Dealing with my shit

Lately I've been feeling this....tenderness, for lack of a better word, I guess? I haven't been able to explain the feeling very well until now, and suddenly this afternoon, after listening to this song, the words to describe my feelings are right here on my lap, calmly sitting, looking up at me expectantly, as if they've been here all along, just waiting for me to pick them up. So here they are...the words that match my feelings. And the song that helped me voice them is below my writing.

Last fall I said to myself and a few other people
That I was ready to "deal with my shit,"
As I put it then.
I expected the outcome would be my inner wounds being healed.
A season of "hospital,"
In which I would tend to old hurts
With clean bandages and gentle hands.
A time of playing nurse in a crisp uniform,
Tucking the hurt under soft white sheets with care.

That's not what I'm experiencing.
Instead, it feels more like
I'm being introduced to multiple war victims inside of me.
One by one, they present themselves.
I drop my neatly-rolled-up bandages
As my hands fly up to cover my eyes.
I'm no nurse; I'm horrified.
Sometimes their faces are only recognizable as faces
Because there are two eyes in the middle of
Broken, bleeding flesh.

Sometimes their bodies are so twisted
I think they must be dead.
I prepare to give one of them a good burial.
I rearrange the limbs piled unnaturally on one another,
Mourning as I do,
But draw back in horror
When hoarse breaths suddenly begin.
Oh God...it's not dead.
I can only stand and weep helplessly before these forms,
Too broken to fix,
Yet still alive.

I choke back the bile sometimes as I look into their faces.
I lean in to hear the whispered words
Coming from what used to be a mouth,
Expecting to hear a last word,
Or a plea to help it end its misery.
And I feel willing;
It would be merciful to assist them in this way.
But instead they whisper,
That they don't want death.
And oh God
They don't want to just be "fixed."
They want and need
Their woundedness to be accepted and loved.

I'm looking into these scarred faces
And instead of flinching and calling for a nurse
To cover up the bloody mess already
And get that goddamned surgeon over here and
FIX THIS MESS,
I'm seeing that these seemingly destroyed,
Nearly-unidentifiable piles of broken flesh
Want to be embraced.
Loved.
Now.
I want to run.

And it's then I realize that I've been here before
And I've run before.
And I'll be here again if I run now.
So I bend to pick one of these broken, bloody forms up,
The smell of it making me almost ill,
And pull it close against my chest,
And hold it like one of my own children.
I hum a little bit of "Adelweiss," soft and low,
As I did to my babies, swaying a bit,
And patting its little back.

I murmur words into its ear....
Precious...
Perfect...
Beautiful...
Never again...
Love...
Always...
Safe...

And I suddenly realize
These are the words I've been longing to hear
For my whole life.
So I say them again.
And again.
Until the little form in my arms finally relaxes
And sleeps.

Life is...YOU ARE...

Watching/listening to this incredible video from Akin Salawu over and over again.

As you watch it, pay attention to how your spirit responds to this.

It feels to me like a loving parent is looking into my eyes, fully seeing and knowing the REAL me, and loving me in such an extravagant way that I can hardly keep from laughing and crying all at once.

If you are like me you will feel courage, strength and intention to be 100% REAL YOU because you know that you MUST, and that if you don't, the world will be missing out on you as surely as the rainbow (or the earth for that matter) would be less than itself with the color blue missing...

"...And I Know That My Heart Is My Home..."

My new favorite song. I really like the music video, too, but there's some scantily-clad-ed-ness in it, just to warn you. :)

Here's the beautiful but not modest version:



And a version without all the skin, if you prefer!

"These Are a Few of My Favorite Things..."

As a little girl, one of my favorite movies was The Sound of Music. I still love it. One of my favorite songs from the film is "Favorite Things."

So yesterday when I found this incredible cover of the song by a...wait for it...KOREAN JAZZ MUSICIAN named Youn Sun Nah, I was absolutely delighted. So I'm including a youtube video of her charming rendition of "Favorite Things."

This morning I've had this song, plus some other new ones I put on my ipod lately, playing on my itunes while I work. And I decided to make a photo collage about the song, which is below the video in this post.

Hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Photo credits:


1. Make Me Smile, 2. Apfelstrudel, 3. Cabled natural white handknit woolen mittens, 4. Brown paper and String..., 5. February 20 - Day 51, 6. Blue Ballerina, 7. Cream Colored Pony, 8. Vintage European Copper Tea Kettle, 9. Whiskers

Touching my heart today

I've had this song on my ipod's "sleep" playlist, as well as my "editing" playlist, for awhile now. It's hauntingly beautiful.

Today I found this video version of the song on youtube. I have no idea what the images the video-creator used mean to him or her. All I know is that they were incredibly significant to me. This is the sort of thing that makes me think about Jung's concept of there being a "collective unconscious." I'm wondering if these images are significant to anyone else.

Or perhaps it's as simple as this. Maybe the person who collected these images and created the video is simply in touch with the path his or her own heart and spirit have traveled and unusually gifted at being able to create a picture of that, in all its joys and its sadness, and with in all its longing and pain. And maybe it's just that this path is a HUMAN path. Maybe, like any artist, the creator of the video is just uniquely adept at combining images in a way that paints a picture of what it means to be human with such accuracy that it makes me feel "understood." That make me feel "seen."

I have no idea. All I know is I love it and I wonder if you will love it, too.

How to be Alone

Each Tear You Cry

Wait it Out

I "hear" this song by Imogen Heap on a personal level, but also on a spiritual one. Very poignant reflection of the whole "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" that's always eluded me. I realized I could live an entire lifetime in "the wretched hollow."

There are other "wretched hollows" in my life and over and over again, I see, once more, that putting curtains up in a prison cell doesn't make it "home." Maybe getting fed up with the "wretched hollow" is what finally motivates us to grow, change, move, stop waiting for someone else to engineer our satisfaction, and instead begin making our own happy lives.

I don't want God's forgiveness....I want YOURS

The above song came on while I was sewing and kind of took me aback. If you know me very well, you know the whole idea of a personal relationship with God just hasn't worked for me and not for lack of trying. So these kinds of songs can potentially really drive me nuts. It's these songs that when I really, really wanted nothing more than to have a relationship with Jesus, got me all choked up and my chest all tight and full of longing. It was disappointing and painful to not find that relationship that I wanted so much. So hearing songs like this one can kind of sock me in the gut the way listening to an old song you associate with a past relationship gone bad can do.

But today I was too lazy to get up from the sewing machine and pass the song so I listened to it. I heard something different this time. Instead of hearing it as a song about how God overlooks my mistakes and sees past them (I could write a book about why this feels like bullshit, but that's not this post), I heard it in a much more meaningful way. The song wasn't about God at all today. It was about my husband. My friends. It was about the people who, despite the mistakes I've made and despite the pain I've caused, love me.

Instead I heard this (I've changed some words and set them in red):

Well the past is playing with my head

And failure knocks me down again
I’m reminded of the wrong
That I have said and done
And that devil just wont let me forget


In this life
I know what I’ve been
But here in your arms
I know what I am


[chorus]
I’m forgiven
I’m forgiven
And I don’t have to carry
The weight of who I’ve been
Cause I’m forgiven


My mistakes are running through my mind
And I’ll relive my days, in the middle of the night
When I struggle with my pain, wrestle with my pride
Sometimes I feel alone, and I cry


In this life
I know what I’ve been
But here in your arms
I know what I am


[back to chorus]


When I don't fit in and I don’t feel like I belong anywhere
When I don’t measure up to much in this life
Oh, I’m a treasure in the arms of [James, Belinda, Pat, Vicki, Brian, Laura, etc.] 

[back to chorus]

Listen to the song again and insert the name of someone you know loves you 100% unconditionally. Imagine those arms being where you "know who you are." I don't know about you, but it means so much more to be the treasure in the arms of my husband, especially after the year we have just gone through, than to be a treasure in the arms of Christ.When I'm in pain, it's not God's arms around me...it's those who love and accept me. When I feel rejected, judged and most of all, misunderstood, being able to be really SEEN by even one person is huge.

