Tuning Out the Noise.

As all three devoted readers of this blog will know, this past year has been the "Year of Dani": a year of self-care, of becoming more comfortable in my own life and my own skin, and concentrating on what has meaning for me and makes me happy, healthy and whole.  I'm still a work in progress, but I feel like I have made some important steps forward and made changes in my own thinking that made a real difference to my own sense of well being and self-worth. 

No small part of this has been working on accepting myself for who I am, at the size I am.  Weight has been an issue for me since I was a kid. I can't pinpoint when exactly I started to feel different and unworthy because of my weight - it goes that far back. I remember being called fat by kids in elementary school.  I can remember my mom and I out walking when I was younger and some stranger yelling at us that we were two cows who SHOULD go out for a walk.  I don't remember a time when I didn't know in the core of my being that fat was bad, that I was fat, and therefore I was bad.  Naturally, I equated not-fatness with goodness.  If only I could just be thin, life would go my way.  I wouldn't feel different, or like an outsider.  I first went on Weight Watchers when I was 13.  I went back to WW a number of times, and have tried numerous other fad diets over the years, sometimes with tremendous success.  Dr. Phil's crazy Texan diet + running 5K every single day for five months = 60 pounds gone.  Dr. Bernstein + heartbreak + obsessive CrossFit = 90 pounds gone.   Dr. Bernstein (again) +  hot yoga 6 days a week = another 75 gone.  I've lost my own body weight probably multiple times in my life, sometimes by very unhealthy means.

Part of this year's focus has been on living in the present.  I quickly came to the realization that I couldn't genuinely live in the present without accepting myself for who I am in the present, all of me: the double chin, the chubby arms, the Size 16 clothing - every last large, chubby, round part of me.   I didn't know where to begin that acceptance, I really didn't.  I have been so conditioned to believe thin is good (for me - ironically I think most other people look good a little chubbier) that I had to start with a very narrow focus.  I found I liked myself more and could look at myself proudly in the mirror when I had cooked myself a healthy meal that day.  So that went into the rotation: healthy cooking.  I also noticed that I felt better about myself when I exercised -  I liked the way I looked in running clothes, and I liked how it felt to run.  OK, so it was time to start running more regularly.  I liked going to the pool - I bought the cutest vintage swim caps you have EVER seen and went and did Aqua-Fit with the old ladies at the Y.   I liked lifting weights - time to join an exercise crew - my dear friend April had told me about her sister-in-law's bootcamp program for plus size women, Body Exchange , so I started doing that two to three times a week, in addition to my running - and you should see me swing a kettlebell now.  

No small part of my growing acceptance and the beginning of falling in love with who I am, right now, came from the growing movement online that celebrates bodies of all sizes - including plus size bodies.  Models were a big part of that - seeing someone like Tess Holliday get on the cover of People Magazine in May was a big thing - but it was Ericka Shenck on the cover of Women's Running in August that made me literally howl with joy.  YES!  I am a runner! She is a runner! We are runners!  I cannot tell you how empowered that cover made me feel.  All I can say is my running laps at bootcamp that week were extra-fast, and extra-proud.  

I also discovered a whole world on Instagram of plus-size fashion beyond the two messy racks in the corner of H & M and the senior-citizens approved plus section of the Bay.   There were young professional women like me posting OOTD on IG, rocking fierce clothes that I needed right. now. There were even people I knew setting an example, like local amazing supermodel Ruby Roxx, looking so damn heart stoppingly sexy that she puts Victoria's Secret to shame.  Thanks to this social media takeover by beautiful, empowered, healthy, fashionable, smart, successful and LARGE women, plus size was becoming, for me, the new normal.  Finally, at 35, I felt normal.  I felt more deserving of being healthy, loved and beautiful - because here were these examples of women being these things, doing fabulous things, that I could look at everyday.

