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Friday, January 29, 2016

Shame and Body Image

I had a dream recently in which someone I know (yes, it was a man, whose name shall be withheld to protect the innocent) appeared to me and gave it to me straight:

"You're a big girl, Alex. You should wear better clothes and some make-up. Make yourself look as good as you can."

Sigh.

It was my dream, so no matter whose mouth I happened to put the words into, this is something that I am trying to communicate to myself.

So, part of me thinks I'm a "big girl" who needs to make more of an effort to appear attractive – to compensate for how I look and how society judges my appearance.

Another – much larger – part of me could care less.

Yet another part of me is in direct revolt against the entire concept of fulfilling an external beauty ideal.

And yet another part of me hates my body and lives oppressed under a lifetime of feeling too big.

And through all of those conflicting emotions and thoughts, that one powerful, suppressed opinion struggled through my mind to show up in one of my dreams and try to shame me for all of it – for being the size I am, for caring, for not caring, for being lazy, for not playing The Game.

Shame Culture, Gender and Body Image


In Dr. Brené Brown's book I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn't), she writes about how shame in western culture organizes itself along gender lines. Shame for women is (mostly) about not being feminine enough (thin, modest and nice) and shame for men is (mostly) about not being masculine enough (tough, powerful, competent, tough, tough, tough – and did I mention tough?).

So, if I were a man, being the weight that I am would not be a source of shame. Because it wouldn't interfere with my ability to be (or be perceived as being) tough. In fact, I would just have a little more weight to throw around. But, as a woman, I am in violation of the demand that I be (or be perceived to be) thin. And therefore, my weight is supposed to be a source of shame.

I think this is really interesting. It seems obvious to me that shame is used as a cultural enforcer, an attempt to solidly define everyone so they stay put – in the place where everyone else thinks they should be. This shame then gets internalized and is self-actuated within individuals, even against their conscious will – as it did in my dream.

My Body Image Story So Far

I've had an uncomfortable relationship with my body image for a long time. In a culture than bases value on competition and comparison, I've always felt like I'm at a physical disadvantage. My body type as a kid was short and muscly – a combination of genetics and gymnastics. Because I was shorter and stockier than a lot of people around me, I felt inappropriately large. But there is a difference between being larger and being large. When I was a kid, I was not a big kid, but because I felt bigger, I felt big. And then I had a whole bunch of value judgments around that. And felt a whole bunch of shame.

My shame intensified when I hit adolescence. I put on weight. Part hormones, part comfort eating, trying to stuff down all of my unacceptable feelings. This is where the cultural expectations on women in North American culture form a real double bind – Thin, Modest and Nice can become an impossible set of expectations for those of us who use eating food to help suppress the feelings that are not Modest or Nice – which means we can never meet all three expectations at the same time!

Anyway, as an adolescent, I felt much bigger than I actually was. I look back now and realize that I wasted being young (and skinny) feeling fat and unacceptable.

Somewhere in there, I realized that my body image was not only negative, but also disturbed. What do I mean by that? My perception of my own body was completely variable. When I was most aware of this phenomenon, during my thirties, I could look in a mirror twice, just a couple of minutes apart, and have radically different perceptions of my body accompanied by radically different value judgments about what I saw.

I never met anyone else who expressed having that sort of experience and so I made up a name for it – dissociative body image. But a little internet research shows that the phenomenon is generally called having an unstable body image and it is not an uncommon experience for people with disordered eating.

When I lived in the city, I often had the experience of passing a reflective surface – like a building with a mirrored exterior – and not recognizing my own reflection. I didn't know what I looked like. Probably because I rarely saw the same thing twice.

And, my experiences with other peoples' perceptions of my body were often jarring to me. I would hear others' opinions with a mixture of disbelief, shame and humiliation – feeling that I were somehow ludicrous – my body was ludicrous and my mind was ludicrous for not being aware of how ludicrous my body was.

I am developing a different relationship with my body now. Living in a more natural enviroment, with few events or people in my life for whom I need to look in a mirror, I experience fewer jarring conflicts between what I think I see and what others see, or what I think I see at various times. But it still happens.

And I'm not sure if the instability of my body image has improved, or if I have just moved myself into an environment where I'm less frequently confronted with the discrepancies. I think my body image is getting more stable, but to be honest, I only dare to hope that it is getting less negative.

Body Image vs. Body Experience


There is a major difference between my body image issues and the way I feel living in my body. Living in my body is an experience I truly enjoy. Apart from times when I am seriously ill (like that time I had a gastric ulcer in my late twenties – UGH!), I love being in my body. My body is strong and capable. I can do the things I want to do with ease – stretch, dance, get myself around, work, lift heavy things, sleep, wake, work, play, laze, read, write, sing, create and appreciate music, etc. etc.

Each of my five senses is a source of great pleasure to me.