The point is...this is what love feels like:
-To be more you in the arms of the other than out of them.
-To be seen, really seen...and loved because of that.
-To look into the eyes of the other and see that they TREASURE you.
-To be forgiven. And that means more than, "It's o.k." It means they look past your mistakes to the person they know you ARE and they don't define you by your mistakes.

Why is it that Christians talk so much about God feeling those things for us, and so little about us loving others that way? Being loved that way? I'm not saying I have a problem with others talking about God loving me that way, but I do have a problem if the person saying it to me isn't loving me that way themselves. As a Christian I did a lot of this. I would love people in this lazy "third party" way, essentially referring them, their pain and their longings TO God. Instead of bear-hugging them or taking them home for dinner, I'd tell them I'd be praying for them.

And that's pretty insane. If my daughter comes to me in tears and says, "Nobody loves me. I feel like I don't fit in. I hurt," I am not going to give her the therapist's phone number. I'm not going to tell her to go talk to her daddy. I'm not even going to tell her to go read the Bible and think about how much God loves her. I'm going to wrap that little girl up in my arms and not let go until I have done everything in my power to make sure she "gets" just how fantastic she is and how much I love her.

Maybe Christian musical artists would do better to stop singing about God's love all the time and start singing about loving others. Isn't that who Jesus was anyway? He didn't walk around asking to be loved and saying he loved people. He walked around and LOVED. He met needs. He spoke comfort. He touched people. He loved them with his heart, his mind, his hands, his face and his voice. It's the whole "becoming flesh and dwelling among us" business, right?

Let's talk more about THAT. Let's talk about how to love. Let's talk about what kind of love we long for. That's HOW we will know how to love others. If your someone who does experience God's love as real, that's awesome. Maybe you can try to keep in mind that there are people like me for whom words about God loving me just fall flat. I don't want words. I want hands that reach for me, arms that hold me and eyes that light up when they see me.

"King of Anything"

I laughed out loud the first time I heard this song on the radio and now that I've heard it a bunch of times, I can't help singing it loudly with an expression on my face that I'm sure our old realtor and one of the most condescending, misogynist men I've ever met would call, "feisty." I can still get fired up, thinking about that man. I expressed some concern/opinion about the sale of our first home and he actually told me, and I quote, "Don't worry your pretty little head about that, Cheryl! You just take care of those beautiful kids and I'll talk to James about it." Needless to say, he heard "what for." I got a $50 Starbucks card in a conciliatory attempt to mend things, which I'm rather ashamed to say almost did the job, except for the accompanying note that, once again, referred to me as "feisty." Sigh.

Anyway, here's the music video that is just as great as the song. I was kind of disappointed that they put her in "masculine" clothes at the beginning. It looked like another case of the age-old "defeminize a woman because she's expressing her strength," as if a woman can't be "feisty" (gag) and feminine at the same time! But I was pleasantly surprised to see her anything BUT masculine at the end, so all in all, I'm giving this song and the music video a big thumb's up.



Here's the (outstanding) album:

Binding the Feet of Our Instinctual Selves

In Clarissa Pinkola Estes' Women Who Run With the Wolves, she talks about the "Wild Woman" who is not "wild" in the sense that we'd call a teenager who is running around doing reckless behavior and is a whirlwind of excess and has no sense of self-control. No, this is a "wild" nature that is closer to the word, "natural," "instinctual" or "original." The best way to understand the nature of this "wildness" is to think about another example that is a little further away from ourselves before we turn and look at our own natures.

In early Chinese culture there was an insidious practice called foot-binding. When a girl was born to middle or upper-class parents, they would break her toes, bend her feet backward, wrap her feet with cloth, wrapping it around and around, her toes tucked under. This process began in early girlhood. By the time she was a woman, her feet would be actually folded in half; the bones grew bent back and up. A woman with a "lotus foot" was one whose feet were 3" long. The tinier the foot, the more desirable she was. The more desirable she was, the more hope she had of being married to a rich man. Of course this is eerily like the practice in our culture of starving women until they are thin as possible, but this isn't that discussion.

