Monday, August 15, 2011

Her

Last weekend I had a conversation with a woman who had just started weight watchers and she was excited and looking forward to losing weight. I asked her if she liked her thin self. She looked at me surprised and yet she thought about it for a moment and said that was a good question and no she didn’t like her thin self. I too have asked myself “do I like my thinner self”? I was/am surprised by the response I had and maybe you will too; Not so much. She is thin and can wear anything but when I was my thinnest I felt insignificant and waifish and boy like. With my curves and heft I feel womanly and “big momma’ish “more effective. Both things are untrue in fact. I can be effective at my thinner weight. I just have to allow that when I was thinner I was all those things because I was younger. Today at a thinner weight I am effective and healthier and able to be effective and very womanly. So I have had in meditations to say yes to my thin woman and welcome her into my dreams and life. Surprise, my body is allowing her to appear. Losing weight is a must for me because I don’t need the extra heft with my new medication (Armour Thyroid) and no gluten and less wine…I am making big shifts. I feel stronger and happier lighter because my joints hurt less. I must say I am taking amazing supplements to assist the process stuff that helps with digestion and tricks the mechanisms in my body that holds onto fat. We are designed not to starve. What was a curse my body holding onto to fat is in fact a blessing in times of stress and crisis since I am not in stress or crisis I can afford to shed extra flab. Not to mention I work very hard with my fitness and it is nice to see what is an outcome of all those hours of running cycling and playing tennis; I like my shape, my muscles and stamina. So do you know her? Do you know the thinner lighter self and do you like her? Does she make you smile or frown is she full and satisfied or desperate and hungry? Does she have friends? Do you resent the compliments she gets or do you welcome them? Is the pressure to be thinner insulting? These are some very important questions and I am certain there are more that we need to address when on the journey toward our thinner self. I remember when Madonna changed her diet and her face got thinner because of the weight loss she looked like a wrestler or a roided weight lifter, hard and old. So I know I will look older and am I ready for that? Yes…I am even though I am older, hello? Still I may need to envision her some more and allow her to exist so that I can reach my goal with love and no pressure and fear. I have no choice and most of us don’t it is a matter of life and death. We do better with less fat so here it goes cheers.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

The Help

A year ago my dear friend Chris read out loud most of a book called “The Help” I say most because we did not get to the last 3 pages or so because he left where we were and flew home and by then we were so disappointed by the ending simply because it fell short. I am not by nature a jump on the “race “ band wagon woman, in fact could be accused of being insensitive to the horrific scenarios my race has endured because I have been cradled in the lap of Hollywood or was , not now. So when I was watching The telly and Lawrence o Donnell featured Melissa Perry Harris a professor at Tulane giving her 2 cents of critique on the movie;
her critique was negative and yet her views were spot on…she expressed the pain I felt inside my heart when I realized that yet again Hollywood will make a movie where women of color are maids who service the white woman stars both for the story and for us to remember where we came from. She mentioned the lynching, the rape and degradation…you see one cannot say those things enough…the lynching, the rape and the degradation. All of it fresh like it happened NOW. We who are of color know and will always know that those times were the darkest point in our history forever so back the f#*K up from it Hollywood! I love you Professor Perry Harris you are exactly what I aspire to be and know, keep me honest! It is never a cute era…I cannot watch Mad Men because my people, I could not vote…so, why even journey back there. It is a wound I admit and I admit it is VERY, very raw, still.

Screwed!

There is a burning question I have regarding the American Medical Association’s pricing of services rendered by Doctors and hospitals. Who decides what things cost? It must be the very powerful insurance industry because the cost of doing business or the prices compared to countries (France, Canada) to name two seems wildly inflated. Why does it cost 150 dollars to visit a doctor in America where as in Canada or France or England it is either free or 30.00? Subsidized medicine costs are lower because its socialized medicine? Perhaps or the real cost of being treated is 400% lower because America has been getting priced gauged by the medical community and Big insurance for 60 years. What is tragic and criminal is because we have run away campaign financing laws where it seems anything goes…we keep electing bought by Big Insurance policy makers. So the abuse keeps going into perpetuity. The character assassination of Obama is financed by these people this same lobby and more. If we as Joe public say no to the gauging done by the medical community and big insurance it will change. Has a study been done of the actual cost of every procedure and test? Has cost comparison been done with American institutions of health care and say England’s or France? This is 2011 and there must be well documented proof of what all of those costs even with government subsidies are. You cannot get away with the price gauging we are subjected to in a country like Canada because government pays the big bills. We are abused by the very group who run commercials that say “Obama care is bad”. Off topic but just as sick; speaking of abuse. Warren Jeff’s and his cronies created a religion so they could molest children. How insane, evil and sick and why aren’t all of those men of his cult being pulled into court and arrested, WTF?

