You Are What You Think, Especially if It’s Ugly You’re Thinking.

I know it’s best to not think about the past. But there are times when it’s useful to go back there, to try and find out a little about how my mind is working now and to make sure I align my mind with the present moment, to be sure it’s not merely running from a subconscious, false belief.

All this thinking was brought on by finding old pictures of me that I dislike looking at. I was 18, in Niagara Falls with my family and I was so unconscious it was scary. (So unconscious, in fact, that I had my hair slicked back in a self-loathing pony tail with two pieces of “bangs” hauled out on either side, which resembled a handle-bar moustache…. placed on my head. Yeah. I hadn’t a clue!)

I hated myself and my life back then; and I hated how I looked, I hated people, I hated how lost and confused I was. I was dorky and ugly with not one ounce of Self developed. I had no idea who or what I was, I was alone in my internal self-war.

Back then, I was living in the past everyday. Going back to things bullies said to me years and years before, and what felt like every day after. I believed everything they said because I didn’t have a sense of who I was or what I could be. I sat desperately alone inside my self-loathing for the entirety of my teenage life. Spent much time and energy in seeing all my faults and believing all the crap people said about me, instead of building who I was and creating who I would be. (I was also very dumb ;)

An older boy I knew back then said to me a few times: you are going to be beautiful…when you’re older. This reconfirmed my notion that I was indeed ugly at the time, but it also planted a seed inside me. I’m not sure if he planned it that way, in hopes of saving my deteriorating appearance, or if he saw beauty in me that I hadn’t yet. Whatever way he meant it, it planted that seed, one that made me start looking for beauty inside myself.

Though because I was 16-18 when I heard that, I figured: I have a LONG way to go before I’m “older” (I'm there now, 30 is the beginning of "older" haha). So, it wasn’t until I was about 23-24 that I started to see some kind of beauty poking through, which correlates well to when I started hearing it from other people a little more (when I would hear someone tell me I was “beautiful” before those ages I would scoff at the lies they were trying to convince me of.) But during my mid-twenties, I started to pause, and Thank someone who would say that (instead of accusing them of being senile liars.)

I didn’t always completely believe them (even still, I have moments of doubt). But thanking people, instead of dismissing them, was my first step in becoming beautiful, like the boy from my past said I would be.

I hear it all the time from people now, that I’m gorgeous, beautiful, natural, etc. I still battle with my inner scowl, which tells me I’m the ugly duckling I always was, but luckily that voice is getting smaller, loosing its power. And the truth is coming forth, that all humans are beautiful.

I do see the beauty in this human form I have, I see the beauty in every human form around me.

So I’m guessing it has been my efforts to create my inner beauty that has slowly been releasing an outer beauty, and my quest to see the beauty in each and every person I see, all of which is what other people are seeing.

I always thought I would be made fun of if I spoke of being any sort of beautiful (people in my past also didn’t take well to other people being confident in any way, you would get ridiculed for “thinking too much of yourself”), therefore I always felt uncomfortable telling myself I am beautiful. It has only been lately that I see how important it is to tell myself that, that I am honoring, not only myself, but the Creator. And after being so negative for so many years, I feel I owe the universe some good vibes!

So, here, I’ll say it, I’ll mean it, and I’ll ignore the inner voice that’s disagreeing with me: I AM BEAUTIFUL! (And so are you ;)

It’s OK to be GAY.

In order for that belief to be the norm in society, we must start referring to homosexuality as normal and acceptable, early in children’s lives.

When my first child was very young (daycare age!) someone asked her: do you have a boyfriend yet?” To which I quickly added: “or girlfriend” (and gave a supportive smile to the question asker- didn’t want to offend. And she actually said to me later, how great that was to say, that she never thought about it that way before.)

It was the first time (and not the last!) my daughter had been asked that question, so I was very happy I was quick to the draw on it. I wondered, what if she was gay!? What if she wanted a girlfriend? Wouldn’t being asked “do you have a boyfriend” make her feel she couldn’t have a girlfriend, or that there was something wrong with wanting a girlfriend? Or if she wasn’t gay, wouldn’t it make her think that having a boyfriend is more “normal and acceptable”? THAT was not the type of thinking I wanted her to develop. I want my children to be open to any possibility and accept people for their differences, and be free to choose for themselves.

So, it’s either scrap the question altogether, or get real about it… some kids are gay, don’t make them feel bad about it or make other kids judge them for it.

I also give my kids the longwinded statement: there’s: boyfriend and girlfriend, girlfriend and girlfriend, and boyfriend and boyfriend- everyone is different! :) ← never forget the smile!)

