by Stef Woods, City Girl Blogs

When I saw a Tweet from my friend, Melanie, come into my feed, I stared at my laptop screen with an odd expression on my face. To paraphrase, the Tweet said:

Hey @citygirlblogs, I think my hair is even shorter than yours now!

I exhaled before I responded: Yes, but yours was a choice :)

See, I had cancer. I was known for my long, beautiful red hair. My hair was a huge part of my identity and my brand.

I shaved my head before six rounds of chemotherapy caused me to lose all my hair. As much as I missed my long, red locks, I wore a wig only a handful of times. I didn’t mind being bald; I actually kind of liked it! I felt confident without hair and as sexy as I could in the midst of six months of treatment and the accompanying side effects.

To most people, though, my comfort with my baldness made them uncomfortable. My baldness forced others to have to think about cancer and their own mortality. I get how scary that can be for some.

When my hair started growing in, I was able to embrace the buzz cut. I felt like a rocker chick! Now that my hair is short, though, I have to fake being confident about my appearance. Post-chemotherapy hair grows at half the speed that normal hair does, and it doesn’t grow evenly. In addition, the chemicals in chemotherapy commonly cause hair to curl. I spend more time and money now to maintain my short hair than I did when I had long hair.

Despite the fact that I’ve told my friends and written about the fact that I can’t talk about my hair, I inevitably receive several comments a day about it. People view hair as a sign of vitality and beauty. I view my short hair as a constant reminder of what cancer took from me.

"Oh, but it will grow back!” well-intentioned friends comment.
“In a minimum of three years,” I reply.
“It’s so thick now!” they say.
“It was thick before,” I respond.
“I know you don’t like short hair,” they try to reason.
“I like short hair on others. I’ve never liked short hair on me. And, this wasn’t a choice!” I remind them.

A study of breast-cancer patients revealed that 30% suffer from depression and 20% suffer from body image issues -- post-treatment. I’m thankfully not depressed, but I am honest and open about my feelings. It will take a long time to look in the mirror and like what I see. Until then, I’ll fake it until I can make it. I won’t let my displeasure at my post-treatment appearance stop me from dating, enjoying time with my friends or smiling at the cameras at an event. I don’t have a choice as to the length of my hair. I do have a choice as to how I live my life.

To some, that might be perceived as confidence or sex appeal. To me, that’s living my life to the best of my abilities.

--

Stef Woods is a university professor, sexuality educator, writer, former practicing attorney, and breast cancer survivor and advocate. She writes about relationships, sexuality, dating, health advocacy and cancer on her website, City Girl's Blog. Follow her at Twitter @citygirlblogs.

Photos by Kristina Hopper (top left) and Naiffer Romero (bottom right).

Have you ever seen The Holiday where Arthur Abbott tells Iris Simpkins that she has to be the leading lady of her own life, not the best friend? When he said that, he meant that we have to be confident in who we are because the best friend never gets the guy or the glory.

As girls, we've been programmed that sexy is really skinny bodies, long silky hair, flawless skin, and always looking our best. Many of us grew up believing that we would get a man by being sexy. My mom was the type to combat those things and although she never leaves the house without her hair and makeup done (and would never leave in her pajamas like so many of us do), she taught my sister and I that although we were beautiful, a smart, confident, sassy woman was the type to attract a man. For many reasons, my view changed and to me, being sexy was the only way to get a man.

I've always had a hard time with attracting a man who didn't need fixing. Either he was broke, or broken, or just didn't have his life together. I asked my mom what she thought I should do. I was shocked at her response. "Dress to the nines every day & you'll find one who has a better job and a better life in front of him." If you know me, you know that I don't 'dress to the nines' and never will. I look presentable but wearing heels and a skirt doesn't seem like an appropriate way for me to attract a man and it doesn't fit my personality at all.

Over the last 3 months I've changed my look twice. I had long blond hair halfway down my back for what seems like forever until... my aunt (a hairstylist from LA) cut it into a long pixie cut. Then I got a wild hair that I should cut it shorter and color it dark brown and did that right before the new year. There's a story here.

Previously, all of my boyfriends loved long blonde hair. They made sure to comment on it and said that I looked sexy with it. I've cut my hair a few times over the years and one of my exes saw me with short hair and wondered out loud if I had switched teams. I liked having long hair but the reasoning was wrong. Guys thought it was sexy. Which meant they thought I was sexy. I placed how I felt about myself in their hands. Their undeserving hands. The problem was... very few of my boyfriends gave me enough credit for being anything more than a pretty face with pretty hair. Not one of them believed I had the strength and confidence to run my own business. As I said before, a lot of events caused me to have so little confidence in myself and I came to realize that if I didn't have confidence in myself, why would anyone else?

As I grew my hair out, I got complacent. I stopped caring about how I wore it. I even started making jeans and a t-shirt more of a staple instead of bothering to put a little time into how I looked. Many people thought I was in my early to mid-20's when I really wanted them to believe I was a successful 'old enough' business owner. The last straw was when two different people at the same conference asked me if I was there doing a college paper. My aunt cut my hair off the following weekend.

Taking a big chance and finding that I loved it, I was told by a friend that I went from cute to hot in one haircut. She hadn't realized how much I had just looked cute and young until I cut it all off. I had put a lot of my sexiness in my hair and found out that it was my confidence that made me sexy, not my hair.

When I realized that short hair changed where I had my confidence, I decided to go a step further and cut it shorter and go dark. Although everyone said they liked it, I was really nervous. Getting rid of something that felt like a security blanket and going dark (which was the opposite of what every guy told me they liked), I had to pull my confidence out of somewhere else.

Shortly after both haircuts, a guy friend of mine let me know that as much as he loved both of my new hairstyles, he loved the fact that I had the confidence to take the leap. His words: Most women hold onto their hair because they don't like change or are worried it won't look good. You doing this shows that you have the guts to do anything.

After only 10 days of being a short-haired brunette, I feel like it's time for me to be a leader and that I've finally got the look to make that happen. My friend Lisa Helfert, a fantastic photographer, loved my vintage look and asked if she could do some photos of me with vintage lighting. The picture seen to the left is what she ended up with. A friend called it vintage glam. This one picture showed me that my personality can come through with serious confidence and an air of leadership without hiding behind my hair. It shows me that I'm a leader and that I have to walk into 2012 with that leadership quality. It's time.

I'm 31, a successful entrepreneur, and I'm taking the world by storm... with short, dark brown hair. Now I'm not sure if the world is ready for me.

Intentionality was the goal for 2011.

First, I applied this to Sisarina. At work, I stopped worrying about where money was coming, I blogged more, I focused on networking and bringing in more business, I hired better. My staff even supported this intentionality. Our intentionality became habit and we'll be taking it into our next year. (2012 is about leadership!)

Halfway through the year, I wondered why I wasn't feeling more intentional about my personal life. My work life was fantastic and everything was moving along perfectly but there was such discord outside of that. I started looking at being more intentional with the rest of my life and was impressed to find out that when you are intentional about everything, you get so much more joy out of life.

A month ago, I set a goal to pray more, exercise more and be more diligent about my quiet time.

MY GOALS:
4-WEEK NEW HABITS CHALLENGE:
MIND:
- commit to praying every morning & every evening
- commit to 15-min of quiet time for just reflection every day
- commit to being in bed by 11pm & waking up by 6am every day
- commit to tracking thoughts on paper daily
BODY:
- commit to 30-60min of exercise every day
- commit to eating & drinking only healthy
- commit to stretching every morning
- commit to tracking exercise on DailyMile.com daily

MIND:
PRAYER: Joshua, the incredible man I'm dating, has helped me keep this one for the month. We've been praying every morning and every evening over the phone, on Skype or in person as we can. Some days we aren't able to and I send up a little prayer but most days we pray together. It's such a blessing to have a man in my life who will pray with me and help me keep this up. It's now hard to start the day or end it without prayer. With this, Teresa and I have taken more time to sit and pray about Sisarina.

QUIET TIME: I definitely have not done this. My runs tend to be my quiet time if I don't have a running buddy. Being quiet is not easy for me but I plan to continue to focus on it. Since I haven't done this, I also haven't had the quiet time to track thoughts on paper. I hope to learn how to get my thoughts out and really listen to what God is saying through writing and quiet time in the new year.

BEDTIME: This is something I've learned to be very clear about. With all the running, I've definitely been up by 6am every day and because I've worn myself out with exercise and work, I'm typically in bed between 10-11pm. It's been so incredible getting solid nights of sleep.

BODY:
EXERCISE: As you'll see from my DailyMile.com profile, I've been very intentional about my 30-min per day. In 4 weeks, I only missed 4 days whereas I was only doing about exercise about 4 days a week. Being more intentional with a goal allowed me to begin a habit that I now plan to continue into 2012. My new goal with exercise is to run 1200 miles. That translates into about 25 miles per week. Excited to make that happen!

INTAKE: The eating & drinking only healthy didn't end up as healthy as I'd like. Because of this, I've also included being careful of what I drink in 2012. My plan is to drink only water so that I can keep my body hydrated for all the running I'll be doing. Drinking rum to combat stress has become a bit of a habit I'd like to break. Joshua & I are starting off the year with the same 4-week detox (minus wheat) that I did a few months ago. 

STRETCHING: Over the course of the month, I became more intentional about my stretching. It became habit after a run to stretch but stretching every morning? Nope. I've recently had a girlfriend convince me to start doing Bikram Yoga and another tell me she'd meet me at my office to do yoga with me. I think this will be something I need a buddy to help me with.

It's been quite an incredible month of intentionality completing my year of intentionality. Huge thanks to running & exercise buddies, David Heyman, Sam Young, and Jessica Menk. Huge love to Joshua Rennie & Teresa Thomas for praying with me. Thank you to all who encouraged me this month. Excited about more growth in 2012.
 

Hebrews 12:7 - Endure hardship as discipline...

Standing at my counter while I make dinner, sweat drips off the back of my hair and onto my neck. It's Monday night and I just finished a really hard BodyCombat class. On Thursday, I ran the Turkey Chase 10K in 56min with my friend, David (@dcborn61). On Saturday, Joshua & I ran a 4+mile hill run and on Sunday, we hiked Stony Brook Park (and by hiked, I mean, climbed a LOT of precarious stairs up to the top of a mountain so we could see the falls pictured here). My muscles ache, I really need a shower and I'm starving, but man, I feel incredible.

I'm inspired to do something.

Evernote reminded me that I had notes from last Sunday (thank you for the sync from my phone!) and after reading through them, I realized that this is something that is obviously on my heart. Pastor Todd (@swirlyfoot) gave a sermon at Church in Bethesda about the saints. He talked about the tough things they went through to become saints but they were never all talk. They had action behind their talk & endured hardship. The sermon was pointed at getting off our butts & doing something instead of just talking about it. Todd told us that each of us could be a saint in our own right if we stopped just formulating ideas and went out to put them into action.

