Brave Enough To Be Bliss

I remember meeting a man in his 60s at a New Year’s Eve party a couple years ago who had tattoos . Shortly after he was introduced, he started to justify his tattoos because he expected to be judged. It had happened so many times that he was proactively defending himself just expecting to be treated that way. I understand it and I understand his behavior as a result of it, but I am just saddened that we humans can be that unkind to one another. I purposely used the photo on the back cover of this book because it doesn’t get more real than your three year-old niece picking up your phone, saying she wanted to take your picture and actually knowing how to do it. There was no editing, it just is what it is. I thought about having a professional photo taken and then quickly decided all photos used for this book were going to be as real as the content. One time John mentioned being curious about what I looked like when I was young, and the thought of showing him any photos of me as a child or young adult horrified me. When someone would post one from high school on Facebook, I cringed and hated it if I was tagged. It wasn’t until the self -hatred began to dissipate that I could bear to see photos of myself. It didn’t matter what the photo looked like to anyone else, it was simply a reminder of how I felt about myself. And I hated myself, so, I hated the photos.

If only all children could grow up with parents who treated their children as beautifully as maid Aibileen Clark does this sweet little girl in the movie The Help .

"You Is Smart, You Is Kind, You Is Important" (youtube.com)

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word... all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” Leo Buscaglia

I want to provide a couple true stories that are examples of the power of our thoughts and the power of perspective.

After a long day, and night, of writing I crawled into bed about 2 a.m. and went to sleep. Suddenly I woke up and thought I heard something moving in the room. Whatever it was, I was very alarmed. It seemed to be getting louder and moving faster. I was about to really freak out when I realized, the movement was the fan lightly blowing the sheet that had come up around the back of my head and the sound was an echo of the sheet moving with the cadence of my heartbeat. I almost panicked because I had allowed my brain to tell me something that simply wasn’t true. Around that same time, I also began to notice that looking in the mirror while I was getting ready each day was easier for me. At first I wasn’t sure why , but then I realized it was the perspective the much lower vanity height gave me. Because I’m short waisted, most vanities cut me off where I look sort of like a blob. This lower vanity height let me see some of my legs, so it gave me a much better perspective of how I look overall versus drawing attention to my thicker middle, which I’ve always been sensitive about. For years, what I saw every day was only from one unflattering perspective , so you can bet, I’ll be looking for low vanity heights moving forward. One of the times I laughed the hardest with Ginger was when we were discussing my body image issues for likely the hundredth time. We were talking about how our body image can keep us from fully experiencing life and she mentioned a time in her past when she hesitated to go boating with friends because they would be able to see, she said, “what it looks like back there.” I didn’t understand and said, “What do you mean?” She said, “You know, the cellulite…like when you look at the back of yourself in the mirror?” I immediately exclaimed in complete shock and she er terror, “Why would you?” We both started laughing hysterically. I went on to explain that it’s hard enough looking at the front of me in a mirror , so I couldn’t understand intentionally looking at the back of oneself. I said, that’s just information I d o n’t need to know . I f I don’t know what it looks like back there, I can’t be self - conscious about it. And I still haven’t looked except once a month when my hair stylist Angie forces me to look at the back of my hair after she cuts it. It ’ s just part of her process with all clients and there’s

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