Smoke 'em if You Got 'em

 

Well, it is raining and storming and it just seems like a good day to continue on with the story. Also, thank you to those who read the first installment and commented. Writers and bloggers are a greedy sort who get their self-worth from their readers and the opinions of their writing from said readers. Not really....but sometimes. So onto our story. 

In order to understand me and my story, first, you must understand my mother and her story. I never realized it so much growing up as I do now. My mom and I were so much alike, that at times it tore us apart. To this day though, even all these years after her passing, sometimes I open my mouth and her words fall out or I do something, and it's as if she was the driving force behind it. I guess many mothers and daughters are like that. So when I say, she created me and formed many of my ideas about life, living, and even dying, I am really not kidding. 

Today I am going to talk not so much about genetics but more about societal norms, what we are taught, what we believe, and what can seem good and turn out very bad. None of us are immune to this and all of us have likely experienced some form of getting caught up in craziness served up as societal norms. So imagine it being 1954. My mom had just graduated from a small Oklahoma high school in a town that barely held a thousand people. Mom had played basketball all through junior high and high school and was pretty darn good at it. (Let me just interject here that I got NONE of her athleticism). She was an amazing dancer too. That gene also bypassed me. 

Along with her prowess on the basketball court, she was also homecoming queen, and to quote her own words, she thought she was a pretty big deal in her town, not because of her athletic skills, but because she was Ray Dougherty's daughter. This translated into, my mother idolizing her dad and thus assuming the rest of the world did too (to be fair, many that knew him did), so this somehow elevated her status in not only her school and town but also the world as far as she was concerned. 

Being the youngest of eleven, Mom was of course spoiled (by attention, not material things. They had no money for material things) and she was a bit of a rebel, which often did not bode well for her. So when she graduated in 1954, she was not going to be the girl who got married and immediately settled down and had kids. No, her aspirations were loftier than that. This may have been spurred on by the fact that as poor as they were, all of her older siblings (including the girls) either went onto college, nursing, the military, or some kind of certified training. Mom had no desire to go to college but nursing interested her, so fall of 1955, she was enrolled in St. Anthony's two-year RN nurses training. 

Now Mom's impetuousness to be an adult and to do adult things was probably not her best feature at this point in her life. However, she was not alone in her desire to grow up and be a woman of the world. As Mom told it, nursing school back then was much different than it is now. There was some classroom work, but much of the training was on the job. In fact, at this point in time, they didn't even call it nursing school. It was called "nurses training" and a great deal had to be covered in that two years of training. Not only was classwork expected and in-hospital training, but they also were required to work shifts during all of this. Apparently falling asleep on your feet was not an uncommon activity among these overworked and underpaid young women. 

Part of the training was that each nurse in training had to work in every department for a month to six weeks. This was everything from obstetrics to cardiac to ER and psych. It is here where I am going to let you know why at times I question the intelligence of the medical community. My mom was in a class of about 25 girls. When they began their psych rotation, not one of those girls had ever touched a cigarette. Six weeks later, all but two were smokers, and most became lifelong smokers. At one time before my mother died, she told me that she had already outlived most of her nursing class. It is just unfathomable.

So why were all these smokers created in a hospital of all places?  Well, if you know anything about past history, smoking was considered a social norm well into the 1970s. The cool factor and "health benefits" were touted by models, actors, the media, and even the medical community. In fact, there was no place where you couldn't smoke, including in hospitals. So along with the social acceptance of it all, apparently psychologists and psychotherapists were of the mind that it was somehow therapeutic for patients in the psych ward to smoke on a regular basis as part of their therapy. It didn't stop there though. The therapy points were somehow really upped if the nurses smoked with the patients, so every time a patient smoked, the nurses would hear "smoke 'em if you got 'em," and they were expected to smoke right along with the patients. 

These poor girls were pack-a-day smokers before they even graduated. Along with what seems today like the sheer insanity of all of this, these girls were under extreme stress with their schedules and they learned that smoking was the cure for hunger, sleep deprivation, coping with their busy lives, and all the stress that accompanied all of their lives. Yes, these girls were not just physical smokers, in six weeks they had become emotional smokers too, completely dependent on menthol, tar, and nicotine to get them through their days, their stress, and in many cases, the rest of their lives. 

Jump ahead to the 1960s. Yes, if you are wondering, she did smoke when she was pregnant with me. No one thought it was dangerous or destructive to do so. In fact, she was allowed to smoke while in labor. Let's not kid ourselves though, with the stress of being an unwed mother, trying to hide her indiscretion from her family, having all those that did know her situation begging her to give me up for adoption, and still having to work full time to keep food on the table, even if society had believed at the time that smoking was dangerous, she was so emotionally and physically attached to cigarettes that I doubt she could have taken nine months off of smoking, even if she tried. 

From my first memories, I don't ever remember my mom not smoking. She smoked socially and at home. She smoked at the store, when she came to open house at my school, working in the yard, and sometimes even in her sleep. The fact that she never burned down our house was nothing short of a miracle. In fact, for most of my childhood, she was at least a two-three pack-a-day smoker. 

Now here is another reason I question the medical field so often. Remember me telling you that my brother and I were both asthmatics? Well, Mom, as most smokers did back then, smoked in the house and in the car. I would be in the throes of an asthma attack and Mom would put me in the car, and run me to the doctor. On that car ride though, I would be wheezing and gasping for air and she would have the car windows up and be smoking the whole way. Once we got to the doctor, they would rush me into a room where both the doctor and my mother would be smoking and discussing what might have instigated this attack. What were they thinking? Today, I have scars on my lungs from all the asthma-related pneumonia I have had in my life and I struggle at times to remember that if a doctor thought it okay to smoke while I was having an asthma attack, why would my mom have thought she was doing anything wrong by doing the same? Sometimes it is hard to forgive the unforgivable. 