Cut to yesterday.  I was inundated, on TV and radio, with news stories relating to this study co-authored by Brent McFerran, a professor of marketing at SFU, saying that acceptance of larger body types in media (such as the now-iconic Dove campaign) result in greater consumption of food and less motivation to exercise. In other words, showing people images of fat people made them fat.  It made them lazy, and it made them eat more.  They refer in their conclusions to "overly large" bodies as "unhealthy" but do not refer to overly thin bodies in the same way.  They conclude that it would be "optimal" for people's well-being for marketers to use images of people of a "healthy weight and refrain entirely from drawing attention to the body size issue."  They suggest we ignore the elephant in the room - even if that elephant is me.  Or you.  The authors of this study seem to be fretting that we can't "normalize" people who are overweight, even though it's well established that the average woman in North America is a Size 14, and also well established, in the work of experts like Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, that dieting isn't working.  People are not getting smaller.  Bigger is the new normal.  Instead of suggesting that the media show healthy bigger bodies - show people that they can love themselves and be good to themselves at any size, and show them how to be healthy at any size, the authors of this study suggest that we be erased from the picture.  

To make matters worse, in giving publicity to this study, the media once again opened the floodgates for people to make judgments about others (as always, like they needed an invitation) based on size. On my way to bootcamp with my large lady-friends last night, I heard the following public comments on the CBC radio show On the Coast:

1)  Obesity is an epidemic, it is unhealthy and costs the taxpayers money so let's not celebrate that.

2)  I have fat friends and when I hang out with them I do eat more and I do make poor choices so I try to encourage us not to just go out to dinner when we socialize.

Imagine comment number 1 starting like so:

"Islam is an epidemic."

Or comment number 2:

"I have gay friends and when I hang out with them I do feel more homosexual."

 You may think, "Oh hang on Dani, being fat isn't the same as being Muslim, or gay.  People can't help being Muslim or gay."  And I am telling you, based on personal experience and the experience of many others I know, that the psychology of weight and our relationships with food, not to mention genetics and hormones, make it as difficult for some people to change their body shape as it is difficult to change the colour of your skin.  I have 35 years of obsessive exercise, diets, cycles of starvation, and more self-loathing than you can even imagine to prove it.  The fact that the study didn't even start to address that complication shows just how flawed, and harmful, it is.

In making a huge, oversimplified news story out of a controversial study that does not even scratch the surface of the psychology of food, weight, body image and media influence,the media is once again giving voice and validation to judgement, bigotry and shaming as legitimate opinion.

And I won't stand for it.  

Seeing myself reflected in the media over the past year has made me feel worthy: of love, of admiration, of health.  OF HEALTH.  Shaming me into trying to lose weight by only making clothes up to a certain size (I'm looking at you, Abercrombie & Fitch and Lululemon) didn't make me feel those things.  Publishing glowing articles about Gwyneth Paltrow's latest cleanse didn't make me feel those things.  Fat jokes on YouTube by dude comedians didn't make me feel those things.  It was seeing myself, or someone who I could identify with, on a cover, in a story, in an Instagram post, that made me want to love myself.  And doesn't everybody deserve that?  Shouldn't our media reflect who we really are, whether that's thin, fat, tall, short, able-bodied, or 

not,

cis or transgendered?  And every colour under the rainbow?  And wearing a hijab, or a burqa, or a turban?  

So,

TL/DR:

1.  I am a hot, sexy, athletic, healthy, plus sized woman who can do more push-ups than you and has the most fierce style ever EVER.

2.  Magazines, TV and marketing couldn't shame me into loving myself, the only way that happened was by seeing myself reflected in the media: by showing me that I existed, was worthy of depiction, and could be part of the story.

3.  Size shaming appears to be one of the last acceptable forms of prejudice disguised as health concern-trolling, and it's not OK.  Just as we won't let Donald Trump's hatred make a comeback, we won't let shaming of people for

any

aspect of their body go unaddressed.  

4. Fat is not contagious.  Nor is it monstrous, or deserving of being "othered."

5. Diversity is good.

6.  Health is good, and we need to celebrate and applaud those actions we take for our health, which can come in many different packages.

7.  Don't let stupid hateful people be on the radio.  This includes Donald Trump.  I'm tuning out the noise and focusing, in the immortal words of Crystal Waters, on

100% pure love

.  

