#92: Forgive people. For yourself.
04 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
This is advice I have found the hardest to follow my whole life. If you believe in the concept of justice, it seems as though forgiveness goes directly against the concept that people should be accountable for how they act. But watching Oprah I saw her say over and over, “Forgiveness is giving up the belief that the past can be different.” This in itself shows that forgiving someone allows you to accept the past, along with give yourself the ability to move on from it.
I still can’t put this in to practice on a day to day basis. I still struggle every time I think of forgiving someone who has done what I consider the unforgivable. How will they know what they did wrong? How will they change as a person? How can they correct what they have done and make everything better? The answer is obvious if you have learned to forgive. Forgiveness is for yourself and your own healing.
When you hold onto what people have said or done to you, you literally and figuratively carry the burden. Your health may suffer, your life may be worse with those thoughts of revenge or anger and your spirit will continue to live in the hurt that the person caused.
I know that forgiveness seems easy when someone does not hold the door open for you, but insurmountable when someone has killed someone you love or neglected you as a child. But I think in the end, although those moments are not comparable, they have the same result above. Every time you go back to the sadness and unhappiness of the moment you were wronged, you relive it. You live in the moment of unhappiness and not the present. Refusing to forgive something forces you to live in the past. The present is where we make our most wonderful memories, where we feel true joy and where we allow ourselves to become better people. The past is over.
Sometimes the advice I put on here is advice I hope I can someday follow, not things I know for certain. I hope one day I can let go of the anger I hold for people and live in the present. I hope I can become an expert at forgiving.
#93: There are a few simple rules to follow when renting an apartment.
04 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
in Life Advice
The rules are simple, but if you miss out on one, you could end up living somewhere awful, stuck in a lease for a year.
#1 – Never rent an apartment that has deodorizers, incense or fabric softener sheets in it. Smell around. If there is something there to make a smell, chances are it is covering up a more dangerous or awful smell (mould etc.).
#2 – Look at the people coming to and from the apartment and the building. If it is only men (and you aren’t a 45 year old man yourself), don’t rent there. I made this mistake once, meeting a landlord and seeing the place without paying attention to who lived in the small building. Two months later I discovered I lived in a place filled with men, all alone and not the most normal of characters!
#3 – Never rent an apartment in a place with tin foil on the windows. There are only two reasons for tinfoil in the windows. Either the people in them can’t afford drapes, or they want to hide what is going on inside. Either way, you are probably in for trouble if you end up there.
#4 – Always check every cupboard and closet for insect traps, dead insects and mouse traps. If you see any of the above, you will be moving into a place that probably has a problem with one or the other. Never believe they are just there “in case”.
#5 – Try not to rent anywhere that the landlord lives. Landlords are not always the most normal people (I know this is a generalization, but I have rented a LOT of apartments!). You are best to live in large apartments, with companies who run it and are monitored. If that’s not possible, find houses that are all renters and make sure the landlord doesn’t make you uncomfortable at all.
#94: When you want something, ask for it. If someone can’t give it to you, do it yourself.
04 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
in The Self
These two lessons go hand in hand in life. There is nothing you need in life that you can’t do for yourself. If you want to be a millionaire, you need to ask for it. If no one is willing to give it to you, find out how to do it yourself. If you want the dishes done, or a PhD, never believe that anyone else on earth owes this to you. I think there are times you can ask someone else to do things you need done and if the time and intent is right, you should get that help. But if it isn’t right you may not need the help or you may feel more satisfaction completing whatever it is on your own.
It is hard to watch those around you be given things they did no work for and that’s the worst example of asking for something. Everyone says you need to feel a sense of accomplishment for what you’re give, but this is hard to keep in perspective when your best friend is being given a house their parents bought for them or someone wins the lottery. But the fact remains that nothing good comes without hard work. Even millionaires made huge efforts to reach their goals with insurmountable odds at times.
When you do accomplish things, you are also given the gift of respect from others. There are many successful and rich people whom no one respects and whose lives are empty of purpose. Getting what you want is an end goal, but having purpose and drive in life is the journey that can’t be given to you by anyone else.
