Valentine’s Day … an emotionally loaded, artificial holiday if there ever was one. I am, however, a huge fan of Love. The full-fat, non-saccharin kind.
With all the commercial reminders, today’s as good a day as any to focus on how we love each other, and also ourselves – because the two are very much connected. In fact, the way we love our own selves has everything to do with how we are able to love others.
As most of you know, Whitney Houston died this week. Her song, “The greatest love of all” was the first song I learned all the words to and still sing in the shower (happily and horribly off key).
I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows
If I fail, if I succeed
At least I'll live as I believe
No matter what they take from me
They can't take away my dignity
Because the greatest love of all
Is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all
Inside of me
The greatest love of all
It’s easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all
Whitney and I part ways at the part where she says self love is easy to achieve. It isn’t. It takes effort when many of us have to convince ourselves we’re worth making an effort for in the first place!
I part ways with the lovely and supremely talented Whitney in other ways as well, including area of talent and choice of mode of self destruction.
While I’ve never inhaled cocaine, allegedly or otherwise, I have ingested food that I know is bad for me, over and over again. And then there’s this extra 35 pounds I’ve been packing around for far too long. Except, now it’s 30. It feels like I’m walking in the shadow of how I could feel and look. I’d like to change that.
Since last year when I set a goal to lose 35 pounds by my 35th birthday, I’ve managed to lose get rid of 5 of them. I decided that one way to boost my esteem and take care of myself is to make this goal a priority (again) because I think doing that will increase my energy, productivity, health, sleep … good stuff.
So I bought a scale. It’s been over a year since I got rid of my old one. (You can read about that in this post called “Worthless.”) And I know it’s not in fashion to talk about losing weight because it’s supposed to be about how I feel. And overall wellness.
I get that. Totally. I am all about feelings. And wellness. However, I also get that for me, I need a number, a specific goal and then smaller goals to reach that target. I need accountability and a measurable outcome.
I got this idea from my friend Linsey. I’m always happy to find a new use for sticky notes. Here are 30 of them stuck to my mirror. For each pound lost, one comes down. (Note: if you try this at home make sure you use the correct side of your mirrored door, I ended up re-doing this).
And … because the number on the scale is just a number, a fact, a gauge … and because I was encouraged by Jenny Meyerson … here’s my number, for now:
I truly believe that my efforts toward this goal, and consequently achieving it, is an act of self love but also a way of loving my whole family because the better I feel, the better I can take care of them.
Here’s my column on rebuilding your sense of worth if you’d like to read it. It addresses the erosion of esteem I’ve found to be an issue for lots of moms like me: http://www.newsregister.com/article?articleTitle=rebuilding+your+sense+of+worth--1328124318--2570—hardy
xo,