The Work of Being Happy.

Back in January, I decided this would be the year of self-care.  The year of not setting ambitious goals or striving outrageously to accomplish things.  The year of being a bit kinder to myself.  I was so so tired.  I was tired of feeling disappointed in myself when I didn't achieve superstardom, unlimited wealth, Olympic-level fitness, true love, a family, and professional accolades.  I was tired of feeling like I was struggling to succeed - when really by most people's standards I was doing just fine.  I figured there had to be an easier way to live.  Or, maybe there wasn't, maybe I was/am a perfectionist for life - but at least I could make peace with that way of living, if I spent a year being "ordinary" and still couldn't be happy.  Maybe the struggle would be sweeter if I knew I was happier struggling than going with the flow.  Weird, but that's what I was thinking. 

I did (and did not do) a number of things during this "Year of Dani."  They were, for the most part, seemingly small "no brainer" things to me, really - basic life skills that I had just forgotten to do in my pursuit of "greatness".  

I moved, to a neighbourhood less bustling than Gastown, where I could sleep, and read, and go for walks on tree lined streets.  I started cooking at home and taking my lunch to work.  I didn't audition for shows I didn't want to be in (sounds easy, is actually hard, when you are desperately afraid of being forgotten).  I said no to volunteer opportunities I was presented with if they didn't make my heart sing.  I stayed at home and read books - real books, from the library, with pages, rather then e-books on my Kobo.  

I went for walks, and sometimes I ran. I gardened on my little balcony.  I didn't shop when I was sad or lonely (because shoes make you less lonely!), I wrote it down in my journal, or admitted to someone that I was sad and received a flood of support in return.  I went to yoga, but not obsessively, as I have in the past.  I meditated.  I napped.  And I made one gigantic life decision: I changed jobs, leaving a job I loved and was completely emotionally invested in, to one with a shorter commute and a less frenetic workday pace, where I became responsible for a smaller portfolio of work, that I could leave on my desk at the end of the day rather than carrying home in my heart.  

These lifestyle changes have been accompanied by really hard work in terms of changing my attitude.  In smothering my negative inner voices, in actively choosing a different way to be, every day.  In choosing not to be critical of myself, in taking one day at a time, in choosing love over negativity. In convincing myself I am entitled to be happy, even without the perfect career, the perfect body, the perfect wardrobe, the perfect house, husband, baby.  It's a conversation I have to have with myself every day.  That I am wonderful as I am.  That every day is wonderful exactly as it unfolds.  That I am exactly who I am meant to be, and exactly where I am meant to be.  I write these words to myself on post-its at work, that only I can see.  I set my alarm on my phone for random times of the day, so that when the alarm goes off, I repeat these loving thoughts to myself.  I say them out loud to friends, who respond with resounding celebration when I say "I deserve to be happy."  

Now, as we head into the last months of the year, it feels like all of the very tiny incremental changes that I have been making over the year are crystallizing into one great gigantic big ball of happiness.  It's actually kind of magical.   Work is going well and I am valued for my contributions.  I saved enough money to buy my first home, a quiet place on a street lined with trees that looks out onto the Fraser River, which will be mine in November.  I've lost enough weight (20 lbs, give or take) that I notice, even if no one else does.  I'm singing as much as I want, with the people I want, when I want.  I sleep well.  It's work, absolutely, but the weird thing is, when you put in the work, things feel...effortless.  I can't explain that paradox, but I understand it now.

The other day, my mom said to me, "It's like you've said, 'Oh, sod it.  I am going to try happy.'"  And it's true - in trying to be happy, I've made myself happy.  It is so much work, every single day, but I'm happy.  Imperfect, sometimes frustrated, sometimes lonely - but happy.  I'm choosing happy.  I can't wait to see what miracles unfold as we head into the close of this Year of Dani.

Imperfect, unremarkable, happy me, at this very minute.

7:26 pm.

It feels like it's been a long time since I cried.  Yet this month seems to have been filled with a lot of tears, both of hurt and happiness, but also when the beauty of something has been too much to bear. 

