creative.mother.thinking

explaining my life to strangers

Susanne

Body image, or Would you recognize your own belly button?

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Did you know that blogher recently gave “body image” it’s own category. Seems that this is an important topic for a lot of us. Of course I wanted to write a “letter to my body” then but these days I’m not writing letters much, not even birthday letters, and even less letters to people or things or parts of me that I see daily. But then there’s the question of whether we really see what we see daily, like the people in our lives. Or as Debra Waterhouse puts it:

It’s surprising the number of women who are unacquainted with their bodies from the neck down. Our mirrors are strategically placed for only blow-drying hair and applying makeup, then we quickly dress without a glance at our reflection. We know our faces intimately, but most of us wouldn’t recognize our bodies in a lineup. When a group of women were asked to identify themselves from a series of headless bodies wearing nothing but their birthday suits, only 20 per cent correctly chose their naked selves. The rest guessed wrong, choosing bodies that were bigger in size than their own! (Debra Waterhouse: “From Tired to Inspired: 8 Energizing Ways to Overcome Female Fatigue”, p 175)

It’s weird that people who are often obsessed with the way they look don’t even really know how they look. That about every single one of us secretly believes she is fat, regardless of actual size. That every single one of us has the feeling she should lose about ten pounds. It always seems to be ten pounds at least, I don’t know why. I know that in my case the number keeps getting adjusted down every time I lose weight so that I never am where I want to be. But today I’m not writing about weight loss (even if I’m thinking about it) but about our body images.

Debra Waterhouse goes on:

Whether we are familiar with our anatomy or not, what’s not surprising, unfortunately, are the negative comments we make about our bodies. It has been estimated that the average American woman makes eighteen critical comments each day about herself and spends one third of her waking hours ridiculing her physical self in some way – getting on the scale and obsessing about the number, getting dressed and grimacing at the way our clothes fit, taking inventory of our wrinkles, catching our reflection unexpectedly in a window and frowning, comparing ourselves to fashion models, measuring ourselves against other women, depriving our bodies from food and nourishment, agonizing over what we will and will not eat – the list goes on and on.

How much time did you spend criticizing your body today?

Just think about it. How much time and energy wasted.

I think that I would recognize my body. Every day I make a point of really looking at myself. From all sides. I have been working on making friends with my body for years now. It’s better to have your body for a friend, and to treat it nicely since you want him to do a lot of things for you. We are not mind alone, even if it might feel like that when we’re sitting in front of the computer communicating with invisible people through a friendly shining monitor screen.

Learning to like what I see in the mirror was hard at first. My body, of course, isn’t flawless. Nobody’s body is, by the way, and you all know it. After a while though I liked myself better. I found that I actually like big butts. Hourglass figures, strong legs. That’s not to say that I’m not working on changing the things about my body that I don’t like but I find that in the long run being free from back pain is more important than having thin ankles. And that, like in any stable relationship, I have to accept what’s possible and what not.

When I actually started thinking about something important to me every time I caught myself thinking about my appearance or weight or food that set free huge amounts of energy. It was about 2 1/2 years ago that I did that, and only a couple of weeks later I had written two songs.

Energy follows attention. Being heavier than one wants to is not a full-time occupation. No, really, not even very heavy people eat all the time.

So, I’m giving you homework this time:

  1. Step in front of the mirror, naked would be best, and say something nice about your body. Say it out loud. Repeat. (This is an exercise from one of Geneen Roth‘s books.)
  2. Think about what’s really important to you. Maybe something creative. Every time you find yourself thinking about how fat you are or how you should lose weight think about that important thing instead. Bonus points if it is something creative.

Things I’m happy about

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I haven’t been writing about it much but actually I have been mildly depressed since August. For a few months I didn’t even realize it. Only slowly did it come to me that my bout of feeling “meh” had lasted not only weeks but months already. It’s not as if I didn’t try to snap out of it. Once or twice I even thought I was getting better.

I never know whether my mood changes because of the things I’m doing or because of some weird brain chemistry shift. Though I’d say that the way I live my life also influences my brain chemistry. It’s not as if my brain weren’t connected to the rest of me. While I do know what to do to make me feel better I have been strangely reluctant to change my behavior in any way. It was as if I threw myself wholeheartedly into the vortex. There’s this cycle of not caring for myself, not sleeping enough, eating more junk, not making music, spending too much time mindlessly surfing the internet, not doing housework… I have become even more stupid, forgetful, unreliable, and overweight than before.

