Hey, friends. I am cooking up a top-secret project that involves being a ninja and giving someone a much-needed gift. I need your help! If y’all are interested in knowing more, e-mail me (seattlerunnergirl at gmail.com) and I will give you the skinny. It’s all anonymous and super hush-hush, so once you know the deets, you are sworn to secrecy. Don’t spill the beans!
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
I’ve got some thoughts for you. Yeah, deep thoughts. Remember when we talked about believing in your own beauty, right now? And when Betsy talked about who you see when you look in the mirror? Them’s the kind of deep thoughts I’m thinking.
I don’t know what started this off for me, but I started thinking about shame. And how much shame we all carry, carried, and/or are trying to let go of, all surrounding the issue of our weight. And it really makes me angry that so many of us (myself included) have spent so much of our precious time and energy feeling ashamed about our weight. And in case there are those of you out there struggling with this issue right now, I have some thoughts for you. Here goes…
Your weight does not define who you are. (Proof: Do you think your loved ones’ weights determine who they are? Would you want your sister, daughter, friend, or husband feeling ashamed because of their struggle with weight? Yeah, that’s what I thought.)
The scale is not a measure of your worth. (Proof: Do small children make you get on a scale before deciding they think you are the most awesometastic person on the planet? Do dogs – who I believe are excellent judges of character – ask to check out the weight on your driver’s license before licking your hand and jumping all over you? Nope, me neither.)
Don’t be ashamed of your weight. I spent my whole life terrified that people would find out how much I weighed. When they did, I was always relieved if they said, “Oh, I never would have guessed it, you carry it so well!” Whatever the hell that means. Who cares about this number? Why are we so ashamed of it? I have a few theories, which involve a combination of our own inability to confront our reality and the disproportionate emphasis our society places on thinness and weight. And it’s silly, because you know what? Now that my blog is connected to my Facebook and all my friends and cousins and business colleagues and God and everybody know how much I weigh now, how much I weighed then, and everything else about this excruciatingly hard but absolutely-worth-it process?
No judgment.
No shame.
No fear.
It’s all gone. Nobody judged me like I thought they would, or if they did they kept their mouths shut about it. (Thank God some people remember their manners.)
Being ashamed of your weight leads to you hiding that number. And keeping things secret out of fear or shame gives those things power over you. Conversely, if you refuse to allow shame or fear to take hold in your heart, and you instead bring into the light the very thing you are afraid to reveal…well, all I can say is there’s power in that. Power because you took a stand. And power because all the horrible things you thought would happen because someone *gasp* knows your weight?
They don’t really happen. The people in your life will by and large support you and cheer for you and won’t really care what that number is.
And the ones who do care, or judge, or whatever? Well, I have a few choice words for them, but let’s allow Dr. Seuss to say it in a muchmorepolite way that I never could: “those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
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