Resolutions

This piece by Anne Lamott is one of my favorite thoughts on body resolutions.  I love it.  I know it's long but it's worth it. Here's an excerpt

We need to talk.

I know you are planning to start a diet on Thursday, January 1st, I used to start diets, too. I hated to mention this to my then-therapist. She would say cheerfully, " Oh, that's great, honey. How much weight are you hoping to gain?"

I got rid of her sorry ass. No one talks to ME that way.

Well, okay, maybe it was ten years later, after she had helped lead me back home, to myself, to radical self-care, to friendship with my own heart, to a glade that had always existed deep inside me, to mostly healthy eating, but that I'd avoided all those years by achieving, dieting, binging, people-pleasing, and so on

I may have mentioned several hundred times that I have had the tiniest, tiniest struggle with food and body image for the last--well, life time. Hardly worth mentioning. It is a long story, having to do with childhood injuries to my sense of self, terrible anxiety, and the inability of my parents to nurture my soul: so starving and chastising myself cannot possibly heal this. I hate to say it, but only profound self-love will work, union with that scared breath-holding self, and not a diet that forbids apples, or avocado. Horribly, but as usual, only kindness and grace--spiritual WD-40--can save us.

Can you put the scale away for a week? Okay, then how about 4 days? I have been addicted to the scale, too, which is like needing Dick Cheney to weigh in every morning on my value as a human being. Can you put away your tight pants? Wear forgiving pants. The world is too hard as it is, without letting your pants have an opinion on how you are doing. I struggle with enough esteem issues without letting my jeans get in on the act, with random thoughts about my butt.

My favorite parts are, "Horribly, but as usual, only kindness and grace--spiritual WD-40--can save us," and "The world is too hard as it, without letting your pants weigh in on how you are doing."  

So this year I'm not letting my pants weigh-in on my worth as a person.

This year I am going to:

1.  Not leave the gym without doing some core strengthening exercise.  I've never had a strong core but the babies have really done a number on it.  No more thrown-out back for me.
2.  Get a general practitioner.  I have an OB and an Endocrinologist, but I don't have a GP.  I'm going to fix that this year.
3. Go with a bold lip
4. Figure out how to do my eyebrows
5. Go to the dentist.  I don't really want to talk about it.  It's been too long, but it's necessary. 
6.  Find 1 song per month I want to learn.  This year the hubb's Christmas gift giving game was on point.  He got me guitar lessons.  I'm so excited and I can't wait to start finding songs I want to learn.
7. Send one book chapter to my mom.  I started writing a book last year and it's terrible, like totally, awfully terrible and I don't really care.  I'm going to work on it. 

May each of you have a lovely 2016 and may your pants have no part in deciding your worth as a person.