By the time I hit junior high school, my mom had set a pretty firm example without even realizing it, that stress required self-medication, whether that was food or cigarettes. Cigarettes though were starting to get a pretty bad wrap among non-smokers and funny thing, the medical community was starting to change their tune on the "health benefits" of these little cancer sticks. No more were there commercials or ads promoting cigarettes and the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association were creating big campaigns, warning us all of the long-term dangers of cigarettes. Even at school, we were starting to be educated on the health risks of smoking, albeit there were a lot of mixed messages for my generation as we were told in health class not to smoke and then the students went to the bathroom to have a cigarette and the teachers went to the teachers' lounge to do the same. Re-educating the world was a long and tedious process, mostly because of people like my mom. 

When I would come home parroting what I was told at school about the dangers of smoking, it truly irritated my mom. If I brought literature home and ask her to read it, she would immediately file it in the kitchen trash without a single glance. She was invested in her smoking. It was a part of her and she was not about to listen to the medical community tell her cigarettes were dangerous and she shouldn't do it when that very same community was who introduced her to smoking in the first place. 

As I got older and realized how much I hated her smoking, I would beg her to quit. I knew how much my mom loved me and my brother and I figured if I asked her to do it for us, she would not refuse me. What I didn't realize or understand at all, was that my mom was an addict. She was addicted to smoking and she couldn't stop at that point, although I do know that at times she tried. She and I would have terrible fights over her smoking and yet it always resulted in me giving up and her continuing to do as she had always done.....smoke! 

Eventually, I became a young adult, and try as the medical community might, they still had not totally erased the "cool factor" of smoking. My friends and I hung out at bars and when you drank you smoked. Because of my asthma though, I was never truly married to smoking and I did it exclusively with my friends. During this period though, I did try to blackmail my mom with my newfound skill and told her if she didn't stop smoking that I would start (she at the time didn't know I already had.) My mother, not one to be blackmailed and in no mood to stop when I was trying to strong-arm her, did a classic mom move and handed me a cigarette. I was stunned but not as stunned as she was when I lit it and smoked the entire thing in front of her. That little game though got us nowhere and didn't get either of us to change our views or our actions for quite some time to come. 

My last cigarette happened the minute someone told me my breath smelled like an ashtray. My vanity was far greater than my desire to smoke. For Mom though, her lightbulb moment didn't come until she was diagnosed with her first cancer and after her surgery, her lung collapsed. At that point, she was smoking over four packs a day and upon going into the hospital she had every expectation to light up the moment the surgery was over. In fact, she had even snuck cigarettes into the hospital (they were a no-no in hospitals at this time and had been for quite a while). However, her lung collapsing scared her so badly that she left the hospital on the patch and never touched another cigarette again. 

This woman was definitely a conundrum having such a strong addiction for so many years and unwittingly teaching us that life required self-medication with catchphrases like "Cigarettes are the only enjoyment in my life" (guess us kids and grandkids were a little lackluster next to her smokes), and "Mind your own business. It's my life." Suddenly though, she just stopped. I know it wasn't easy but the willpower she showed, even if it was fear-induced, taught me a great deal about commitment, strength, and the desire to do better when she finally knew better. 

So how does this all affect who I am? How does it not? All the life lessons woven into the years of smoking, addiction, and all that went with it, left lasting impressions on me, both positive and negative, as well as physical consequences. My health was impaired because of it and her health was drastically changed for the worse because of it. 

Knowing now what we know about smoking, we know that it likely caused major issues with her Lupus as well as helping her lung cancer along. Her battle with the addiction of smoking also taught me to be obsessive about certain things even if they aren't good for me. I learned to be wickedly stubborn, even if it wasn't to my benefit, but I also learned that my actions can at times affect my children negatively and I have to be careful so as to not give them lasting repercussions and even fatal consequences.  

Please don't get me wrong though. My mom was more than just her smoking and I would not trade her at her worst or our relationship at its worst for anything. While I don't like to ever think of my mother as a victim, the truth is, she was at a very young age. She was a victim of misinformation and her own worst inclinations. She was also brave, fierce, loving, kind, wise, and smoking aside, a truly great mom. For better or worse, my life with her molded me and gave me both the positive and negative which I am still learning to navigate my way through. Perhaps if Mom had realized that she really was a big deal and the head-long rush and rebellion into the world weren't quite as necessary as she once thought, her path and choices might have been different and consequently so might mine have been. But then again, had things been different, I might not even be here today, so maybe everything does happen with a purpose and maybe that is why I am writing this today. 

(The next installment is coming. I don't know when, but I promise not to disappoint. As always I welcome your comments and hope you get as much from reading this as I do from writing it. Until next time......)

The Creation of Me

I'm not exactly sure where this is going. I guess we will see when we get there. This morning my pathway to this blog piece was much clearer than it is right now, but that is what having to be interrupted by an IEP, two loads of laundry, dishes, and cleaning the house will do to a creative process as well as a mental plan. It's fine though. I will muddle through and take you along for the ride. Shall we?

So let's go back to the beginning. In my best Sophia voice, "Picture it. It was 1960's Wichita." My mother was so thin, even after having me, her first baby, that she could almost blow away in a strong gust of Kansas wind. To look at her, she was thin and beautiful and you would think that she came from some pretty impressive genes. That would later prove to be incorrect...for her anyway. 

My mom was the youngest of 11 kids. They were all farm kids, full of unpasteurized cows milk, farm fresh eggs, garden-fresh fruits and veggies, their own home butchered meats, and not a processed item in any food they ate. Of course, there was also a fair amount of DDT, asbestos, and other farm chemicals floating around, that they had no idea would prove to be deadly later on, but at the time, except for some asthma and an aunt with a heart ailment due to rheumatic fever, they were a healthy bunch, but they had no idea what genes and environmental issues were doing to their bodies or what the outcomes might someday be. 

My grandmother was a short woman at 4'11" who after all those births, held a little weight. My grandfather was a tall thin man reaching about 6'2" who never put on much weight his entire life. Grandma in her later years suffered from heart issues and strokes, most of which she fully recovered from, until her last one. The one that took her life. Grandpa also ended up with heart issues and this was what took his. 