Always believe you deserve what you want. With this in mind, work hard for the things that are important and don’t begrudge those who have everything given to them. Know that you will always have many gifts given to you by the simple fact you learned something, proved your self worth and had the joy of the end result, obtaining what you wanted in the beginning.
#95: Happiness is a choice (but you can’t simply choose to be happy).
04 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
I finally discovered around the age of 35 that happiness really is a choice. I had seen that slogan and mantra a millions times, always simultaneously scoffing and agreeing with it. I used think, “If I could just choose to be happy, wouldn’t I have done that long ago lin the midst of sadness and stress?” I also believed deep inside myself that some day I might have the chance to choose happiness somehow, without knowing the path to that.
I now realize that happiness is a million tiny choices every day. Happiness means that when someone yells at you in traffic, you try to not get angry back, think of why that person is so unhappy themself, shake if off and know the day can get better. Call it optimism or call it blind faith. I am not sure when I made this shift, but one day I realized that bad things happen to people every day. Some of them choose to maintain a belief and hope that happiness can be possible through any circumstance. And I think it can be.
I guess the confusion lays in the concept you can say “I want to be happy” and it magically occurs. But happiness is slow and sweet and comes when you least expect it. Because I don’t feel the pain of every little bad thing (and absolutely horrible huge thing) that happens to me, I have the opportunity to see the beauty in every day things that provide for happiness. When my daughter smiles at me or reaches out to me it is a moment of brief happiness that could outweigh any unhappiness. If I recall my wedding day, or imagine a hug from my nephew, I fill my mind and life with happy thoughts that can have amazing power over me and the bad ones that used to inhabit my every thought. My dreams and hopes for the future are other ways to fill my mind and thoughts with happiness. They make me believe in myself, endless possibilities and push away the negativity that people so often push on you.
Happiness is also a choice that leads to more happiness somehow. Whether it is a pendulum effect or just fate, I feel that as you surround yourself with more joy and amazing moments, more seem to happen. And like with sadness, happiness is infectious and allows for everyone around you to tap into that feeling.
Try to live in it every day at least a little and it will become as much of a habit as brushing your teeth (but a lot more fun!).
#96: Everything about having a baby will probably be hard, and no one else will admit it!
22 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment
in Your Body
The first thing I noticed when I was 2 months pregnant and throwing up all night long was that most women I talked to were not very willing to admit they experienced the same thing. Some did have horrible morning sickness, but rarely did any woman admit to me that it was as bad as I was experiencing it to be. I would come into work and moan at my desk that I wanted to die. To my friends and sister I said in terrified whispers that I thought I had made a mistake, because I couldn’t take one more night of sleeping on the bathroom floor. I luckily found a book titled “Pregnancy Sucks” and went about reading that all the things I thought I was insane for thinking were actually perfectly normal. I was not the glowing, bright eyed picture of a reproductive miracle.
I was pregnant once before my most recent child, which ended in miscarriage at 3 months. I had fervently read “What To Expect When You’re Expecting” word for word while pregnant and was absolutely devastated to discover when flipping through it a day after my miscarriage that the chapter with respect to miscarriage was the last one. This made me think: how many women don’t admit to a miscarriage or don’t even hint at the possibility because they feel a failure or feel it is taboo? How many things about pregnancy, pregnancy loss, giving birth or mothering are swept under the rug because women don’t want to readily share their experiences. The very FIRST thing I needed to know about when pregnant was what might indicate a miscarriage. Why on earth would I need to read this chapter a month after a baby was BORN!? I had actually experienced some symptoms that, had they put this chapter first, might have led me to realize sooner I was miscarrying.
The fact is, the authors most likely felt it morbid to tell pregnant women anything bad might happen. Other women probably feel the same when they discuss pregnancy. But I am not of the same mind. I think information is power, and discussing miscarriage or admitting to having one (or more) is not what can make someone lose a baby. Telling women that they may throw up all night for 13 weeks straight is not misinformation. Knowing this and passing along a little advice to keep a box of crackers on the nightstand might actually prevent it at first!