My initial thoughts for this post were about formulating a plan for the next month to get off my butt and show myself what I'm made of physically. The verse above, Hebrews 12:7, is the beginning of a few verses (seriously, go read them) that talk about how God is our Father disciplines us for our own good and and how even when our earthly fathers have done the same, we've respected them. Being able to discipline ourselves to action allows us to correct our own paths.

MIND:
Based on what the Bible is saying here, I know I must discipline my thoughts, my words and my actions to make sure I am wholly good and holy for Him. If I can do that, I'll be wholly good to everyone around me. Being a Christian is so much more than just going to church on Sunday and praying over dinner. And although some of you may not agree with me, being a Christian isn't about just telling everyone that God will save them. Being a Christian is about being an upstanding member of your community in everything you do. It's about who you are when nobody is watching AND when everyone is watching. Finding myself standing here knowing that I'm a leader in my small community, I know it's time to correct my path.

I've always struggled with prayer and downtime. I've always had a hard time just quieting my mind. Running helps  me quiet my mind (we'll get to that next) but otherwise, I'm a million miles per hour in thought. Being able to refocus my thoughts will allow me to be a better Christian AND a generally better human to my community. Ever been around yogis? They're incredibly peaceful to everyone around them. Hmm... we'll see how this goes.
 
BODY:
This goes back to me sweating and feeling amazing yet painful after a few straight days of working out. I'm disciplining my body to do what I want it to and it's respecting me for it. For the last few years, I've been pushing myself to do more but then I fall into a comfortable pattern and end up working out only 3x a week.. maybe. This year, running has become something of an addiction for me but sometimes what I put in my body (fried food, alcohol, etc) doesn't allow me to have the drive to get up and run the next morning. While in this space, I always wonder (even though I know) why I can't break the barrier that shows me what I'm really capable of. In order for me to see results from this discipline of my body, I need to get off my butt and make it a reality.

If you repeat a behavior over and over, it becomes a habit.

My plan is to make these two behaviors good habits. Thanksgiving is now over and Christmas is on its way. These aren't insane plans for having a killer body or being a Christian saint, but they are simple actions that I want to become a part of my lifestyle, not just a phase.

4-WEEK NEW HABITS CHALLENGE:
MIND:
- commit to praying every morning & every evening
- commit to 15-min of quiet time for just reflection every day
- commit to being in bed by 11pm & waking up by 6am every day
- commit to tracking thoughts on paper daily

BODY:
- commit to 30-60min of exercise every day
- commit to eating & drinking only healthy
- commit to stretching every morning
- commit to tracking exercise on DailyMile.com daily

Now that I've written it down and said I'd do it, it's on. I'm ready... are you?
 

"Why don't I have ____?"      

                                                                  "Why can't I get ____?"
            "I'd be so much happier if ____?"

Ever catch yourself asking these questions of yourself? I finally quit... and guess who is happier than ever before? Me.

So many people think that if they had more, they would be better off. The grass is always greener. If you are single, you wonder what it's like to be married. If you're married, you wonder why you made that decision. If you don't have kids, you yearn for them. If you do have kids, you're happy to give them up for a night off. If you're in an unhappy job, you know you'd be happier working for yourself. If you work for yourself, you wish for the days of a steady paycheck. Greener... but is it?

At the beginning of this year, I set a goal of intentionality. I didn't do a New Year's resolution. No "I'll eat less and run more". No "I'll walk the dogs more." No "I'll take more time off." Just a goal of being intentional with everything I do because no one else was going to live my life better than me. 7.5 months later, I see the fruits of my intentional intentionality... and every day it's clearer.

No more worrying. When I set this goal, it was to put full faith that God had given me the tools and the strength to be a success. I finally started leaning on Him and with that I had to stop worrying about everything. Money, relationships, work, family, everyday details... Once I stopped, I was able to focus on what He really wanted for me - my best life. A life that was in place to help others accomplish and live their own.

I love my life. My friends, my family, my job, my coworkers, my clients, my dogs, my home, my office, my body, my goals, my everything. Nothing is perfect but man, I really love where I am a month from 31. I am happy, I am healthy, I'm in the best shape of my life, I'm a successful entrepreneur, I travel, I am full of faith... it's all coming together.

Being intentional about who is in my life, what I do with my days, and how I find peaceful rest each night knowing I'm living my best life is how I am able to just be happy.

Are you happy? How are you intentional about your life?

by David, @dsklarin

There is a stigma regarding men talking about struggles with weight and healthy eating. I was hesitant to even write this post when Melanie requested that I guest-blog about the last few weeks. I believe that in life I can either save my ass or my face, usually not at the same time. So I choose to save my ass and to talk about it. I had let some friends know where I was at and that I could use some help. Asking for help also does not come easy for me. Here is my experience so far:

A funny thing happened a couple months ago...I found myself staring at myself in the mirror in the bathroom wondering what had happened. I now knew how my beloved Yankees must have felt after dropping 4 straight games to the evil Red Sox after being up 3-0 in the 2004 ALCS. I woke up and was genuinely horrified at what I saw. I was a fat guy again. How did this happen? Was this some nightmare that I couldn't wake up from?

See, a few years ago I was a REALLY big guy. Here is a picture of me with Aaron Boone (who hit the home run for my Yankees that knocked the aforementioned evil Red Sox out of the ALCS the year prior to the collapse of 2004). It wasn't so much that I was larger than life, I was UNHEALTHY. I grew up playing baseball and hockey and hiking. I was now sedentary...at a desk job, in a bad relationship and just unhappy in general. I hadn't even picked up my guitar or sang in over a year (if you know me at all you find this hard to believe right now).

On the way home from losing my job I received a call that my aunt had died. As I pulled up to my house there was a moving truck. My girlfriend was moving out and I was home early, having been laid off and all. BEST DAY EVER. That's not sarcasm, it's the truth. The job stunk, the relationship was not so great and my aunt was in a lot of pain. Jimmy Needham sings a song called "Hurricane" where he asks that all of the unnecessary things in his life get swept away like in a hurricane so he can focus on what is really important. That is what that day was for me.

I started on the breakup diet, aka not feeling like eating. A funny thing happened though - I started eating right - cooking all of my meals, not eating processed flour or any sugar that didn't occur naturally. I started running. I was at the gym almost daily. I prayed before meals giving thanks for the continued motivation and ability to be a good steward of the body that I had been given.

A year later I was running 5 miles a couple times a week. Want a real fistpump at the Jersey Shore??? Run 5 miles on the sand as the sun is coming up. If you don't feel like pumping your fists at that kind of overwhelming beauty then I think you're crazier than...well, a Red Sox fan or something. I was lifting at 5am 5 times a week. Here's a pic from about that time with a friend and a horse that my family owns: I was healthy and loving life.

And then last September I switched companies and was behind a desk again. I started to skip a day here and there at the gym. Then two days once in awhile. I didn't eat as well on those days, as my body didn't crave the same types of nourishment. It was too cold to run was what I allowed myself to believe. Then before I knew it I hadn't been to the gym in months. By mid-May of this year I was up 40 lbs. HOW did this happen? HOW could I have let this happen.

Two choices at this point - give up, believing the lie that I would always fail at this and hence why even try...OR, get back on the horse, listening to the truth that a temporary setback was all this was, if I wanted it to be.

Melanie asked me to write how I feel after a few weeks of not eating crap (have you ever heard her say the word "crap" with that Western NY accent? it's cutely funny). There's not much to tell - I feel like I am not craving things that are killing me anymore. I have not dropped much weight...yet, however 4 weeks is just the beginning of a restart of what I began in May of 2009.

I didn't agree to be a part of this food detox for vanity - I love how healthy FEELS. I crave that again. I want to have a family - to grow old with someone I love, to see kids graduate, get married and have kids of their own. An unhealthy lifestyle is more than inconvenient, it is the surest way to miss out on these things. I actually love eating healthy, I love exercising and I love being a good steward of the resources that I have been given. I view the detox as a "reset" button... like those old Nintendo 8-bit systems had... when the game was crap, you could hit that button and start over... So thank you, Melanie, for helping me restart something that I love.

Keep up on the progress at: 4 Week Detox

It's been a week & I'm still alive.

I've written before about my body image. I've told you all how much I hate my body… I still do and not because I'm trying to get any of you to say otherwise. It's my issue, not yours. I know I'm thin, I just hate my curves and bumps and love handles. My middle has been a source of disdain for the last 7 years and I've done everything in my power to make it go away… or so I thought.

A week ago I realized that two things were happening. 1. My middle area was not getting smaller no matter how much I worked out. 2. My intestines hated me almost every day. 

Why did I pick these?

I'd talked about doing a detox but couldn't figure out how to do it so I just kept putting it off. Knowing that I'm probably allergic to some of the foods I'm eating I decided to give up the 2 things most people have problems with: wheat & dairy. I also noticed that my sleeping patterns were all messed up and it was a crazy cycle of drinking caffeine every day then not sleeping because I'm naturally caffeinated as it is. Then because I didn't sleep, I'd need caffeine. Processed sugar & fried foods are just bad. End of that story. Alcohol became an issue when I realized that I was working way too much & felt the need to drink on my couch at home while I was working to make it not feel so stressful. I was drinking 4+ days a week and that also didn't help with my sleep habits and caused me not to want to go running. Now do you see?

First Week Report:

Aside from accidentally ordering ginger ale last night out of habit while out for a friend's birthday instead of my usual rum & ginger ale, I've stuck to the plan since last Sunday morning. 7 straight days.

• Wheat: easy-peasy. I don't eat a lot of wheat as it is. I don't plan on adding much back into my diet after this is over.
• Dairy:  isn't too bad since I'm not eating cereal or drinking coffee. I believe I'll be eating the giant container of Greek yogurt in my fridge this week though since it's too expensive to waste. 
• Sugar: The hardest of all of the list. I want a cookie or something sweet after lunch/dinner and have SUCH a hard time breaking this habit. I didn't realize how bad it was until I gave it up and didn't give in. I'm a sugar-lush! Fruits have helped replace this but nothing is as delicious as a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie… !! 
• Fried food: I do crave a big bowl of french fries but I have sweet potatoes that I may bake instead. I'm removing this from my diet wholly. No more fried foods ever.
• Caffeine: The first few days were really tough. I went to work exhausted. Later in the week I realized I was sleeping better, feeling more alert longer and ended the week wide awake. This is something I'll be giving up for good.
• Alcohol: This has been tough. I spent the entire first 6 days with just water. Nothing else. Yesterday I made a mocktail of 100% blueberry & pomegranate juice with seltzer water to help me through the craving.

Having friends support me and go through this with has been an amazing experience. It's been really rough but my whole being feels better and it's prompted me to hit my workout regimen much harder than normal. I'm heading into my 30's (31 shortly!) and want to make sure I hit them with a rock solid, hardcore body. Inside AND out.