Their kids came in all shapes and sizes, my mom being 5'4" and the tallest girl to my aunt who like her mom, was also 4'11" and the boys ranged from about 5' 9"  to about 6'2". In this mix of 11 kids, there turned out to be everything growing and mutating in their bodies from multiple forms of cancer, to lupus, to heart disease and aneurysms. Funny though, while some died as early as their early 60's, others hit their 90th birthday, and then some. We also learned that our family had a nasty little genetic mutation called the Lynch Syndrome Gene which is a cancer gene. If a parent has it, there is a 50/50 chance their children will also have it. It has wreaked quite a bit of havoc in my family as a whole and in my immediate family as my mom had it and it was believed to be the root of her four primary cancers throughout her body. She also had Lupus Erythematosis and with the combination of Lupus and all those cancers, it is a true miracle that she lived as long as she did. 

So why this genetic history of my family? Because I am learning that genetics, environment, hormones, societal norms and views, emotions, physical activity and everyday habits ALL have a huge effect on who we are, our emotional and physical health, and how we look and feel about ourselves. Some of this we can control and some of it we can't, but sometimes what we can't control seems to overwhelm and confuse us to the point that it seems to outweigh what we can. 

I have started this blog piece (or likely pieces) with my mom because she created me in more than one way. She created my very being, blessing me with the good, the bad, and the ugly of my genetic makeup, but she also created my eating habits, health habits, and my view of myself and my body. Don't get me wrong, my mom was an amazing mom, but like most women of our modern world, she too was not immune to magazine models, social persuasions, and the constant advertising of what the perfect woman should look and act like. So on that note, let's get back to the 1960s and my mom. 

My mom was an RN and for a while, a single mom. Being a working woman AND a single mom in the 1960s were definitely not social norms so with both of them came a certain amount of stress. At that point in my mom's life, stress was better than any diet pill that could have ever been on the market. Where most of us eat our stress away, Mom dropped 10 pounds in three days when she was stressed. She simply couldn't eat at these times which meant that at 105 pounds on her 5'4" frame, she really couldn't get a whole lot thinner and not get sick. By this time, she had already been diagnosed with Lupus (something even most doctors at the time knew little if anything about) so throw that into the mix and while Mom had the appearance of the willowy thin Twiggyesque models of the time, her body was anything but healthy. 

As the 1960s wore on, Mom got married, but it wasn't particularly a happy marriage and soon she was pregnant. The funny thing about Lupus and pregnancy is, that often the second you conceive, all of your symptoms go away. There is a small percentage of a chance that when the baby is delivered, the Lupus will go into remission. This was not the case for my mom. Her Lupus symptoms did in fact go away during her pregnancy, but her pregnancy was not particularly a pleasant one with all the things going on in her life and the stress took over. She lost tremendous weight and her health took a major hit and she got extremely sick with strep throat. The delivery was no picnic either as she had a reaction to the epidural which nearly killed her, the cord was wrapped around my brother's neck which nearly killed him, and the second she delivered, not only was the Lupus back, but it had affected her kidneys causing her to have Glameral Nephritis. Her kidneys were not good for the rest of her life. 

So stress, Lupus, and an unhappy marriage not to mention two kids weighed heavily on my mom and it affected everything from her hormones to her emotional well-being, and her physical health. Through it all though, she tried hard to be a good mom and one thing she learned from her mom was to feed her family well. As a kid though, I don't remember food being a focal point in our life. Maybe it was because there was just too much else going on. In fact, I remember being a rather picky eater who made my parents crazy, as I could out-stubborn them every time when they insisted I eat a food I didn't like. Flaked hominy comes to mind and I, as a very young child would go on a days-long hunger strike before I would touch that icky stuff. Because of this, I was a pretty small child and I was just slightly underweight for the first few years of my life. 

My brother and I were also asthmatics at a young age and allergic to many things in our environment. Often our asthma would send us both into all sorts of infections along with bronchitis and pneumonia, causing us to both be on a plethora of antibiotics and steroids. What doctors were thinking back then, I don't know, but changing our diets wasn't at the top of their lists. They treated it all with medications and some of those medications were tough on our little bodies.  

In the early 1970s, my mom and dad were finally divorced but dad was still a fixture in our lives which I know was tough on my mom, as he was not particularly kind to her. It was at this time, two things happened in my life that changed my outlook on food and myself and that I have continued to struggle with throughout my life. 

At this point in time, my mom was in her mid to late 30s and her hormones and body were starting to change. No longer did stress take the weight right off of her, but instead, it started causing her to gain weight. Part of it too was likely the fact that she became a foodie and spent a lot of time in the kitchen baking. It was also the dawn of fast food and often it was easier for mom to get pizza or burgers than it was for her to think about cooking a full meal. Suddenly our bodies were taking in a lot of carbs, fats, grease, processed food, and sugar that they hadn't before. This was also when diet Pepsi hit the market and we drank diet Pepsi like it was our job. Gone were the days of well-planned and balanced meals. They had been replaced by Mom's emotional eating and our newfound love of fast food, sugar, and artificial sugar. So that was thing one that changed me! 

Thing two that changed my world was the fact that I was at that preteen stage of life where I was about to start my period and become a full-fledged teenager. My body held some baby fat, but it was no more or less than any girl at my stage of life, even with our newfound less-than-stellar eating habits. I was an active kid and left to my own devices, my body would have likely self-corrected and been perfectly fine, but Mom took me to a new pediatrician who had different ideas. He told my mom that I was on the heavy end of what I should weigh and that if I wasn't put on a diet right then, I would likely get fat. What was worse, he said it in front of me and fat-shamed me right there in his office. A part of me immediately shut down that day. No one I even knew was fat and yet this doctor had basically told me that I was headed down that path. I was devastated. I thought I must somehow be strange and defective. Now mind you, I was not fat and at 11 years old, that thought should never have been put in my head, but it was, and it was also put in my mom's head. She immediately felt like a failure mom for causing me to be fat (I am sure this was in part due to how she was feeling about her own body at the time) and I immediately lost all sense of my real self and saw myself only as this fat creature that the doctor had created in his office that day. Sadly, I have never looked at food or myself the same way since. If only that doctor knew the life-long damage he caused me that day and likely caused others just like me with his incorrect conjecture and his insensitive words. If only. 

