My best friend has a mantra she says when her children are being difficult, "I love my child, I love my child, I LOVE my child …" and it helps to some extent when dealing with the upsetting behaviors of those we love. I've tried it out a few times myself, and it tends to lead me to laugh or at least to breathe and reconnect with my priorities.
Lately, the mantra hasn't been working for me.As a birthday promise to myself to change some of my own poor habits, I disconnected myself from Facebook for a month (still going), because it had become such a big distraction, it was bleeding into my writing time, my cleaning time, and worst of all, time with my kids.So, I set up a filter so all my notifications go to a special folder instead of my inbox, I deleted the related apps from my phone, and stop myself when I unconsciously start typing in the URL.
Being overweight in a society which reveres skeletons as fashionable, I’ve learned to turn a blind eye and deaf ear; assess the strength of furniture; determine the width and depth of space and deflect looks of disgust all because I dare to be outside the norm. Contrary to what many people believe, I used to be slim, athletic and well within societal norms. As a freshman in high school, I was on the gymnastics team and at my lowest weight of about 115 pounds. I was also miserable. I hurt all the time and felt conspicuous with my bones jutting out. Even at that low of a weight I was never a size zero like one of my sisters but size twelve is certainly respectable.
Life happens and weight seemed to find me. Low income, poor nutrition and many mistakes along the way piled on weight to my 5’4” frame. I make no excuses as I am responsible for my situation and myself. I’m overweight not stupid. Life happens and this is how I am right now in this moment. I can’t wave my magic wand and become 120 pounds again. Honestly I don’t know that I ever want to be that thin again. I don’t believe it was healthy for me. However, I would like to be thinner than I am now.
It has not necessarily been the easiest of winters. We had fair warning. We were told it was going to be a doozy. In my part of the world, we were expecting record snowfalls which thankfully did not come to be. Instead we got record freezing temperatures. Day after day of minus 40 Celsius (which actually puts the US and Canada on par). In our household, we went through weeks of frozen pipes, washing dishes in the bathtub, and burst pipes during a brief temperature respite. I heard similar tales from many corners, not least from the incredibly busy plumbers who arrived to save the day, darting from one home in need to another.
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
Erin Lale
Here's another link to a pagan response to the Atlantic article. I would have included this one in my story too if I had seen it before I published it...
Janet Boyer
I love the idea of green burials! I first heard of Recompose right before it launched. I wish there were more here on the East Coast; that's how I'd l...