A Resolution of Sorts

I am well aware that most people make their resolutions for the year before the year begins or at least shortly thereafter.  I however, struggle to do anything on time so even if I thought those thoughts back in December, I am only now writing about my 2014 resolutions. This year I forego any Lent-like restrictive resolutions. Instead I let myself do something I should have let myself do years, decades ago.

This is the year I learn to love myself. Love my body. Love this body.

I resolve to to look in the mirror each day and at least once love what I see and love who I see. This is my goal if I look like I did in the last few hours of 2013… tired, bloated from holiday indulgences, and covered in my sweet baby boys vomit. This is my goal if I spoil myself with a full episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse for the littles and allow that whole time for myself decorating my face with creams, crayons and powders.

Why should I not? I have every reason to, even if I take my own happiness completely out of the equation. A confident, self-loving wife makes my husband crazy-giddy-happy. We’ll leave it at that. ;) For my daughter, I need to treat myself and my body exactly as I hope she will lovingly treat herself. And for my son, I need to show him how valuable women are as people in all shapes and sizes, not one-dimensional objects. There are millions of reasons for me to love myself. Those simplistic starter reasons are enough to launch my resolution full-fledged.

This is my resolution. It is hard. For some reason it is harder than hating, dieting, starving, pinching and crying, but this is it. It’s time to love me. Why is even that so hard to say? I feel vain and conceited and like I should apologize for both my imperfections and for the vanity to consider loving myself flaws and all. It’s hard. It’s confusing. It is time to love anyway. 

I leave you with Savannah Brown and her emotional, incredible way of saying all I mean to say.

When I first learned that no one could ever love me more than me, a world of happiness previously unseen was discovered because somewhere along the line of aging and scrutiny and time, I was taught to despise myself. But I made sure I kept myself beautiful so someone would love me someday, so I could belong to someone someday, because that’s the most important thing a little girl could ever want, right? I was 13 the first time I was embarrassed about my body, of course it might not be the last, and I remember stuffing my bra in the morning, tears stinging my eyes, hoping, praying to something that I could look beautiful enough today, braces and all, for the ruthless boys who mercilessly told me I was worthless because my boobs weren’t big enough. And I would go home and put on a sweatshirt with my eyes closed, deny myself the right to be shown myself because I didn’t dare want to insinuate beauty in regards to something so insulting as my body. But, I mean, we all end up with our heads between our knees because the only place we’ll ever really feel safe is curled up inside skin we’ve been taught to hate by a society that shuns our awful confidence and feeds us our own flaws. And sometimes when I need to meet the me that loves me, I can’t find her or remind her that the mirror is meant to be a curse so that I could find her in my mind, but when he or she shouts, “Let me out!” we’re allowed to listen. But it’s met by a chorus of conceited, egotistical narcissists. But since when was self-substitute a sin? Since when was loving who we are made an offense by morons that don’t matter? Change this physicality and that one. Don’t you dare shatter the illusion that you could ever be anything beyond paper-fine flesh and flashy teeth and fingernails. A code of accusations of not good enough, never good enough. Have you ever felt so numb that it hurts? Entertain me. You can’t surrender to them. You’ve gotta remember that you’re the only thing you’ll ever truly have. And no, I don’t mean your body. Because someday that will go bad no matter what you do. I mean you. I mean the way your bright eyes go wild when you smile and how your laugh is so melodic it’s a song. I mean the way your creativity is a compass that leads you to what you love. And you don’t need any miracle cream to keep your passions smooth, hair free, or diet pills to slim your kindness down. And when you start to drown in these petty expectations, you’ve gotta re-examine the miracle of your existence because you are worth so much more than your waistline. You are worth the beautiful thoughts you think and the daring dreams you dream, undone and drunk off alcohol of being. But sometimes we forget that because we live in a world where the media pulls us from the womb, nurses us, and teaches us our first words: skinny, pretty, skinny, pretty, girls, soft, quiet, pretty, boys, manly, muscles, pretty. But I don’t care whether it’s your gender, your looks, your weight, your skin, or where your love lies. None of that matters because standards don’t define you. You don’t live to meet the credentials established by a madman. You’re a goddamned treasure whether you want to believe it or not. And maybe that’s what everyone should start looking for.

 

 

How I Love My Body: Life Lessons from an Almost Preschooler and Why I Prefer Custom Over Stock

As women, loving our own bodies doesn’t seem to come naturally. Ironically, as VERY young girls, it’s the most natural thing in the world. I shouldn’t base the entire preschool-and-under-aged, female population on my only daughter, but for the sake of a solid example, that is exactly what I am going to do.

S thinks she is frickin’ awesome. She’s right. She thinks the way her belly pokes out is fantastic. She’s right. And she thinks that the way her funny little outie belly button pokes out ever farther than her belly is hilarious. She is right again. When she goes to put on some of her favorite pants and her outie-on-top-of-an-outie, belly/belly button combo causes the pants snap to burst open, she always looks up at me with a huge grin and proclaims with obvious pride, “I’ve been growing!”

