Introvert be damned! December 10, 2009

In my line of work I come across all sorts of different types of characters but the main reason I deal with them is because they at some level feel misunderstood.

It pains me to see, over and over again children who are apparently suffering or “failing” in some way either at school, socially or behaviouraly because essentially most of the time they just “fail” to fit the accepted mould we expect them to.

We live in a culture that reveres the extrovert, the kid that puts its hand up in class, the one that jumps up and down and volunteers for anything that comes up in the classroom or in life.  We have decided it is important to want to be in the limelight, the only way you and your talents often get noticed is if you push yourself to the front of the queue and make your self known.  We like talkers and communicators not quiet thinkers.  We worship the “out there” people who appear to be getting things done and call those who don’t naturally step forward “shy”, a word that has awful implications; a label that once stuck on our foreheads, stays with us for life, especially inside of ourselves, feeding self hate and feelings of low self worth.

It is imperative to educate educators, parents, employers and ourselves that it takes all types.  A cliche I know, but its so true.  Without the less extroverted of us ( and there are varying degrees of extroverts and introverts) the world would be a maddening bun fight with all of us vying for egotistical attention.  Without the more sensitive thinkers and silent do-ers the world would probably be even more unsafe than it already is.  Many of the worlds famous people, inventors, artists, activists are not as gregarious as you might think. 

So when the teacher tells you your child is not “participating”, “contributing”, ‘performing” to “expected” norms or is labeled a wallflower or lazy, be careful not to tar the poor dear with the same brush but instead look deeply at the situation, check for unhappiness and where it might be coming from.  If it is just a reaction to feeling “unaccepted”, or not living up to cultural expectation, have the courage to look beyond what you are told and back your own team player and make his or her life a little more comfortable.  The more you support the innate temperament of your child, spouse, friend, be they extrovert, HSP, not a great talker, a quiet do-er or a serious introvert, the more comfortable they will feel with themselves, the more confidence will grow and the less therapy needed!

The bitch is back: Getting rid of the Good Girl. December 8, 2009

I am back!  A long hiatus, a dark night of the soul, different voices in my head that have led me nowhere or maybe they have.  I highly recommend a few weeks, or if you can swing it, months, of time out.  After years of feeling unwell, thousands of dollars spent on all manner of practitioners – quacks and experts included, a nasty bout of shingles a few months ago and a life time of self harassment administered by yours truly, I think I may have finally hit the jack pot of self knowledge.

My doctor (of sorts) took one look at me a month ago and said “You need 6 months off”- whatever that means in the life of a forty something mother of two, wife  and daughter of two aging parents who  now retired don’t seem to like each other and therefore look to me for entertainment!  

I would love to have 6 mths off. Imagine.. re-inventing myself, chilling by the beach, reading books I have had lying on shelves for most of my adult life that are just gagging to be dog-eared and smeared in sun-cream, eating bowls of cereal for dinner ( or not) and generally living the world according to Garp- I mean me!  But I, like many of you no doubt, suffer from an affliction most dire: The Good Girl Syndrome.; a people pleaser extraordinaire, a well honed, heavily oiled, Stepford kind of woman, except without the perky boobs and perfect skin.  Unfortunately I can’t blame the water supply because I was born with this terrible disease- its in my waters.

Being an HSP to boot doesn’t help. You are even more tuned into everyone else’s needs. A veritable nightmare of feeling, seeing, breathing every ones energies.  Knowing who’s needy of what before they even do; complete energy overload, a thousand hands tugging at your apron strings that no one can see other than you, all alone in your nightmare, drowning in your empathetic aura.

Thing is, that you would imagine this good girl thing would be a nice ever so polite thing to live with but no… it’s a voracious, greedy,ugly wolf like beast ready to devour you at any chance. If there was something like ghost busters use to detect ghosts, a plasmatron kind of device that scanned you for good girl-itis, it would be screeching off the scale by now for me.  And I didn’t even know it.

The biggest downfall of GG is that you are so bloody good that you can’t see your folly, your downfall, you are too busy orchestrating life so that it is nice and rosy for everyone else that you forget to look at that ugly devouring wolf you have become in the mirror.