I feel things.  

Sometimes too many things.

But I am feeling them, without fear.

It feels raw, and I feel like I should flinch to avoid being hurt.  I need to find some resilience.  Or find some peace in that fragility.

It is dusk, and I am sitting alone and content, the last vestiges of sunlight pouring in from all sides.  The doors are wide open, and Currie is perched on the deck outside, staring intently at me as I write.

"What are you doing?" I ask her, when I look up to see her yellow-green eyes fixed on me.  She meows a reply, then yawns, stretches, and steps back inside, and past me.  

We are happy here, in this moment. 

There is still so much hurt.  And sadness.  And loneliness.  But it is accompanied by a visiting peace, and a growing awareness of moments of joy.  And grief in the moments that have passed without it.

This is Sunday.

I can't tell you how sweet life is in my new home.  I thought myself a hardcore urbanite: I loved the grit and colour of Gastown, the mix of upscale, industrial, hipster and downtrodden that made up my neighbourhood of the last five and a half years.  And then I found my little oasis in the middle of not-so-glamorous Marpole, and suddenly none of the cool coffee shops, bakeries, clothing stores or bars that surrounded me mattered anymore.

So it's true - most of the restaurants and cafes that surround my new home are...not great, or else not designed to be that welcome to Canadians of the whitey-whitebread persuasion such as myself, with all-Mandarin or all-Cantonese menus and staff that don't really speak English (that being said, I have ventured into a few anyway and found a number of gems).  But I have a wonderful dining room that has light that streams in from the east, and with another window that opens up onto views of trees and mountains to the north, so it's not a hardship to eat at home.

Yes, it's a fact that the only speciality food store near my new home is Safeway.  But I have a kitchen that I delight to spend time in, and since I moved in January I have spent many happy hours cooking away on my new stovetop.  True, I haven't visited a "hot" restaurant in...well, months really, but I have re-discovered my cookbook collection and found some new recipe blogs that I adore.  There's no good coffee, true - you can't count the Starbucks at 64th and Granville - but I have a perfectly good machine to brew my own, not to mention a well-loved Bialetti stovetop espresso maker that Edy and I purchased in Rome years ago.  

I worried when I moved out of Gastown that the new neighbourhood and the lifestyle (or lack thereof) that it presented would not be "cool" or "exciting" enough for me.  Instead, I've found that I nest more - I've looked inward rather than outward to develop a home life.  I'm happy to spend a quiet Sunday at home, as I'm not exhausted from waiting for the bar underneath me to close at 4 a.m. in order to get some sleep.   I don't mind waking up to hear lawnmowers and birds singing (OK, I like the birds more than the lawnmowers, it's true).  I love being able to hear the rain on my roof.

Cornmeal-Raspberry Pancakes, homebrewed coffee, the Georgia Straight on the table and Michael Enright on the radio.  The new Sunday.

So, yes.  It's been a good move for me.  A very good one. When I started looking, desperately, in November, I was trying to escape a situation that I think my body and my heart knew were no longer healthy for me - that I needed peace, and refuge, no matter what my trend-loving, hipster-admiring brain told me about living in Gastown.  I felt like I was in flight from terrible anxiety and unrest. So I'm content that today my day will consist of throwing some meals together for the week to come, brushing Curriecat's coat out on one of our two balconies, sitting in my living room and staring at the rooftops, cherry blossoms and mountains that make up my view, perhaps going for a walk in Fraser River Park, and then heading to Granville Island for a rehearsal.

Maybe I'm mellowing, I don't know. Would it be nice to have someone here to mellow with?  Sure.  But if this is what 34-almost-35 looks like, I think I'm OK with that.

Home Is Where the Heart Is.

