Distraction

I have an eleven week old. He is so chubby and getting to be big. Every time he gets a new role of fat we celebrate it. I, on the other hand, am not celebrating the extra fat my body still has from the pregnancy. I can look at him and realize what a miracle he was, and how great a thing it actually is to create a person, yet hate the toll it took on my body. How can I hate the body that produced something I love so much? My husband gained weight during the pregnancy also and I do not feel disgusted by his body, as I do about mine. I don't know if it is inherent in females to be vain about our bodies or un accepting of ourselves. I don't know how to get over the feeling of revulsion every morning when I look in the mirror. For now I will just focus on looking at our little bundle of joy and try to put my figure on the back burner. I'm lucky to have the distraction

Learned From My Mistakes.

I did not have a self esteem problem until I was married to my first husband. I was married to a man that dished out insults constantly, instead of paying compliments. Never in a million years would I have believed that being in a situation like that could take it's toll on you mentally and enormously affect your self esteem.
Everything I tried to do, he told me I would be a failure. He criticized everything I did, and choices I made - my jobs, cars, friends, clothes I wore, my body. He also had a lot of help from his family, they made me feel like I was the ugliest peron on this earth. I would advise anyone who is in a relationship like that to get out while it's early, don't make the mistake that I did and enter into a marriage with that type of person, because once your self esteem is gone, it's hell to get it back.
Luckily, I am now married to a wonderful man who compliments me daily and makes me feel great about myself. It took eleven years for my self esteem to return!

Self-Portrait

In a personal growth workshop at age forty I was given drawing paper and crayons to help me
experience my feelings. Black. Tears welled in my eyes as I drew my eyes, nose, mouth and
hair. The more I allowed myself to feel my ugliness the harder I pressed the crayon on to the
paper. Tense, tight, mesmerized, my fingers throbbed under the pressure as I used the
blackness to obliterate my face.

With unrelenting tears streaming down my face I put the crayon down and stared in stone
silence at my picture. Others left for lunch while I mopped my nose and blinked hard so I
could see between the tears. We were to write a number on our picture between 1 and 10 to
represent how strongly we experienced the feeling we discovered. When I could finally move
again I picked up the crayon and wrote: 29

My mother was impatient. She yelled and was e-x-t-r-e-m-e-l-y critical. I can't remember her
saying anything she liked about me. I heard her say my older sister is beautiful and that my
little sisters are cute. She told me I looked like a boy. At age fifty-three I was looking at
a picture of myself with my two girlfriends. I was stunned at what I saw. Three beautiful
women.

The Fat Game

I was in second grade when I first remember feeling...fat. I felt awkward and bulky around the other girls. I was a chubby kid, definitely, but at age seven I thought that I was the fattest girl in Mrs. Slavin's class. It had started when Meghan said that my cheeks were fatter than hers and that it wasn't pretty. Suddenly, nothing about me was right. My hair was too dark, my eyes too brown, my fingers to stubby. And because Meghan, my best friend, was the all-knowing girl who told me what was pretty and what wasn't, she was the standard I measured myself against. I wanted desperately to look like her...And it wasn't that she was thin, really, it was
that she didn't look like me. Part of me is really surprised that I never developed an eating disorder, but for me, it wasn't really about the weight; it was about knowing that I wasn't supposed to like myself just the way I was and that my body was a construction project.

All throughout high school my friends and I played this game, the "I'm-fatter-than-you-are" game where one person would complain about their hips and another would reply, "What
are you talking about? Your hips are nowhere near fat! But look at my arm flab," and the game would continue until the bell rang and we had to go to our next class. This was really a never-ending game that picked up on the bus home and continued when we hung out after school. And no matter how many times your friends promised you were pretty, you never felt satisfied. This need for reassurance became like an alcoholism of sorts. I drank up their comments, but the buzz wasn't there, that good feeling I used to get when someone mentioned that they liked my shirt or that my hair looked good was gone, like my compliment tolerance was so high that just one wasn't going to do it. When I was complimented, I rarely believed it because my friends poured compliments out like they needed to relieve themselves of a
minimum number of niceties each day. Boys hated the arguments because it made their jobs a lot harder. When a boy DID compliment me, I was actually uncomfortable accepting it because I knew that if I disagreed, the poor boy would argue back and then it would continue back and forth for a while. The stronger he argued, the more truthful he was and the more likely I was to *possibly* accept the reality of his statement. I wasn't even aware of how bad this addiction had become until college when James, my boyfriend, finally said to me, "Why are you arguing?" and I had to stop and think about it. I had no response, so I just said, "I don't know. Thanks." And that was the first time I accepted a compliment in over ten years.

"You're Ugly"

When I was 12, I used to walk to school through a lovely wooded street in our affluent, suburban neighborhood on Long Island. One day, as I was walking, a tall boy from the grade above mine ambled up behind me. I didn't take any notice of him. But suddenly, he shoved past me, whispering, "You're ugly."

Stunned, I stopped in my tracks, letting him get quite a bit ahead of me. I didn't want to hear that again. Most of all, I didn't want him to see how deeply he'd hurt me and I struggled mightily to hold the aching, burning tears inside of my chest. I'd almost forgotten it had happened when, a few days later, he walked up and did it again, this time snarling, "How'd you get so ugly? I aint' never seen anyone so ugly." Again, I froze, hanging my head in shame. For me, ugliness was the worst thing anyone could have accused me of. Call me stupid, fine, you're stupid, too! Call me lazy, yawn. But ugly! I couldn't bear it. And I couldn't forget it. Weeks and months and years later, I still recall the whiplash of pain those silly words, that silly, cruel boys-will-be-boys sentence caused me. And though, in the 36 years since it happened, I've learned to forgive and forget and that the people who wound us are, as the Buddhists say, our
"noble friends," sent to teach us to be stronger, I still wonder, "Am I ugly?"

Mirror Work

Naked, my image is reflected back to me, in a full-length mirror. But a woman, I do not see: curves that rise and fall like hills that would be a dwelling place for a love. I see a broken hull of what should have been a sailing vessel. It’s body has been damaged in that delicate meeting place, where the tip of the bow breaks through the water. This vessel of mine, I call “bodyE"is held precariously, in suspension, disconnected from it’s own source. It won’t let me accept the good in life. It is somewhere in between yes and no. It’s the difference between joyfully receiving what is rightfully mine and merely parting the lips of my desire, for whatever might push its way in. The excitement of forced entry is the only touch it has known. I know it as an ache that took 48 years to feel, and is more persistent than longing. I cannot describe the wholeness I seek, except to say it is a touch my body has never known. I am being healed—this much I can trust—by examining my

reflection in a mirror. And naming the damaged parts can be a way of reclaiming my self.

In Someone Else's Eyes

He was cooking and I was standing by, chatting aimlessly. He needed the olive oil. I leaned into the counter to get out of his way. He passed around me, feeling my butt ever so casually. He did not grip or press. His hand went to my bottom the way I would put my hand on a shoulder or a back: to tell someone was there. Ever so slightly his hand lingered on my derrière, hardly enough to notice, insufficient to call harassment charges. He took the olive oil from the shelf and returned to cooking. I continued chatting aimlessly.

At age 23, no man had ever made a pass at me. Now one felt my ass and I felt beautiful. He was handsome, elegant and probably always treated women like divine creatures. I was the only female there and appreciated his gesture as an individual compliment. For as long as the memory lasts, I can see myself as beautiful, because he did.