If you are tired, exhausted, angry, a tiny bit bitter, or spend hours dreaming of a different life and then immediately reprimanding yourself for such selfish thoughts.  If you are secretly dreading the christmas shopping that has to be done in these coming weeks, or hate your boss but see him as your Karmic lesson, or really  can’t be arsed to make yet another dinner tonight but instantaneously correct yourself and go write in your gratitude journal then I hate to be the bearer of bad news dahling.. sorry but you got GG bad!

HSP Child: Musings on what it’s like to have and be an HSP child. October 19, 2009

 In ancient times temperament was a crucial element in understanding those around you and yourself.  No physician  would treat an illness until the temperament of a person was decided. Learning that I was an HSP just a few short years ago resulted in me having to look back into my childhood with more than the usual dose of reflection.  Having always been concerned with issues of childhood and bringing up children in our times, considering the notion of temperament became even more interesting and relevant once I realised I was HSP.

My own children, by and large, display indications of being HSP too, especially my eldest.  It’s tough being the parent of an HSP child because they don’t follow the stereo typical model we have of a child.  They aren’t “free” in the same way that we imagine all young children to be.  They often display uncharacteristic traits of being mature and responsible.  They aren’t always pre-disposed to wanting to have fun in the way we would expect and they usually need little discipline of the normal kind or very little at all.  I didn’t know this about my first born and its been often times an arduous, trying journey.  I think by virtue of myself being HSP ( although not knowing it) and just using my own temperament as a rough guide was pretty fortunate for my son.  Heaven knows what damage we would have done if I hadn’t recognised certain similarities between us and been strong enough to stand up for his so called quirks.  The fact remains though, that if I hadn’t stumbled upon this HSP information the inner conflict I had inside of me for both myself and my son would have continued to eat away at me.  

For most of my life I always recall feeling not quite up to scratch, socially.  I often felt too emotional or touched by issues.  These feelings often had to go underground and stay hidden because it seemed to me that I was just too sensitive or touchy as I was often called as a young child, teenager and young adult.  It was, when I look back, very bewildering and left me often at war with myself, never ever feeling “enough”.

Most HSP children, if they haven’t gone completely underground, are superbly intelligent in some shape or form.  My own son, now a few days off being 17 always displayed an extraordinary grasp on things like science or would cut myself and my husband dead with his knowledge of things little boys really ought not to know.  The first word that he read independently was pharmacy! When I was heavily into mediation and all things psycho-spritual he drew pictures of me with a third eye exactly where it should be.  I had never spoken to him of such things but when gently questioned about his drawing, he looked at me in his usual quizical fashion with eyebrows raised more suited to a university mad professor and said ” don’t you know mum- I have one too?” pointing to the middle of his forehead.  ”That’s for seeing things when my other eyes are tired of all the rubbish I have to look at!” The ironic thing is that he is the complete antithesis of a “spiritual” child.  His life revolves around quadratic equations, theoretical physics and scientific proof.

 

More on this topic later.

I don’t have a Julia Child. October 18, 2009

I have  just had a heated “discussion” about how I work towards achieving the things in life I wish and want for.  The film Julie & Julia came up.  I agreed that there were some parallels between Julie’s life and mine, I mean here I am blogging about things that means something too me and, yes I would love to be recoginised enough to have a book published.  Essentially I am a published writer:  I have a regular column/feature page in a magazine http://www.novaholisticjournal.com/ where I write about children’s issues but I am still a work in progress when it comes to living the dream.

My partner for this particular discussion seemed to intimate that my problem was that I don’t give in to ‘another” , that I don’t have a guru, or follow with sufficient passion, the path of another to get what I want.

I have issues with this I have to say. I have never been a follower.  As a product of two fairly conflicting and diverse cultures there was an invisible agreement that one had to find out and figure out life for oneself- make up ones own rules on a minute by minute basis, attempting at all times to be respectful and conscious.  I was born and raised without any base line, other than to be honest, humble and independent.  So throughout life I have never looked to any one else other than myself for clues and tips of how to make my life happen.  There wasn’t even God in the equation.  