She loves to incorporate the mirror into as many activities as possible. Every evening when she brushes her teeth, she walks out of the bathroom, into the hallway and stands in front of a full length mirror for the full brushing of the teeth ordeal. You may think I am just promoting vanity. That’s possible. But if you saw the determination in her eye, you may come to believe that she just gets a kick out of seeing herself do stuff.

What Life Looks Like When You Are Loving It and Yourself

She likes how long her hair goes down her back when she takes a bath. She likes that she can run “super fast,” She likes how her legs help her to “do good jumps” in ballet. In fact  the only complaint she has ever made about her body, is her lack of breasts. Yup. You read that correctly. She has asked on several occasions when she will get big boobies like mine. Poor kid, by age two she sat beside me as I breastfed her little brother trying to pull her own tiny, toddler nipples out. No fear. Once I assured her that all girls grow boobies once they become grown up ladies, she was satisfied enough. But I digress. The point is she loves how freaking incredible she is and how fascinating her body, and human bodies as a whole, are.

I think most of us felt that way at some point. Maybe it was gone by age 3. Or 5. Or 7. If you still had it once you hit the double digit ages, you were some sort of miracle kid and should definitely be writing this instead of me. I was very negatively conscious of my weight and how my clothes fit my body by 2nd grade. So the question remains, “How does a girl like me get back to being a girl like her?” (My kick-ass 3 year old daughter.)

Based on my obviously super-scientific research, step one is find a few things you love about your body, and fully enjoy those things. Go ahead; it’s cool. Love something about yourself.  Seriously. And it doesn’t need to be anything that fits nicely into some conventional definition of beauty. Ok, despite the chance of looking vain, I’ll go first. I have this dimple on my right shoulder that is gosh-darn adorable. My darling son has had the same dimple on both of his shoulders since he was born. Now I love my shoulder dimple even more. It’s a special thing we share – and a cute thing to boot! Now it’s your turn.

The next thing I realized about myself in an effort to experience self love, is that to appreciate one’s body isn’t so different than appreciating anything else. I love things decorated. I love them custom. I love them unique and personalized. Basically I am the idiot who will pay $6 for the $3 spatula in leopard. I don’t buy pill boxes, mugs, diaries and other completely unnecessary trinkets because I want to see how close I can get to full-blown hoarding without crossing the line. No, I just find them attractive and pleasant. That’s why I love pinterest; I can collect all the pretty and clever things I see without needing to make a Goodwill drop-off a month later. The same is proving true for my body. I fully recognize that I am about a lose a few of the die-hards still reading, but try to bear with me.

I like to customize myself. Plenty of people don’t, but I love my nose ring. Which is funny because once upon a time not so long ago, I hated my nose. Now I like it and how it looks with one of my gold hoops to decorate it. I love my tattoos. I love what they say and what they say about me. I want more. Maybe it’s a little gimmicky, but it works. What do you do with a boring old dining room? Paint it, hang photos you love in cool frames (or old windows salvaged via dumpster diving, whatevs), shake it up a little. It’s not that I hate little white dining rooms, it’s just not what I love. It’s not what excites me, inspires me, and motivates me… unless I am thinking of it as a blank canvas. I am looking at myself as my own exciting semi-blank canvas. Maybe that means new bangs or earrings. Or maybe that means a fine-tuned version of this (which I sketched myself in an inspired moment) getting permanently inked onto my skin.

Hand Sketched by Elle Smith

Self Love and Plexus

I sometimes forget what I say and post where. I have been posting a lot more to pinterest, facebook, and instagram than I have posted here lately. To make up for it, I have created an image to say much of what I post regarding Plexus on my other social media outlets.

In essence, it is to take a stand against so many disgusting body-shaming, pro-anorexia Plexus images I see circulating. They are often enough to turn me against Plexus forever. If I thought for one second that they were created and promoted by Plexus Worldwide, I would quit and boycott on the spot. But in this day and age it is simple as can be to create catchy images and layer them with any quote you please, and I know many (often well-meaning) Plexus ambassadors are doing just that.

This is me. Taking my stand.

Love yourself and your body every step of the way.

A Plexus Slim Woman?

Womanhood brings challenges most men don’t even notice. Hell, maybe most women don’t even notice. At any rate, I do notice and on that basis, almost every issue I encounter becomes an intellectual and spiritual battle within myself.  And yes, my insatiable desire to read everything I can makes me question whether showering myself in others’ opinions weakens my own intuition. With that in mind, I am now an ambassador for a weight-loss product. I promise, there is a connection.