I am endlessly moved, entertained and pleasured by the beauty my eyes perceive, the delicious things I smell and taste, the sounds I hear and the luxury of touching and being touched. Even the soft tip-tap of my fingers touch-typing on my computer keyboard is delightful to me.

The question is, if my body is so perfectly able to do all of these things that I love to be able to do in it and through it, what is my damn problem?

Back around to shame


The way I see it, there is shaming and there is shame. Shaming is imposed from the outside: advertisers, media, peers, family, and selves shame other people and ourselves if we are perceived to lie outside of the accepted norms. Shame is what individuals feel in response to shaming.

Disrupting shaming in such a shame-based culture is a big project. It involves changing the way many people think, feel and communicate – often against their own self-interests. Advertisers use shaming tactics to manipulate people into spending money. Often people use shaming to manipulate themselves or others into doing things that they desire them to do.

Shaming is also used to silence people and to shut down uncomfortable ideas. When Dr. Brené Brown posts ideas and research on-line that stir up people's shame, the vicious comments rarely focus on her ideas – they focus on her body. Those comments attempt to shame her for not being thin enough, in the hopes that she will stop writing about shame.

While the cultural shaming is overwhelmingly difficult to change, we can change our approach to it and our willingness to feel shame in response to shaming. We can work with our own shame. We can transform it. We can become shame resilient.

For example, Dr. Brown says that one of her main shame-resilience tools for on-line comments is a tiny piece of paper she carries around in her wallet with the names of the handful of people whose opinions actually matter to her. When she receives a shaming comment on the internet she can check, "Is this person on my list? No. Then it doesn't matter what they think."

Each of us has the ability to choose to buck the system and refuse to accept the dictates of societal shaming. I don't have to accept that it's shameful not to be Thin, Modest and Nice. I have choice.


Transforming shame

This past summer, my friend Jonathan Rotsztain gave me a copy of one of the books he has written and illustrated. The book is entitled Everything that's wrong with my body. I recommend you read it now on Jonathan's web site (Note: adult content). The book is an inventory of everything that Jonathan feels is wrong with his body – too much hair in some places, not enough hair in others, every perceived bump and flaw and wrinkle. Every time I read Jonathan's book, I feel deeply moved. I am moved by Jonathan's honesty and his courage.

And I am moved by the way his book makes me understand that the negative feelings we have about our bodies are not the whole story. Not by a long shot.

This morning, I did an exercise. I created an inventory of everything that I feel is wrong with my body. I listed 28 things. Then I made a list of everything that I feel is right with my body – 35 things on that list. And as I've continued writing this blog post, I've thought of more things to add to both lists.

I am not as brave as Jonathan. I don't feel ready to post those lists publicly or transform them into art. But I will tell you this: the feeling of making those lists was deeply instructive. I made the shame list first – and I felt shame and self-judgment. I felt disgusting and discouraged. I made the list of things that please me about my body second and I felt pleasure, smiles and contentment. And those feelings washed backward toward the shame list.

I believe that if I can focus on the places where I love myself and my body, I might be able to build resilience around the shame about some aspects of my body. And become – gasp – a more integrated person. And hopefully, a more integrated person who will no longer have dreams about people telling me I should wear make-up and make more of an effort.

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

The SECOND driveway (A Tiny Home/Land Development Report)

On a couple of days over the past month, my forest ecologist friend (who is also an artist with a chainsaw) and I have gone to my land to cut out the "real" driveway (if you missed the back story on this one, you can check out this earlier post).

One afternoon, my friend stopped off by himself and cut down a few trees.

Today, we were able to complete the job. 
Walking down the "false" driveway toward
"my clearing" through soft and
peaceful snow.

Some tools of the trade – branch trimmers and tea.
I had forgotten how much we had already completed.

It only took us a couple more hours to finish the job.
Most of what we've cut out so far has been fir,
but my friend dropped a couple of large pine trees today.
The pine boughs smelled so good and for some
reason reminded me of being sprinkled with holy
water as a child in church. I know in Toronto
the priests used palm fronds, but in Lunenburg,
I seem to remember the priest using pine boughs.

There was one particular bit of excitement when we had to fell a tree that was close to the road, leaning toward the road and with all its branches on the roadward side. We thought we might obstruct the road and cause a massive traffic jam (in Crousetown – haha) but in the end, my friend did such a stellar job felling it that this is how much of it wound up (very briefly) on the road. Given that it was between my car (with its four-way flashers on) and my buddy's truck, I don't think it had a major impact on anybody's drive home.

Here is the final view of the driveway entrance from the road.

I'm tired and happy and I smell like pine trees.

Next, the plan is to haul out the logs that are suitable for lumber and get them milled.

After that I just need to get through winter so I can get the heavy machinery in to build a road! 