Keep track of all of us & what we're eating at melaniespring.com/4-week-detox or #4weekdetox

Happy & healthy eating! 
Melanie

I've recently discovered just how human I am.

This past week I helped organize a group we ended up calling #MetroCarols. Our intentions were pure, our excitement for the holiday was intense and we love to sing. Cheering up the curmudgeons of the DC area on their miserable commute home was our plan & singing Christmas/holiday carols was what we thought would be best. Plan: Organize a flashmob that just happened to break out in carols randomly in metro stations.

Once word went out, my cohort & I realized that we had a much bigger sphere of influence, especially together, than we had any idea. The press & bloggers caught on and we had 150 people sign up. Things got out of control, he did an interview with the Examiner & once the press started posting articles about our plans, metro riders commented with a vengeance. After hearing about stun-guns, their wanting to punch us or push us off platforms, we took our plans off the public Facebook invitation so that we didn't end up doing what they accused us of: ruining their commute. 

By Monday, we had done some behind-the-scenes practicing with the trustworthy NPR & WUSA around to listen in & passed around our plan for where we were going that evening. At 11:30am, TBD & WashFM posted our PRIVATE schedule on their websites for all to see. Tears flooded my eyes and I realized that things had gotten out of hand. Although I was publicly accused of being ridiculous, I was honestly only afraid that if anyone was hurt due to the angry Metro riders showing up just to spite us, I would be left responsible for the tragedy. My humanity hit hard.

I called my cohort with overwhelming amounts of worry and told him I wanted to go home and cry myself to sleep. He had no intentions of backing down and satiated my worry by telling me that I needed to just come enjoy it in the spirit that we had planned in the first place - to spread cheer to commuters.

In a final change of plans so as not to allow anyone to get hurt, we moved to Dupont Circle, press surrounding us, as a group of 30 carolers, and sang joyfully with smiles & chills. The cold air caused us to sing Let It Snow & snowflakes started falling in a beautiful coincidence. Our joy was passed on to those leaving work that chilly Monday evening & DC commuters smiled at us as we moved closer to the Dupont escalator to sing a few more songs without impeding their rush home.

My smile got brighter the more we sang, our group gained momentum and carolers and we ended up singing the 12 Days of DC up and down the escalator & other carols into the Dupont station. After boarding a train & heading to Union Station, we started singing again & stood in a group caroling while people walked past with smiles & joy clearly showing on their faces.

Final outcome: Although my humanity almost got the best of me, we accomplished our main intentions - spread holiday cheer & make people smile - except with full press coverage.

PRESS & VIDEOS:

Check out what they wrote & said about us along with hearing us sing:

GREAT piece by NPR's Nate Rott

WUSA (Channel 9, CBS) coverage with videos of our rehearsal and of the event

Washington Post edited video:



Washington Post video on YouTube:


Washington Post article

Washington Post "Dr. Gridlock" blog about Metro

WeLoveDC's article

Waxing Unlyrical's article by Shonali Burke

When I was born, the first child in my family, my dad had only recently become a born again Christian. He was gung-ho for God and his faith is the reason I am still growing daily as a Christian. He has never let his faith waver in that God will take care of him and his family. Dad made such an impact on my faith. And I want to share more with you on my family's faith journey and also an incredible tithing story from the book "Crazy Love."

Growing up in WNY in one of the poorest counties in the whole state, we didn't have money. 6 people, 1 income, no more than $20,000/year for all of us to survive on and somehow we managed. My parents gave us each an allowance. 50cents a week. 35 to keep, 10 to save and 5 to tithe. I still appreciate my parents for how they taught us to spend, save and tithe.

I vividly remember Sundays when the offering plate was passed. No matter how much we didn't have, my dad always had a wad of bills to drop in that plate. I noticed that other families didn't put anything in the plate and wondered why my dad was different. When I was in my teens, I asked him why he gave so much to the church. He told me that God had asked him to and that because he was faithful, God would take care of us.

No one in my family had health insurance growing up until NY State passed a law that low income kids under 19 could have free health insurance. That happened when I was 17. With 4 kids to raise, my parents had complete faith that God would take care of them. Not once did something happen to any of us that caused my parents to worry about money. Oh sure, they worried, but they knew God would be there to listen. 

God listened and told our church that we didn't have money for groceries when my mother was too proud to even whisper that truth - grocery bags filled our porch without a note the morning my mother walked out our front door to go apply for welfare. The day the rent was due and we didn't have the money for it, God told someone to put cash in an envelope and leave it in our mailbox. No one knew we didn't have the money but God made sure to take care of us.

When I got older and established myself in a church, I would give halfheartedly and not because I wanted to, only because 'God told me to.' I didn't give because I felt called to or that there was something to give for... I wasn't even sure if the church would spend 'my money' the way I thought was best. I heard a song on the Christian station the other day that reminded me of myself back then. The lyrics say: I try to stay awake during Sunday morning church, I throw a twenty in the plate, but I never give ’til it hurts.

As most of you know, last April I lost my job and decided to restart my business instead of finding another job. Shortly after that happened, a friend gave me the book "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan. It's a book about God's crazy, relentless, all powerful love for us. There was a part of that book that talked about tithing and told a story of a man who lost his job and although he really wanted to keep giving the church what he had been, he didn't know if he could since he didn't have that income. He did a lot of praying and decided that instead of giving what he had been giving, he would give double and put his faith fully in God. 

Obviously that struck home with me. I had just lost my job, knew that I wasn't going to be able to pay myself any sort of salary from May to December due to taxes and the fact that growing a business doesn't happen overnight - I had no idea what I was going to do. I loved my church, this church... and knew I needed to keep giving, not just of my time but of all the resources God gave me. I decided to take a huge leap of faith and be like the man in Crazy Love... and like my dad. I started tithing double what I had been tithing before I lost my income. 

Yes, it might seem crazy to you for anyone to do that… and you're right, but I had to eat, keep a roof over my head and forge ahead with this new business while still paying all the bills. It takes full faith to do something like that and I wanted to know what that faith felt like.

When I did an assessment of last year's finances, I found that I had given 60% of my overall income to the church or other charities throughout the year... without anything more than my business just paying my living expenses from May to December. I never once went hungry, I didn't lose my apartment, my dog didn't die because I couldn't feed him, I had everything I could have needed and more. How? God took care of me. Little miracles. Teresa even had a chance to observe God’s gifts as they emerged.

Teresa saw the IRS put unexpected money into my checking account JUST when I wasn't able to buy groceries and gas. She saw my friends taking care of me. She saw the forgotten $3,000 from my retirement fund come through and pay employees when they needed it. She saw people remove themselves from my life and my business without the burden of unemployment.

God takes care of us... if we let Him. I am living proof. If you want that faith, the faith that you know God will take care of you, you have to trust Him and know that whatever you do ends up giving to His work and will go to exactly what is needed most. So I invite us to take a few minutes now and envision all that we are thankful for… and all our needs that have been met. With these gifts in clear view, how can we ‘throw a $20 in the plate but never give til it hurts?’

I love this church, you love this church; we’ve made it our home. Tithing isn’t about obligation, it’s about supporting the community we’ve built here. Don’t give because you feel like you have to, give because you know God is faithful to you and the rest of us.

--

Originally given as a talk at Church in Bethesda to the faith community during worship service. Huge thanks to Jill Foster for reviewing & providing me with incredible feedback. 

When I was growing up, every night my family of 6 would sit around our dinner table and pray for our food. Every Sunday we would go to church for service. Every Wednesday we would go to church for activities. Once a month was communion. As kids, we were obligated to do these things because my parents enforced them. When I left home, I felt like they were things I was still obligated to do.

When did you realize your faith was just an obligation? Have you ever thought of it that way? Do you honestly feel like you have a choice in your religion or are you just going through the motions? I'm talking to all of you with whatever religion you believe in.

Not long ago the song More Like Fallin' in Love by Jason Gray came on and I heard the words so clearly that it had me shaking my head yes. The song was about how it's not easy to be 'religious' but that our faith should be more like falling in love with God than obligation.

I've never been good at following rules. I've been told that if someone tries to put me in a box, any sort of box, that I will get out of it as quickly as I can - that I can have rules put on me or I'll break them just because they're rules. It's the same way with religion. If I feel like I'm obligated to do something, I probably won't end up doing it. Being a Christian often feels like a prison, if you don't look at it the right way. So many rules, so many consequences, so many requirements and restrictions. It goes against everything I am at my core.

Love is something we humans are always searching for. Acceptance, someone to tell us we're beautiful, someone to wrap us in their arms and take care of us, to give us the feeling that we're doing the right thing. I've been struggling with love and acceptance since I was a kid. I want to be loved but at the first sign of it, I flee. I've realized that's how I am with God too.

Instead of being obligated and required to believe & act a certain way, I want to feel like I'm falling in love with Him. As soon as He starts showing that it can actually be like that, I go back into the mindset of 'fine, I'll just pray every day, do my devotions and go to church and He'll love me' when all He wants me to do is let go. He wants to sweep me off my feet and show me that I am loved with a deeper love than a human can feel.

In the same way, marriage is something I feel is an obligation, not something that's sweet and wonderful. I feel that our society tells us that we should go to school, fall in love and get married. It's the course of life and is 'just the way we do things.' As much as that has changed over the last 30 years, it's still something many of us look to do since we don't feel we can be alone. Since this seems like a rule, it makes me want to run away... fast.

Maybe if I stopped looking at my faith as something I have to do and start looking at it as falling in love, I'll see the emotional growth I've been needing in my personal life to allow myself to be open to loving a human rather than running from it. In the same sense, if I stop looking at marriage as an obligation and focus on the falling in love part, it won't seem so terrifying. Why can't we just enjoy the falling in love portion of everything we do and stop focusing on the outcome and requirements?

Guess that's just how it starts... as food for thought.

More Like Fallin' in Love - Jason Gray

Give me rules, I will break them
Show me lines, I will cross them
I need more than a truth to believe
I need a truth that lives, moves, and breathes
To sweep me off my feet

Its gotta be
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
Its like I'm falling
Its like I'm falling in love

Give me words, I'll misuse them
Obligations, I'll misplace them
Cuz all religion ever made of me
Was just a sinner with a stone tied to my feet
It never set me free

Love, Love
Deeper and deeper
It was love that made me a believer
In more than a name, a faith, a creed
Falling in love with Jesus brought the change in me

“It’s always eye-opening to see how others view themselves.”

“So glad I read this before heading out to the gym,
because now I can focus on how strong I am instead of thinking about all the flaws I have to fix.”

“I too have struggled with loving my body.”

“I can totally relate and feel relieved knowing that I’m not alone.”

“I share your pain.”

“I think we all struggle with being perfect.”

“The fact that you’ve started to overcome your problem is comforting
 and has made me a little more hopeful.”

