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I was reading before bed one night near the end of the semester, when a feeling of urgency came over me.

Have I told them everything, I wondered.  Have I given them every bit of wisdom that I have to help them with their self-acceptance journeys?

And so I started writing down what I wanted to make sure I had told them before our time together was done.

Want a semester of my body image class boiled down to its essence?

Here are twenty-five points I try to impress upon my students every semester:

1. You are here on purpose.   You have a gift you are meant to give to the world, and it has nothing to do with your body.

2.   There is something you are not doing for every minute you spend in the mirror obsessing.  Go do it.

3.  Self-acceptance starts with a choice.  The choice you are making is to not have an adversarial relationship with your self.  Every decision is about not being your own adversary.

4. There is nothing you have to do to prove your worth.  You have worth simply because you exist.

5.  One of our greatest mistakes is thinking that if we change our body, we can change our minds.  Happiness is an inside job.  You have to change your mind.

6.  If someone comments about your physicality or station in life, it is not about you.

7.  People will sometimes say crappy things in the hopes of making themselves feel better.  Don\’t listen to the one.

8.  We teach people how to treat us. Choose your boundaries and communicate them with others.  A simple, “this isn’t a conversation we are going to have” can communicate more than you thought nine words were capable of conveying.

9.  People will sometimes say crappy things because they do not have better words but they do not mean it the way it sounds.  In those moments, assuming right intention can help you both. A powerful part of the self-acceptance journey is that you can begin to not assume blame either way and distinguish when to assume they had a better intention or put up a boundary.

10.  Beauty is so incredibly subjective.  There is not one look that is universally pleasing.  If you want to be in a partnership, who you are right now is someone’s cup of tea. But you have to start by being your own cup of tea.

11.  If there is no perfect, there can be no imperfect. We are each meant for our own unique expression.

12.  You vote with your time.  Don’t watch shows or read magazines that cause you discomfort.

13. You vote with your dollar.  Don’t pay for products that make you feel less than.

14.  You vote with your voice.  You can share your disdain for any message that demeans you.

16.  If something or someone makes you feel bad, you don’t have to continue your exposure.  You can quit anything that hurts you.

17. We spend so much of our adolescence trying to hide what makes us unique and so much of our adulthood trying to point it out.  Don’t mask what you have to offer.  Embrace it now.

18.  All natural day isn’t just good once.  Embrace your natural state more regularly.

19.  A media fast isn’t just good for a grade.  Create more media free moments in your life.

20.  There is no less interesting conversation than one rooted in body shame.

21.  Set ground rules.  Make your ear space a body snark free zone- for you and others.

22.  That party that has you paralyzed about how you look?   No one there cares about how you look as much as you do.

23.  People might remember what you wore.  They could remember how you looked.  But they will always remember how you made them feel.

24.  Look people in the eye.  They deserve to be seen.  You do, too.

25.  You can do anything.  You do not have to do everything.

And a bonus:  While you are not defined by your body, you have a responsibility to your body because it is your vehicle through this life.  What do you need to take care of you?  Offer yourself that. Now.  You will never regret taking good care of yourself.

This is Happy’s first week of summer and so I am not creating new blog content this week so that we can kick things off just right!  Here’s a blog post from March 2013.  Hope you enjoy and see you Monday with a new post!

Truth:  I do not have naturally pretty handwriting.

Also true:  I am often complimented on my handwriting.

What?

I was a high school teacher in the age of overhead projectors.  I had those little clear plastic sheets that I would write essential notes on for my class and then my students would take notes from mine as I lectured the class on things that I barely remember any more like the Stamp Act and The Battle of Wounded Knee.

My kids HATED my handwriting and bitched about it all the time.

“If you want us to be able to get down these notes, you are gonna have to write better,” someone would inevitably say to me at some point during a lecture.

And because I wanted my kids to get down those notes so that they would have something to study so that they could pass my class and the state exam and actually become seniors in high school (total pressure there as my class was directly tied to their route to high school graduation), I decided that I needed to relearn how to write.  And so I did.  I totally taught myself a whole new personal font.

But, as you might imagine, this post has very little to do with handwriting.