It would be nice if there was a magic pill. I could go to a doctor, take it and feel happy and healthy again. But I doubt that it works that way. I’m not really clinically depressed. In fact I am a cheerful person despite the fact that life looks a bit grey all the time, and everything I do feels like pushing a big boulder uphill. Even things like doing the dishes, getting out of bed, or taking a shower.

The reason I’m writing this now is that I actually do feel a bit better. I have been getting enough sleep for almost a week now, and I have started to tackle things that have been lying around and weighing on my conscience for months now. Like reading a friend’s manuscript (I told her in September that it would take me a couple of weeks, ahem.), like starting to sew a bag that I originally planned to make in August, starting to knit something that I bought the yarn for in October. Since it has been such a long time since I cared for such a lot of things I couldn’t finish everything that I started or wanted to do since August in the past week but I made a start.

It seem that I really need structure and routines to feel good, even if that structure and routines don’t feel good when I’m in the midst of them. Like exercise. I only feel good after I have done it. Somehow I have to remember that dreading and procrastinating something often takes more of my energy than actually doing it. Maybe I should make a banner of that and post it over my piano.

So, to celebrate feeling better I’d thought I’d post a list of things that make me happy. in fact, I encourage you to do the same, whether you feel good or not, because it lifts your mood anyway.

  1. The first flowers peeking out under the snow.
  2. My son starting to spell words.
  3. My son starting to play the very first chords on the guitar.
  4. Hearing my husband play his guitar through the wall.
  5. Taking out the guitar not with the notion of, “I have to practice for work.” but just for fun, and playing around with it for a whole afternoon. (In fact I found out that I think of my two guitars as “work guitars”. When I use them I have to be efficient, and to the point. Get the most out of limited time. So I took one of my husband’s for play.)
  6. Writing blog posts again.
  7. Baking bread.
  8. Eating the bread I made.
  9. Pulling out an exercise DVD that I used to work out to three times a week, and finding that I’m not totally out of shape.
  10. Seeing my son dragging around his new bunny and playing with it.
  11. Waiting for my hibiscus to blossom.
  12. Watching my son singing along with “Sky Children“.
  13. Having no unread posts in my feed reader.
  14. Being almost able to sing again after weeks of throat problems.
  15. Not having to teach until next week.
  16. Knitting the Scheherazade-stole with exquisite Wollmeise-yarn, something I have been looking forward to since at least four months.
  17. Giving up on being perfect all at once, and instead just changing one thing at a time again.

What have you been happy about lately?

Mindfulness Day

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As often as our life permits my husband and I attend something called “A Day Of Mindfulness”. It’s held once a month in a beautiful setting near the Alps. The group organizing this is a Buddhist community following the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh.

The first time I remember being drawn to meditation and such was when I was about 12 years old. However I didn’t know how to do it, found the prospect of sitting still unbearable and so forgot all about it. After being drawn into Christianity for a while, and then slowly becoming disappointed with my church, and then becoming agnostic again, I didn’t think about spiritual matters for years. That changed when I read “The Artist’s Way”. At first I found all this talk about the creator and spirituality off-setting, then I felt drawn to it again until I felt comfortable with spirituality once more. Not Christianity as such though.

I think it was in 2005 when I found the book “Coming to Our Senses” because I was looking for a parenting book. I loved it. And how can’t you. The subtitle is “Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness”. I was hooked. I ordered the guided meditation CDs and started practicing. Learning more about mindfulness meditation, I became interested in Buddhism which led to a visit to the local Vesakh celebration in Munich. We made that into a sort of family tradition (because we already have been going twice, you know). There you can check out all the different groups of Buddhists there are in Munich. We’re fortunate because there are so many to choose from. In 2007 my husband and I thought about joining a group. There were several that sounded interesting, I researched them on-line, and found that the “Gesellschaft für achtsames Leben” held a day of mindfulness every month. No membership required, you can just show up, meditate with them and practice mindfulness for a day.

I have come to cherish these days. I’m still not really sure if I am a Buddhist or not but taking the time to slow down for a day, sit, walk, and eat in mindfulness feels very joyful, refreshing and makes me a bit calmer.

It isn’t that easy to organize. My mother-in-law has to be available to take our son for the day. We’re all busy people. We have to get up at six in the morning, pack lunches, tea, meditation cushions, and such and catch the train at ten past seven. The train ride takes about 90 minutes. It takes us through Munich, out of the city again, and then, finally, to a beautiful lake in view of the mountains. To be frank this view alone would be worth the trip. There are quite a few people taking the same train so we go to the village together. Everybody says hello, gets out the cushions, takes off shoes, and puts on socks. After a bit of chanting we sit for a while, and then walk in meditation, then sit. We have tea in meditation, then we’re allowed to talk and have a short break followed by a lecture. Then eating lunch, partly in silence, walking meditation outside near the lake, then some singing, walking meditation back, talk about the morning’s lecture, sitting meditation again, and then it’s over.