These are just a snapshot of the comments left on posts throughout the Body Image series. The lives touched, the hearts that were softened, the tears shed writing and reading these posts, the honesty poured out, the love that went into them – I am so humbled by all of it.

Over the last few months, I had been formulating my post in my head while working out, running or slacking. Realizing that many of us have this same issue, I decided to write about my internal disgust for my body so I could work through it openly. While talking to Jennifer about it, I found that she had the same issue and wanted to write about it also. Thus, a series was born.

Just by talking about my battles, I stirred up a whole spectrum of people that felt the need to share their own. Every post I read brought tears to my eyes and I hope at least one of them touched your life. From a capable body to losing 100 lbs to battling with acne to battling anorexia, the Body Image series encapsulated so many.

Here’s a recap of each:
1. Learning to Love it (Melanie) – a race against time, striving for unneeded perfection
2. My Body is Capable (Jennifer) – motherhood, running & surviving
3. My Body, I Hate Thee (Courtney) – loving her body, an accident, hoping to love it again
4. The Ugly Duckling? (Annie) – overcoming the outer duckling to find her inner swan
5. I’m Up Here! (Nicole) – breast reduction, learning to love her body
6. I Love My Body (Amanda) – childhood anorexia shows her how to love what she has
7. My Less Than Perfect Body (DeChelle) – a battle with perfection & the scale
8. The Bald Way is the Only Way (Joe) – college hairloss leads to adult baldness & acceptance
9. Appreciate What You Have (Abbey) – learning about body love as an aunt
10. Confessions of a Guitarist (Neil) – childhood baldness slowly allows a rocker to find balance
11. Discovering Hope (Amy) – learning to cope with nervousness instead of taking it out on her hands
12. Finding Balance (Joe) – battling against the gay standards
13. Coming into Focus (Anonymous) – a lifelong battle with anorexia
14. It’s My Windows, Dammit! (Christopher) – childhood eyesight issues lead to other heightened senses
15. Things That Stay With You (Nicole) – a story of tattoos & being an emotional woman
16. My Face & I (Shannon) – a struggle with acne & putting her best face forward
17. A Change Will Do You Good? (Chris) – losing 100 lbs & trying to find peace inside his body
18. Courtney Gives Insight (Courtney) – a counselor explains the originals and formula for body image

Thank you so much for being a part of the series, even just as a reader. Now go love yourself. You are beautiful.

Next series: Passions – tell me what you’re passionate about, why you are, what you do about it and how it makes your life better or worse. Contact me if you're interested in posting. Series starts in September.

by Chris

The thing about having a huge gut is that you can feel it.

Sure, it’s bad enough to have to see it. Nobody wants to look like Fat Marlon Brando. What you can’t know unless you’ve been truly fat, though, is the unpleasantness-bordering-on-horror of the way your midsection feels – every day, every hour. Your belly precedes you into a room, dangling from your body like a surgical attachment, tugging your entire torso toward the ground.

The word that comes to mind is “visceral.” You feel your gut, tuberous and loose, in your bones. No surprise, really, that life at 300 pounds poses challenges. What’s much more interesting is how things change – and don’t change – when you get down to 200.

I reached the weight of an offensive lineman, more or less, about 18 months ago. I had been protruding outward, though, since my freshman year of college. The culprits, more or less in order: A type-B tendency toward inertia; a sometimes-nasty anxiety; an unhealthy diet stemming from habits I learned growing up in a pasta-pushing Italian family; work weeks that occasionally pushed 80 hours.

Factors like these feed off one another. It ain’t rocket science: Anxiety fuels inertia. Inertia makes you keep your crummy diet the way it is. A crummy diet means you have precious little energy – and when you’re working 10- to 16-hour days, that energy goes to your employer and not to a workout routine.

Then, abruptly, I changed.
Now I feel better.
Sometimes.

What led me to drop 100 pounds in a year and a half after tolerating so much extra weight for so long?

It’s weird to say, but nothing special. There were some come-to-Jesus pictures of myself I disliked even more than usual. I grew weary of the watermelon growing in my abdominal area. I found myself unemployed and, thus, with time on my hands to work out, to learn how to cook and how to eat. I was embarrassed and frustrated by not being able to make it through more than a few plays at a time in pick-up basketball, long my preferred method of relaxation.

So I put myself on a better diet, started exercising, and lo, the weight came off. A boring story, but the results are nice. I look better; I feel better; I no longer face the humiliation of paying an extra $2 for a XXL button-down. Forget the 5-Hour Energy guy – if you want to be awake in the afternoon, be healthy.
And yet.

“One can't build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out,” the poet Anne Sexton once said. She was discussing mental illness – Sexton eventually committed suicide – but it’s a wise analysis of life in general.

So it is with weight loss. Indubitably, it has been good for me, so maybe I’m underselling it when I compare it to something as cosmetic as a white picket fence. But it can’t keep the nightmares out:

• At a shade under 6’ and still 200-ish pounds, I still look, and jiggle, not unlike peach Jell-O. I doubt I’ll feel fully satisfied until I kill another 30 pounds or gain some muscle mass.
• The specter of screwing up and gaining everything back looms. Like plenty of mercurial 20-somethings, I’m prone to sloth, gluttony, hedonism. As I write this, I haven’t been to the gym in two weeks. I haven’t eaten dinner two nights this week. I’m finishing this blog post at 4:30 in the morning because I can’t sleep.
• I have plenty of thoughts about why I even need to lose weight to feel better about myself. Isn’t that perversion, feeding into a fat-success complex that leads to trash like this?

Perhaps the greatest benefit I’ve accrued though this process, though, is a more personal understanding of a truism: Body image is merely a subset of self-image.

That’s so obvious that it hardly seems worth mentioning, but we forget. The mind is too ready to commit fraud, to allow its user to rationalize and romanticize with impunity. It’s easy to think: Hey, if I just lose this weight/get a raise/move to a new city/get a girlfriend/travel the world/buy this stuff, things will be so much better.

Usually, they won’t be. Scientists have studied the psychology of happiness, and it turns out that we’re pretty lousy at figuring out what will make us happy.

I’m no different. I like to think of myself as rational, annoyingly so even, but we’re all prone to our own bouts with irrationally. A belief in the transformative, quasi-mystical strength of weight loss was mine.
Improved health and a better body are tangible benefits of losing weight. I’m grateful for them.
But – for a whole host of reasons – my overall self-image kind of sucks.

So my body image, though better, still sucks. I shouldn’t still feel embarrassed by walking down the street and meeting people’s eyes, but I do. I shouldn’t fret too much about the clothes I’m wearing or the haircut I really need, but I do. I shouldn’t look at my girlfriend and wonder (in weaker moments) whether her enthusiastic endorsement of how I look isn’t in some way tempered by private doubts, but I do.

By all means, we need a little bit of romance and self-denial in our lives. I wonder how many of us too easily trap ourselves, though, into thinking we’ve done something meaningful for ourselves – when in actuality, we haven’t had the guts, the necessary self-awareness, or the time to stare down whatever affliction dominates our days.

Clarity like that can be hard to come by. Courage to do something about it can be harder still. Resolve to follow through might be hardest of all.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from losing weight, it’s that I have the tools and the fortitude to get started.
 

by Shannon

Unlike many women, I am fairly content with my body from the neck down. Sure, I get annoyed at the bits of cellulite on my thighs or with my stomach sticking out, but we have a healthy enough relationship. No, my issue with the mirror – and my body – is more immediate, more unavoidable. It's my face.

Up until junior high, I was somewhat oblivious about my looks. In fact, I was a pretty cute kid. I knew I wasn't popular, but it didn't have anything to do with my appearance.

When I hit adolescence, puberty made me painfully aware of that connection. I started getting acne – ugly red and white pustules began arising from my fair skin. Splotches of red emerged on my cheeks. I'd look in the mirror and wince, not recognizing myself.

I might have been able to write it off as paranoia, except that my classmates reinforced this idea every chance they could. I was regularly told to “get a facial” and that I was ugly by both the popular girls and bullying boys. In seventh grade, I had a crush on a very popular boy. Convincing myself that my life could be a movie, I believed that he would see the beauty in me if I only took a chance. But instead, one of the coolest girls responded to me when I wrote a note to him. She said, “He said he would cut off his dick before going out with you.” I stood in shocked silence as she flounced down the hall.

Although I developed an “I don't care what they think” mentality, I can't shed the scars they left on me. Every time I have a new pimple, those words ring in my ears. When people mistake me for eight years younger than I am, I think of the fact my face looks like a teenager's. And of course, every commercial for acne medication reminds me of how hideous it is.

On the rare occasions my face is clear, I still examine it for any visible flaw. I look in the mirror and am vaguely disappointed, thinking I am “prettier” than the reflection I see. I avoid blush because it highlights the redness in my face; I'm still annoyed I let the makeup artist for my wedding put it on me. I focus on my small eyes, my strong chin, my bushy eyebrows - anything and everything. They're the sort of things no one else notices but affect you deep inside - what Tori Amos calls “my funny lip shape” in “Silent All These Years.”

The worst part is that my face is both something I can't change yet is obvious to everyone. I've tried every medication on the market, none of which have worked for more than a few months. Makeup doesn't work either; in some circumstances, it even makes it look worse. And I know it's something people notice, even if it's not as much as I do. Unlike large hips or out-of-shape arms, your face is the first thing to register in people's minds. Psychology studies have shown that people process the image of your face in milliseconds, using it to judge you on everything from trustworthiness to attractiveness.

Knowing I can't control something so physically and emotionally significant deeply frustrates me. Every time I look in the mirror, I feel like I'm in a war with my skin. As if something about my body itself hates me. Either way, it's a losing battle. Even when my face is clear, that mentality is neither healthy or productive.

So if my current attitude isn't working, what can I do? Honestly, I can't say I know. Right now, I'm making a pledge to myself to keep my skin as clear as possible while trying to be positive. I want to avoid breakouts, but just accept them as part of my body when they do occur. Like anyone who struggles with having a positive body image, it's easy to fall back on those destructive ways of thinking. But for my own sake, I need to work every day to look at myself a little closer and say with conviction, “I am beautiful.” If I don't believe it myself, how will anyone else?
 

by Christopher

I work as a chiropractor in both Alexandria and Bethesda, so every day I see many people who come in with bodies to be fixed and wounds to be healed (both physical and emotional). In my 23 years of practice I have met people in all shapes and sizes. Nearly everyone I have met has something that he or she would like to change about their body or a health challenge that limits them. My brain is filled with so many stories and secrets that I sometimes feel like the local parish priest.

In searching for a topic for this series, I thought about my increasingly graying yet vanishing hairline, my “why-do-some-women-insist-on-pinching" butt, my large head, or my orthopedically-modified joints but I settled for the one that really has the strongest emotional charge for me.