(There is a story I am telling here and it will be continued in installments. This was the first installment and I hope that you will continue reading the future installments. I am thinking that some of you will see yourself in parts of this, learn as I am learning and before all is said and done, understand that true change is the only constant in our lives. Until next time.) 

A New Adventure. A New Journey.

I have had a love/hate relationship with this whole COVID experience since day one. So much of COVID sucked right down to the depths of hell, but like with all truly bad things, there is always also something good. In this case, for me, the good has been the changes in me. I guess the conclusion I have come to is, that if you try to lock me down and break my spirit, I will rebel like hell and find a part of me that I never even knew existed. Take that COVID!

So many lessons have come out of the last 16 months for me, and one of the biggies was that I am far more competent and capable than I ever gave myself credit for. I am, for lack of a better phrase, still very teachable...even at my age. I also learned that I am worthy of at least as much care and effort as I give everyone else. Imagine that! 

Ultimately, I think I may have learned more about myself in this time period than I have in all the decades before. 

Prior to this last year or so, I have not been someone who took myself very seriously. I was an afterthought, even to myself and I looked and felt like it. I also didn't push myself to do a lot of things, because I always felt that I wasn't smart enough or capable of enough. This came from years of being told that I would never amount to anything by my dad. I think it was because I was a girl, and he just didn't think very highly of girls/women. Because of this thinking, I quit things when they got too hard as I think I felt I would fail anyway. Rather than push ahead and try to find answers, I just felt I wasn't smart enough to make it to the finish line. I don't know that I was really okay with all of this, but I did settle for this outcome more times than I would like to think about. 

This last year though, I challenged myself. Maybe it was because we were on lockdown and it was either challenge myself and learn, or die of a stagnant boredom. Since I haven't actually allowed myself to be bored since 1983, then learn and push ahead was my only practical choice. From this choice, I learned why for four decades my cookies had tasted like and had the consistency of sheetrock. I learned that the reason some of my past sewing projects didn't come out properly was not that I couldn't sew, but because I didn't take the time and/or have the patience to read the directions and sew properly. More importantly, though, I learned that taking care of myself was not the chore that I had always viewed it to be, but worth the time and effort I put in to make me feel better and in some cases make me feel more whole so that I was better for the people around me. This has been huge for me and I know that I am not alone in the difficulty (especially as a woman) of finding the desire and the energy to make myself a priority and to take care of myself. 

This particular blog, Do I Look Like a Celery Kind of Girl, was originally started as a blog to talk about health and self-care, even if I couldn't frame the right words at the time. Unfortunately, over the years, it has been ground zero for a lot of false starts with big ambitions and very little long-term follow-through. Because of this, I decided if I ever started hitting the keyboard again for this particular blog, that it wouldn't be until I had something long-term to say with some real follow-through as the end game. I think COVID may have just given me all of that and more. It also made me realize that long term may just be overrated because quite honestly long term is not the same for all of us. 

COVID and the year 2020 and the start of 2021, have put me on a journey like no other journey I have ever been on in all my years. Something was opened up inside of me that gave me a bit of childlike wonder, and a whole lot of desire to push myself and see just how far I could go. 

I have never been big on limits in the big scheme of things (David taught me that) and yet in so many ways, I have limited myself over the years and I am working very hard to stop that. Life is very short and if we don't live it on our own terms, we will end up wasting it on someone else's. That is not the life I choose to live. 

I am no longer tying myself to big ambitious goals that are usually too big to be attainable and when they fail, end up hanging over me like another missed opportunity. Instead, I am thinking and planning at best, no farther ahead than this summer and in most cases, no farther ahead than next week. This is going to give me opportunities to try things on the spur of the moment and rearrange things when something doesn't fit. My OCD where order and scheduling occur will simply have to make peace with a little bit of spontaneity, as I am allowing myself no guilt if time or situation doesn't allow for something, but I am also not allowing myself to give up, give in or quit anything I do start. 

Moving forward, I am going to use this blog to the fullest extent and I am going to take you on the journey with me, that I started several months ago.  I have no plans, very limited goals and the only thing I really know is that it is going to be about transforming me and ultimately, taking care of me, whatever that ends up looking like on any given day. 

Perhaps one of the biggest lessons, to come from all of this is that life and health are a gift. For me, it is especially so, with all the genetic issues and illnesses my family possesses. I am 58 years old and before I know it, I will soon be hitting 60. Rather than see me and my body as winding down, I prefer to see myself and my body as entering an exciting new phase of life where I don't have any expectations and everything is a new chance at a new beginning. 

So if you are like me, and ready for an adventure in life, then join me on this journey. I won't be blogging here every day, but when I do, I promise you that I will try to make it worth your read, and maybe together we will find a little joy, a little laughter, some new ideas on life, and some much-needed self-transformation. 

Until next time, may you have no expectations, may you have no guilt, and may you push yourself farther than you ever dreamed possible. 

Just Who Has Time for Self-Care Anyway?

Self-care! Self-care! And for those in the back...SELF-CARE!!!!

So funny story, before I went to Al-Anon, I don't think I had ever really heard, or maybe more to the point paid attention to the term "self-care." Al-Anon however, is a huge proponent of self-care as taking care of ourselves is about the only thing we as individuals have control over. 

As a mom, and maybe just a woman in general, I had never really thought much about self-care. Perhaps it was because women of my generation were at that fork in the road where we were choosing whether to be stay-at-home moms or being out in the workforce. If you were a stay-at-home mom, then your attention and care were all about your family. If you were in the workforce, then you had to work twice as hard to prove that you were just as good, therefore there was little time to focus on much else other than the work. If however, you had that "S" on your chest and decided to be both in the workforce and a mom, then your days were usually 25 hours long and each minute was consumed by something or someone else and there was zero time to even go to the bathroom, let alone do something special for yourself.  

In my world, in particular, I spent all day every day, as a widowed mom, trying to be both mom and dad to my kids, and most days, feeling as if I had failed miserably in all areas. Add to that, taking care of a differently-abled child, cooking, cleaning, and at times holding down a job, and there were days that I was lucky to comb my hair, let alone practice anything that even remotely looked like self-care. 