Besides the obvious discomfort that women endured as their feet were taught to bend backward, wrapped tightly in a position they were not meant to be in, there was the awful reality that this practice essentially crippled women. They could totter around but not walk fast or run. They moved around with tiny steps on their little nubs, but this was o.k. because if they were married to rich men, they wouldn't need to work or do anything physical anyway, except of course sit there and lie there and be the objects they were born and raised to be. They were simply ornaments and ornaments can be changed, revised, cut in pieces, tied up or any number of methods for making it into something that a man will want to consume, have, own and control.

When you imagine these women with their little nubs that they had to totter around on, you can picture them sitting in richly-decorated rooms, sipping tea with other nub-footed rich women, their every whim being indulged and no work required of them. It becomes a different story altogether when you imagine these women as young girls who wanted to run and play like their male contemporaries but physically couldn't. It becomes heartbreaking when you imagine a nub-footed young woman who is being physically victimized but can not outrun her attacker. Perhaps the worst image is one of a woman with bound feet, who knows the pain that it means, tearfully binding her own daughter's feet, knowing it is the only way she will find a husband.

It is easier to imagine that this happened in the early centuries and that the practice was obliterated long before modern culture. The awful truth is that foot-binding was finally outlawed in 1912 but couldn't be enforced in all cases. Lots of things are outlawed, but when women are the property of their fathers or husbands, the law takes a back seat to things like cultural traditions or financial gain. This story explains why a woman today, in her 60's has the tiny "golden lotuses" even now.

This movie is nauseating, sobering but imperative that we watch it:

*The narrator has the date when it was outlawed wrong, or at least it sounded like she said it was outlawed in the 1600's. In fact it was outlawed in the early 1900's.

This video is a woman's direct memory and narrative of having endured this practice as a young girl. These are very painful to watch, but that is why we must.

Contemplating the concept of the "Wild Woman" after the thoughts and feelings we have while watching and reading about the Chinese foot-binding process, the reality of the "cobbled feet" of our own wild/natural selves springs into stark relief. Modern woman don't have our feet bound, but we are bound, nonetheless. We come into the world with instincts intact, possibilities and potential as wide open as the ocean. We aren't repressed the way women used to be. That does not mean we aren't cobbled. This cobbling happens first when our instincts are repressed, bound up and allowed to rot away inside beautiful shoes.

Estes writes: "Sometimes it is difficult for us to realize when we are losing our instincts, for it is often an insidious process that does not occur all in one day, but rather over a long period of time. Too, the loss or deadening of instinct is often entirely supported by the surrounding culture, and sometimes even by other women who endure the loss of instinct as a way of achieving belonging in a culture that keeps no habitat for the natural woman....Most women have been captured at least for a brief time, and some for interminably long period. Some were free only in utero. All lose varying amounts of instinct for the duration." (p. 269)

The good news is that the feet of our instinctual, wild nature are not impossible to un-bind.

Estes goes on to explain, "Whether the injuries be to your art, words, lifestyles, thoughts or ideas, and if you have knitted yourself up into a many-sleeved sweater, cut through the tangle now and get on with it. Beyond desire and wishing, beyond the carefully reasoned methods we love to talk and scheme over, there is a simple door waiting for us to walk through. On the other side are new feet. Go there. Crawl there if  need be. Stop talking and obsessing. Just do it...." (p. 272)

A bit further on she tells the reader, "If our own wild natures have been wounded by something or someone, we refuse to lie down and die. We refuse to normalize this wound. We call up our instincts and do what we have to do." (p. 273)

Estes talks about how we can not wait for ourselves to heal completely before beginning this reclamation of our wildish nature. She says,  "The real miracle of individuation and reclamation of Wild Woman is that we all begin the process before we are ready, before we are strong enough, before we know enough; we begin a dialogue with thoughts and feelings that both tickle and thunder within us. We respond before we know how to speak the language, before we know all the answer, and before we know exactly to whom we are speaking." (p. 274)

There is a song that we all hear that our feet long to dance to. We may hear it only faintly. But we all hear it. It is that song that gives us the motivation to unbind our feet, hoping that someday we will be able to hear that song clearly and that when that time comes, we will have feet that can dance. Perhaps we don't know how to dance yet. We may not know another soul that dances. But there is still a kind of "muscle memory" of dancing; we KNOW deep, deep down in the knowing part of us that we hear the song. Just because the old woman with bound feet in the second video could never dance doesn't mean she wasn't made to. Her feet "know" they are meant to dance, not hobble around. We can plug our ears and tuck our feet under our chairs but we can always hear a note now and then, reminding us that there is "something more than this." 