I have inherited from both of my parents, a pair of rather penetrating big blue eyes. Yes, I have been told that I seem to be able to see through people, making some feel uncomfortable, but, honestly, I don't consciously do that. With respect to body image, it's what you can't see that bothers me the most - what the world looks like through my eyes. If it is true that the eyes are the windows of the soul, then in my case God or the Universe clearly "doesn't do windows."

I have either been blessed or cursed with severe myopia and a whole series of “weird eye problems.” This has resulted in my 'behind the scenes" body image issue. At the age of 3 years, back when there was no such thing as a car seat, I was perched up in the middle of the front seat of my parents' car, when my father saw me excitedly point outside exclaiming, "Doggie! Doggie!" When he looked over at the side of the road, it was clear to him that I was pointing to a rock. His conclusion was either that I had bad eyesight or a vivid imagination. It turns out that he was right on both counts.

Although I managed to squeak by in kindergarten without perfect sight, it became clear that I needed glasses for first grade. It was both traumatic and dramatic. As I recall, nobody else in Mrs. Schreiber's first grade class needed spectacles except for one - me. (Interestingly enough, I recently moved and found those original glasses, felt a shudder, and promptly thew them away - not suitable for the Lions Club). My father, a chiropractor and natural health fan, set to work to have me do eye exercises. There were the side-to-sides, the convergence, and the eye rolls. Eventually, it became our routine to do these every night. The funny thing is that, for a time, they worked! Much to the surprise of my optometrist, Dr. Roach (yup, his real name), my astigmatism disappeared even though he continually used the term "impossible." Nevertheless, despite my father's valiant efforts to save his son's eyes, my vision continued to decline resulting in stronger and stronger prescription eyeglasses.

School situations were difficult. I would leave my glasses in a gym locker so as not to break them outside. It wasn't all that unusual for me to be playing in left field when a baseball would whiz by my head and all I had to go on was my newly developed sense of "sports sonar." Multiple episodes of poor athletic performance resulted in me usually being picked last for team sports. This despite the fact that I could run the 100 yard dash faster than almost anybody in my school. Thick "coke bottle bottom" glasses didn't do much for my social life either. There was no "geek chic" back in the early 1970s. I avoided school dances like the plague.

When I went to Harvard, the image of my eyes was somewhat rescued by my college sweetheart, a cute blonde who decided that yours truly needed a bit of a makeover. She encouraged me to get hard contact lenses and my image instantly changed. I could finally have a conversation with someone without worrying that people were staring at the thickness of my lenses or watching my glasses slide down my nose. Contacts seemed to be my saving grace yet still my prescriptions kept getting stronger and stronger.

Fast forward to the past two years. I began to notice that there was a certain fuzziness in my right eye, a giant blind spot that appeared to be getting bigger and bigger. After ignoring this fact (Yes. Doctors DO make the worst patients), I found out from my new opthamologist that not only was my retina pulling away from the back of my right eye but that there was atrophy and my retina was LEAKING! Yikes! I was informed that this would require a series of eye injections using special substances designed to cease the leaking of blood into my eye as well as stop the growth of bad blood vessels gone wild. Dr. Murphy, my retina expert, and his staff were great with their care but there is something incredibly disconcerting about seeing a giant needle coming at your when you can't blink. Fortunately, 5 injections later I appear to be stable and now I am maintaining relatively good vision.

My vision has been so poor that I have often joked that I could easily be a watchmaker. In truth, in order to read without contacts or glasses, I have to be about 4 inches from a piece of paper - so close that I can see the grain of the paper. My ex wife used to recoil when she saw this, saying, "Poor little blind Chrisetchka... You make me want to cry." That just made me angry. I didn't want pity. I just wanted to be accepted as my current optometrist states, "a nice guy with a lot of really weird eye problems."

There is a bright side to poor vision. The good part of being severely myopic is that I now have highly-developed senses of both hearing and touch. Hence, I can listen really well and have a great pair of hands. As a chiropractor, I've been told that I "give good neck." Not such a bad reputation to have.

by Anonymous

For as long as I can remember, there was something wrong with my body.

In one of my earliest memories I am three years old, standing in front of a sun lamp to treat a rash on my belly. In first grade, I had eye surgery and wore a patch for months. I had a benign tumor removed from my side when I was eight. By the time I left elementary school, I’d broken enough bones to put my mother on a first name basis with the radiologist.

There were other things – not exactly health conditions – that concerned my parents about their first-born. Like the fact that my hair didn’t grow much until I was four, one or my hips is higher than the other, and some of my permanent teeth never developed.

The message I took from all this was not that my parents wanted the very best for me (which they did). It was: My body is a problem that needs fixing.

One October day when I was 12, my mother applied mascara to my eyelashes. It might have been related to Halloween, but I’m not sure. What stuck with me was my father’s declaration that I was beautiful and my mother’s promise that I could wear makeup in junior high, the following year.

That’s when my weight became an issue. Instead of growing lanky like many adolescents, I seemed to go right from child to woman.

“You might have a pretty face, but no one will want you if you’re fat,” my dad warned.

“It’s genetic. You and I will always battle our weight,” my mother confessed. She constantly cursed her upper arms and double chin, and wore what she and my dad called “the garment” to make her slimmer.

When we moved to another state in the middle of eighth grade, I joined Weight Watchers, which recommended I lose six pounds. In a room of women three times my age, I learned about calories and fat grams and listened to stories of self-loathing and late-night binges.

Although I was constantly hungry, I shed the weight and reveled in my parents’ praise. It gave me confidence to make friends at my new school, attend my first dance and talk to boys on the phone. I attributed those and other peak experiences to my weight loss. Being hungry never felt so powerful and productive.

So from then on, when my self-esteem dipped, dieting was the answer. But no matter whether the scale was up or down, feelings of shame about my body never fully waned. If someone gave me a compliment, I discounted it. People don’t really see me. Wait until they find out how flawed I am, I thought.

Carrying these patterns through adolescence and into adulthood, I eventually questioned why they existed. I studied the media’s influence on body image, reflected on the events of my youth and read books like “Fat is a Feminist Issue.” Intellectually, I got it. I could talk a good game about body acceptance and America’s oppressive standards of beauty. But how I truly felt about myself didn’t change.

Around my 30th birthday, my husband of five years and I hit a major road bump that crushed me and would eventually lead to the end of our marriage. To manage the stress, I joined a gym and before long, saw results that pleased me. Not only did my mood improve, I started feeling strong and athletic for the first time in my life. And, without even trying, I began to lose weight.

My first hint that something was awry, came about six months later, when I decided to go running after taking an aerobics class. The month before, I had added an extra evening at the gym each week, and the month before that, I’d started doing both weights and cardio every time I went.

Taking my workouts up a notch usually gave me a surge of self-assurance mingled with a sense of protection. Exercise was an amulet. No matter what went wrong, it would buoy me. And in between, there were always hunger pangs to remind me that I was moving toward the solution to my problem.

But as I ran that night, conflicting thoughts spun in my head. If I did an extra 20 minutes of cardio now, would I need to do it every time? Maybe I shouldn’t set the bar so high. But think of all the calories it would burn. Wait, someone at work said my suits were getting baggy.

Afterward, in the shower, I looked down at my belly and pinched what seemed like more flesh than had been there the day before. Extra cardio would be a good idea in case I overate during the winter holidays, I decided.

By the following spring, I found it impossible to go a day without exercise and shut down anyone who suggested I take a break. Although the scale proved I had well surpassed the goal Weight Watchers set when I was 13, my body felt uncomfortable and distorted. My will to fix it was unrelenting: it interrupted me with phone calls in the middle of businesses lunches, woke me up for 4 a.m. runs, and whispered in my ear that I was nothing if I gave up the battle.

That August, I went to get a new driver’s license. Making my way through the chaos of the motor vehicles headquarters, I noticed people looking at me with concern, perhaps a second too long. Well, it sort of made sense. Who’s happy in a place like that?

But the enormous sunken eyes that stared out from my new license told me the truth about their pained expressions. Granted, the MVA isn’t in the business of glamour shots, but even so, I looked dreadful. Gray skin, thinning hair, facial creases like an old woman. Things that I couldn’t perceive in front of a mirror, suddenly came into focus.

I would like to tell you that moment brought me to my senses, whereupon I stopped exercising and began eating well. But the truth is, it took the gym saying I could no longer return, plus the intervention of a stranger in order for me to surrender. Then, it required two hospitalizations and six years to reach what I consider a state of recovery.

I feel fortunate to have come so far (half of anorexics don’t), but some people ask me what took so long. Here’s what I tell them: Although my behavior was destructive, it was the glue holding me together during my most difficult chapter yet. Replacing that with a better way to keep it together can take a while.

Every day for the rest of my life
I will remind myself:
This container of my being is
A gift, not a burden,
Sometimes an answer,
Never a problem.
 

by Joe

I was pretty much doomed to be small from the get-go. My mom never surpassed 4'11". I barely reach 5'5" in my best shoes, though I'm still on the taller end at family get-togethers. Picture the wimpy kid in any coming of age movie -- the one born to be bullied -- and you have a good grasp of me growing up. Top that off with the slow discovery of my sexuality, and you can imagine the horror of middle school gym class.

Everyone knows body size spawns assumptions. If you're small, people assume you're frail or incapable; that you're not into sports or most 'masculine' interests; that you're a passive person; or that you couldn't possibly date anyone over six feet tall (proved that one wrong numerous times).

What I didn't expect was the amount of scrutiny I'd receive for why I was so small – from teachers, friends and even my own family. For several years, mom and I lived with a woman who was bulimic. To say it made my mother paranoid would be an understatement. Often times she would check my teeth if she thought I was looking too skinny that week. I didn't have an eating disorder, but I did feel pressure to keep my weight up. I remember being terrified of not finishing lunches at school, and how I'd have to hide any leftovers so my family wouldn't worry.

Fast forward to adulthood and now most of my friends are gay men or straight women. While we all lived through the backlash against Kate Moss framed models, our ability to rationalize that these remnants of the beauty myth are harmful doesn't always match the ability to quit internalizing hatred of our own bodies.

In truth, the percentage of gay men with eating disorders is astronomical. And if it's not anorexia or bulimia, there is gym and steroid obsession or drugs use and smoking as appetite suppressants. The need to exhibit a great body is in many ways a gay man's way of coping and finding self validation after years of feeling outside the desired norm.

And of course, the pressure creeps in when you're at your lowest. I remember a drawn out break up with a guy whom I'd given far too many chances. In the closing arguments, he chastised me for never attaining a six pack I "promised [I] was working toward". Mind you, the most I weighed during that relationship was 120 lbs. Dumping him was the right decision.

