Hello, Friend

I was looking in a cabinet and found an old WW weekly that caught my attention.  On the cover is a woman smiling and hula-hooping.  I must confess I'm not quite sure I can even hula-hoop or even get the hula-hoop over my hips!  The title on the cover is "Befriend your Body" June 12-18, 2016 issue.  

I have horrible body image.  I never liked my body even when I got down to my lowest at 118 in high school!  Here's the sad part- a man/child I was dating at the time made me feel that way.  I was dating a child in a man's body.  I mean who keeps telling their girlfriend "It looks like you've been eating again?"  Or grabs a small bit of a love-handle and jiggles it.  No matter what I did (starve myself/ exercise/ give in to advances/ etc etc etc....ad nauseum...) I was never good enough. And the even sadder part was I KEPT PUTTING UP WITH IT!!!!

Do you ever have moments you wish you could have a do-over? 

Thankfully we do have do-overs.  It's called waking to a new day, Praise God!  True, we can't go back in time and redo past mistakes, but we sure as heck can make sure history does not repeat itself on our part.  That's the clincher- our part.  We cannot control what others do or say, but we sure can control how we will respond.

My older and wiser self will befriend my body and it's bumps and lumps and squishy parts.  I'm still blaming childbirth on those squishy parts and I will till I die, but I have 4 beautiful, wonderful, loving, made my life complete children who I wouldn't trade for the world and if it means I have a not-so-perfect body in the eyes of the world....well just go to hell.....that is if I believed in hell....which I don't.....so just go to Wal-Mart!  ;)

Pop Quiz Time...pull out a sheet of paper and number 1-10....hahahaha....just kidding, but really, let's take a body image test brought to you by the above mentioned weekly with a little tweaking from Strawberry.

1. Overall, your feelings about your body are:
A. "Eh. It'll do."
B. "Yay! Weight loss will make me more confident." (really? Who says that?)
C. "Yuck. I won't be happy until I'm thin."......mints, that is.  Oh man, I'm craving Girl Scout cookies

2. When friends compliment your appearance, you think:
A. "They're loyal and kind" (and I want what they are smoking)
B. "They're right!" (pretty full of yourself, eh?)
C. "They're lying to make me feel better" (we do think this sometimes, don't we?)

3. You don't plan to get into a swimsuit until...
A. you have to.
B. your next trip to the pool/beach/lake
C.the bathtub (Okay, I added the bathtub...in which case, you have terrible body image!...just saying)

So how'd ya do?

Mostly As- the article says your body image is neutral so show yourself a bit more love!

Mostly Bs- You, girlfriend, love yourself. Way to go!!

Mostly Cs- "Your body image skews negative" and believe me, there are too many negative nellys in the world and you don't have to fill that role.  

Love the body...love the mind...and let's love each other and show compassion (especially now that we are in such a divisive election year!).

As for me, I'm heading out to purchase a hula-hoop.

Peace Out, Grainiacs