A New Me

On January 1 this year I weighed 292 lbs. When I moved to SC from Atlanta, I weighed 189, so that was a substantial gain in only seven years. A lot of it came on when I was working as a debt collector. The worst time for binge eating was just before Cameron's hip surgery, when I would often stop at Bloom for fudge.

Because I didn't eat the whole thing at once, but over several days, I told myself it wasn't the same as binging. Truth was, I was consuming too many calories. And each bite prevented me from dealing with whatever emotion was in front of me.

About mid January, I decided things had to change. I couldn't afford to wait any longer. The heal plantar fasciitis had mostly healed. My knees hurt every day. It's time. I had dreamed of putting myself on NutraSystem, but financially, that wasn't option.

Mamaw always wrote on the back of pictures. On this one
she wrote: "Rosemary Modesitt. Sept 1985. Cindy had just
given Rosemary a Mary Kay facial." I would have been 22,
and she would have been about 66. She was a size 14.

This is where the journey gets a little weird. I channeled my grandmother instead. My grandmother was food for me. As a kid, when my mother slipped away in her schizophrenic craziness and wasn't feeding me enough, we went grandma's every day. I never went hungry at grandma's. She was a rather difficult woman to approach emotionally. But when I was about nine, Grandma Haynes, who lived next door, told me the secret. Mamaw showed her love with action. And love was food. She made all my favorite foods and made sure I never went hungry. She controlled portions and calories, while still making things YUM. If I wanted both kinds of pie, she cut portions into slivers and I got both.

Mamaw grew up during the depression. Her family were poor dirt farmers. I remember going the farm until I was about nine, and having to go out to the pump for water. I dreaded the outhouse. She managed to go live with an aunt when she graduated from high school. In exchange for caring for her aunt, she received enough money for tuition, and went to college where she majored in Home Economics. She taught HomeEc until she was 62 when she took early retirement.

So I've been shaping my cooking around what she would have done. I get a desert every day (2 chocolate chip cookies only have 180 calories!). A couple of days a week I have a New Castle (140 calories). We've taken a page from Montel William's book, and drink Green Drinks all day long. Funny how they slow caffeine withdrawal. I only had 4 sodas yesterday instead of six. May eventually be able to get off them all together!

I've started a private journal at livestrong.com so I can track calories taken in and calories burned, as well as fitness. I'm doing Richard Simmon's Sweatin' to the Oldies more days than not. And it's working. When I weighed at work this week on the digital scale, I was down to 276 lbs.

And I'm in the kitchen thinking of my Mamaw. I miss you Grandma Rose Mary. I know you'd be proud.

Conscious Men

This is amazing. While women are more than intuition, inner wisdom and emotion, these qualities are very much a part of the sacred feminine. I feel honored to have viewed this video. Indeed, I wept as I viewed it.

Angry Teacher Raps About Getting Unjustly Fired

I'm the daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of teachers. We have 17 school teachers in my family, including my youngest son. I'm not a teacher because when I was in the 7th grade, my grandfather asked me not to teach. He had been threatened with a 2x4 in his shop the previous semester. My grandmother, a home-ec teacher, had a student brandish a knife at her the same semester. No teacher is paid enough. No teacher should ever get a pink slip because of a budget. Our children are too important.

Mindfulness

I took over a mindfulness group that meets once a week at work shortly after beginning working in substance abuse treatment. While meditation is virtually impossible in our environment--most of my clients would simply fall asleep--I try to introduce some mindfulness technique to my clients. I relate the concept of being aware of triggers with mindfulness. I also work with them on how to recognize stress in their bodies and how to use that awareness to their advantage. It's gotten to be a fairly popular group (clients only show up once, unfortunately, when they are required to take a group in order to earn privileges).

So it's taken me two years to make time to really research mindfulness and think about applying it to my own life. I've used meditation in my life for a long time. Studying Wicca requires it. But I'm now learning to use it more fully. Tonight I decided to check out youtube to see what it might offer. I really like this guy and thought I would share. He does a good job of just getting a person reoriented to breath work and mindfulness.