Unfortunately it set off several years of calorie counting and navel gazing. Suddenly single, I became not only career but fitness driven – sometimes obsessed – chastising myself if I didn't run 20 miles in a week. Like women, gays feel the pressure to look forever young, to not just be a size small or XS, but to attain XXS; to not have a 30 or 28 inch waist, but to look emaciated. Cursing ourselves for carbs, at least until the week at the beach. At least for the weekend. We survive on a "this body could be gone by midnight" mentality.

A girlfriend of mine is getting married this month. Like many brides to be, she is trimming down, but to the point of taking five boot camp classes per week. I wonder what it will feel like looking back at her wedding photos years from now. Will she be proud she looked so good for a few short days, or will she regret that she may never sustain that body again?

I'm finding a balance. I work out to a level that keeps me feeling healthy but comfortable, and more importantly proud. I find routines that have mental benefits like yoga, kickboxing or rock climbing. I'm health conscious but not critical. I eat, but I know when to stop. I'm keeping my body for the long term. I can't always control the insecure moments, but I know these too shall pass.

by Amy

We all struggle with our image of our body in certain ways. For some, its the inches around your waist. For other women, it is the lack of inches around your chest. I would be lying if I said that I don't wrestle with those frustrations from time to time, but my main challenge doesn't have anything to do with the common body image trouble spots.

My struggle is with my hands.

I can hear you now saying "Your hands? That's ridiculous!" But, it is incredibly true. For the past 15 years, I've picked at my hands until they were bleeding and raw. It started during my part-time job in high school as a florist. I would come home with cuts on my hands from making flower arrangements. Soon, I would pick at those imperfections without consciously being aware that I was doing it. Next thing I know, my thumb was red and my cuticles were raw. I've even started to pick at my right earlobe and

It is such a habit that I don't know that I'm picking. I pick during meetings, whether stressful or not. I pick my fingers as I'm out in public and having conversations with incredible people. Heck, I'm picking my fingers now that I'm typing this blog post and spilling my guts to all of you.

I have had many people who have tried to keep me accountable over the years. They verbally point out when I'm destroying my hands or, in some cases, will hit me if they see me hurting myself. I encourage this behavior because I wouldn't know that I'm picking if people didn't point it out. And I've tried everything to stop: Band-Aids, that gross-tasting stuff, expensive hand lotion, fake nails and lots and lots of prayer.

The physical injuries are not necessarily the bad part - it is the emotional toll that it has taken on me. The attention to my hands can make me seize up in public and withdraw from conversation. (And if you know me at all, you know this is very uncharacteristic). Because I can't control how or if I pick my hands, I feel like I can't control many aspects of my life. I feel like a failure at one thing that everyone can see and will ask about all the time. This issue has spurred countless tense conversations among those I'm closest to and has caused so many tears. I often feel completely defeated and almost gave up on trying to fix the problem earlier this year.

I'm told that the technical term is Dermatillomania, a slight form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). While I wouldn't say I'm totally OCD, I am a perfectionist and am prone to worry a lot in stressful situations. But, who doesn't worry, right? Right, but sometimes that stress manifests itself in weird ways. Instead of the "normal" nervous habits like twirling hair or tapping your feet, I pick my hands and everyone can see the effects. It has such a stigma at times. No one wants to broadcast that his or her nervous habit may be a bigger issue.

The fix: identifying the major stressors and not allowing them to reign in my life. I've been through a huge life change in the last four months. I've had to prioritize how I want to proceed with my career and take risks I never imagined. By stepping away from one thing I knew as secure and "safe," I've actually alleviated a source of stress in my life. This renewed vision and other realizations have actually improved my hands. The next step is to continue the healing by being diligent about watching my actions and identifying my stress for what it truly is.

For the first time in a very long time, there is hope. Hope that I don't have to wrestle with this issue as much as I have in the past. Hope in overcoming huge obstacles. And hope that others who have dealt with this will not be as reluctant to continue this conversation.

I'm discovering that hope in healing is a process and I'm learning to love it.

by Neil

Any music critic will tell you that music and image go hand in hand. Let’s face it, what would Michael be without his white glove, Cobain without his flannel shirts, or Lady Gaga without her RIDICULOUSLY goofy self-made outfits!

But image is not always about a certain piece of clothing you wear, it’s about your body as a whole. Body image is one aspect of you that derives confidence, and the level of confidence one has affects performance.

As the lead guitarist for the Alternative/Rock band, Redline Addiction, performing is my job and the difference between a good or bad performance determines the whole outcome of my success. So to say that body image plays an important role in my life is a VAST understatement. Body image is something I’ve had to struggle with my whole life and continue to do so today. My story begins early on.

The beginning of the end:
I had just finished the sixth grade where I conquered elementary school with flying colors and was getting ready to start the next chapter of my life in seventh where I would take the middle school world by storm! But a funny thing happened. Little did I know that an itty bitty hormone deficiency would rock my world and would forever alter my course in life. You see, at the ripe age of 11, my hair started thinning causing me to have issues with male pattern baldness as a child. To this day, I haven’t met one other person who had to deal with hair loss at that age. Now add puberty to this equation. I was completely SOL! A little bit of background. I’m an Indian American (that’s dot, not feather). Genetics alone tends to give my people dark features including dark hair and lots of it! Picture this, an 11 year old Indian boy with glasses who is the first to have a mustache and chest hair in his grade and looks like he’s bald. Was this a cruel joke from God?!? Being Hindu and believing in reincarnation, I was sure I was a serial killer in my past life. God: “As punishment, I’m going to take Neil and make him the hairiest bastard possible and just to mess with him; I’m not going to put any on top of his head. HA!”

At first I tried ignoring it hoping no one would notice, but as we all know, kids can be cruel. It started off with class mates sitting behind me noticing my bald spot and announcing it to the rest of the class. From there, it spiraled into a frenzy of old man jokes and constant teasing. Who could blame them…I was a walking bull’s eye. Always being an extrovert, I still had lots of good friends but I started noticing that even they would stare up when they were talking to me like my head and thinning hair was the center of the next great battle between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. I tried ignoring my impairment but the damage was already done. And my complex had already been built.

This filtered on to high school all the way through college where it never got any easier. I became more introverted and less active in social activities because of my hair. My passion for music and learning the guitar was my only outlet and I spent countless hours practicing in my room away from the public eye and scrutiny. My parents tried taking me to several doctors as a child to help explain why this had happened to me at such a young age but to no avail. It wasn’t until later in life that I discovered that a hormone deficiency causes my hair follicles to be spread further apart than the average human causing my hair to look thin.

The ability to wear hats was my only savior but this self image complex I had built constantly haunted me… to the point where it controlled my actions. I wouldn’t leave the house without a hat and if I misplaced or lost it, I wouldn’t go out at all. My hats were my safety blanket and I felt lost without one. Dates and formal occasions were awkward for me as I constantly worried about what a girl would think…even getting intimate was tough as I was so embarrassed on what they would say if they saw what was underneath my hat.

The change:
A decade and a half later, I had been three years out of college and had a new found look in life. I was exercising regularly and eating healthy. For the first time in my life, I had felt healthier than I had ever been. My girlfriend at the time, who was a hair stylist ironically, urged me to start shaving my head. I was reluctant at first but decided to give it a chance. With the likes of Vin Diesel on the rise, it had become a socially accepted look and people thought it was a natural cut for me. It took me a while to adjust but after a short period of time, I never gave it a second thought and became more and more confident with my looks inside and out.

But life is ever changing and battles just keep on coming.

Enter Adulthood:
It’s a funny thing getting older…it’s like a switch goes off and your body just says “no” to anything you want it to do. For me, that switch went off three weeks ago on my 30th birthday. Simple tasks like lifting up a small box or walking the dogs puts you out of breath. Your stomach starts to hurt in the middle of the night from the diner you stopped by on your way home from the bar. And that drinking tolerance us guys worked so hard building since puberty?!? Forget about it! You’re ready to pass out after a few beers.

The older you get, the more responsibilities you have.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m the self proclaimed “busiest man on the planet.” I have a tendency to take on more than I can handle and am constantly moving from one project to another. Between a full time job, touring in a band, graduate school and personal commitments to family and friends, it’s hard for me to find a balance between commitments to others and find time for my personal well being. I tend to lose focus on other important aspects of my life such as dieting and exercise. In fact, it barely allows for it at all.

This in return has caused another battle with body image in which it’s hard to maintain my ideal weight and health. Being as busy as I am, my options are limited when it comes to cooking healthy meals or providing my body with the proper exercise and dieting it needs. As a result, I have gained weight in the past years and feel excess fatigue when it comes to work and playing shows.

Finding balance:
What I’ve learned in my lifetime is being confident and successful at what you’re working towards takes great discipline and balance. Maintaining that balance is always difficult to do but there is always a way to do so if you work hard enough towards it. I now make it a priority to include exercise and dieting with my other commitments and value it as important as anything else in my life. I have always gone through struggles with body image that affected my confidence and I guarantee there will be more to come. Part of being confident which affects your overall performance is to understand your limitations. It took me a long time to come to terms with my limitations being it not having hair or not being my ideal weight, but I understand them and accept it for what it is. Knowing these limitations, I always strive to the best I can at what I can do instead of worrying about how to change what I can’t. In time, I have come to be comfortable with my body image and now let my confidence be dictated by my performance rather than the other way around.
 

by Abbey

My name is Abbey and I will be a good auntie.

I spent some time with my two nieces who are 11 and 6-and-a-half a few weeks ago. The elder was discussing how she is going to be the shortest of her siblings. She was not terribly upset about it but I looked on as a concerned auntie. Unlike her two siblings, the 11-year-old takes after my family and tends to be on the shorter side while the other two seem to have acquired tall genes. But, really, isn’t 11 too young to be acutely aware of one’s body? Shouldn’t childhood be preserved for all good thoughts about oneself?

CONS: I don’t remember a time when I didn’t realize that I was the shortest of all of my peers and surely this has always had pros and cons. It’s the cons that have stood out more often, however. Being short makes it very difficult to be “curvy”. The only thing worse than trying to find pants for short legs is having to find pants that also fit my curves. Further, shirts just never seem to hit my body in just the right places, making me look even curvier than I already am. My short waist and curvy bust-line make shopping for clothing this woman’s worst nightmare. In my mind, it looks dreadfully funny when the waist of your pants or skirt come close to the bottom of your bust. This accentuation of my least favorite part of my body leaves me self-conscious much of the time.

How is it that the part of my body that makes me the most insecure is the part that society tells me I should be happiest about? Magazines everywhere suggest that it’s not just blondes that have all the fun but women with big boobs do too. Women pay big bucks to have breasts the size of mine and I can’t figure that out. The first time my chest embarrassed me was in middle school when I overheard the boys talking about them. These same boys, who were friends of mine, proceeded to poke them with a stick. Today this would be called sexual harassment and those boys probably would have been suspended from school. In my mind, they were simply normal adolescent boys who had heard what society tells them: “Big boobs are fun to play with.” I’m here to say that society can just shove it and we need to start appreciating girls and women for their more important assets.