As the years passed I grew my own special brand of spirituality that created close and causal connection to something  or someone not outside of  myself, but with with deeper aspects of myself.  I am in a constant process of creating myself piece by piece.  I explore and draw on things that I read, people that I meet, experiences that I have but essentially I have had to forge myself from nothing and everything.  My life so far has been a giant forensics project where I have had to dig deep to find clues and reasons for why and how I think and decide for myself where I am going.  

I have had to figure out for myself what it means to be a woman, wife and mother.  I have had to create my own philosophy regarding child rearing, marriage, work and life in general. I even learned to cook for myself, experimenting, using intuition and vague ideas from other people.  Most of the time it feels like I have been doing this in the dark with, on the odd occasion, a candle to light the way.  I have had to build my own connection with Spirit and work from the inside out.  Which brings me back to my initial issue.

Just because I don’t have a “Julia Child” or a God or tribe to worship and follow does not mean I will not make it.  It does not mean that I don’t have humility or wisdom.  It does not mean that I am arrogant and irreverent to other peoples marvelous achievements or ideas. It just means I am journeying back and forth to myself consciously building a world for myself, on my terms with my rules.   Contrary to popular belief we are not made to serve the world but the world is  us,the sum of our thoughts, ideas and  actions. The world was made for me and you and you.

Him and me. October 16, 2009

He will always want waves when I want calm waters

He will always want a crowd when I want intimacy.

He will want friendship when I seek a soul mate.

He will want eggs when I want bacon.

I will want peace when he wants chaos.

I will want to sleep when he is awake

And I will want romance when he needs comedy.

Will he dance with me when I want music?

He will want sugar when I don’t

And I will want crisps when he wants cake.

I will drink coffee whilst he drinks tea.

I will want to read when he watches TV

Will this ever work: him and me?

Lily and the Blahniks October 7, 2009

Do I love my man and my children more than I love myself? Is this a good thing? I can cook up scrumptious meals just for them but find it as easy as the CIA catching Osama, to prepare, let alone eat, a meal that I either need or want. My desires went underground a long time ago, and I mean a long time ago when men walked around colossal stones in white nighties with big long beards.

 

The Eve in all of us is still ashamed of that apple malarkey (if it ever did really exist), and being a woman of conscience she still punishes herself on a daily basis.

 

Really get over it Eve! It was a long time ago and its time to let go. Get yourself some therapy girl. Any good shrink will tell you its unhealthy to fester in the sweat of your own guilt. Think gilt not guilt. Think gold- repeat after me “I am gold” Throw away the fig leaf and buy some Manolo Blahniks or if that makes your sustainable blood curdle, a hemp skirt will do. Eat a whole, free range if you like, chicken, tuck into a bowl figs and luscious Greek yoghurt drizzled with honey (you can keep the fig leaf for those nudge, nudge, wink saucy moments). I mean what is the deal Eve? Go find your buddy Lilith (Eves’ twin sister) and be bad for a day. Head into town and rip it up.

 

Your “bad” probably means not doing the washing or getting a take away for dinner, or more naughtily maybe you won’t vacuum this week. Oooh, oooh , an inch of dust rather than half of one- Agggh- we’re all scared out of our hole proof undies!!!

 

Lilith might tell you its OK to take a break. She’ll start training you to be free. She’ll probably introduce you to a voice coach who will show you how to get that choked up, annoying squeak that turns into something of a whine when you don’t get heard, into a melodic, alto that runs off your tongue like the sound of a crystal clear waterfall.

 

Lily, as we will call her affectionately, will book you into a 5 star establishment, order you a mans’ portion of steak and chunky chips (room service of course), draw the black out curtains and tuck you in for the sleep of a life time. Six days later (she too rests on the 7th) she’ll wake you from your slumber, run a bath for you and leave you there until you are scrubbed clean of your original sins. After that she will hoist you out of your comfort zone. Your bra will be tossed in the bin and she’ll help you drape cloth around your body that would put Givenchy to shame. She’ll take you by the hand and march you to the nearest ATM. One look from her glaring eyes will send you into submission and you’ll withdraw cash, equivalent to a mere single contribution you have made to the mortgage, kids, food shopping and Holden Ute that lies in your garage. Your faltering fingers will be steadied by her piercing gaze as she reminds you of the 2400 other pay cheques and unpaid labour you have put into the account over the past 20 years, “None of it really spent on you my dear!” she’ll say sarcastically.