I remember a time when my life was so crazy and so hectic that I would go entire days and forget to eat, baby wipes were at times as close to a shower as I got and I was so worn out and tired that I actually fell asleep at the kitchen sink while I was doing dishes. Yeah, I came pretty low on the totem pole when it came to care of any kind and my life and demeanor showed it. 

Later, as my kids got older, my dual parenting role turned into unadulterated control, and I was way too involved in my kids lives, doing too much for them, expecting too little from them, and focusing all my time and attention on their care.....or as they like to refer to it as my smothering years. 

The biggest and suckiest part of that time period was that I truly felt like a  martyr who was completely unappreciated for all the love and misplaced care I gave. Looking back though, I don't think I would have appreciated me as a mom either. 

Not only had I become a self-proclaimed martyr, but I had also become a bit of a whiner to anyone who would listen to me. I was just so confused because I literally thought I was doing what I was supposed to do as a mother....live for my children, and I could not understand why instead of being grateful to have such an amazing mom as I surely had to be, that they were avoiding me like the plague and angry at me for just about everything....including my very existence. 

It was one day, when I was mid-whine into one of my poor-me stories, that a very kind and yet very direct person, looked me straight in the eye and said, "Lisa....get down off that damn cross. We need the wood." It startled me into silence, and then it was kindly and directly explained to me that my kids couldn't stand me at the moment, because I had no life of my own. Every breath I took was for and about them and I had no identity other than being their mom. It was a realization that hit me like a brick right between the eyes. If I didn't totally immerse myself in the lives of my children and control their every move, then what was I supposed to do? I felt as if my Mom Card was being revoked.

Not long after this revelation, was when I started Al-Anon and was introduced to self-care. Hmmm.....it sounded fishy to me. No, it actually sounded selfish and not at all the way I was brought up or taught that a mom was to behave, and just who had time for this self-care nonsense anyway?  Then another very kind and direct individual pointed out to me, that I had been doing it my way all of this time, and then they posed the question, "How was my way working out for me?" Well, that was just uncalled for! It made me mad clear down to my toes, and then it hit me, it wasn't working out well at all. 

They then went on to point out that my care had turned into control and my control had become borderline insanity. Harsh, but not completely incorrect. It seemed that the more I tried to care for control my kids, the more they rebelled, and the more they rebelled, the more I tried to control them. The reality was that I only had control over one person and that was me, and outside of that, I was just a crazy woman who was pissing off everyone in my hemisphere. This is where self-care came into play. 

It seemed that if I took care of myself putting the focus on me, and let those who were old enough to make their own decisions and deal with their own consequences do so, then my world might just start changing for the better. I was skeptical, but as was pointed out earlier, my way did not seem to be the tried and true winner that I thought it was. Perhaps.....I wasn't as wise as I had led myself to believe. Who knew?

I remember the first time after that, when I said, "No!" when asked to do something that they could do for themselves. The initial reaction was utter shock on their part, but guess what? They did it! For me, it was a heady feeling of release and freedom. Next was the afternoon that I shut my bedroom door and.......took a nap. That's right. Their laundry be damned. It was the most glorious nap I had taken since my drooling Percocet nap after my hysterectomy. I was beginning to see the beautiful wisdom in this whole self-care thing. 

Since that time, I have learned more and more to focus on myself and to take care of myself. This doesn't mean that I have completely abandoned my family, it just means that I have stepped back out of their lives and allowed them to succeed or fail on their own merits. They have learned that their failures are often as important as their successes and I am learning that they don't need me to fix things or clean up after them. This gives me a lot more time to find out who I am and what I like, outside of meddling in my children's lives. 

Of course, I still care for my differently-abled son, but even with him, my relationship has changed. I work hard to allow him to be as independent as his abilities allow, although sometimes I catch the crazy mom in me, trying to slip out and I have to shove her back in. Practicing self-care though has made me healthier, stronger, happier and in many ways a better mother (not mother and father) to my kids. 

Over time I have learned a lot about myself and the things that make me happy. I have found that I like to mow the yard, sew and craziest of all.....go to the gym. I like to take the time needed for all those things to give myself a break from my daily life and to recharge both my body and my soul. In turn, giving myself those gems of time, makes me feel happier and more productive in the rest of my life. My kids I am sure, are much happier too, now that I have learned to stay in my own lane and it is much easier to stay in my lane when I know who I am and that whenever necessary, I am able to practice a little bit of good old self-care.💜

So until next time, may you never have to replace a shower with baby wipes, may you get to take a drool-worthy nap, and may you practice self-care every chance that you get. 

Diets vs Programs

I hate diets but I want to be....skinny! Healthy! In shape! We've all said it and yet for most of us, it seems to be an unwinnable battle complete with frustration and in many cases, further weight gain. Arrrrrrggggghhhhhhh!!!!!  

Today's blog is a little bit about how we (especially women) tend to torture our bodies for the elusive gold star of perfection, only to find that the star isn't always so easily attainable and if we do get it, it isn't always as bright and shiny as we had hoped. It is also about the fact that we might be able to get on our way to being thinner, healthier, and in better shape without doing the whole "diet" thing. Are you intrigued?????? Then keep reading!

To begin with.....over the course of the last 30 years, I have probably been on every diet known to man, not limited to, but including diet pills of various kinds. Where did it get me? In most cases.....nowhere. In a few cases, I was smack dab in the middle of an eating disorder and in other cases, downright physically sick.  

So why did I or does anyone for that matter, do this to their bodies? Because we want what we think the world wants from us and expects us to look like. We want only one chin, the right size boobs, the right curves, and just enough junk in the trunk to fill out our favorite jeans. It really doesn't seem like that is asking too much, but then we find ourselves stress-eating an entire pizza at midnight and another chin just seems to drop on cue. We then realize that we are fighting a losing battle with all the things we want but can't seem to get. We don't look the way we want to because we stress eat and we stress eat because we don't look the way we want to. It is the very definition of frustration. 