I made it my goal while pregnant to not lie about my symptoms, to not feel embarrassed to admit I was feeling more like a host to an evil parasite at times than a beautiful picture of health. I admitted when asked that I was exhausted and thought the baby might hate me already! I admitted that every day was some new health challenge, from indigestion to not being able to walk to the store. When my friends got pregnant and called me to commiserate, I agreed that the morning sickness was a cruel punishment for conceiving and that it made you wish you had never met your spouse. In short, I did not reiterate the 3 stupid pages in the pregnancy books I read that suggested eating ginger and ‘staying active’.
After my miscarriage, almost every woman who had children admitted to me they had had a miscarriage. Some of these women were close to me, yet in years had never said they had lost a baby. Although this is personal and I don’t suggest everyone has to shout it from the rooftops (I sure didn’t), I think we owe it to other women to admit that bad things happen sometimes and that if they do, you are no less of a woman. I feel like if we all share information about pregnancy and childbirth, we can all empower each other to make it through the experience with knowledge, a few laughs and some support.
I had wracked my brain while pregnant on ways to find underwear that fit. I googled it, went to every store and even asked each sales clerk what underwear I could get on me that wouldn’t cut off my circulation or roll down into a useless bunch of material under my belly. No one had the answer for 4 months until I asked a friend who had 3 children. “Underwear? I don’t bother wearing it for the last 3 months of pregnancy! Just give up on it!” I laughed and proceeded to the bedroom to peel off my uncomfortable underwear and voila, FREEDOM!
My next lesson in choosing my own path for mothering and the lack of support came while I was in childbirth. The last 10 hours of my 42 hours of labour consisted of doctors (all women I might add) telling me I would not be able to give birth naturally. I had chosen to have a doula (a labour coach and support person) as well and each time they would leave she and the nurses would tell me “you can do this”. That piece of information is vital when you are doing something as difficult as giving birth. You can do it. Choose what you want and stick to it. Believe in yourself and don’t worry about what ANY other woman is doing or says you have to do. Advice about childbirth from women the whole ten months of my pregnancy consisted of horror stories and “why on earth would you refuse an epidural?” repeated to me. I have learned that if each woman had told me some tricks they tried, what made them feel empowered or that I was capable of doing it at all, I might have felt a lot better going in. In the end, I got this from some women and my doula and had a healthy baby girl on my own terms.
Once my baby was born, I thought I would be empowered from the experience and a master of my own body. What I discovered was that my body was still not my own and that my self esteem was worse than it had ever been after the experience. Again, not something any woman ever had admitted to me. Although I had gained and lost lots of weight before, I had not thought of how hard that might be with 2 hours sleep and a torn vagina! I think this part of post-partum is not discussed enough in books and each woman needs to know it will be very hard to get back on track to feeling yourself.
Gather all the information you can about pregnancy, childbirth and mothering. But ask the women around you to tell you the truth and as you experience it, don’t be afraid to do the same. The entire experience may be wonderful for you and this is also important to share. If someone only wants to pass along horror stories about childbirth, ask them instead to give a little helpful advice and that you don’t need to hear about things that might increase your worry. The use of midwives has increased in recent years and I believe this is partly why. Women sharing information and supporting each other is vital to understanding the experience of pregnancy and childbirth, because we are the only ones who truly understand the experience.
And don’t be afraid to admit you went without underwear for 3 months. You never know what other woman will thank you for it when she feels free to do the same.
#97: Believe in and love yourself. If you don’t, no one will.
12 Oct 2009 Leave a Comment
in The Self
Self esteem is probably the biggest battle everyone faces. A rare few are born with the ability to stare in the mirror each morning and feel they deserve more and are capable of getting it at every turn. Some people do have this and I suspect it begins at a very early age, where they are told these important truths and learn them as fact.