 

Lily seems to be a bad influence, a friend you could do without doesn’t she? She’s the kind of girl your mum warned you about; the wanton witch who can lead you astray. Actually she is your best friend. Be brave. Get to know her. She’s actually is the part of you that you have forgotten, have no memory of and Lily really loves you.

Testosterone October 2, 2009

Testosterone has a lot to answer for. I am a feeble, floundering sole female in an all male household. As they all grow up (debatable) I am increasingly aware that the air is thick with this gun toting, hairy hormone. The atmosphere if left on its own for more than a few hours feels like the fur on a dogs back that has been stroked the wrong way, all on edge and spiky. We cannot as a family, sit down to a lovingly prepared meal with out at least one of the other three “boys” (and that is what they are and what they will remain) sniping about something or the other. As the 10 minute enforced civilized sit down disintegrates, tweety bird chests expand and the fight over which bits of roast lamb are ‘theirs’ or which potatoes have their names stamped on them becomes unbearable. The subversive tactics employed to hide a few green beans could be better utilized in a career in the SAS. For a sex that claims to be the stronger, the sight of a bit of fat on an offending piece of meat sends them into a girly flat spin.

 

 My teenage ninja mutant first born loudly proclaimed last night, he didn’t like to “forage” for his lamb amongst bones and a bit of fat. “What have I given birth to?” I thought. “It’s all gone wrong- we’ve gone from hairy mammoth hunters to lazy, spoilt Neanderthals!” I struggle to bite my forked estrogenic tongue and try not to point out that it took me nigh on two hours to prepare this clearly unacceptable meal. However I was brought up to be a lady and my female heritage predisposes me to an uncanny and unnatural capacity for keeping my mouth shut. Perhaps it is a way of keeping that godforsaken evil apple, which haunts our sisters’ psyches, at arms length.

 

There is nothing like a nice piece of soothing music to help your dinner go down but when I conceived my two boy children and bequeathed my body and soul to that handsome lad from down the road I was unaware that the predominant background symphony would be nothing more than a consciously composed backing track of belching and farting in F major. To sit at a table and endure this daily cannot but help bring forth a counter rage. It’s called PMS (post marital stress or pissed off mothers stress), lasts a whole month and is undoubtedly the hormonal bottling up of complete disbelief and horror that such an opposite species actually exists.

 

I made the grandiose mistake of taking some time out last Saturday. Anyone would have thought I had deserted troops in Iraq. Exhausted and fully fed up with the monotony of weekend chores I retired to bed, leaving my manly trio with a wide-eyed, high eye browed look on their faces. The fact that I had actually drawn the curtains and got into bed rather than sheepishly pass out for three seconds on the sofa whilst waiting in the wings for the muffins to be ready, seemed to shock them in to a few moments of being able to walk without leaving echoing footprints or demanding food. But within 10 minutes we were all back to normal and the kerfuffle in the kitchen resumed. Cupboard doors opened and shut with alacrity and I counted the fridge had been opened and shut about 12 times in as many minutes. “ Boy vision” had returned and I was being whispered at for culinary advice or the GPS of homework that was “lost”. The elder (but not always wiser) of my three boys, my husband, enthusiastically set about preparing a “best ever” dinner but “checked’ in on me three hundred times for step by step instructions until my progesterone depleted rage directed him to that same cupboard which had already been opened and shut 7 times, where a barrage of good cook books lay, which had in print what I have in my overburdened head.