In my lifetime, the expectations of what women should look like have gone from the ridiculous and unachievable body curvature and measurements of Barbie to the pencil-thin Twiggyesque look. High-end fashion ads have promoted everything from no boobs to big boobs, no hips to fully rounded hips, and in my opinion their worst call ever.....the emaciated heroin chic where all the models looked like they had one foot in the grave. Now, what kind of message does that send to young kids who are already having body issues because of puberty, hormones, and just the awkwardness of adolescence and are looking to society to lead them to whatever the social norms are currently calling attractive and beautiful?  I'll give you a hint. It sends a bad one!

One day at the gym, I heard a young woman who was very small and attractive and also sweating her rear end off, make a comment that she wished she had lived back in the olden days when everyone was skinny and obesity didn't seem to be an issue. Instead though, here she was fighting every calorie just so she didn't gain a pound. Assuming her age was late 20something, I also assumed that olden days to her were just about anytime before the 1980s. To be fair, the 80s were in fact, a time of excess in everything, including food. So...... 

Prior to the 80s though, people stayed fit and healthy because they worked all the time and their meal portions weren't as large as they are today. Fast food also wasn't nearly as prevalent therefore more meals were eaten at home and cooked fresh with little or no processed or prepackaged food. Also, prior to the 70s, more food was homecooked, so there were not as many chemicals and additives in our foods that can actually cause cravings and yes, even weight gain. Add to this, the fact that people seemed to be more active with the lack of technology that keeps most of us sitting on our butts, and the world may have been an overall healthier place....in the olden days.  

Since the years of excess though, people, and women especially have done some truly crazy and unhealthy things with beauty and the perfect body as their goal. They have injected themselves with horse urine, starved themselves, taken laxatives by the handful, practiced binge eating and throwing it all up, taking speed (it was basically sold over the counter back in the day), and going to quack doctors with a diet pill side hustle. We were literally giving ourselves addictions and killing ourselves for some idea of perfection. Apparently getting healthy had nothing to do with it. All we were interested in was looking good in a bikini. 

In the early 2000s obesity started rising at alarming rates and becoming not only unhealthy but one of the leading causes of death related to heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer. Sadly, it also started to become more acceptable, as society had a newfound love for people loving their bodies, regardless of how healthy they were. There was a definite belief going through the land, that if you couldn't or didn't want to put the effort into losing the weight, you might as well celebrate it...... and celebrate we did. Amidst the celebration though, people started ballooning up to 600 lbs and far beyond. They were getting so sick and they even lost their mobility and independence. It's hard to celebrate when a specially reinforced hospital bed, dependence on others to do even the smallest things for you, and bedsores are pretty much your life. 

At this point, people started realizing that maybe they would never be what society touted as perfect, and more importantly, maybe it didn't matter. They could eat and still be healthy though. So they started looking at not just diets but tried and true weight loss programs. Weight Watchers was pretty much at the top of that list and it had a huge hand in the last few decades for turning people back to eating normal and being healthy. Then we started hearing from a  new kid on the block, called Trim Healthy Mama. THM also started changing people's lives one meal at a time. 

Honestly, with all the "diets" I have been on over the years, if a diet is what you are looking for, you literally are not going to find one with long-term weight loss results. Diets will only help you take the weight off, but you will always gain it back. WW and THM, on the other hand, are different as they are not diets but lifestyle changers and because of this, these two are the only two that I would put any faith in right now. 

To compare and contrast the two, WW is by far the older of the two programs and through the years they have tweaked and refined the program to keep it up to date with our modern lifestyles. It will also cost you to be an official Weight Watcher, as there are weekly meetings, weigh-ins, and foods and materials if you choose to purchase them. They are all add ons to a program that could actually stand on its own without them. In all the years as a program, WW has had many long-term and even lifetime success stories of people losing the weight and keeping it off, because it was real food, prepared at home, and it taught people how to not only eat well but also to change how they viewed and ate food. 

Trim Healthy Mama or THM on the other hand,  (in my opinion) may have surpassed WW. Yes, there are $$ to be spent, as you really need to purchase at least the first THM book and maybe one of the cookbooks, but those are one-time purchases and there are no weekly fees and no weigh-ins in front of the world. The biggest difference between THM and WW though is that THM has many ways to work their "program" and there is a science of sorts behind how it all works. 

With THM, it basically boils down to three meals and three snacks/day timed out at least three hours apart. In a meal or snack, you can either eat carbs or fats, but don't combine the two, and in a day, you should eat maybe two carb meals and a carb snack and two fat meals and a fat snack, or you can mix and match any way you want. Sugar is a big no-no as are pops, soda's or whatever you call them unless they are sweetened with stevia, xylitol, or erythritol. These are also the only sweeteners you can cook and bake with.  Aspartame, sucralose, or any of those other highly chemicalized sweeteners are out the door. Another plus for THM is that you learn to make just about everything from fresh, therefore, you know exactly what is going into your food and your body. At first, this means a lot more time in the kitchen, but the majority of the recipes are easy, and as you learn to plan ahead and pre-prep, it becomes a lot less work and a lot more worth the effort. 

In both programs, they are not considered true diets, as diets are temporary and not meant to be used long-term or past the time you lose your desired weight. This is also why diets don't tend to work in the long term, because in most cases, in a period of time, the weight comes back as we tend to find our way back to the eating that caused us to need a diet in the first place. However, with WW and THM, they are both considered lifestyle changers, meaning that by working these programs, you change how you see food, buy food, prepare food and eat food. The recipes in these programs are also good, family-friendly, and meals that can be carried out throughout the rest of your life. 

In my opinion, both of these programs are so good because they teach you to not only take care of your body but to also make it healthier and learn to love it permanently. They also help you to have a completely different relationship with food and to pay attention to not only what you eat, but also what you buy. Diets just can't and don't do that.

So, now you may be thinking, "Wow Lisa, that is a lot of information, but I am not sure I am ready to commit to a diet or a lifestyle change, so what can I do right now to lose ten pounds by Saturday?" 

Well.....I have good news for you and bad news for you. The bad news is that short of doing something very unhealthy, there is really no magic wand that can be waved and make you lose ten pounds in two days. The good news though, is that if being healthy and preparing your body bit by bit for a positive lifestyle change is something you might like to do, then there are four things you can start doing right now. 