Most of us, however, do not feel so confident and content with what we were given. Some people have the proverbial ‘chip’ on their shoulder, all because of wanting more, feeling you deserve it, but not knowing how to get it. I cannot count on my hands the times I have felt like this (and even been accused of quite blatantly acting like this).
Over time, I have come to realize that the most successful people, in love and life, have a deep love for themself and what they are capable of. More importantly, they do not have a negative ‘soundtrack’ that can remind them of what they are not capable of. I know that many people in my life were ready to provide that soundtrack at a moment’s notice.
There are always those who would abandon me when I needed to be told I could make it through a hard moment, to others whom you could sense the disbelief I would even be capable of making it through something. We all have encountered people like that and some of us are surrounded by them all the time. What has struck me over the years of learning is that again and again, I prove my inner voice and other’s outward voices that I do indeed love myself quit a bit and I am capable of almost anything.
Nelson Mandela said that ‘our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond all measure’. If you are born with that innate knowledge, wonderful. But if you are like almost everyone on earth, some situation, person, magazine or concept has occurred and taught you that you may possibly not deserve the love you so desire.
The most common way that women are robbed of this innate knowledge is when they are faced with the universal truth that once someone else loves them, they will be loved.
Quite the opposite is true. I have learned that as you love yourself (and I mean, really love yourself….to the point of saying it in the mirror if you have to convince yourself), people feed off that love and join in. Every time you cock your head to the side and think, ‘I can’t believe I did that, I am awesome!’, there is a universal force that will make others around you wonder if this is true.
That is not to say one shouldn’t understand their faults, and strive to be worthy of love by knowing how to love back. Or that there is not a tendency to be in denial when things just seem to never work and there is some reason why. Investigate yourself, your actions and who you really want to be. If you know that, in whatever situation you are in, you are acting for the good of yourself and others, believe in yourself and follow a path with pride.
I waited many sleepless nights wondering what could make me unlovable in one situation or another. Every time I was faced with the fact that when I believed in myself, my goals and my ability to love and be loved, there was someone, somewhere at some time who would respond in kind. No on is truly unlovable, so if you do not have yourself surrounded by the most supportive, loving people,… start the trend and at some point, everyone else will join in.
#98: What you put in your mouth is what dictates your weight, your mental state and your health.
04 Oct 2009 Leave a Comment
in Your Body
This seems so simple. There are a million diet books, shows and doctors all telling women and men that what they eat is the reason they look/feel the way they do, but still, this is a lesson it took me years to fully understand.
The first thing I will say is that eating dairy, meat and wheat is not all it cracks up to be. A lot of myths surround food and these myths are started from everyone to huge companies paying money to even larger corporations to lie about food, to simple miseducation of people over the years where important facts about food get distorted or are never learned.
For years I struggled with my weight and at 5′ 2″ was everything from a size 22 at 220 lbs to a size 8 at 110 lbs. No matter what I did, I could never fully accept that what was going in my mouth was causing me to yo yo in size, feel miserable and not function properly.
After seeing a naturopath I went on what is called an ‘elimination diet’. This diet basically eliminates almost ALL foods except some veggies, fruits, whole grains, beans and lean protein. At first I wanted to die, going into sugar withdrawal and feeling like my entire world had ended (this was my first clue that my relationship with food had gotten a little out of control!). No more caffeine, no more bread, no more cheese, milk, fast food, sugar….the list went on and on and I thought I might die of starvation! Needless to say, I did not die.
Once you have eaten this limited diet for 2-4 weeks, you slowly add back foods one at a time in order to see what has an effect on you. By this point in my life, I already knew dairy was making me sick, as I had eliminated it years ago and discovered that suddenly I no longer had abdominal cramps, diarrhea and bloating to the point of feeling sick 24/7. So that did not get added back.
With respect to dairy, it is simply a myth that we need to ingest tons of it daily. If you are overweight, even by a few pounds, limit your dairy to the recommended amount and ONLY skim milk products for a few weeks (or eliminate it but make sure you are advised on how to get adequate calcium, vitamin D etc.). I guarantee you may lose weight and feel a little lighter.