For each woman (and man, for that matter), the binding of the instinctual, wildish nature is slightly different. Of course that means that the un-binding process is a unique one for each one of us. Our un-bound feet will propel us to dance different songs. We will each dance into a different reality. We may not know exactly what that is, this side of it. But we all know the edges of it. Why do I know that? Let's start with this...

*What would you do if you could do anything, no one would be hurt by it and no one would reject you?

*When you imagine a little, free-as-a-bird child "you" inside, playing as children do with utter lack of self-consciousness, stopping only when a hungry tummy growls, what is that little self doing?

*When you imagine finding that little "you," her chubby cheeks glowing from whatever busy-ness she was involved in, her bright eyes lit up with fun and pleasure and you imagine pulling her sweet little self up on your lap and telling her, "You are so good at _______" (whatever she was doing just then) do tears spring to your eyes? Do you feel a tightening in your chest? The song grows just a bit louder, doesn't it?

Our grown-up minds rush in with cautionary words about how we must be mature, we must be adults and how we don't have the luxury of doing what we want. If there is a stern, religious voice inside of us, it may say, "Your heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. You can not trust that little you or that 'knowing.' That is your sin nature and doing what you want is going to always end with you in wreckage. Your true nature is bad and must be redeemed."

But there is still that still, small voice. There is still the haunting notes of that song. Your feet tap a little, however hard you may try not to let them.


What would happen, if you unbound your feet? What would happen if you followed that song right into vibrant, soulful, rich-as-chocolate, thick-as-mud life? What if you danced right into the middle of that life, let your feet take over and your heart lead?

A Pound of Flesh

"A strange equation, and an altogether too-common belief: One's worth is exponentially increased with one's incremental disappearance." -Marya Hornbacher, Wasted

"It was horrific seeing those beautiful women reduced to sticks. [...] It's like we're killing these women in public. We watch while you die." -Russel T. Davies

*******************************************************************************
My first "real job" was as a copy writer/copy editor in the in-house advertising department of a locally-based department store called Gottschalks that has since gone out of business. It was a good job. I proof-read ads, wrote copy and worked with graphic designers to make sure the copy we wrote matched the graphics/photos they created. The photo studio was also in-house and I soon got used to beautiful people walking in and out of the office for photo shoots.

I was shocked, however, while standing in one of the graphic designers' cubicles, to find that photos of the already-thin, beautiful fashion models were being altered dramatically. Generous "slices" were taken off of all parts of their bodies right before my eyes. Small waists, hips, legs, arms and even faces were trimmed generously. It was not just this graphic designer; it was standard practice. Today I can still look at photos in ads and see the tell-tale signs of the chopping block: any outside lines that are blurry and not crisp have been altered. Try noticing this the next time you look at a magazine or newspaper ad. You'll see that the blurred lines are in all the places that normal, and even thin, women have curves.

I got mad all over again. You see, I had had an eating disorder that I'd gotten under control a mere two years prior, and truth be told, still did in my head (always will). Those women in those fucking ads had haunted me as I was growing up, taunted me and told me how much of a failure I was. To find out it was a lie, that they had had pounds of flesh removed with the drag of a mouse and a "click" while I spent days, weeks, months and years starving myself, running 3 miles even when I only consumed 600 calories a day, pinching pieces of myself between my fingers while I stood in front of the mirror, hating that I couldn't cut those pieces off. I remembered the A+ grades that were twice as hard to achieve because my brain was dulled and my head pounded. All those times I hung my head over a toilet, vomiting until there was nothing left in my stomach so that I could have a moment of feeling thin came back to me.

I'm not that unusual. 

The National Institute of Mental Health reports statistics that in real life mean:

-If you know 25 women, 5 of them have eating disorders
-4 of those are women between the ages of 12 and 25
-Of those 5, 1 will die of eating-disorder-related health complications
-Half of those 5 will never fully recover from their eating disordered behavior
-All 5 of those women are 12 times more likely to die than the other 15

And don't miss that these statistics are among women. That means if you are in a crowd of men and women, double the stats above.