1) Start drinking 48-64 ounces of water every day. This flushes impurities out of the body and is good for your skin, heart, kidneys, muscles, and colon. Yes, at first you will pee every 30 minutes, but by Friday, you may have lost some water weight. Drinking this much water every day is very good for your body both inside and out. 

2) Start moving. I don't mean just housework or grocery shopping. I mean get out and walk for at least 30 minutes every day. Even if you can't walk a full half-hour, start with 10 minutes and work your way up. Walking is one of the healthiest ways to love your body. It gets you moving which gets your heart and blood pumping. It is good for your muscles and joints, not to mention your lungs and your heart. Who knows....you may drop a few pounds and start changing the shape of your body too?!

3) Right now!!! Drop that soda or diet soda and don't pick it or any variety of it, up again! That's right. Even "only" diet soda drinkers, tend to lose weight when they quit drinking diet soda. Why? Because the chemicals in diet soda can trigger sugar cravings that cause you to want and usually eat more sugary foods. So, no diet soda, and those cravings decrease by a lot. And of course, if you drink straight sugar soda and quit, think of all the sugar you are NOT putting into your body. It is a win/win. If you just absolutely have to drink diet soda, switch to one with stevia, xylitol, or erythritol, but nothing with the last letters "ame' or "ose" in it. If you just absolutely have to drink regular soda.....just don't. It is nothing but liquid sugar. Also, check out my blog here where I talked about Good Girl Moonshine. It is a THM gem of a drink and can help you drop the soda much quicker and much easier. 

4) Finally, don't eat after 6 p.m. This is a must for people with acid reflux and by not eating after 6, it gives your food time to metabolize and not sit in your gut causing sleeplessness. Also, eating after 6 p.m. is linked to weight gain, something most of us are trying to avoid. 

Well, there you have it. The four things you can start right now that don't commit you to a diet or a program but definitely give you a leg up to a healthier life.

So the lesson here is, you don't have to look like anyone but you to be beautiful. You do though, have to put some work in if you want to stay healthy and it doesn't matter if you weigh on the low end of the scale or the high end of the scale, the goal is to always strive to be healthy. The key is to treat yourself the same way you wish others would treat you. Love yourself. Show your body respect and do the maintenance it takes to keep yourself in top running performance. After all, aren't you worth it? I know I am!

Until next time, drink that water, walk that mile and always remember that you are so very worth it.  

Soda, Diet Soda and Your Health

Some of you call it soda. Others call it pop and still others call it coke, but whatever you call it, we all know that it is delicious and that whether it is full-sugar or diet, it is simply NOT good for you. 

When I was very young, us kids seldom had pop. On occasions, my mom would splurge a bit and buy Shasta (if you didn't drink Shasta as a kid, then you were missing out), but other than that, we really didn't drink pop. Mom though, being forever on one diet or another, would drink Fresca. In fact, when she was pregnant with my brother, she craved the stuff. That and parsnips. It certainly explains a lot about my brother. 

Later on in my childhood, we were allowed to drink some pop. Mom always kept Coke on hand as when I would get one of my horrid headaches, she would make me chew aspirin and then drink a Coke. The aspirin mixed with the caffeine often helped get the headaches under control. To this day, if my headache gets bad enough, I will be sending someone to the store for a Coke. Mom still liked her Fresca though,  and although I liked it too, I became a TAB girl. Probably mostly because it was cooler to drink TAB than Fresca according to magazine advertisements. 

By the mid-'70s Pepsi had come out with diet Pepsi and Mom gave up her beloved Fresca for this new kid on the block. By this time, we had all become diet pop drinkers which pretty much ruined regular pop for us,  because it was now too sweet. We were pretty much addicted to all the artificial sweeteners that were killing lab rats by the dozens and apparently, we didn't care. 

As the '80s rolled in, Coke, A&W, and Dr. Pepper all had their own diet versions. In the early to mid-'80s, I  found diet Orange Crush which mixed famously with cherry vodka and tasted like Hawaiian Punch. That was my very favorite until it wasn't...if you get my drift. After that, I  was pretty fond of diet Dr. Pepper. I think I pretty much lived on diet DP until the early '90s. But then, something life-changing happened. I found.....diet Mt. Dew!!!! It was like liquid meth to me. After one glass, I was full-on addicted and stayed that way until about five years ago.

When a friend got me interested in the Trim Healthy Mama eating program, this was really the first time I even thought about tossing diet Dew out of my life. Up until then, this lime green elixir had gotten me through many a tough time, and frankly, I couldn't imagine my life without it. Then I actually started reading about diet pop and pop in general. By this time, I was no longer calling it pop like every other loyal Kansan. I was now calling it soda after living with a Missourian all those years. Whatever it was called though, my research was telling me that the best word for it was.....unhealthy. 

The lovely ladies of THM went into details about the ingredients in both soda and diet soda and how bad they all were for you. Then there was article after article about diet soda being linked to muscle issues, cancer, and diabetes. Yes, diabetes. It seems that diet soda can actually trigger sugar cravings which are not good for diabetics or really anyone for that matter. The most interesting thing I read though, was how there had been some correlation between diet soda and.....wait for it.....migraines. Lawdy, what had I been putting in my body all these years....and more importantly....what had it done to my body?

You may have snickered a bit when I made the comment about diet Mt. Dew being like liquid meth, but to me, it really was an addiction, and going off of it took me about a year and I literally had to detox from it. Coming off of it the first time, I got sick, because I am pretty sure that rather than water, my body was about 70% diet, Mt. Dew. I got the shakes, was dizzy and I was a royal b!tch as I went through withdrawals. It was not a fun time had by anyone. 

Thanks to THM though, I found my way off of it when I found their drink...Good Girl Moonshine.  Yeah, I laughed too the first time I heard the name, but it really was what got me off all soda. When I realized that they had a version that tasted very much like diet Mt. Dew, I was sold. 

Good Girl Moonshine or GGMS is a homemade drink recipe from THM. In mine, I mix lime juice and lemon juice with some orange extract. I add liquid stevia to taste with a splash of vanilla and about a tsp of apple cider vinegar. To that, I add about 20 oz of  Soda Stream water (yes I have to have my fizzy fix) and ice. It comes very close to the taste of diet Mt. Dew and if anyone should know what diet Mt. Dew tastes like....it is me. 