But back to the add-back portion of the diet….I added back caffeine and discovered this was what was making my periods worse, this was what made me feel jumpy and unable to sleep. So I eliminated that as well for good.
The next thing I had to add back was wheat. To my complete surprise, EVERY time I ate wheat I felt bloated. But even more amazingly was that I had felt listless, confused and tired for the last 10 years and when I did not add this back, I felt like I had awoken from a deep sleep! Not everyone has this experience with wheat, but it certainly made me realize that it contributed to a lot of my health problems!
I then did not add back wheat. I did not add back pop, and everything else that was high sugar, high fat and high in preservatives.
Amazingly, in addition to feeling better, I lost 30 lbs in 4 months and was able to control some health problems that had been out of control for years. I was even more surprised when, unlike in all the years before, that weight did not creep back onto my body. I realized that I had replaced all the wheat, dairy and high fat/sugar foods with healthy, fresh items. Instead of a croissant and tea in the morning, I was having grapefruit juice, carrot sticks and fresh strawberries.
I have to admit, no amount of exercise and no special diet did what this did for me. And so I finally came to the conclusion that my weight, health and mental state was solely a reflection of what went into my mouth. Everyone’s needs will be different. Some people might try this diet and discover they drank 3 pops a week and have that extra 30 lbs just from this. Some people might see that they ate only processed meat all day long, or drank so much coffee that it made them constantly nervous. Whatever it is, try changing your entire diet for a month and see what happens. Don’t be afraid to learn a new way to live.
Now, it won’t be easy. I cried when I came home from restaurant dinners, where all I could eat was chicken salad. I worried that Christmas would be ruined as I ate only the veggies and some lean turkey and watched the rolls and gravy pass me by. Food is a social thing and something we all use to celebrate, enjoy life with and connect to others. But I started to wonder how well I connected when I indulged in that fried bread product and then spent the night tired, sick and essentially gaining weight.
Even if you are not capable of this, try thinking about everything you put in your mouth for an entire week. Every time you eat a microwave meal, or fast food, do you remember it? Do you realize it all adds up and the end result is trying to squeeze into too tight jeans and feeling exhausted at 10 pm?
In the end, you can exercise all day and may be slim or a perfect weight, but if you are not eating well and what your body truly needs, you will not achieve your healthiest state. There are naturopaths, websites and doctors who can help you in your journey. The best starting point is to write down everything you put in your mouth for one whole week and see what is written down the most. That is where you can probably find your source of unwanted weight, tiredness or physical problems.
When you find a new pattern, your body will thank you.
#99: A real man loves a woman with confidence, purpose and brains.
04 Oct 2009 Leave a Comment
I think it begins in your early teens that you begin to try to fit yourself into some mould that men will accept and seek out. I remember being a teen and starting to wonder, “Are there any men who find intelligence attractive?”, since the only girls I saw getting dates were either incredibly dumb or trying hard to look as dumb as they could. If I disagreed, the look of disdain on a teenage boy’s face was palpable. But as the years progressed I, like many other women, learned the fine art of either not saying what was truly on my mind, or at the least, looking complacent and impressed with everything a man said. Every time I bit my tongue I felt a little less of a person, but consoled myself with the age old question, “Who wants to be alone?”.
As I got into my twenties, I did occasionally find a partner or two who revelled in my questions about life, who delighted in deep conversations that provoked even deeper thought. I got boyfriends who said I seemed ‘strong’ and did not shy away from this verbal diarrhea that was so intimidating to men in my teen years. I also started to see the vast difference between the men I had tried to pretend I was dumb around and the ones who liked me as is. Each time I had pretended I was less of a woman (this came in every form, from telling myself I was not smarter than them, to actually forgetting my own good sense in situations until I ended up hurt by their stupidity), the end result was that I was rewarded with a partner who was not a good man.
Once I dated an abusive man in my teens who was completely illiterate and became incredibly threatened when I was accepted into and left for university. This is a classic example of settling for less, and knowing it is less the second I opened my mouth to disagree the first time and he flew into a rage. Real men, the kind you want to share your life with, expect you to disagree and most certainly are not angry when you attempt to get an education or do anything that might benefit you.