It's no wonder. Every depiction of the female body in the media tells girls growing up that if they want to be beautiful, desirable, sexy, pretty, attractive and valuable they will be thin. These mind-boggling videos bring tears to my eyes when I think about my daughters and the other young women in my life.

An article which pictures Britney Spears in both "before" and "after" photos that she intentionally released makes the point that women have too much pressure put upon them to look not-natural. You'll see the arrows pointing to where the flesh was trimmed, cellulite removed and an already-beautiful shape morphed into what we would, without thinking, accept as an accurate-portrayal if we saw it in a magazine. Here is another pretty dramatic depiction of the "before" and "after" differences. Roll the mouse over each image to observe the differences.

Is there any hope? For years I didn't think so but in today's newspaper I found an article about some ground-breaking moves by the British government to curb the way the media's portrayal of women affects young women's view of themselves and their bodies in destructive ways. British government officials will be sitting down with members of the fashion industry next month and discussing ways to minimize the practice of airbrushing photos of women's bodies.

Fashion retailer Joseph of Montreal, Canada, will no longer be digitally altering body shapes in their advertisements. Read more of the story here.

These moves are not just important as they relate to the self-esteem of young girls who view magazines/advertisements/fashion shows. In November of 2006 a Brazilian fashion model died of infections caused by out-of-control anorexia and her family said she also struggled with bulimia. She was 5'8" and 88 pounds when she died. 

People are paying attention, it seems. Super-thin models were banned from Montreal's fashion week and encouraged to seek medical treatment. That story is here. A British study by fashion industry officials estimates that about 40% of models in the industry have an eating disorder, as compared to 3% of the general public (American stats are higher, it seems) and urge those with eating disorders be banned from London's fashion week. They are also calling for children under 16 to be banned from the catwalk. That story is here.

What can we do?

One of the things that is happening in the UK effort is advertisers are being urged to include a "disclaimer" similar to those that advertisers have to place on products like alcohol or cigarettes. This may be legalized, which would be fantastic, and will perhaps set a precedent the U.S. could be urged to follow. 

I called the FTC and the woman I spoke to clearly thought I was crazy to consider filing a claim against advertisers who airbrush photos. :)  She said she did not know of any such claims having already been filed but sent me to the website to type "airbrushing" into the search field. Nothing.

So I kept digging and found that, in fact, the FTC doesn't resolve individual consumer complaints. The upshot is that if they get enough complaints, they take notice.

Here's the list of things the FTC suggests if the consumer thinks a company is running an ad that is deceptive:

• Explore your legal options under federal and state statutes that protect businesses from unfair competition. For example, the Lanham Act gives companies the right to sue their competitors for making deceptive claims in ads.
• File a complaint with the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, if your competitor's ad is running nationally or regionally. The NAD is a private, self-regulatory group affiliated with the BBB. It investigates allegations of deceptive advertising and gives advertisers a mechanism for resolving disputes voluntarily.
• Call your local BBB or file an online complaint with the Better Business Bureau if the ad is local. Many BBBs have procedures for resolving disputes between businesses.
• Contact the radio station, television station, or publication where the ad ran. Let them know that they're running an ad you think may be deceptive.
• Contact your state Attorney General's Office or your city, county, or state Office of Consumer Affairs. To get their phone numbers, check your telephone directory.
• Contact the FTC. By mail: Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Response Center, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20580; by telephone: toll-free 1-877-FTC-HELP.

So far, I've filed a complaint with the FTC, which was easy and quick. Here's the consumer complaint form: https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/FTC_Wizard.aspx?Lang=en

I don't think dealing with the FTC is going to be the most effective method of combating this, but it's a start. Ultimately, the changes that are being made in the UK are changes that require people thinking beyond "what sells" to "what's right." I believe human beings are very capable of making such choices, even when they are physically or fiscally difficult. This action in the UK is beautiful proof of this.

I'm going to continue to try to figure out the best way to go about this. I'm hoping to stumble upon an already-existent effort/group/cause to this effect.  If you know of anything like that please email me at cherylensomdack@gmail.com.