Self Portrait Saturday: Change Gonna Come

In our lives there are often big, giant, changes that happen that we have no say over or control about. But we always have control over ourselves whether that is our attitude, our gratitude, or maybe just our hair.

 

 

before:

Proof of Life

Having lost both my mother and husband in recent times, I’ll add that I REALLY wish I had more pictures that I am in with them. I am usually behind the camera and have never liked having my picture taken. Now that they are gone, I wish I had done it differently. I have been trying to make sure that I am in more photos with Casey since mom died, but I have about 5 pictures total that I am in with Al. and that hurts my heart. When I look at pictures of my mom, I don’t see what she looked like, I see what she felt like. and that there is proof that she was here and we were with her in this life.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allison-tate/mom-pictures-with-kids_b_1926073.html
get yourself in front of the camera with your loved ones.

Self Portrait Saturday: A Shadow of Myself

Shadows are funny things. They show a picture of you that is both you and not you. I take pictures of my shadow because it helps me to remember that the way I see myself, and even how others see me, is not the way I actually am. Shadows change minute by minute depending on the location of several moving bodies both celestial and terrestrial. These moving, changing, progressing bodies affect how the shadow is perceived, but not the actual body that the shadow comes from. A lesson to keep in mind.

 

 

Self Portrait Saturday: Baseball Gear

I haven’t done self portrait saturday in a while, so here is a picture my friend took at our baseball game last week. Spring here isn’t really that warm yet, so watching baseball requires some gear. and for good measure a picture of Child C sliding into home to steal a run.

 

I am not fat. (Viewer discretion advised)

When I talk about my ADD I try to be careful to make the distinction that I have it, not that I AM it.  I’ve blogged about it before.  Someone posted on facebook recently a sentence that, after it had a little time to sink in, really made my stop and think. What they posted was:

Fine, I have fat, not I am fat.

At first I dismissed it a little. Yes, of course, that makes sense. So? But it refused to give up as easily as that and niggled around in my brain, tapping at neurons until I paid more attention to it. Right. Okay. Yes. It’s kind of obvious once you think about it, isn’t it? I have fat. It does not define me. As much as our thin obsessed society would like me to think otherwise, I am not fat. I have fat. I have fat on my body. Some of which, maybe even most, I’d like to take off of my body. I am working at doing so. But in the meantime I am resolved to love my body for the beauty that it holds now.

I have fat. That little word has no bearing on myself as a person. It has nothing to do with my heart, my soul, my sexiness, my womanliness, my abilities as a mother, as a spouse, or as an artist.

I think that our media and society has fetishized thinness to point where people have trouble believing that any variation is attractive at all. It’s hard to envision yourself as beautiful when society holds up a picture of what beauty is and you don’t match it. We have swallowed the line heard so often; that we ARE fat and that being fat is a failing. The truth is that having fat is not a failing. Even if you want to lose weight or fitten up, it is possible to love yourself and your body now. In fact, you must. The way you talk to yourself colors the entirety of your experience. If you are hateful toward your body it won’t work with you it will work against you. You need to love your body into a new shape.

I wonder if it would be easier to turn down a “fatty” dessert if you could just say, “No, thanks. I already have enough fat.” As opposed to drawing it in to the fatness that you ARE because you can’t separate yourself from your fat. Hard to say. But it’s sure as hell worth a try.

 

A funny thing happened yesterday. I was on Pinterest and ended up spending 15 or 20 minutes looking a a couple of boards in promotion of Curvy women. After just that little amount of time had a big effect on my perception of my own body.

 

Just that small amount of time looking a big beautiful women let me see in me some of the things that I considered beautiful about them. Imagine if that could happen all of the time. If women of every beauty type across the broad spectrum were regularly represented in mainstream media. If your culture said that you were beautiful, too.

 

It is hard to imagine it.

What if our young men saw that it was okay to find more than one type of woman attractive? What if it was not considered a fetish to be attracted to bigger people? What if we allowed people to love who they love without labels?

What if I told you you’re beautiful?

What if you knew it already because you didn’t have to fight so hard against society’s cookie cutter idea of beauty?

What if I am not fat? What if I have fat?

What if it doesn’t really matter that much if I do?

Self Portrait (satur)Day

I was waiting for my husband yesterday and started goofing around with my photo app on my phone.  

 

Yeah, goofing around. 🙂

 

 

Then I realized that I really look like my mom.

Self portrait Saturday: one month done

So, I’ve been going to the gym every day that my son has school. That makes four weeks so far. 🙂

If we were relying on weight as an indicator, we’d be sorely disappointed. However, since we can feel and see ourselves deflating and getting stronger we are not disappointed at all.

(Don’t ask us why we started talking in third person plural. Perhaps we are royalty.)

I had to stop using the treadmill because I have wimpy feet and they really started hurting. So I decided to try the elliptical machine. The first time I tried it I could only do 5 minutes before my thighs started screaming, “Get off! Get off!”

The second time I tried it I managed ten minutes. Then each day I tick it up a tiny bit. This was the first time I did a mile. Wahoo!

And then I managed 2 miles on the evilliptical. It really is evil. But effective and so far doesn’t seem to bother my wussy feet too badly. So that’s good.

I’ll let you in on a secret:

Fat people are strong.

Our muscles are completely accustomed to carrying around a lot of weight. So, if we can maintain that strength as we lose weight, then we will be amazingly strong smaller sized people.  Like most people, and especially women, I have noodle arms. But I was excited to see that my legs are kinda badass. So is my back/core area because I can do the machine where you do a sit up pushing back against a weight behind you and I don’t really even feel it until I get up around 140 pounds. so, yay me!

I also want to say that this would not at all be possible without the support of my headphones. Since I generally don’t want to hear what is playing an the TV.

I’ll finish up here by posting a couple pictures that I took of myself when I was trying to take a close up picture of my eye. That’s harder than it sounds.

 

 

Oh and this….same old, same old. 🙂

Self Portrait Saturday. ON A SATURDAY!

 

 

 

Joined a gym.

Found out I shouldn’t eat dairy.

Goal: Get fit.

 

Self portrait S’monday

So, I graduated from college this weekend.

Cum laude, which was a nice surprise to me when they gave me my Honors Cord.

I didn’t realize my grades were good enough to be lauded.

According to my dad, I’m the first on his side of the family to graduate from college.

It was so nice to see my dad and fam who drove over for the weekend.

Juxtaposed against all our pomp and circumstance as we processed across the footbridge, were the people floating the river on a Saturday afternoon.

Given that by this time we’d been shrinkwrapped in black plastic and baking in the sun for about 45 minutes, had they led us into the river I don’t think anyone would have complained much. And not at all three hours later when we finally got done with it all.

In addition to my degree, I also I received a laudable sunburn from the ceremony. 🙂

Sees the Day!

I was on Pinterest yesterday and came across some very cool macro images of eyes.  I was inspired to see if I could do that with my camera. I just have a little point and shoot, so it turns out I couldn’t quite get there. But I had fun trying and came up with some cool stuff anyway. I’ll say that it’s tricky to take a picture of your own eye.

 

Then I started playing 😀