 

All you good women know the outcome of this story don’t you? It’s all too freaking familiar. I now know why our planet and politics are in such a mess. Too much testosterone! It knows nothing of order, of beauty, of negotiating without war, of acting before disaster strikes. I left my intelligent brood for a few hours and our house is adorned with wet towels and bathers left casually slung on dining room chairs. Empty wrappers of food that have no nutritional content, grace the coffee table in front of the TV that wastes our precious energy as it blabs away to an empty room. The dishwasher is half stacked and on. The dog is going stir crazy because she hasn’t had a walk. Attempts at domesticity are evident- the ironing basket sits proudly in full view of who ever might walk in but oddly it’s still full. The energy is flat and flaccid, dull and dreary, devoid of a special kind of love and conscience that only a woman who has embraced a true feminine essence can replace. By feminine essence I don’t mean the frilly pink kind. I speak of an energy that is used to saying ‘yes’ more than no’, one that works tirelessly to create safety and harmony; one that works from instinct and pure love, one that’s strong but always soft. It’s a shame we sometimes feel like a well-known toilet paper though isn’t it? Take heart girls, the world would literally be a shitty place without us!

A leaf in the wind: Being a HSP wife and mother. Things I wish I had known. September 26, 2009

One of the dilemmas of being Highly Sensitive concerns the acute and automatic tendency to tune in to other peoples feelings at the drop of a hat.  As a mother its natural and necessary to be able to know when things are right or wrong with your children and in that sense I have been blessed with a talent of tapping into emotions, situations, concerns and even illnesses before they fully blossomed or before the shit has hit the fan.  For 17 years now I have tuned into my children’s needs  before they have fully manifested, sought educational help before things get really bad and boosted immune systems to hold bugs at bay.  I have influenced family decisions so that they take into account my “feelings” on the subject” and stood up in classrooms and doctor’s offices to back my heightened intuition.  

As a wife I have often sensed my partners moods, been sensitive to his needs and feelings too, ranging from knowing what to cook that night to understanding his need for freedom, space and lots of entertainment. I have also taken on too much, let too many things slip through the net that I don’t agree with: In general I can see I have been a bit of a pushover in many instances and to my detriment because I was always ready to be self sacrificing  at some level  due to the fact that I felt so poignantly  where the other person was in himself.

Being Highly Sensitive and not knowing this fact for 40 yrs has had its drawbacks.

When you are an HSP you often think that there is something wrong with you when you quietly feel like you can’t tow the line.  Add to this a good helping of New Age-ness, karmic concepts and a dollop of conditioned responses rooted in centuries of religious doctrine which always advertise the importance of turning the other cheek, treating your neighbour as you would like to be treated and doing for others before yourself, and what you have is a person who is swamped by everybody else’s needs with a natural tendency to give over and above what is healthy.

HSP’s need better boundaries and must teach themselves to overcome guilt and confusion over why they can’t perhaps cope as well or as assertively with other people’s energy and demands than the non HSP.  Having this ability to tune into other peoples needs has a down side.  It renders you, at times, unable to meet your own needs eventuating in some cases in a complete loss of supporting their own desires, personal, career, financial, emotional and social.  From this point on there can for some HSP’s be a complete withdrawal or lack of consciousness in regard to their own desires rendering them flapping around helpless in rising waters which threaten to drown them out of their own lives.

It takes no stretch of the imagination that when and if this occurs, at whatever intensity, if you are in a relationship with an HSP there comes a point when either they appear to be constantly depressed, angry or volatile and can be just as hard to live with as they claim to have found you to be.

The key to fostering good relationships for HSP’s or with HSP’s are very similar to cultivating harmony in relationships with any one else.  Life is really only about two things.  One is about finding right relationship with one self which in this case would mean for an HSP to actually know they are HSP and support themselves with tricks and tools of the trade.  And then there is the other life lesson of learning to build right relationships with others which requires feeling justified in having limitations, refusing to be a victim, learning to know how to use their sensitivity productively and most importantly understanding, setting and feeling justified in having their own boundaries even if they seem nonsensical to others.

Sack the Smock. September 24, 2009

I have a question.  Who is in charge of fashion these days.. and why??
A shopping trip is usually hard enough as it is.  First you have to negotiate the huge mall with the acoustics of a football stadium, full of giggling girls with weird haircuts and teenage boys with pants that hang beneath their yet to blossom bottoms. Then there is that awful new age energy saving lighting in all the change rooms that makes you look pale, pastey and kindly shows up every lumpy, bump of cellulite you own.  It makes you seriously consider “beauti- lation” , whip out a Sharpie, a white coat and some designer specs and start drawing black lines on where your body should be.  I swear they raid old fairgrounds for their mirrors. You go in to one store and you look fine.  Move across to the next shop and your body has changed in all of three minutes. ” Surely?”  You think. ” It couldn’t have been that mango smoothie I just had?”