Once I started full-on replacing diet Mt. Dew with GGMS, I found myself sleeping better, less headaches, and a whole lot fewer sugar cravings. The great thing about GGMS is, that you can play around with flavors and come up with whatever your tastebuds like. I have made ginger ale, strawberry flavored, cherry-flavored, and rootbeer flavored. They are 100 times healthier and there are no side effects. It is also a lot cheaper too. 

Oh....and who saw the "apple cider vinegar" and went...NOPE!? Trust me, I did too when I first started drinking it. It is an acquired taste, and to start with, less is best. ACV though, is very healthy and good for you, and believe it or not, I can't imagine my drink without it now. 

I know there are those out there reading this and thinking, I AM NOT GIVING UP MY DR. PEPPER! That is fine, but if on occasion you want to replace a soda with something a bit healthier, then I think GGMS might be the way to go. There are absolutely tons of recipes online and once you have tried a couple, you will find it really easy to play around with ingredients and find your own favorite drink. Plus it is really fun to walk around drinking out of one of those big mason jars with a straw, a lid, and a handle. Okay....maybe that's just me. 

Let's face it, we are only given one body and one life and it would be kind of tragic if we messed that up over a stupid soda addiction. Instead, let's be good to ourselves, treat our bodies with respect, and keep this one body in as good a shape as possible. I know I am trying...how about you? 

Until next time, stay healthy, stay hydrated, and don't forget.....water is good too! 

A Little Comfort

We all have things that give us a sense of well-being. It can be anything from a hug to a certain food, to an object. A while back I talked about things that we do that make us feel whole, confident, and good, but today we are talking about the things that make us feel like we are wrapped in a warm blanket on a cool night. You know what I am talking about.  I am talking about things that bring us that deep down feeling of well-being, care, and joy. In a word....comfort.

As humans, no matter how tough we are or how closed off we become, each of us still has a deep down in our soul, need for comfort at times. As a kid, we often got that feeling from our parents or grandparents when they would wrap us tightly in a hug. It made you feel as if the world couldn't touch you because you were safe and warm and cared for. 

Sadly, our parent's arms were not available to us 24/7 even as kids, so that is often why we would latch on early to things such as blankets and stuffed animals. They gave us similar feelings of comfort and made us feel secure on a stormy night or as we drifted off to sleep. In fact, often those items become so integral in our need to be comforted, that we often hold onto those things into our adult years. Maybe we no longer sleep with them or carry them around, but just knowing that we can pull them out of a box or off a shelf, continues to give us a sense of peace. 

As we grow older and leave home for college or even for forever, often things that we took for granted growing up, become sources of what gives us comfort as adults. Maybe it is a certain fabric softener you use in your wash. It might be the same one your mom used and every time you wash your clothes, all it takes is one sniff and you are right back in your mom's house folding laundry fresh out of the dryer. Or maybe it takes you back to playing outside in the yard and smelling that scent waft out of the dryer vent into the air on a warm spring day. To this day it can wrap you up in it and make you feel as if you are back there, safe and comfortable.

Another soother, right down to the soul is food. Mine is meatloaf. Every time I make meatloaf, I use my mom's recipe and as I mix it with my fingers, it takes me back to standing in the kitchen and watching her mix the meatloaf with her own hands. As it bakes, the smells that permeate the house are the same smells that permeated my house growing up. I can close my eyes and go back to a time where my mom cooked with love and had a meal on the table every night. As supper was almost ready, I could smell the meatloaf all the way to my room and I knew any minute I would be called to the table. Then with that first bite of the meatloaf, mixed with the mashed potatoes and gravy, I am transported back to being a kid and sitting around a table with my family and eating my favorite meal of all time. To me, that is the epitome of comfort, and to this day, when life is tough or I am missing my mom, you can bet that meatloaf will be on the menu that night. In my world, it is comfort food at its best. 

Getting older though, I have learned that songs, smells, and tastes can easily transport me back to a time when I felt loved, cared for and safe. They bring on a feeling of well-being that is unparalleled. It is a feeling our bodies crave and something that helps not just our physical selves, but also our mental selves. Even as adults and maybe especially as adults, we still need that feeling from time to time and so we create new ways to feel comfort and to carry on those old feelings from the past. I guess we can call it adult self-soothing. 

Some of the things that have come to bring me comfort as an adult are: sitting on the porch on a cool and rainy day, wrapped in a blanket, and reading a book. I love the smell, the feel of the air, and the look of the grey sky. It is perfect for getting lost in a book and forgetting that time even exists. Does comfort get any better than that? I also find comfort in a warm Calgon bath. There is something about just soaking in the warm water and smelling the Calgon (yes, it must be Calgon). that just gives me such a feeling of peace and relaxation. I also find comfort on stormy nights when the lightning lights up the sky and I lay in my bed, covered up with a blanket and watching out the window with one of my dogs on either side of me. It gives me such a sense of peace and security. 

There are, I am sure, at least a dozen or more other things that give me comfort and with that comfort give me a feeling of security and well-being. And even though most of us don't dwell on the need for comfort, when the possibility of it is near, as humans we long for it and settle into it with a sense of joy right down to our deepest core. Believe it or not, comfort is part of what keeps us healthy, brings us happiness, and keeps us centered. In fact, comfort helps us to keep balance in our lives, even if we aren't aware we need it. 

So today, focus on what brings you comfort, and how that comfort makes you feel. Is it your grandma's spaghetti, or the teddy bear you had when you were two? Is it warm cocoa before bed or being wrapped in a blanket by a fire? Whatever it is, give yourself more of it. Allow yourself that comfort from time to time and see if it doesn't make you feel more centered, more joy, and give you a better sense of well-being.  

In today's world, taking care of us is so important and if you are a woman reading this, it is essential. We are the caregivers, the moms, and grandmas. We head up homes and we head up corporations. We have to do better and be better each and every day and at the end of the day, we all can use a little comfort. 

So until next time, find your comfort, find your joy and allow yourself to find that, which balances it all.