And so in my twenties I realized that the high price of trying to find someone by not being my whole self was that I would end up with someone who was not wholly themself. Almost always, a man like this would be abusive, a cheater, or simply not the best partner. The most wonderful men were the ones who did respond to intelligent conversation, to challenges I posed and who revelled in my success.
So in short, being alone because you are smart is not a penance, as it may seem at first, it is a gift.
By the time I reached my late twenties and thirties, I realized I would not settle for anything less than a man who challenged me, was challenged by me and who expected me to be the most interesting, strong woman I could be to match up to his own similar qualities. The beauty of this was that when I did question a man’s integrity, or tell him what my honest opinions were, if he ran far and wide I was confident that I had successfully avoided a lesser man. Instead of feeling less myself (and wondering how I could dumb myself down or fit into a mould for him), I felt happy knowing I had weeded out another man who was not right for me.
If you are a teen and wondering why being the best baseball player, the smartest girl in the classroom or the winner of the Mathematics award is not attractive to men, fear not. Any man who fears a woman with power is not one worth pursuing. Any man who wants someone who agrees with their every word is a waste of your time. This seems unreal and a strange concept when you are standing at the dance alone. But as the years progress, you will see that the men who feared your great accomplishments are rewarded only by women who cannot accomplish anything except to agree with their every word.
There is nothing more satisfying than finding a man who sees you succeed and says, “I am proud of/amazed by/so attracted to you”. As you and men get older, you start to see that the men who seek out the smartest girl in the class will often have the happiest life, as they chose a woman with purpose, who will live their lives well. These women are often the best mothers, the best at their field of work, or even the happiest as they live their lives the way they want to.
There are women I know in their 40′s and 50′s who have still not understood this. Again and again these friends come to me distraught that the man whom they knew inside was not striving for their best interests goes astray. They cry and ask me why he would change like this? But the truth is, men who do not inspire you to become more, do more and think more were wrong to begin with and the relationship is destined to go sour as soon as you either assert your own power, or he gets tired of asserting his.
A real man does not ask you to be quiet when you disagree. A real man does not try to be more than you, or ask you to not succeed so he can remain in power. A real man loves a woman with confidence, purpose and brains.
So go ahead, ask that question he does not know the answer to….tell him your theory on feminism, or how you were the valedictorian of your high school, beat him at chess or explain the theory of relativity to him. If he is a true ‘catch’, his eyes will light up and he will be there in the morning, waiting for your next great move.
#100: Periods are NOT supposed to be painful.
20 Sep 2009 Leave a Comment
in Your Body
One the worst myths that doctors rely on and say to women when they complain about painful periods is “every woman has bad periods” or that “cramps are normal”.
They are not normal.
During teen years or in times of bad health, many women do have cramps occasionally. There are probably a select few times in a woman’s life this can be considered a normal occurrence. However, if you have cramps every month, or your period causes enough pain to make you unable to work or function, you probably have a medical condition causing it.
From age 14-24 I told doctors my periods were bad. I tried to tell them I had unbearable PMS, mood swings, cramps that travelled down my back and legs, and stomach problems. At first, doctors insisted this was ‘normal’ and that some day it would ease. I kept going back to them, again and again, saying, “This just isn’t right”. Each family doctor in turn would tell me that ‘every woman gets cramps’, I should ‘exercise more’ or would prescribe painkillers that rarely worked. I insisted on seeing gynecologists, who stared at me blankly and offered no respite from the pain. They sent me for numerous ultrasounds and often said ‘there is nothing wrong with you’.
This led to years of me enduring severe pain, all the while wondering why I was so crazy that I could imagine myself into pain that left me curled in a ball for 2 days every month. How powerful was my mind?!?
By age 25 I had had enough. Unlike myself, I hope that every woman does not wait 10 years to finally muster up the strength to insist on proper treatment. I had a family doctor that was fairly new at the game, so did not attempt to dissuade me and instead sent me to a proper gynecological clinic to investigate the problem.