As you may recall, back in February I made a 6-week commitment to a vegan diet. I began losing some weight. It felt good. I made a commitment to a 12-week weight loss challenge at my gym. That felt good too. I ran. I did things I had never done before in my life. That felt empowering and vibrant. At the beginning of February 2013, and at the less-than-towering height of 5’4”, I weighed 180. I don’t say this to shock you, mock myself, or provoke any other body-shaming line of thought. It is simply a fact. By the time I stood in the line for my brother and sister-in-law’s fabulous July 20^th wedding, I weighed 157.

During that time I started hearing about Plexus Slim. A couple of friends were on it and doing well. Losing weight. Energetic. Excited. After more and more seemed to jump the bandwagon and achieve their desired results, I was plateauing in my weight loss journey and curious. I won a three day trial from a girl in the weight loss challenge at the gym. Later I contacted the most vocal of the Plexus people I knew and got a 3 day trial from her. I liked it. I like the taste and I liked the energy pep. I didn’t see dramatic results, but I didn’t take my measurements either. I did do a lot of research. I read it all.

Although I read plenty from people preaching of the evil of direct sales, and the flaws of any sort of quick weight loss program, those weren’t my real concerns. For each of those nay-sayers there were handfuls of people saying the exact opposite. I read the ingredients, and on that front, I was ready to give this a try. My problem then became, “Why?” I worried that I would get caught up in weighing and re-weighing myself. I worried I would start down this path to then routinely measure myself against unrealistic ideals. Worse yet, I feared I could only become successful by becoming some body-shaming be-yatch with “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” “motivational” quotes and images.

Here’s the thing. Beauty is not everything. It’s not even the most important thing. Especially not the Hollywood variety. My value is far more than my height, weight, body type, and facial structure. Even if beauty were the basis of all that is valuable, thinness does not equal beauty, nor vice versa. So why?

Why, in the name of all so-called pyramid scheme gods did I somehow get so stuck on this particular product that I would become an ambassador and public display of it? I suppose there are a few reasons. For one, although I fully recognize one’s worth exceeds far beyond his or her outer appearance, I am one who really enjoys the whole concept of physical appearance. With that in mind, I like my appearance to reflect who I am, and I like to play with that definition of who I am. To the dismay of some, I still experiment with my “look” more than some adolescents. From switching out my hair color, cuts & styles, adding piercings and tattoos, to attempting to create my own style, I enjoy that creative outlet. In the same way that I HAD to dye my hair full-on, ginger red last spring, I really wanna try for being thinner. Since even as early as jr. high, I have never been smaller than a size 6 – and I was even shorter than my current stature. So that’s it I wanna see if I can slim down, and I wanna see if I like it. Idk. Weird? Yeah, I can be terribly awkward, but I promised truth, gosh-darn-it!

Next, what a slug I can be! Seriously. The past few months I have just felt sluggish. I caught myself at work hitting 2-3PM and looking/feeling like a hot mess of a 5 Hour Energy commercial. I would daydream about the surprisingly-pleasant, refreshing, stevia-sweetened Plexus Slim and how it would be the kick-start I needed to power through my days. Of course, I could just try to drink more water and eat better on my own, but truly, if nothing else, Plexus Slim has some pretty bad-ass placebo effect going on. To keep this blog post on the up-and-up, I should clarify that there are plenty out there who cannot gag down the “pink drink.” I just happened to be one of those who genuinely enjoys it.

In this mess of an obesity epidemic, I do want to take charge of my health. I do. Really. It’s just hard. It’s not that I don’t have time to work out. I just don’t have time to work out that wouldn’t include sacrificing time with my children. Well that or giving up say, the time I am using now to write… But that’s different.

After my dedicated stretch of Veganism, I slowly slipped into a full blown vegetarian. I even ate cheese pizza with a side of stuffed cheesy-bread once. In the past two weeks I have gotten a better grip on sticking to a veganish diet. (Sorry Vegans. I know, I know. That is NOT a vegan. Just a wannabe on a mostly plant-based diet. I’m sorry. If I were as cool as you and there was so much as one single, semi-vegan eatery in this whole community, I would do better. I promise! But there’s not.) And these two weeks I have felt better again.

So now here I am attempting to do my part by actively trying to love my body ALWAYS. Average, fat, or fatter. AND trying to make some healthy progression while loving my body at every stage of that. Every fiber of my remaining high school self screamed to attach, “eew” or “yuck” to my sports bra-clad “before” photos. I told that little b to shut up. The photo says, “Before” and then has the date. After I gulp down 3 months’ worth of Plexus Slim, my body may be different. It may even be healthier. But that is it. Not “better” and not “worse.”

So that’s it. I am doing me. If you wanna play along. Let me know. You are more than welcome. If you wanna just creep on my little adventure, that’s cool too. And if you genuinely want to have absolutely nothing to do with it, I’ve got ya covered. I will through “Plexus” into the title of each and every blog post regarding the product in anyway. If you see that, keep scrolling. I pinky promise to write about other things too.

Cheers!

http://www.plexusslim.com/ellesmith

Before Plexus.

(don’t mind the crappy phone photo or slimy mirror!)

Plexus Slim Facebook Cover