means lying down flat on the bed to pull the zipper up while I suck it in as much as I can.

No thanks.

I run for my life.  I run for my daughter's life.  I still indulge in a half cheeseburger.  I still have Cheeseboard pizza with my coworker on Wednesday nights.  I have my little dark chocolate bar filled with speculoos (from Trader Joe's.  If you haven't had it, run and get some now.)  I have two glasses of wine on my nights off.  I get my gummy bears when we go out to the theater.  I enjoy all of my treats.  But depending on what they are, I enjoy them rarely, or in small portions.  For the most part my diet consists of lean meats, healthy grains, and fresh fruits and vegetables, fuel for my body.  My daughter eats the same way.  In fact, she picks through my salad with her own little fork, plucking out pieces of avocado, tomato, or spinach, asking "mama, take the stem off?"  And for the last two months I have steadily worked my way down ten pounds.  My daughter does "exercises" with me at park where we stop toward the end of my run, twisting and bending into yoga poses along with me.  I feel fit.  More of the cute clothes in my closet fit.  I feel proud.  I feel alive.

I am not shooting for some date.  I will not do this until I hit a certain weight and then stop.  In fact, I worry what I will do once I get down, twenty more pounds, into a healthy BMI range.  I have no intention of continuing to lose much more weight beyond the top of that range, but I have no intention of quitting my routine.  I will keep up this routine for the rest of my life.  I plan to run well into my next pregnancy, as my doctor has said I can.  I hope my daughter asks to jog with me some day when she's old enough.  And until then, she sits patiently, playing with her toys, in the stroller.

I love jogging.  I get runner's high.  I get into a zone when I run.  I feel invincible, both physically and mentally.  There is no problem that seems too difficult to overcome, not even my brother and husband harassing me while I write to come and play monopoly.  Nothing.

So I will keep running.  For my life.  For my daughter's life.

And so I can enjoy that half cheeseburger, those slices of pizza, that ice cream cone, and still have one enchilada.

And two glasses of wine.