As an auntie, I hope to be able to encourage my nieces to love their bodies no matter what. Our bodies are our gifts from God and we need to appreciate how He made each of us unique. Both of my nieces are exceptionally smart, athletic, funny, sweet, caring, outgoing, and artistic. I pray that they will always love themselves the way that they are and know that they are loved. My job as auntie will also extend to my nephew. I promise to always teach him that girls and women are way more than how they look and guide him to see beyond the superficial. It may be too late though. I visited with him too and he was already enamored with a beautiful young actress that attended the same wedding that we did that weekend. Ah... life as a 9-year-old boy!

PROS: In order to set a good example for my nieces and nephew, I am going to have to start appreciating my own body. Being short helps me look younger, I always have leg room on planes and in the back seat of cars, and I can always hide behind taller people when I don’t want to show in pictures. I guess the curves aren’t so bad either, especially the breasts. Someday I may have the blessing of nursing my own newborn- a bonding experience that no father can ever have. More importantly, I am grateful that mine continue to be healthy while many women have lost theirs to breast cancer. It is so freeing to develop a positive body image.

My journey has just begun.

by Joe

My hair started falling out during my first year of college. I thought about killing myself.

No, I'm not kidding.

My hair was poker-straight when I was a kid; pics abound of me sporting the traditional bowl haircut (with the requisite turtleneck and plaid pants, of course). But something happened in 7th grade, which seemed to coincide with me playing football. My hair began this metamorphosis from straight and malleable to some kind of wavy, bushy mass that seemed to grow out sideways instead of down toward my shoulders -- no matter how hard I wished it would.

And this being the age you start to notice the opposite sex (and begin hoping they notice you), I tried every damn hair care product in the free world attempting to make my hair look longer and cooler, to get the sea of waves to relax enough to resemble something approaching the long locks of the metal musicians I worshipped. Alas, it was not to be. The longer I let it grow, it never grew down…just OUT.

At the same time I never had (as far as I knew) what most girls my age considered to be the ideal "look." My Italian heritage gave me a short, squat stature. Although I wasn't fat, I wasn't skinny either. Soft in all the wrong places, you could say. I was always actually pretty muscular as well, but never in any defined way, not like the guys I played football with who seemed to be blessed with thin skin that wrapped tightly around very defined muscles beneath. If I worked out, I got stronger, and I got bigger; but in size only, never in definition.

When I played football my stomach was rock-hard (the coaches would walk on it when we did leg lifts), but it still looked like a one-pack. And for whatever reason I always had visible love handles, always a little extra poking over the sides of the tight, faded Levi's that were required apparel in those days. I felt surrounded by good-looking, well-adjusted people whose clothes fit them perfectly, who didn't wear the "husky" size, whose mothers didn't have to hem every pair of pants they owned because they were made for kids who had legs longer than a basset hound's. And the hemming bit itself was enough to kill my desired look; jeans in the 80s were tapered toward the bottom. So when you cut off 3 inches or so, instead of the cool streamlined look your friends had, you wound up with something that looked like the cardboard tubes left on an empty roll of toilet paper. Stovepipes were NOT cool at that time, I assure you.

Add to all this that I had never felt able to "fit in" in high school; I was all over the place – punk, metalhead, jock, sensitive artist, nerd – and as such no one group really wanted anything to do with me. My outward persona was never defined enough to meet the criteria of any clique, and at the same time I was struggling with my parents with regard to who I was and what I was into. The way i wanted to look and what I wanted to listen to and what I wanted to do with my life (art or music) did not sit well with the folks…war all the time.

So on the outside I remained, and my self esteem and body image were predictably low.

So then I got to college, which was cool because it felt like a chance to start over. Be myself. Redefine, reinvent. Walk, talk and act like I wanted to. Join that rock band and practice and gig because there were no parents around to forbid it. Discovered graphic design, fell in love with it instantly. Met incredibly cool, like-minded people who seemed to 'get' me. Grew my damn hair out…and out…and out…until I had a big unruly bush of hair that finally, mercifully, went down past my shoulders. All very good for our boy Joe.

And then my hair started falling out.

And receding at the temples at the same time.

In a matter of months my hair began to resemble some kind of strange mohawk-mullet, with a growing bald spot at the back corner of my scalp. We were playing a gig where the seating area had a balcony, and a friend was up there snapping shots of us. When I saw the top of my head my heart sank through the soles of my feet. At the top of my head, starting at each temple, was a U-shape where there was clearly very little hair. at the bottom of the U where the lines met was a big bald spot about 3 inches wide. I had been teasing and pushing and prodding my hair for so long to get it to look a certain way that when looking straight on, it wasn't visible.

I wanted to die, there's no other way to put it. I felt crushed. i felt like the person I was becoming -- more ME, less external influence -- was suddenly arrested in his development, thrown out, locked away. Not to be. Not now, not ever.

So fast forward past a lot of nights alone in my room feeling very, very sorry for myself, wearing bandannas and backwards baseball caps and other assorted headgear to ease the pain and hide my malady from the world. Eventually I came to some kind of uneasy truce with my follicles and decided to get it all cut off.

Somewhere I get the idea that a flattop might work, because I still had a little on top. Short sides would de-emphasize the receding areas, or so I hoped. So I set out to the local shop to get it done.

The girl completely mangles the cut, shaving all the way down to my SCALP in one area. When I look in the mirror from the chair I see that instead of a straight, flat line across the top, it looks more like grass that was cut with three or four different lawnmowers by blind men of various height. So I stare for awhile and I think OK, maybe it's one of those things where when you go home and wash it it'll bounce back to normal. Yeah, that must be it.

Except it isn't.

It looks equally as bad, if not worse, after I come out of the shower. This is almost worse then the balding problem. Remarkably I bounce back quick with an idea: screw it. I'll go back and tell her to shave it all one length to match the shortest-buzzed areas of my scalp. it'll grow back, and I can start over. Bandannas and baseball caps here I come.

Here's what happens the first time you shave all your hair off: your head looks HUGE. I mean musk-melon-on-steroids HUGE. Like it doesn't belong on your body, like you have a giant punching balloon where your head is supposed to be, and it has your face.

But then a curious thing happened after a week or so: I stopped paying any attention to my head whatsoever. Didn't think about it. No combing and brushing and gelling and pulling and being frustrated that it wouldn't lay the right way or wouldn't cover the bald spots. No constant self-torture about rocking what is now known as the "skullet." And hey, it was different. It was unique. It was….ME. This was about 10 years before it became cool to rock a shaved pate, and so I was really beginning to dig the uniqueness. And somewhere along the way, the more time went by, I realized that I no longer felt the least bit self-conscious about my hair. Did. Not. Care. And that felt like a victory: a long-fought, hard-won victory.

I was 20 then. I'm bearing down on 42 now, and I have never gone back. For me, the bald way is the ONLY way and I can't imagine anything else. It's me, it's mine, it's purely and essentially who and what I am.

I'd love to say that I'm less self-conscious about other areas of my body, but I'd be lying. I'm in good shape and the woman I love thinks I'm dead sexy and tells me so -- but I still obsess about those areas at the sides of my waist, about the hair that grows in more places than I'd like it to.

But be that as it may, the feature I lead with is one that I'm proud of and totally at home with. I LOVE my bald head and am proud of it – because for me it symbolizes a concrete victory over shame, fear and self-loathing. So yeah, I went bald - but I lived to tell about it.
 

by DeChelle

I have a secret…

A really big secret that only a few people who know me really, really well know. I am a perfectionist and it infiltrates and pervades every area of my life. This “secret” desire, to make me and everything around me perfect, makes me tend to obsess a bit. Okay, whom am I fooling? It makes me obsess a lot. Over everything. But mostly over my weight. 

In the past, obsessed over my weight so much, I actually forbade myself from owning a scale because when I did, I would weigh myself no less than 8 times a day. I’d weigh myself as soon as I woke up in the morning, then after showering, before a potty break, after a potty break, when I came home, before eating, after eating, before exercising, after exercising, and then before bed. It was awful. If I saw a scale, I had to weigh myself and if there was any weight loss or gain, well let’s just say I was on a constant emotional roller coaster of highs (weight loss) and lows (weight gain).

But even without a scale, I still obsessed. I badgered my family and friends relentlessly…”Do I look fat? Does this outfit make me look fat? I shouldn’t be eating this.” Any ripple or tug in my clothing and I’d be back on that emotional roller coaster speeding towards the low, low pit that can only be used to describe where one exists who wears an extra-small but still worries, “do I look fat?”.

And while I knew this was all absurd, try as I might, I could not help it. Even to this day, I run miles and still don’t consider myself a runner. If my intention is to run 10 miles and I only run 9, I’m upset that I didn’t run the 10 miles. Many a time, I’ve told someone in a very matter of fact tone, “Oh, I didn’t run far today, I only ran 3 miles...” to which I receive a quizzical look and a comment about how 3 miles, by most, is considered far.

This desire to be perfect, to want everything around me to be perfect, has it’s benefits. I’m an extremely hard worker, always going the extra mile, in everything I do. It makes me push myself harder than anyone I know, to never be complacent, to never accept failure, and to always do my best. It gives me the appearance of always having my act together and having it all. But trying to be perfect is exhausting. It’s like working towards a goal that you know will never happen but you continue to work towards it anyway. It’s a constant battle that requires me to step outside my head daily and pull the plug on the line of thought that causes me to beat myself up or to not celebrate all the things that make me really great.

Every day I remind myself that nothing is or ever will be perfect, including me, and that as long as I do my best, that, in itself is as perfect as perfect can be.
 

by Amanda

I’ve always been obsessed with food. And in turn, equally fixated on my body, and not in a particularly positive way. If the women in my life are any indication, from friends to coworkers, most of our relationships with food and with our bodies are intertwined, thanks to years of dieting, binging, yearning, and often sacrificing dessert in the name of fitting into a smaller dress. And more often than not, leaving the table wanting something more and still scrutinizing every ripple in the mirror.

Hi, my name is Amanda and I love my body.

Let me explain how my obsession with food and my relatively new-found love of my body are wrapped up together like spinach and phyllo in spanakopita. My obsession with food has not always been a healthy one. In my childhood, I loved to eat, and eat I did. I grew quickly (more sideways than up, judging by some of the photos) and loved fried things, desserts, and all of the yummy-fattening-sugary things that are just what kids shouldn’t eat in excess. I remember volunteering for a piano recital just because I wanted to go out to KFC with everyone after. My parents were great at serving us a balanced diet and ensuring there were always fresh fruits and vegetables around the house, but sneaking fun sized Snickers in my room was much more appealing than a salad sometimes. I was a pudgy Girl Scout who liked to read, and lived in leggings and oversized sweatshirts until I was in sixth grade. And somewhere along the line, I started to believe I wasn’t pretty because I wasn’t rail thin: exactly what all of the more “popular” girls had in common. And that’s when I started to hate my body.

