Posts tagged “acceptance

Self, Easy

Posted on January 28, 2014

I don’t think that getting older is hard; I think that what’s hard is that as each year passes the inevitability of pain gets closer. Incremental change happens in life no matter what I do to prevent it—wrinkles, thrown-out backs, an inability to listen to 18 year olds sing about heartbreak and life without rolling my eyes. All of these things add up and I realize that I know people with terminal illnesses, friends who’ve buried children, and romantics who no longer wear a ring on their left hand. These are the things that begin to weigh on my face, not the wrinkles. It’s an intimacy with heartache and the idea that unfair is really just a moment, an excruciating, unwelcome, out-of-your-countrol moment. Unfair is a beginning and…

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Resolve to Mean it

Posted on December 30, 2013

Each year I welcome the holidays with childlike wonder, soaking up the hope and patience that come to visit. Less than a month later I stow the decorations and vacuum the pine needles in a frenzy to reclaim order. Usually the cleaning blitz extends beyond the decorations as I scour the fridge and go through closets. I know I’m not alone as I watch headlines crop up with tips for a cleaner, healthier, cheaper New Year. Lose weight.              Let go of baggage.                Meditate. Everyone dives in and I think: Maybe I can make a pledge to reform some part of myself. Then the next wave of articles hit with people consumed by…

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Is That Really Me?

Posted on May 8, 2013

I was standing with my back against a brick wall and talking to a colleague. The dressing room mirror shone in the afternoon light and I could see my reflection as she asked, “You ok? This whole thing is aging you. It really is, I mean you can see it,” and she motioned at my face as she shook her head. The whole thing was so over the top it felt like a bad sit-com. I winced. I wouldn’t say something like that, even on my worst foot-in-the-mouth kind of day. It hung there in the air between us and I thought of the wrinkle between my eyes, the way my cheeks have hollowed and the way that at certain times my shoulders have…

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30 Day Challenge

Posted on April 14, 2013

I’ve been quietly cataloging the proliferation of things like 30day challenges that I see floating around everywhere from Instagram to Pinterest to Facebook. I love the idea of having a smorgasbord of options from which to choose how to improve oneself, but I think we are getting overloaded. Organize your house, tone your abs, be assertive, find forgiveness, love generously, work efficiently…we spend so much time gathering ways to improve, that I don’t think we actually give ourselves the chance to do much improving. I use Pinterest to talk to myself in ways that I can actually use. I know that for every 100 great ideas I find to quell my working mom guilt and use for awesome projects with the girls, I will try…

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Face It

Posted on January 23, 2013

Standing at the mirror I take inventory of the day and of my face. I play back the conversations I had at work, my train of thought on the solitary drive home, and I scan the shape of my face—it’s more angular than before. I am not sure when the dissatisfaction with the planes of my face started, but it was a constant. I remember biting the lower corners of the inside of my mouth to try and make my cheeks look hollow. I studied make up tutorials on how to accent my cheek bones. I pored over magazine articles about how to apply make-up to your specific face shape. Apple? Square? Triangle? Nothing seemed right. I always felt like a sham because whichever shape…

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