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“I just need to catch a break,” she said, her frustration palpable.

It was near the end of the semester, and she had faced what felt like curveball after curveball since the beginning.  She was looking at me for some sort of reassurance, a confirmation that bad things only come in threes and then life reorients itself and gives you rainbows and sunbeams.

I like to be positive.  I like to be reassuring.  But I don’t like lying.

And so I told her what has been the truth in my experience.

For a long time, I waited for life to be perfect, to be the stuff of my dreams, for stuff to quit happening.  I thought that if I just earned enough money or just settled down with the right person or just set boundaries that life would get easy.

And those things do make life easier.  But people still get sick.  The refrigerator still breaks.  A rock still flies out from under the wheel of the truck in front of you and still smashes your windshield.  A perfectly ordinary day turns bloody at the end after a bad fall.  There are layoffs and food poisoning and kids whose phases are really something more.

So if you are waiting for life to get easier, you are going to be waiting an incredibly long time.  Because there will almost always be something to contend with, almost always some problem that needs solving.  Life keeps delivering challenges to us (because we have the great privilege of caring about lots of people whose problems become our concerns and because we use so many tools to help us navigate life which means that we feel off when they are off in some way) in its grand pursuit to keep us constantly learning and growing.

It’s not life so much that has to change then if we want our lives to feel different, to be different.  Life is not what is going to give us a break.

The truth is that we make our own breaks.

With our attitudes.  Our choices.  Our decision to set boundaries or walk away from things that are no longer serving us or our conscious development of the tools that will guide us through the journey.

We choose how much power to give to the bad things.  We choose what attitude we will have about it.  We choose how to respond.  Our response is one of our greatest sources of power.  Our response can change everything.

What are you hoping will get easier in your life these days?

What choice can you make right now to make it easier?

What tool do you need to find to shift the situation?

Are you ready?

If in considering the situation, there feels like no choice or tool is available, please reach out to me through the comments or via email.  I am happy to help brainstorm around it and if there just is no choice or tool available right now, to commiserate with you through the rough stuff. 

At the end of each semester, my body image students write a process paper where they synthesize their learning- both personal and academic- for the semester. These papers are always a delight to read and there is so much wisdom in them that I just have to share a fraction of it (with my students’ permission, of course) with you. Here, some wise words from my students this semester. May they give you hope and inspiration the way they did me (read part 1 here).

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I believe that one of the most beneficial ways in which my thinking has evolved is that I no longer measure the worth or goodness of my body based on it’s ability to visually please to others, or based on aesthetic appeal. If my body does aesthetically please someone that is great, but that was not the reason I was given this body. I was given this body as a well-oiled machine to aid me in fulfilling my purpose in this life. It is a vehicle that was hand crafted for my soul’s work on this earth, to carry me to my destiny. And just like the unique contributions to the world that only I can give, my body is a snowflake, there is no other exactly like it. Truthfully, as I type this I am reminded again of the body pledge, which taught me “to understand that a body, just like a personality, is like a fingerprint: a wonderful embodiment of my uniqueness”.Who needs to be aesthetically pleasing? I am beautifully and wonderfully made. My body inspires me to be unique, and to maintain resolve, never giving up. It never stops working for me, and it is a thankless job. I love my body for its lessons and its uses, and that is something I have never felt before.

~Andreana

♥

At the end of each semester, my body image students write a process paper where they synthesize their learning- both personal and academic- for the semester. These papers are always a delight to read and there is so much wisdom in them that I just have to share a fraction of it (with my students’ permission, of course) with you. Here, some wise words from my students this semester. May they give you hope and inspiration the way they did me (and come back next Monday for Part 2).  