Frankly if you are actually trying something on you are way ahead of the game because someone, aliens perhaps, have stolen all the good clothes and left us with the smock!  I mean, no one  really honestly looks good in a smock.  Its simply just a sack thats had the odd nip and tuck with a badly sewn on button on the left.  If you have any sort of boob-age you end up looking like a beach ball and that little bit of indentation you proudly call your waist is lost forever.  If you are young and super skinny you look like you are wearing gran’s old curtains  and are in need of a good feed.  Its called a smock  for a reason  and  will have the last laugh because my friends,  when you put one on it points its pathetic patterned finger at you and (s) mocks you!

On a more serious note always check the label of your smock.  Most of them should be sold with an environmental hazard sign attached.  I mean, in our current times of global warming you would have thought designers would have cottoned on to the fact that to step out on a hot day in a smock made of all fibres stretchy and synthetic means there’s a high risk of spontaneously combusting.

Wait!  I am not done yet.  So you have failed with the top half but surely you can find a new pair of jeans?  Sorry girls I have some grim news ahead : skinny jeans.  If you can actually get a pair on you are emaciated.  They will be so tight fitting that you will get that oh so desirable bow legged look and everyone will be able to see half the mall through the gap in your thighs.  If you find they are more than a bit of a squeeze  to get on and you actually possess a modicum of flesh, then they are just wrong!  Forcefully throw them on to the floor in the corner of that change room with the mercury leaking lights and leave the building now.

Sigh!  Ok so no luck with clothes you say.  Shoes are always a safe and easy bet?  Sorry to disappoint again but where have all the good shoes gone?  I am not quite ready for a German sandal or a brogue with a free orthotic thrown in.  Here are your choices.  First the ever so flat ballet flat.  For this footwear I recommend googling or wiki-ing the ancient chinese art of foot binding.  Better still rip up that smock that skulks in your closet and make it into a good set of bandages.  Wrap tightly around your average width foot,  use neuro linguistic programming to reinforce your goal of a pencil shaped foot and in a short few years you will be able to fit your previously ugly sister of a hoof into a flap of fake leather held together with a bit of elastic.  Hey presto Cinderella is born!

And then there is the Gladiator Russell Toe line of shoes.  An ugly mesh network of leather  ladders, perfect for ambitious mosquitos to climb and bite those not so boney ankles of yours.  These shoes should however come with a sign
 for those poor blood thirsty creatures that reads ” insects with vertigo or high blood pressure are advised not to attempt this”.  I mean who decided an ancient Roman macrame project should get a 5 inch heel?!  

I am trying very hard to morph into that goddess that self help books recommend these days, but find me one mythical maid who ever wore a nylon smock, skinny- squash-your-ovaries jeans with a wrap and strap leather skyscraper shoe.  They all wafted around in floaty- breezy- hide- your-baby-belly- show- off- your-post- breast-feeding- cleavage-low-cut-gowns.  They would go barefoot or on wet days don a strappy sandal with a few beads for fun.  Even Joan of Arc, that feisty she-man wore a good roomy jodhpur, a breast minimising fitted blouse and a shoe with a low heel so she wouldn’t fall out of her stirrups.

Gym-no-sium September 23, 2009

I finally submitted wagging my ever-optimistic tail, to joining a gym this week. My once sensual curves have turned in to hyperbole and are now Saharan shifting sand dunes. I go to sleep at night thinking that the flab is in one area and wake up the next morning to find it’s moved to another body part. It’s beginning to take great courage to look in the bathroom mirror (I don’t do full length ones any more) and I blame the wrongly placed down lights for the fact that there are murmurings of a second chin happening. I really must have a word with Him who wrote Genesis. I mean “And then there was light?!” I could do without it right now. I really quite prefer the forgiving darkness. When in doubt blame an electrician. It’s confronting but I stoically refuse to succumb even to the notion of checking in with a white blond, white coated, caked in foundation, panel beater to eek out any dents with a shot of deadly bacteria. It’s a crazy, world we live in but it scares me even more to think that I, diva of “Aging Gracefully, is feeling a wanton lust for all matters superficial.  All our wisdom, work and washing, stands for nothing when we mount the bathroom scales and watch that needle begin to creep east or when character and laughter lines dare show up to the party.