Sunday, January 17, 2016

A thrifty soup idea

A couple of months ago, I remembered something from the eight months I spent in cooking school at George Brown College in the late 1990s.

Most of our cooking instructors had been raised up in the apprentice system in big hotel kitchens in the UK and Europe in the 50s and 60s. One of them told us about how they used to have a big pot going on the back of the stove containing Le grand jus. Everything that would have otherwise been wasted went into le grand jus: vegetable and meat scraps, leftover gravy and drippings. The pot was simmered down and simmered down until it produced a thick jelly rich with flavour. This jelly would then be used as the base for sauces and gravies, giving them a deep and complex flavour.

Remembering this story gave me an idea. Since I don't work in an old-school hotel kitchen, it's not practical for me to have a pot simmering away on the back of the stove all the time, but I realized that I can adapt this idea to suit my lifestyle.

I like making broth from scratch in the winter. Soup makes a delicious, warming and healthy meal. In the past, when I've made broth I've added a carrot or two, some celery, onions and garlic as well as herbs and spices to some meat bones leftover from a roast (roasted meat is my other favourite winter meal).

Remembering le grand jus made me consider that through the week, cooking all sorts of other meals from scratch, I produce a large amount of vegetable scraps: parsnip peel, carrot ends, onion and garlic skins and roots, mushroom stems, spinach and chard stems, the woody parts of broccoli, etc. 

I had been putting these scraps in the compost bin and chucking them away.

But since I remembered about le grand jus, I have started keeping a ziploc bag in the freezer. When I have meat or vegetable scraps, I put them in the bag and keep it in the freezer until it's full.


Last week I made lamb soup. The contents of my ziploc bag met a lamb bone, some bay leaves, coriander seed and peppercorns, were covered with water and simmered into a delicious broth.


When it was done, I strained out the broth and put the veggie scraps in the composter – having gotten an additional use from them before they became waste. And having saved myself from using wasting perfectly good carrots, celery, onions and garlic to flavour the broth.

Then I put some carrots and parsnips into the soup – and put the veggie trimmings back into my rinsed-out Ziploc bag to begin the cycle again:


And now I will leave you with this link to Hawksley Workman's Almost a Full Moon: Let's make some soup 'cause the weather is turning cold.


PS: When curating your veggie scrap collection you can choose an active or a passive role. You can just throw everything into one bag and toss it all in the pot when it's time to make soup. Or, you can have several bags in your freezer at once: perhaps a "sweet" one for puréed root vegetable soups that could contain apple and pear cores among other things, an "Asian" one that could contain ginger scraps and green onion trimmings, and a "pungent" one that could contain more strongly-flavoured scraps (especially those from the cabbage family), which could be reserved for cabbage/broccoli/cauliflower-based soups. If you want to get really fancy, you could save each different kind of veg in a different bag and use your preferred amount in each soup that you make. Personally, I prefer the random approach – and I haven't been disappointed by my soup yet. 

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Menopause: Mood Swings

I have noticed an interesting trend in my moods. The bouts of peri-menopausal euphoria I've been experiencing occasionally over the past couple of years have been extending into a pretty regular phenomenon. I can no expect to feel unreasonably happy and high for about 7-10 days out of every month.

Pair this with 4 or 5 days a month when I feel absolutely full of hate and have to bite my fingers to keep from trying to start big fights with people via email or Facebook.

Definitely a weird place to be.

I'm trying to stay even-Steven. No big decisions on the up days, no massive outburts on the down days. Afterall, there are still 15 days a month when I feel like myself. Plenty of time to get things done.

Makes me think of this song, Mood Swings, that I wrote in the 1990s and posted as part of my 52-song project last year. Have a listen, if you will.




Monday, January 11, 2016

Today smells like a day I can't remember

It's an absolutely gorgeous day in Lunenburg, NS, and I decided to take a break from my work and chores to sit out on the deck and look at the water for 15 minutes. 

I feel a little overwhelmed by how much this day smells like another day that I can't quite put my finger on. I think it was a March or April day in Toronto years and years ago. 

I feel melancholy and nostalgic, even though I can't remember why. 

Isn't memory a funny thing?

Thursday, January 7, 2016

Austerity measures (aka Living Within One's Means)

I started budgeting almost a year ago, using YNAB. (The chain of events that led to my decision to start budgeting are described in this earlier post).

At first, it didn't make much difference, to be honest. I started tracking what I spent. I developed a better sense of how much money was in my bank accounts and what was racked up on my credit cards, which made a change from my usual frantic checking and hoping. 

But for a long time, my spending behaviours did not alter. Not in the least. I still spent more than I was taking in. I didn't save up for coming expenditures, like the quarterly misery of filing my HST, money that I had collected from clients but which was mysteriously spent rather than reserved. 