When I moved to my new place in Marpole, my bedroom was an extremely important consideration.  Gastown had always been loud and bright. Over 5 years there, I learned to ignore the lights in the courtyard outside, and the lights of SFU Woodwards across that courtyard, which remained on all night.   But I never got over the noise, from the Charles Bar, crazy people or drunk people shouting outside, and the hum of air vents on the many buildings close by.  I have never been a great sleeper, but over the past few years it's become even more difficult for me to have a good sleep.  In the past years, 2 -3 sleepless nights a week has become the norm rather than the exception.  It wasn't unusual for me to be up and awake until 4 in the morning on a regular basis.   By the time I moved, I was desperate for quiet, and for somewhere I thought I might be able to sleep.  I chose the north facing suite, which faces into an alley and residential backyards, rather than the south, to avoid even the little bit of street noise you could hear in the south suite from West 70th Avenue.  

In my past few apartments, my "colour" theme has been turquoise and yellow: bright versions in the living areas, more muted shades in my bedroom.  But for whatever reason, when I moved to my Marpole place, I suddenly decided I wanted my room to be red.  My spare room in Gastown had been red, full of bright artwork and a graphic poppy-printed bedspread (when one of my movers saw my bed he said "Wow! It's Remembrance Day up in here!" - maybe not the most sexy thought), and that's what I decided I wanted in my bedroom. I've since picked up another red-themed bedspread (isn't it always nice to have two - one for when the other's in the laundry?), but continued on this "red" path.  

When I was young, my parents let me choose the decor for my room in our house on Winchester Road, where I grew up.  I asked for red and white hearts, and they wallpapered half my walls in crisp white wallpaper with hearts.  My bed had a red and white striped quilt (which my brother and sister-in-law have on their bed now).  When my grandmother, my Dad's mom, passed away, I inherited her four poster bed, which my Dad painted white, with tiny red wooden hearts affixed to the headboard.  My dressers were painted white with red drawers.  Every Valentines' Day, another item with red and white hearts made its way into my room.  And I loved it.  It stayed that way until I was at least 16 and too cool for hearts.

As I began picking up bits and bobs for my new bedroom here in Marpole, I found myself drawn to stuff with red hearts again.  It occurred to me that I really liked the idea of a throwback to my childhood sanctuary.  Not to be a kid again, or to have a wish to go back, but to move forward with some connection to the "me" that was a kid in that bedroom.  To connect to the home I grew up in, which I sorely miss - this somehow made me feel closer to my family, who aren't around on a daily basis.   My dressers were already a throwback - they were also my Dad's mom's, and sat in my own parents' bedroom on Winchester.  My dad repainted them for me when I came home from London with no money and no furniture.  

Then I started to find things I already had, that I wanted out  and visible, because they made me feel even more connected to family, and to that essential sense of myself and where I came from.  I put vintage pillowcases on the bed, which my Mom noted had lived in Marpole before, in the home she grew up in a few blocks away on 62nd.  They had belonged to my grandmother, who lived her whole life in this neighbourhood, but who I never met.  I put out some vintage glass dishes, which I remembered sitting on my grandfather's bathroom counter when I was a kid, one filled with soap and one with cotton balls, but which my mom told me her mom used to store her hairpins in.  

It's all Valentinesy up in here.  Curriecat doesn't care as long as her pink blankie is on the bed.

The heart that started it all.  This was an Opening Night gift from my director, Rick Tae, when I performed in "A…My Name is Alice."  It hangs on my bedroom door.

The "doggie dishes."  The only thing I asked for from my Grandpa's house when he passed away, I remembered fishing out cotton balls and little hotel soaps from these as a kid.  My grandma Annette used them for her hairpins.  That's her on the left.

My dad thinks all the hearts are "too foufou".  That may be so.  I am unapologetically foufou.

That's it, that's all.

When I showed my parents my room on FaceTime, my dad grumbled that it was too girly, that no boy would like red hearts.  "It's too FOUFOU," he said jokingly-but-not.  ("

YOU'RE

FOUFOU" I shot back.  Great comeback, Dan.)   But the reality is, no boy lives here.  It's me, it's my room, and the connection to home and to family, and the feeling of belonging that it gives me, are worth the risk of a boy not liking it.  Of course it's not to everybody's taste.  It might not always be to mine.  But things can always change, and for right now I need my room to be a place I feel cozy, safe, and connected.   Home is where the heart is.  Literally.