So, here I am. I have swiped my magic card and managed to fight my way, with the grace of a three-legged hippo through the turnstile of this fat busting institution. The gate bangs ominously behind me and I get a sense of what it means to be incarcerated. But what crime have I committed? Calorious the god (yes he’s male) of over consumption sits lightly (he only eats fat free) on my shoulder in his Lycra best and begins to give me a detailed history of everything I have eaten in my lifetime and reminds me of my exculsive, elusive exercise history. He ignores all the shopping bags I have carried, the Le Creuset confined casseroles I have lifted out of oven, (this is how French women stay fit) the fact that my hip joint is still locked in its child carrying position, and the knowledge that my pelvis and its floor will never be reunited. He smugly points to the ideal weight/ height chart insurance demons get fat on and types my imperfect weight into to his greedy PDA. He takes no account of the fact that my DNA is rooted in a short, stocky, generous thigh, heavy boned heritage. He uses the new emaciated super race as the benchmark for my goal. I come over all fuzzy and faint. What lies in front of me is more pain (haven’t I done my bit for queen and country by birthing two gorgeous boys?). Will I ever taste food again? Will I ever lie down without guilt? For every moment that I sleep I am forgoing a calorie burning opportunity. My legs buckle slightly but I find strength if only to leave Calorious behind mumbling self-righteously.

I walk down the corridors of slick and no-span where happy shiny people commit GBH to a small black ball by bashing it against a wall. The highly polished floor resonates at a vibration that reflects the hardness of modern life. Is this a place for a woman, a creature whose power rests in her softness, whose strength does not require muscles and a six-pack?

A wave of dead man walking nausea floods through me and I avert my eyes, avoiding the Chinese army of cold, unforgiving machines that stand to attention in the palatial sweat shop on my left and instead, scurry, flesh wobbling to the womb like safety of the pool. Here I conform to swimming clockwise for thirty minutes navigating the narrow lane, the isthmus that vicariously connects me to my ideal self or to the place where I will never feel quite content with my imperfections.

As I slide in to the steam room I offer myself a confessional. The clouds of steam provide anonymity and I surrender to streams of consciousness. I ask the good people in hallowed places why I feel so out of sorts in this church of the body. I wonder would I not be happier shimmying away to the sound of a zither and Egyptian drum, playing dress- up in sequins and chiffon moving my hips to a rhythm I can’t even begin to hear in this sarcophagus. Would I not be more of me in a place where I could lay my head down to rest and learn to breathe again? Would I not prefer the soft light thrown from a candle to the glaring florescent beam highlights every inch of cellulite? Would my body return to a peaceful, pretty place if I could surrender to a massage or have my back scrubbed with the pumice of companionable woman in a Hamm am bath? Would music that touched my soul rather than  jangle my adrenals heal me of my woes and allow me to release the protective chain mail that manifests as unbidden weight? If I could find my voice and sing would that not clear channels of self-love and bring to me a body that I love being in?

I am awakened from my gentle commune by the harsh sucking sound of air as the door bursts open. A specimen of the opposite sex saunters in, man boobs thrusting through the steamy air. Suddenly I feel suffocated and I attempt to gracefully find my feet again with out slipping and falling bum over bosom in my haste. As much as I love men, I bid advice one last time before leaving this holy booth. Why do we not have places of female worship and reverence where a woman can not only expose her body but can allow her soul and spirit to step out, however gingerly?

The horned Calorius awaits me outside and orders me into the spa in the hope that I will burn up some more by sitting in this chlorine scented bubbly bath where hundreds have smugly, silently farted. Perhaps that’s why the smell of chlorine is so over powering. Oh how I long for the summer again so I can “spa” in the waves and the sea and feel the warmth of natural sunlight touch my skin.