Stepping Outside the Social Grid

The Bali people's daily living takes shape around a system of ritual where Hinduism and agriculture meet. People in Bali depend upon an agrarian system to keep them fed. They work in rice paddies, and their survival depends upon each member of their society knowing exactly their role. Their rice growing society depends upon communal service: "Rice terraces require an unbelievable amount of shared labor, maintenance and engineering in order to prosper, so each Balinese village has a banjar--a united organization of citizens who administer, through consensus, the village's political and economic and religious and agricultural decisions. In Bali, the collective is absolutely more important than the individual, or nobody eats" (Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert).

Balinese people know exactly where they fit in the culture, from birth order to their place in the 13 rites of passages that mark their lives. The balance of their civilization depends upon conformity. So when you walk down the road and someone asks where you are going, you cannot reply "I'm just wandering" without distressing the inquirer. It is better to make up an answer than not offer a reply that fits their expectations. If someone inquires, "Are you married," it is better to reply "not yet" even if you are a lesbian, rabid feminist, 80-year-old nun.

On the one hand, what a comfort to always know exactly where you fit in your culture, your work, and your family. On the other hand, "different" disrupts their social grid to the point that they are distressed simply because you are not married. Or Hindu. Or fill-in-the-blank.On the other hand, what if you don't fit? What if your soul feels the urge to fly? Or to love someone of your own sex? What then?

And how different is that, truly, from our own culture? I live in South Carolina. I've lived in the Midwest or  South for 37 years. I struggle for authenticity in my life, claiming it as a banner. Waiving it around as my hope for salvation in a land of Christian fundamentalists and Southern culture. Yet I work in a place where the only Southerner is the owner. We have employees from Boston, California, and South Africa. We see a client base that is also "other" because of addiction. I've considered changing jobs, but don't dare do so. I'm lesbian. Not a safe to be publicly gay working for the local school system. The Christian fundamentalists won't tolerate it.

Cameron and I dream of living in a place where we both can find authenticity. As Cameron progresses along her path, identifying more and more as male, we both know transitioning here simply won't work. She has too many links to the past, to family, to those who won't understand. And while I was truly encouraged at the measure of support that came to the demonstration last week at Converse College, I also know I can't call five of those folks by name. They aren't present in my daily life offering support and strength. Moreover, we've not found our nitch spiritually here, either.

Guess we've stepped so far out of our cultural, social grid that we're having to define who we are, not by societal exceptions, but by our own intuition. But there are still many places that's not acceptable. Many places that still depend upon a social grid to provide identity and direction.

Moments of Bliss...and Unconditional Love

So I'm reading EAT PRAY LOVE by Elizabeth Gilbert. I deliberately choose not to see the movie, at least until after I experience the book. Not that I have anything against Julia Roberts, but I doubt she can achieve what I need to experience. Yes, I love the book so far.

I've reached about the middle when she talks about people coming to the Ashram from all over the world for a week of silent medication. Now I don't know about you, but the flashes of silence I get in mediation are an incredible relief. My mind races, worries, constantly. My limbic system got wired for constant emergencies at my mother's knee. Literally. I would not say I'm good at silent meditation. I would say that I've been practicing for a very long time...since I started studying Wicca, actually. And I need a lot more practice. It does come easier in my late 40s than it did in my early thirties.

I've also done one short, silent meditation. I took a 24 hour period to go to The Snail's pace, in Saluda, NC the day before my third degree ceremony. It was awesome. I've been craving an opportunity to return and do it again, but have never found the right time. Funny how chosen silence brings out so much "stuff." I've had enforced silence, going up to four days at a time without speaking to another human being on a regular basis because my life had become so isolated. Nothing restful there. More like I was verging on insanity.

So I'm reading my book, the TV is off, I don't listen to a lot of music, and the only sound in the house is the crackle of the fire and the sound a fan (gotta have a fan if you want to burn a fire and have hot flashes). The author writes about the sacred bliss that comes when we claim our inner perfection, our inner sacredness. And I looked around my humble home, and thought about the anxiety of the earlier part of the day, and as I watched the fire, and the cats, I thought, "this is it." I am, in this moment, blessed. I wish I could keep this moment of certainty, of connection, of love when the cat pans need doing, and I get up at 3:30 in the morning to go to work, when anxiety rules my moments.