On Mindfulness, Balance and Being Deliberate.

2014 was one of the busiest years on record.  I spent almost three months total outside the country.  I learned tons about my job and the company I work for.  I laid on a few different beaches, and visited the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. I went through a shitty breakup.  I went to Disneyland.  I acted in three productions, one of which was a super top secret non-rehearsed full-length musical.  I put a painful professional chapter behind me once and for all with respect to a bad business arrangement.   I staged Evita in my living room with my friends for my birthday (of course I played Eva, don't be silly).  I sat on three boards, helped organize a shoe-themed fundraiser, and met my first nephew, the darling Charles Alexander, known as Cal.  I saw a dead body (really).  I climbed a giant mountain in Wales.  I dyed my hair green, and then purple.  I sang karaoke in front of my work colleagues.  And then, in the last days of the year, I moved house.  

As crazy/fun/wondrous as my year was, it was also draining, and kind of disorienting.  I was tired all the time, and things that had been fun, suddenly weren't.  Due to structural issues and neighbourhood noise, my home no longer felt like a safe place to be.  I felt like I didn't sleep - all year.  By the time this autumn came around, my workload felt unsurmountable, my free time felt chore-ridden, and I wondered if I would ever not feel exhausted again.  I never read anymore - ME! The English major with walls and walls of books lining her home!  I felt like being busy was keeping me from - something, I didn't know what - but it wasn't making me happy.

There are a couple of things that I have learned over the past year.  The first was that I can't do it all.  I really can't - and (surprisingly) I don't want to.  My approach over the past few years has been to throw myself into everything I'm asked, head first, and it has not served me well. That's what makes me tired.  And tired leads to sick.  And sick leads to sad.  I have learned that I can have a very little bit of everything, but not the whole lot - and maybe that's OK, to only have a little bit.  The second was, it doesn't have to be perfect.  I'm still working on that one.  The "it" is every aspect of my life really - from the roots of my dyed hair to the Curriecat fur that occasionally sweeps across the floor, to my really really really slow running and my sloppily cooked dinners.  It doesn't have to be perfect, but for the things that matter: my work, my art, my health, my friendships - it does have to be the best I can possibly do.   And sometimes it has to be the best I can do right at that moment.   

And so, the things I am focusing on this year reflect these lessons.  The goal is to help me put these ideas into practice every day.  Just because I understand what I just said above - that I can't do it all, that "it" doesn't have to be perfect - doesn't mean that I'm comfortable with those truths, or that, when I am lonely, or tired, or insecure, I don't revert to the manic business and accomplishment-collecting that have characterized many years of my life.  While some people may say, "This year, I'm going to get out of my comfort zone,"  my promise is that this year, I will stay IN it.   I will not take on everything.  I will say no.  I will build in time for nothing.   I will take the time to think through what I'm doing (there's the mindfulness for you), and make deliberate choices about what I can do, what I'd like to do, and what I'd NOT like to do.  I will reflect on the people I surround myself with, and how I'd like to treat them and be treated in return.   

In December I made a scary but so-far-wonderful decision about where "home" is, and am having fun creating an environment for myself that is comfortable, relaxing, somewhere I can bring my friends, somewhere I can be  be still, and quiet, when I need to be.  Somewhere I can sleep.   It's not trendy, it's not hip, but it is filled with sunlight, fresh air, calm, and Curriecat, which is all I need, really.  

It's not going to be easy, this being easy on myself.  It's very very disorienting and uncomfortable at times.  To say, "Today I think I will go to work, come home, make dinner, read a book, and go to bed.  And that will be enough.  That will be OK."  To say, "I think I've done everything I can on this work assignment, time to put it away for now.  And that's OK."  To say, "It's OK to just go for a walk."  It's scary, to think that at the end of this year I might not have a laundry list of things to say on Facebook, or Twitter, or this blog, that I've done and been and seen.  But I keep telling myself that's OK.  I'm OK.  And OK is just fine.