The first time I went there I was sure I’d go nuts, trying to be silent for so long but actually I’m a bit sad every time the bell rings and we’re allowed to talk again. Being silent and mindful all of a sudden seems a rare treat. Which it is in modern life, especially when you have children.

It also is a good way for me to remind myself how good mindfulness feels. Lately I have been trying to wriggle out of it. But that’s not doing me any good. Trying to be mindful on the other hand has done me a lot of good. I have to keep that in mind…

Happy Easter!

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This was one of the things my son found on his egg hunt yesterday. The pattern is Sophie by Ysolda Teague. My son named it Franziska, and we decided that like Pippi Longstocking she is the strongest bunny-girl in the world. So that she can help him against any monsters or ghosts that might be in his room at night. Of course he knows that there are no such things but then he also knows that this is just a knitted toy. It all evens out.

The egg hunt was indoors this year because it was too cold to do it outside even though the sun was shining. We had dyed eggs, plaited easter bread that I made the day before (this year with soy milk since we just found out that my husband is lactose intolerant), and my son got too many toys. I really try not to make this into some gift-giving holiday like Christmas but there are so many people wanting to give him something…

So we’re having nice lazy days, my husband working on his songs, me knitting and making music, and my son making a police station out of paper for his new playmobil waterplane.

There’s still one week of spring break to go, who knows maybe I’ll post again before it is over…

Why I write. And how I started it.

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I think it was Terry Pratchett who said that if you read enough books you’ll eventually start writing because all the words filling up your brain will start seeping out. That’s as good an explanation as any.

I have never thought of myself as a writer; but the first time I remember wanting to write a book was about 30 years ago. And I thought, “Well, if that’s what I want to do I better start now.”
I sat down and wrote into an old notebook. About three sentences into the story I despaired. This was no good. Ridiculous. So, obviously it wasn’t meant to be, I had no talent, and that was it.

Interestingly I didn’t really stop writing. I kept a journal, I wrote lots and lots of letters, and occasionally bad poetry. When there were writing assignments in school I loved doing them but none of my teachers thought they were particularly good. I didn’t know you could practice writing then. I thought you either had it or you hadn’t.

I gave up my dream of being a writer much as I had given up my dream of being a dancer at age 10, of being an actress at age 12, and of becoming a musician at age 16. (How my dream of being a musician came back is another story for another day.)

When I was 18 I entered two halfheartedly attempts at stories to a contest. I never heard anything back. It was only when I wrote my master’s thesis that I realized how much I actually liked the writing part of it. For a couple of weeks I’d spend every morning with it. After breakfast I’d get to the computer and start the day by writing into my journal. Then I went on to the thesis.

While writing about how jazz music is taught in German schools I had a lot of story ideas coming to me. I kept them in a folder on my computer where they sit until today. A friend told me about a book about writing screen plays. I had no intention of ever writing anything fictional but I bought the book, and started a script. Then I went back to the thesis. (I actually wrote a first draft of this script that I started in 1992 last year during Script Frenzy.)

It took me ten years to finally realize that my main motivation for going on towards a Ph.D. was that I wanted to write another book. Only after years and years of working on that did I realize that I’m not an academic.

But I still didn’t think of myself as a writer. And as of now I’m still unsure. Last year a new friend introduced me as, “This is Susanne. She’s a writer.” I had to resist the urge to hide and protest.

I might have a storyteller’s mind though. Through conversations with my husband I found out that not all people tell themselves stories all the time. That there are, in fact, lots of people who don’t invent characters and live with them for years.

So, when I first heard about NaNoWriMo in 2005 I immediately knew I had to do it. And I did. Twice. Which means that now there are two novels in first draft sitting in my desk drawer.

I’m a bit slow, I know, because only after writing for my blog for more than a year did I get the fact that writing a blog is still writing. (Do you hear me? You’re writers too.)

From all this I conclude that writing seems to be important to me. It feeds part of my soul. And my life feels richer for it. I still don’t know if I’m going to tell any of the stories in my head, or if one of my first drafts will ever get to be finished, but for now I’m very happy with writing about the things that feel important to me, and – and that’s the best thing about a blog – have people read my writing and come back for it.