Middle school. I have yet to find anyone who thought adolescence was easy. I was a smart, quick-thinking perfectionist, who realized I had some control over what size my body was, and attempt to control it I did. I started depriving myself of the delicious things I had loved in the past. I ate less and less, and more compliments came flowing my way. People, especially my peers, seemed to like me more because of how I looked. Packaging those two things (acceptance and body size) within my mind was a dangerous combination, and by the time I started eighth grade I was a skeleton of my former self. And what did people say on the first day of eighth grade? “You look great!” And I still didn’t love my body.

High school. Despite having starved myself to a point of emaciation, achieving the impossible (for me) of squeezing into size 0 (and sometimes double zero) pants, I still didn’t love my new shape. I wanted to be smaller, because I equated smaller with better. Therapy and nutritional counseling until I finished high school helped me get back on track with my eating, but I still wasn’t comfortable in my own skin. I just learned that it wasn’t okay to starve myself, and I reluctantly accepted the fact that my body didn’t like being rail thin and I would need to just get used to that. And I still didn’t love my body.

University. Perhaps it wasn’t the healthiest choice to select a university with a remarkably high eating disorder rate, filled with women who looked like they belonged in a swimsuit catalogue rather than in an 8 am lecture hall, but that’s precisely what I chose. Over four years, I coped with and sometimes resented the fact that I didn’t look like a Barbie doll, and between going out and eating out and some less-than-regular exercise habits, I seemed to gain weight more often than I would lose it. I loved my time there, had amazing friends, joined a sorority, served in leadership roles in Greek life, and graduated cum laude with university honors , and without an anorexic-relapse. And I still didn’t love my body.

Grad school. Working on my Masters, I had two wonderful experiences that changed the way I thought about my body. The first was having someone in my life who loved and appreciated my body exactly how it was, and told me so often. Not that I like to admit that I needed that outside reassurance (I’m a big fan of doing things for myself), but somehow, in this arena of life, it was helpful. Everyone likes to be told they’re beautiful. I will forever be thankful for him for giving me that gift, though we’ve gone separate ways. The second was spending a summer living in rural Kenya, where standards of female beauty seem to be entirely different than what they are in the States. Curves are embraced, an ample bosom and hips and a sizable derriere are acceptable, and standing 5’10” and being thin and muscular is equally fine: there seemed to be women in so many different sizes and shapes, so many of them carrying on with an air of confidence I relished, that I couldn’t help but be amazed. Many pieces of who I am and what I want to do were shaped by that summer, and it most certainly impacted the way I thought about my body. I began to think more of what it could do than what it looked like. I was amazed. And I started to love my body.

Hi, my name is Amanda, and I love my body. And the love I have with it is the kind of love you have in a long-term relationship, or with parent, or with a sibling: I don’t always like my body, but I always love it. I can nitpick with the best of them, and envy the muscled arms of women far more disciplined in their gym regimens than I, or the lean, long legs of a runner. Over time, though, that envy has evolved into an appreciation for what others have done with their bodies, and what they are able to do with them. I have no fear of walking around a pool in a bikini, even if my tummy doesn’t even resemble a six pack. My body does amazing things for me, and I want to shower it with the love and affection it deserves, embracing every curve and every little imperfection. I love to cook, and enjoy crunchy strips of bacon and rich sauces as much as the next foodie, but in moderation. Being healthy, eating healthily, and enjoying the nourishment and satisfaction food brings to my body became more important than my dress size sometime in the past year, and for that, I am grateful.

by Nicole

Summer in the city means cleavage, cleavage, cleavage. Or, so Regina Spektor says.

I remember when I used to be ashamed to show my cleavage - it really wasn't that long ago. I first became ashamed of my breasts when their rapid growth (I was a D cup by the age of 13) caused me to quit figure skating. Despite my talent and grace on the ice, large breasts made it impossible to keep my arms in tight to spin in the air or hold my back straight when doing a spiral.

Also, ninth-grade boys are brutal. Around the same time I quit figure skating, I began getting harassed by boys in my 4th period class. In the winter time, they would open all the windows so that I'd get cold and then you know what happens. I turned one boy in for sexual harassment and, instead of taking it seriously, my principal brought us in for counseling together. He wasn't reprimanded or moved to another class. Instead, the torment increased and became more devastating.

I held a lot of resentment toward boys in high school and never had a serious boyfriend because all the attention (positive and negative) I received from them was focused on my breasts, so I completely avoided boys all together. When I got to college, I began improving myself internally; I got a job, an internship, and took classes that interested me for the first time. I also met friends of all shapes and sizes, both sexes, from all across the world. My horizons were rapidly expanding, but I still had issues with my breasts.

I started dating my first real boyfriend when I was 19, but I was incredibly self-conscious. He would constantly tell me how beautiful I was, but I never "felt" it. I would always bow my head in shame and say, "You're crazy." Or, "No, I'm not." None of the attention he gave me was focused on my breasts, but I still carried that resentment from junior high school with me and took it out on him.

At one point in our relationship, I mentioned how I'd talked to my parents when I was younger about getting a breast reduction. He told me that I was beautiful no matter what my breasts looked like, but that I should research the surgical options if I thought it would change my negative self-image (in addition to the physical pain: indents in my shoulders from my bra straps and intense back pain).

A few months of research, begging my parents for money, and talking to others who'd had reductions, I made plans to get a breast reduction two days after Christmas and two weeks before my 22nd birthday.

It wan't an easy decision at all. I had a lot of questions:

- Would I be able to breast feed if I wanted to? Actually, the size of my breasts before surgery greatly reduced my chances to breast feed if I had a child. After surgery, it's much more likely that I could breast feed if and when the time comes.

- Would they really be that much smaller? What if I went through with this surgery and they weren't able to make my breasts small enough? Or, what if they were too small?

- Would the scarring be so bad that I was embarrassed to take off my clothes or that I was ashamed of my breasts in a whole new way? Unlike implants, breast reductions require a two large incisions on each breast (doesn't seem fair, right?). Imagine the shape of an anvil cut on your skin - that's what it looks like. Thankfully, I'm very pale and my skin is soft, so my scars aren't red or puffy.

The day after surgery, I went back to the surgery center for a check up and was happy, standing tall, and not wearing sweatpants. Apparently when you have plastic surgery, it means you have an excuse to wear sweats for the entire time you're healing. That wasn't me! I was excited - I wore a shirt I bought in high school that I'd waited six years to be able to button (I tried it on about 5 hours after surgery and almost jumped up and down in excitement, but that would've hurt).

I took the standard post-surgery photos and was smiling. The nurse taking the photos said she'd never seen such a transformation and that I looked like I'd lost 30 pounds. The doctor told me he removed about a pound of tissue and skin from each breast. Yes, A POUND. Can you imagine that? They're still pretty large, too! (They were a size DDD before surgery and are now a D)

So, how has my life changed?

1. My clothes fit better. A lot better. I basically had to go out and buy an entirely new wardrobe. The extra larges I'd been buying for 6 years no longer fit. I could now buy mediums from most stores (and even smalls from some more generously-sized stores) and I could button shirts for the first time in as long as I could remember. I don't hate shopping anymore and I feel like a "normal" girl who can go into a store and pick something off the rack and buy it.

2. A lot of attention I receive from men is still focused on the size of my breasts. That hasn't changed, but now I know how to deal with it. Also, I'm more comfortable with them - I'm not afraid of what I look like naked or how a potentially romantic situation might end if a guy sees that I have scars on my breasts. (In fact, I now think I look better naked than with clothes on!) Now that I'm comfortable in my own skin, guys generally don't say the negative things they used to. I began presenting myself in a new way that encouraged guys to treat me differently.

3. Also, I'm open about my insecurities, but in a positive way. I talk about my surgery openly and people ask a lot of questions about it. Nine times out of ten, someone will respond, "I had a friend in high school who had it done. Best decision she ever made." People also say, "Wow, they were bigger?!" Also, when a guy tells me I'm pretty or beautiful (or even sexy, sometimes), I say "thank you" and smile.

Two years later, I can safely say the breast reduction was the best decision I've ever made. I never would've thought that slicing my body open, taking out some tissue, and having life-long scars would make me feel better about myself, but it has.

Now, whenever I hear "Summer in the city means cleavage, cleavage, cleavage," I think "Yes, Regina, it does." And I'm okay with it.

A local radio announcer had a 'positive tip of the day' a few weeks ago:  "Your private life says more about you than your public life." It really got me thinking about the things in my life that are private, things I would hate for others to find out about.

One of my dear friends, Rashmee, passed away suddenly recently. She was here, then she wasn't. Gone without warning. Her little light left this world and a mark on all of us left behind. She was such a darling young woman who gave so much to the people around her. Her life was marked by having so many people who loved her. When she died, I started thinking about everything she left behind unfinished or hidden. Did she have things she hoped no one would find? It wasn't her time to go. Did she have relationships, emails, pictures, things that she didn't expect anyone to ever see? I doubt it. She lived in a clean life with clean friends and a loving family. She had nothing to complete, just a lot of living to do.

My life has come under serious scrutiny by myself. Looking at every aspect of who I am, what I am, where I am, what I have, everything - has really made me stop and think about where I am going. If I died today, would people find things they didn't know about me? What would they think of me? Would their perception of me change?

God asks us as Christians to live our lives in accordance to His gospel - to walk as Christians in all aspects of our lives. Rules for Practical Christian Living is found in Ephesians 5.

Be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. - Ephesians 5:15-21

Being a Christian and walking in His light, without losing our inhibitions or who we are as true Christians, is all He asks. 'Do not get drunk with wine' is not just warning against drunkenness, it's telling us that when we get drunk we lose our discernment and act in ways we wouldn't if we weren't drunk. Excessive anything is not living the way He has asked us.

Walking on a straight and narrow path allows us to face the right direction, continuing along in the way we are supposed to and in every aspect of our lives. It doesn't just ask us to be public figures as Christians, but also in our private lives. Recently I've been hearing a Christian artist say that it's easy for us to confess our sins to God but it's not easy to tell others of our indiscretions. We should tell those around us about what we've done so we can have more desire to change our sinful ways.

Think about the skeletons in your closet, the things you want to get off your chest, the things you have hidden in drawers or boxes so no one finds them... all the things someone might find out if you died suddenly. Are you prepared to leave behind the memories of who you are and what you have? Think about it and start cleaning out your life. I'm cleaning mine out. As much as I am a Christian that doesn't mean I have nothing to hide. Why would I want people to know about the sinful person I am?

Thank you, my dear little Rashmee, for making things more clear in my life. Thank you, my heavenly Father, for listening to my sins and forgiving me for them. Thank you, my friends, for listening and supporting me through all of life's changes and decisions. Now it's time to make it happen.