♥

    “To stop berating my body and to begin celebrating the vessel that I have been given…” This statement baffled me. Celebrate my body? Why would I celebrate my body when I hate everything about it? I had never even considered all that my body does for me on a regular basis, all of its curve, strength, intricacies, and persistence. I had always viewed my body as a visual aesthetic, and nothing more. Furthermore, it was a visual aesthetic to those around me and not myself. I did not place value on its uses, or its daily victories in doing what a body is supposed to do. I did not thank or reward my body for housing my mind and soul, for keeping me alive and going, for fighting for my health. Even when it was fighting my own mind to be healthy. I did not see that, all I saw was that I am not beautiful to society, and that was what I thought bodies were for. As for now, I do my best to give my body what it needs. I always smile when I am able to lift a heavy object, or carry a child. When I rock my niece to sleep, I am proud that my body can act as a place of peace for her. When I am playing sports and dancing, I always hydrate and speak positively to myself. I am proud that I have a vessel capable of helping me to enjoy myself and do what I love. When I am healthy, I acknowledge my body’s strength. I celebrate the vessel that I have been given.

~Andreana

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I’ve learned that my soul is incased in this body so that I can experience life and therefore I need to take good care of it in order to live a long and healthy life. I can’t limit my opinion of myself to what I feel others think of me or worse yet what others say I need to be. This journey of self-acceptance and self-discovery has just started for me but I’m very happy at how much I have grown and all I’ve accomplished. I think the most important thing I leaned was not to love my body but rather love me, my mind and soul, if you can do this then you will automatically look in the mirror and love what you see. I’ve realized that I’m so much more than what I look like, and even though I want to look nice on the exterior, what truly matters in the end is what’s in your heart.

~anonymous

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On all natural day… I was most self-conscious about wearing my glasses.  It reminded me of my vulnerability and insecurities from middle school.  Many of my friends do not know that I wear glasses because I almost never wear them in public and sometimes find them an inconvenience.  When I shared this comment in class during discussion someone commented and said they didn’t even realize I had them on. I learned how we focus on our own insecurities and think they are at the forefront when people view us, when in reality it’s probably the last thing on their mind.   Realizing that my peers do not notice the same things I do has changed my body image dramatically.  Instead of worrying about the cellulite on my butt, I realize they probably don’t even notice. I have learned that it doesn’t matter that… I … have bad vision and must wear glasses.  It was just a card that I was dealt in life and something that I cannot change.  I have changed my body image now by being lenient on myself, respecting myself, and accepting my differences rather than perceiving them as faults.  I must continue to remind myself that only I zone in on my insecurities, that others do not notice them, and that it is media telling me I have faults.  I must remind myself that we all have differences and that is what makes us beautiful.  There is not a perfect ideal that has been made or that is capable of being achieved.

~Megan

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The thing that personally gave me an epiphany in this course was the idea that I am not my body. While this concept seems so simple that it’s strange to think that this had so much of an impact on me, I believe that its simplicity is why its so beautiful. We constantly see ourselves through the lens of other people. We rarely see ourselves for what we really are, because we are too busy thinking of how other people see us. I admit that when I look in the mirror as I get ready in the morning I do not see legs that will get me where I need to go and hands that will allow me to make a difference in my world, but the way that my thighs look a little too big in these pants and that my outfit needs to be accessorized with a designer watch to be socially acceptable. And this is sad to me. I find that I decorate and style myself to please others, and that I am constantly thinking about what others think of me rather than what I think about myself. So the idea that I am not my body really stuck with me. I love the idea that my body is just my vessel that acts as an intermediary between myself and my environment, and that it’s just my vehicle to accomplish the things that my mind and heart desire to do. And in the same way that this statement allowed me to view myself in a different light, it opened me up to viewing others in a different way as well. I noticed that when I stopped appreciating people for what they looked like, or condemning people for not aligning with my ideals of beauty, I saw everyone differently. Some attractive people suddenly became dull when I realized that the thing that kept me in thrall was not their scintillating personality, and normally plain people became beautiful because I finally could appreciate the way their laugh sounds or the way their eyes light up when they feel as if they are truly being heard. I discovered that while I look at people everyday, it is very rare that I genuinely see them for everything that their character and personalities had to offer.

~Heather