It has more to do with finding out that that the way we are doing something is not serving our end objective and then actively working towards a change so that we are more able to reach our goals.

My goal, back then, was to teach in a way that allowed my students to learn how to be in the world, how to be vital, giving community members, how to be self-aware and to keep themselves safe and, also, what they needed to know about history in order to be wise, responsible citizens of the world (who are capable of passing a state exam that determines whether or not they are on track for high school graduation).

And so I did a lot of things to achieve my goals: developed connections with each of my students so that they understood that I found them worthy  and so that they felt seen and heard and understood and knew that they always had a place to turn, came up with and held all of us- including me- to community norms of how to be a family in the space of 90 minutes of a class period, demanded their thoughtful reflection on a variety of issues and pushed them to be more and more aware of themselves, learned everything I could about moments in history and how to teach them to make their learning more interesting and evocative, and then, ultimately, taught myself how to write again at 23 so that they could capture the highlights of things and be more easily able to study their notes.

When we want something, it is amazing what we will do to achieve it.

Sometimes, we tell ourselves that we are too old for something, that time has passed us by.

But it hasn’t.  There is still time if you are willing to give it energy.

Just this past Saturday I taught a writing workshop and one participant was 77, retired, and ready to get everything she had to say out.  She is going to start blogging at 77 because she has so much to say.  Thoughtfully she said, “The time goes so quickly.  I don’t know how much I have left.  I need to get started.”

And there you have it.  It is just that simple.

We do have time.  It is not too late.  But we do not have all the time in the world.

What are you waiting to do?  What do you most need to do but don’t believe you can?

Insist to yourself that those limits are self-imposed.  Push yourself past them.  Insist that you get out of life what you most want, what you have most dreamed.

And then go after it.  You have not run out of time yet, but, if you keep waiting, you will.

it is Happy’s first week of summer and so I am taking the week off from writing new blog content so I can kick-off the summer with him.  Today’s blog post comes from May of last year.  Hope you enjoy it.

We are forgoing this week’s spark because a dear friend recently emailed me seeking advice about how to handle a fitting room emergency.  I thought the answer might be something you’d be interested in and so I asked her permission to share some of our exchange here.  It may not be anything you need right now, but, hopefully, filing it away will be helpful later!

Trying on bathing suits today, my daughter realized that her bottom isn’t the same size as her top and that she doesn’t just strictly fit in clothes that are the same size as her age any more. Help! I want my beautiful daughter to feel beautiful.

My advice? This is about the clothes— obviously, nothing is wrong with her body-because bodies aren’t wrong and bodies all develop in different ways and at different paces but because clothing is made in production, it doesn’t always account for the nuances of bodies. But you can help your daughter develop some ease around clothing sizes and an ability to see them just as a tool and not a judgment.

Because a script can be a helpful tool (don’t feel like you have to follow it word for word.  It’s just a guide), here is what I might say:

As we get older, our bodies develop at different rates and so sizes aren’t really about your age any more, and not all sizes- from store to store or style to style- will be the same. Sometimes we’ll need an 8 in one store and a 10 in another and sometimes we’ll need a 10 for one part of our body and a 12 on another part of the body.  The numbers don’t really mean anything other than to give us a guide when we are trying to choose what to try on. 

Every body is different and every body grows at different rates and clothes are all different, too.  Sometimes you’ll see people who are really tall because that is how their body is meant to grow right now and sometimes you’ll see people with lots of muscles because that is how they are supposed to grow right now.  Nothing is right or wrong on a body.  It’s just about what your body needs and is doing right now.

 As you move forward, stay aware of what she is noticing and make any appropriate little course corrections here and there.  Later, when the time is right, you can celebrate bodies that might be more like hers (for example, you might watch some tennis this summer and say something like “I admire how strong the Williams sisters are) without overemphasizing it. The key is to help her think more broadly about beauty and bodies without making it all about bodies and beauty because, in the end, that’s not the most important thing anyway, and you don’t want to accidentally teach her otherwise. You are doing a good job, mama. Trust your instinct.

Have you run into fitting room issues with your children?  How did you handle it?  What advice do you have?

{image source?  Karen Gunton from Build a Little Biz.  Her stuff is totally amazing.)