Then, somewhere in the last month of 2016, I had a few epiphanies: 
  • It's actually better for me not to spend money I don't have. 
  • Many of the things I think of as necessities are actually luxuries.
  • I want to get my home set up this year more than I want to do most other things.
  • Getting my home set up without a lot of debt is going to mean saving every cent I can.
As a result, I have stopped spending money. Almost entirely. This makes me think of Augusten Burrows' wonderful "self-help" book: This is How. In it, there is a chapter about how to lose weight that basically says: All you have to do is want to be skinny more than you want to eat pastries and chocolate bars.

That may never happen for me, but something has clicked in my head and I actually want to create a home for myself more than I want to go out and have a good time or go on a trip or even help someone else out (which is not to say that I didn't give to charity this year. I did, I just did it within my budget).

And so, the booze budget is struck to zero. The entertainment budget, the junk food budget, the restaurant budget likewise (well, after a couple of mandatory post-holiday get-togethers with friends this week). The grocery budget is leaner – no treats, no shortcuts, just good, wholesome, prepare-from-scratch food. If I want sweets, I have to bake them.

It's been an absolute revelation. It used to be that when I wanted a restaurant or fast food meal, I just bought one. Now, when I think to myself, I don't want to cook, I want to grab a slice of pizza, the next thought comes into my head is I don't have that in my budget. When I want to grab a Coke and a chocolate bar, same thing. It hasn't even been that difficult. It's weird. It's like I suddenly grew up and the little bratty kid who wants everything right away is being reasonable and quietly nodding her head while I explain: You're going to have to wait, darling. Right now we can't afford it. She's not even being pout-y about it (at least, not often).

I think it helps that I know I don't have much money coming in this month or next. These are lean times.

But, wonder of wonders, I actually have my money ready to pay my HST at the end of the month. And I'm working on saving for my income tax. I've stopped using one of my three credit cards entirely. The other two are at about one-tenth of the amount they were this time last year.

This all feels like good progress in the right direction.

And every cent I can scrape together will go toward my house fund.

Monday, January 4, 2016

30 Days of Hustle

A family member invited me to do the 30 Days of Hustle with her (and a few thousand other people) this January.

The 30 Days of Hustle is a motivational challenge in which each participant sets a goal and takes steps (hustles) towards its completion for 30 days.

Along the way, the program teaches productivity and motivation skills that can be used to accomplish other goals.

I have a pretty quiet month ahead in terms of work. And I know the temptation might be to slip into a Netflix coma. Which would be fine if I needed to rest. But truthfully, I just spent the past six weeks chilled out on Netflix. It was great, but here, in the new year, I feel like getting some stuff DONE.


Tying up a big loose end


Although I'm planning to focus on more than one thing in this month's hustle, the structure of the hustle encourages selecting one main goal, so, my Official Hustle is going to be finishing off a number of my UFOs – which is quilting slang for UnFinished Objects.

You see, for about ten years, I was an avid quilter. I made quilts for people I loved, quilts for friends' babies, quilts for myself, art quilts, etc. I took classes, belonged to a quilt guild and gleefully fed my fabric addiction. I started countless projects — and to give myself credit, finished many of them.

But then, about eight years ago, I lost my quilting mojo. I moved from a 3-bedroom home to a 500-square-foot apartment, so I didn't have much space to work in. I became a performing musician and I became much busier in my life. Instead of just going to work and coming home to my quilting studio, suddenly I was leaving work to run around to gigs and voice lessons. My former "hobby" time was re-allocated to recording and producing three independent CDs.

The past 8 years have been an exciting time, but it's a time that feels like it is winding down for the present. I don't feel like performing shows very often these days. I certainly can't afford to create another independent record and can't even foresee a time when I will next be able to do so!

Right now, my focus is on getting settled on the piece of land that I bought last spring and creating a permanent home for myself. My current home is a tiny house on wheels. I'm thinking about building a permanent home – which will also be tiny, or perhaps micro. And that means that the six or seven boxes of fabric from my quilting "hangover" pose a problem. I can't bring myself to throw them out, but I also don't want to keep them in my space.

A small portion of my fabric "stash",
this is probably about one-eighth of it.

Worse still, there are a number of half-complete projects in those boxes, some of which are unfulfilled presents/commitments from 10 or 11 years ago.

The thought of those unfinished quilts has been weighing me down.

When I moved into my winter accommodation in Lunenburg, I got a membership at The Lunenburg Makery, thinking I would take the opportunity to work on some quilts this winter. I've been over a few times and have probably made three or four quilt blocks of my barely-started New York Beauty quilt. 

It's not that I didn't have plenty of spare time in the fall. What I lacked was motivation.

And so, this project seems perfect for the 30 days of Hustle. I have set my goal: complete four quilt tops in the next 30 days – two singles, one double and one baby quilt.

Here's the "baby" quilt to be –
a partly-finished colourwheel quilt.

I'm getting my hustle on!