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Moga

Tonight I began watching a French film (to practice the language) about a white woman in Africa who is trying to maintain her life there as the country is torn apart by civil unrest. The director Claire Denis has a simple shot of a middle aged man as he scratches his head after they are hassled at a military traffic stop. In that moment my heart burst open. I could feel his life in his beloved country being held hostage first by his leadership than by colonialists and now by militant rebels…I could feel his confusion and helplessness just by the way he stroked his skull. Which immediately thrust me into trying to imagine life today in Somalia, their day to day life which is beyond our western too fat perceptions? Imagine that each human being has a simple desire for shelter, food, safety and enough warmth or cool or safety for his partner and children and a place to define him or herself where he is part of a culture? Now strip that human being of all of this and subject them to unbearable starvation and mental if not physical torture and remove anything close to normalcy and you have a fragment a small piece of life now, today in Somalia and Darfur only it is much worse. We have no idea what bad is as we struggle here in our own mounting stresses life over there is inhumane. We have allowed it to get that bad and worse. You see it will reach us here…my beloved sister in law Julie mentioned that all the American people and our leaders care about is the pirate problem (big business) but you see it is so much more than just that; in fact if people have the basics they tend to avoid groups that hurt others. Imagine that if some other country like say Italy and Spain and France stepped into Mogadishu and offered infrastructure it could help save the world ultimately. China is helping because it can and soon other countries like Germany need to step up. America has done enough and can do more but only if THEY step up as well or in fact Germany could save Somalia…it has the resources. There is a man who steps into his one uniform everyday and directs traffic without pay in Mogadishu he does it because he has nowhere else to go…my husband thinks he is dead or that he isn’t real it is a BS journalists idea of a good tale. I find it revealing that we cannot fathom, imagine how bad, bad is…unless we investigate over there. If we keep ignoring them they will impact us. In ways we will not like. This alone is why we need to admire Angelina Jolie I know she is on her way there…or wants to be because it must be one if not the worst place on planet Earth. If I won the lottery I would immediately create a foundation to help Somalia get back to being civilized. I think it deserves that…and more. My heart is in pain for them and us.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

The abooo

Nothing is more irritating than having someone tell us “under the guise of friendship” what we need to "do" in the moment of a crisis. It is a phenomena that I notice people don’t talk about enough. It is true we can see into a murky situation better from a distance and yet when the tone begins and the words appear we can hear them alright, clear as day and sometimes even understand their correctness, but it bugs the crap out of us and we shut down. I am so guilty of dishing out heaps of advice which I always find I need in the moment I spout the words out of my yapper. So I will take this moment to apologize to my friends and family for the decades of RDC advice probably none of it welcome. I suspect it is because we don’t want help we want to stew and fester and sink. It’s my life let me blow the turns of it. So I noticed yesterday when I was speaking to a friend who is having a very big moment of pain this is someone who I adore and have been friends with for over 3 decades and you know we both have not changed all that much. She was in “it” I listened and sure enough as I was gently (a lie) explained a few tidbits wanting to ease her confusion she wasn’t having it. I had an “ah ha” moment. Why should she get my wisdom and it’s 2 cents worth? It is her path, her life and she is on it and how dare I? So I listened and didn’t get bored or sad or anything, I just listened and then I remembered my Father centuries ago trying to help me and I rejected everything he offered because I could and did. I also remembered that he was right and I should have listened but having spent a huge majority of my time disliking him I suffered. So I listened and I was and am sort of impressed by the fact that we don’t want advice. We want an ear and a quiet co existence someone to hold the space of misery together. So that is what I did and it was really a challenge. It was also a practice in self love because afterward I listened to myself my untold advice and everything I wanted to share I needed to implement myself. So there it is; my bit of advice about withholding advice and the loving act of just that, being quiet and trusting us as we tumble and bump and crash through the cosmos.

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Every time we allow people to buy US treasuries we make money.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUOFTPbxuWA

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