I was scheduled for a laparoscopy (a minor surgery where they sedate you and through 3-4 small incisions in your belly button and abdomen view your pelvic area) in 2006. When I came out of surgery, they told me ‘you have endometriosis’.
Endometriosis is one of the major causes of pelvic pain. There are other gynecological disorders that can also be diagnosed via laparoscopy, such as Pelvic Congestion Syndrome, Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome and I am sure many more that I do not know because I am not a doctor. What I have learned in my research since being diagnosed is that endometriosis is rarely, if EVER, visible on ultrasounds. These doctors, sadly, either did not know that or chose not to explain that to me. Many women who suffer from endometriosis are told they are crazy simply because doctors perform routine ultrasounds and determine that the diagnosis is ‘emotional problems’ when nothing is visible on an ultrasound.
Since being diagnosed I have become my own health advocate. When it comes to my period, I am the best expert. After my first surgery I continued to feel pain and so insisted on follow up treatment. Although, again and again, I was denied it, this time I had learned the lesson that I KNOW MY BODY BEST and that NO WOMAN SHOULD HAVE TO ENDURE PAIN every month. I was able to locate a brilliant surgeon who helped me ease my pain levels through proper treatment for endometriosis. Doctors told me there was nothing wrong with my bowels when I complained, even after my diagnosis, and when I had surgery I actually faxed them the operative reports, explaining that where they said there was nothing wrong, I actually had adhesions from the endometriosis attaching my bowels to things that required detachment. In short, I was right every time and this time I held them accountable.
The lesson I had to learn in a very drawn out long manner was that women know their body well. Women know their body and what they need better than any doctor will give them credit for. If you feel something is wrong, it probably is. If they investigate, find nothing, and you still feel something is wrong…keep fighting. If they tell you that you are crazy, it is all in your head and you need psychiatric treatment, by all means get treatment…and then keep on insisting for an answer.
Periods should be minor inconveniences and my friends who are healthy with no gynecological conditions are able to work through their period, take perhaps an advil or two and keep going. If you feel pain for hours, have bad periods every month or feel unwell at your period time, ask for an answer. You are your best advocate when it comes to making sure you are not in pain when your period comes!
Periods are not supposed to be painful….
#101: Whatever size you may be…wear that size.
09 Sep 2009 Leave a Comment
in Your Body
You may think that being a size 14 is embarrassing, or maybe you tell yourself that you are a size 10 when you are a 12. Maybe you used to be a size 0, but now you are a 4. Whatever size your body is (and the tightness and fit of the clothes will dictate that, but if you really cannot decipher that your waist is protruding above your pantline) wear that size.
It is frightening that we have let the fashion industry create such mind control, but in the end, power always comes from within, and wearing the size you are (and demanding they sell it and it looks good) is the first step in exercising that power.
Too many times women are taught that it matters what size you are. It is almost pointless to try to tell any woman between the age of 13 and 72 that a woman looks beautiful when she is confident, happy and has purpose. But the unfortunate side effect of this larger issue is that women tend to look for smaller clothing in order to be smaller. When you see a woman who might be slightly overweight or underweight, or anywhere in between, the first thing you might notice about her is that her clothes are too large or too small. Woman also often think that men will believe whatever size they are wearing is their actual size (but they are not magic clothing items that disguise true form). Women sometimes are simply just pleased to say to the women beside them at work “This is a size 12″. When this happened at my work one day, I realized that the woman beside me was 5′ 7″, 150 lbs or so, and most certainly NOT a size 12. But she desperately wanted me to think she was (and her clothing had to be close to it, but NOT a 12, more like a tall 14 or higher). All I could think was, “Please, don’t lie to me. We have no reason to lie to each other about our size, since we have eyes and could not care less in the end. Be honest, share information with me and don’t let the rest of the world determine what we tell each other about our size, since we are all exactly the size we need to be.”.
I wish every woman was seen for who she was. In the proper size clothing, you can start the game off right.