One little note of serendipity. As I made my way through the section where the author reconciled her losses in relationships, including her ex-husband and a boyfriend, I had my own moment today. I married a man when I turned 30 from India. While I had known him for five years, during which he pursued me relentlessly, I didn't know I had also married a psychopath...a dangerous story for another day. I got my own affirmation for good decisions today while reading about the reconciliations to the past. I received a notice that the condo my ex and I owned together was about to be auctioned off for unpaid taxes. I did some quick research and made a phone call or two. Turns out he's still a computer programmer, working for a company with world-wide name recognition. He's probably making $100,000 a year and hasn't paid an accumulated $3,000 tax debt. He kept our condo out of spite when we divorced because he knew he I wanted it. He's probably let it go to move himself and his Indian wife (arranged marriage) into his parent's condo across the street...and rather than pay the debt, characteristically let it go. He always said he didn't care about money. Actually, he did. But only for the power it gave him over others; he paid his parent's and brother's bills while letting his own go so that he could have power. Yep, I got the Universe's confirmation of good decisions on a day I needed to hear it...

I don't know about you, but keeping  unconditional love for myself is hard. I certainly didn't have it this morning when I wailed about my shortcomings. I didn't have it for my wife when I got all impatient because she didn't "get it" the instant I thought she should. Or maybe I did. When the hurricane is gone, and we are left in comfortable silence, when we know our place in the universe and trust in the love we share with the people in our lives, and when my wife still loves me no matter what I twit I have been; maybe that is also sacred, blessed, and filled with grace.

Budget Cuts and Planned Parenthood

Anyone else noticing the antics of our lawmakers and the contradictions of their actions?

The House of Representatives just voted to cut all screening, prevention and family planning funding from Planned Parenthood. Apparently our lawmakers believe that if they remove all funding from Planned Parenthood, they can prevent funding abortion.

Hello? Research? Proof?

In case our lawmakers aren't paying attention, people are not going to stop having sex. Unwanted pregnancies can be prevented with condoms and education. Rather than providing services to low-income persons who otherwise will have yet more children they cannot afford to raise, our lawmakers preach morality and refuse to provide services. Meanwhile, they drive nice cars, live in the burbs, and have health care coverage.

Moreover, the consequences are far more expensive than the prevention of unwanted, unintended pregnancies. According to Reuters, raising a child costs $291,570. This price does not include childbirth or college. So for the lack of a condom, our nation will assume the cost of education, medical and other needs. And if the child lacks attachment figures and other needs, thereby winding up in the legal system, the cost increases even more. A quick Google search suggests that housing an inmate in the legal system $20,108 per year or about $55 a day, not including building maintenance, staff, etc.

I've been through four layoffs in my lifetime. I'm familiar with the end of the year push to salvage this year's numbers to justify next year's existence, regardless of the consequences. It horrifies me that we run our country that way. We look so closely at the final bottom line number for this year that we refuse to read the fine print indicating consequences for the next year, the next ten years or the next generation.

To add fuel to my rant, this is one of those things from Facebook that I posted on my wall:

Top 10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP's War on Women

1) Republicans not only want to reduce women's access to abortion care, they're actually trying to redefine rape. After a major backlash, they promised to stop. But they haven't yet. Shocker.

2) A state legislator in Georgia wants to change the legal term for victims of rape, stalking, and domestic violence to "accuser." But victims of other less gendered crimes, like burglary, would remain "victims."

3) In South Dakota, Republicans proposed a bill that couldmake it legal to murder a doctor who provides abortion care. (Yep, for real.)

4) Republicans want to cut nearly a billion dollars of food and other aid to low-income pregnant women, mothers, babies, and kids. 

5) In Congress, Republicans have a bill that would let hospitals allow a woman to die rather than perform an abortion necessary to save her life. 

6) Maryland Republicans ended all county money for a low-income kids' preschool program. Why? No need, they said.Women should really be home with the kids, not out working. 

7) And at the federal level, Republicans want to cut that same program, Head Start, by $1 billion. That means over 200,000 kids could lose their spots in preschool.

8) Two-thirds of the elderly poor are women, and Republicans are taking aim at them too. A spending bill would cut funding for employment services, meals, and housing for senior citizens.

9) Congress just voted for a Republican amendment to cut all federal funding from Planned Parenthood health centers, one of the most trusted providers of basic health care and family planning in our country.

10) And if that wasn't enough, Republicans are pushing toeliminate all funds for the only federal family planning program. (For humans. But Republican Dan Burton has a bill to provide contraception for wild horses. You can't make this stuff up).