Welcome back!

Yesterday’s story about the mermaid or the whale was especially pithy I thought.  Can you imagine in your wildest dreams of actually choosing to be a whale?

What I loved about the story is that the writer used her powers of deductive reasoning to cull out all of the good inherent to being a whale, and I believe that this is the secret for every one of us.

In my experience, every one of us thinks he or she has “one thing wrong” and that this one flaw is devastating.  Fat people think it’s their fat.  Poor people think it’s their poverty.  And on and on.

It’s never about the one thing wrong:  it’s about thinking that the supposed one thing wrong it is.  It never is.  I’ve had people tell me all my life “I never see you as fat.”  But I saw me as fat.  So who was right and who was wrong?  I was wrong for much of my life.

The better idea is to focus on the inventory of the things in your life that are right and hold your focus there.  Do you know what is good about you? If  you get busy and discover that your one best forté is writing, for example, and you work to foster writing skills, you’ll become so successful in writing that you won’t care about your supposed “one thing wrong.”

Let’s all be whales.

Love,

Pat

I respect the work of many diet and exercise experts. They are truly dedicated to the task of dieting and exercising to maintain the form they consider appropriate, sexy, good looking, and healthy. The problem I see in this approach is that only the superhuman are able to achieve and maintain it. I’ve found spiritual healing much more beneficial despite your size because you can take it with you. It also leads to self acceptance and self love.

The diet and exercise approach appears to have a piece lodged within it that says “Unless you do this and look like this, you are not successful or acceptable.” I was never able to accomplish one of those acceptable bodies although I did try many, many times. God knows I tried.

I felt the disdain of others, men in particular. My parents nagged constantly for me to “do something” about it. I once had several surfers walk past where I was sunbathing on the beach at a trim size 16 and say with a snickering laugh “Oh, look! It’s a beached whale.” I became obsessed with my not being okay. It’s a very uncomfortable way to live.

The judgment, criticism and contempt of others was a heavy cross to bear. I made it heavier by agreeing with them. Yes, I was too fat. Yes, fat meant lazy and dumb. Yes, because of the size of my body, I was worthless!

But wait a moment! Wasn’t I out there earning a living for me and my two sons, with no help from their father except a measly $100 a month, if and when he felt like paying it? Hadn’t I bought two homes by myself on a clerical salary? Hadn’t I been buying my boys the OP shorts and the Van tennis shoes they needed to wear to fit in with their classmates? Didn’t we have great food due to my frugality and artistic cooking? Wasn’t I being promoted at work due to my talent? Wasn’t I in middle management capably running a team? Wasn’t I dating? Didn’t I drive a current, well-maintained car?

How could someone so terrible-looking and so worthless be accomplishing all of this, and I personally think my accomplishments were marvelous! There must be something of value there that everyone else wasn’t seeing because they couldn’t see past my body.

So, dear readers, I began the journey within myself to discover what was there that other people weren’t seeing due to their own conceptions of what was acceptable. I think now that their vision is rather short-sighted, but, gosh, did it serve me well!

The journey within is one of the most exhilarating trips I’ve ever been on. I was driven within by the world and it’s opinions, because the world of without judged harshly and erroneously. I wanted to find my own value. I wanted to know that my one sweet life was worth living.

My journey within has involved therapy, hundreds of self-help books (reading and applying), moving away from my parent’s church of choice, finding a home in the realm of metaphysics, criticism from my family because of my decisions in this arena, finally settling on one area to study, becoming a teacher of that study, writing a book about my life, and setting up an avenue to share my understanding with other women who suffer from a body that just doesn’t measure up to the world’s mistaken standards.

I like to watch the 1940’s musicals so I can still see plump thighs that jiggle. I’m saddened by the emaciation currently in vogue and called “appropriate and acceptable.” My heart goes out to girls who are starving themselves to maintain this look. Some of them are in my own family and it breaks my heart to see what they’ve embraced.

I believe we are here in this relative experience to discover that there is an ‘absolute’ that relativity is about. I think that relativity includes many, many tools that teach us about ourselves if we will become silent observers of our lives and try to figure out a way to become objective vs. subjective. I believe we have to pull ourselves away mentally to become those silent observers. Step back from your one sweet life and see what you see. Learn to classify what you see into big buckets and always search for the lesson inherent in your experiences. That lesson, once discovered, will cease to parade in front of you, hoping maybe this time you’ll get it!

I used my body as a teaching tool. It taught me that what I was thinking is what I got. I learned that to think “I am too fat” made me too fat. I learned through observing my thinking that in truth, this is a purely mental experience. I learned that my body is the Report Card of my thinking. I love my body as is. I learned that my mentality is one powerful Cause Machine. I learned that everything in my experience is caused by me through thinking. I learned that this happens whether I am aware of it or not.

You can have fun with this fat thing too. You don’t have to accept the remonstrances of others as your own personal truth. I still get a kick out of my quick response one evening when I was strolling with a girlfriend. A carload of surfers caromed around the corner and one hung out the window yelling “No Fat Chicks!” So I quickly pulled down my sun dress and showed him the beauty of my Italian heritage. The look on his face is tattooed in my mind and I’m laughing now while writing this.

Become philosophical: if life has handed you this lemon called Big Body, find a way to turn it into lemonade. I did, and this is what spiritual healing is about. I travelled within and I discovered a wonderful me in there. She’s highly intelligent, an incredibly organized and efficient worker, extremely talented, very sexy, and both loving and generous. I’m wondering: who’s inside you waiting to be loved and accepted by you?

Love ya,

Pat

My Cats

When I wrote this book, there was a great deal of love in my heart for the potential of reaching lots and lots of women, because I know how the obsession and foment and struggle about bodily appearance seeps into the nooks and crannies of our souls and sometimes turns to acid there.

I learned something about self-acceptance, self-love and spiritual healing though in my lifetime and that is what I wrote about in my book.  I thought that other women might see the wisdom in my words and be able to let go of the  horrible obsession we American women have about our bodies.  Many women from many different countries don’t live under the pressure we do here, and come on girls, wouldn’t it be a relief to just be able to “be” without all this blouse tugging?

We have been accustomed to having bodily criticism flung at us all our lives.  In my experience, my parents, one teacher and my husband felt duty bound to let me know I was not okay.  I ultimately discovered that they were all wrong, but at the time it was happening, I sucked it up like something wonderful and true and wrapped it tightly around my heart.  My concept of self grew to be “not okay; too fat” and this is not easily lived with, as many of you know first hand.

Let me ask you to consider this:  have you ever told a boyfriend “Your bodily shape is unacceptable?”  There might be a few who say yes - in particular you younger girls - but the majority is so on the defensive about having it done to us, we wouldn’t dream of telling another this kind of crap. So why do we permit it?  Why is our husband or mother or father or sibling permitted to say “You’re too fat” to us?  I am outraged at even having to consider such a thing. The worst part is that we believe it true and we take it in and we weave it into a self concept that scratches and abrades us.

We are not our bodies.  We are the animation inside our bodies.  That would be your mind, in case you haven’t given this much attention. You are a mind that thinks.  Your body is the report card that shows you what you have been thinking about your self.  What you think is the cause for that effect called your body.  You cannot change the effect with diet and exercise. You can only change it by changing how you think about yourself.

And this is what is in my book. And this is why I want all women to read it.  You would feel so free to understand the magnificent ideas I’ve shared there so that you could let go of your old ways and step into a new reals of self love and self acceptance. I wonder how big we need to get in order to learn the lessons we need to learn?

Love,

Pat