In order for the teasing in schools to stop and more acceptance to evolve, everyone needs to be asked the question that way: ‘boyfriend or girlfriend’, just so they stop for a moment, think, and are made to see the normality of the fact that it IS possible to be gay—and that it’s OK!

(photo: these are peace-rocks i tend to make whenever i go on a hike.. if you see one, let me know! ;)

I realized I’ve been traumatized by the media.

We learned an exercise called Trauma/Addiction Clearing in the Enlightenment studies group. (*British accent*: For to learn how to help others, one must help ones self first…*end accent*: which is why we do all the work on ourselves.)
We were asked to choose something from our past that was traumatizing, something that is affecting us somehow in the present moment, and intend to feel it directly. I went into my list of traumas (most of us have a list, right?), but nothing seemed deep enough (and I had already cleared some of the “big ones” earlier in the year). So I kept pondering…

Then we were asked to focus on something we are addicted to today. And the process was to seek the trauma that is at the root of the addiction (all addictions have a root cause).
I didn’t think I was addicted to anything anymore. After giving up smoking and other things years ago, and completely changing my eating habits (which means: my addiction to junk food was broken (or ok, loosened a great deal ;).

We were then told it could even be a thought or an idea, some kind of mental pattern we were addicted to.

That’s where I found mine.

The preoccupation I adopted at a very young age: my obsession with my appearance. (which I contest: started when I began watching TV and became in contact with other media (which is why I have cable, radio and magazines banned from my house, my quest to save my children in some way.)
Namely and initially (when I was young) it was feeling ugly and inadequate compared to the rest of the world, the people in my real world and the people in the fantasy/media world (actually: mainly the people in the fantasy world!)
Thankfully, that obsession no longer has the strong hold over me it once did, even though there are still issues surrounding it.
Today, it has slowly evolved into repeated questions in my mind: am I ugly or am I beautiful? And what does it mean to be either?

I am addicted to that thought. That’s my addiction.

I obsess over it at times. I really don’t know the answer, or if there is even one answer. Because I, logically, know that beauty is subjective and it really matters none what this exterior vehicle, the human body, looks like; and that it is all in what one feels on the inside that radiates out that is important… blah-blah-blah... I know this “intellectually”, but it doesn’t change the fact that I still have that obsessive thought.
How do I stop the dysfunctional thoughts? How do I evolve my mind from brainwashing that ran so deep in my youth?
Will there always be a shadow of it or can I completely remove the imprint and release the hold it has had on me for so long?

My trauma lies in my distorted perception of what “beauty” is.

All the images and messages I have seen in movies, on TV, in magazines, on websites; things I hear from other people (who are no doubt twisted on some level of thought by much of the same dysfunction!), things in music and even in radio ads! It is truly EVERYWHERE. A distorted idea of what it means to be and look like a woman.
(DISCLOSURE: I am not saying women have it worse than men, or that men don’t have some of the same issues, or that women are better than men. No.
I’m not saying anything to really “compare” women and men. I am merely stating a female perspective of the affect of all the images and ideas of women (and men) I have gathered over the years, from the media and also from the people around me. So don’t get all defensive about it. NOTE: the only people that will be upset at that last comment are the people who are feeling a little defensive about it ;)

I was a lonely, self conscious, unguided youth. As much as there were many people coming and going through my life, none seemed to let me in on the self-esteem secret, and I always felt lonely and different from everyone else.
It seems this loneliness really solidified in 5th grade. When my feelings of being separate really sunk in to my existence and became the norm for me; when I really started noticing other people, and myself in relation to them, and when other kids started picking on me and making me feel hideous.

This seems to correlate strongly with my increased viewing of television, movies and other forms of media. (To use a fitting cliché: which came first, the chicken or the egg? Both sides have great arguments.)

Now that I know all of that: how do I change it? How do we fix broken thought patterns or beliefs? Is it even possible? Or are we doomed to think the way we first learned?
I don’t believe that last thing. I believe we are supposed to evolve the messy mind and its distorted beliefs it developed in its younger days. And that hardship builds character in the human mind. So: the more trauma, the more character? Lets hope so.

During the Trauma/Addiction exercise, I released a lot of charge in relation to the trauma of being brainwashed by the medias portrayal of women and its effects on me as a young female. I am now in the next phase: watching my minds daily reactions and noting anything that may seem to stem from the past trauma and then release it, mindfully, with the intention of letting it go and seeking the truth.
Like yesterday, I felt much too “ugly” to go out in public (that’s normal right? *looks around for someone to agree, I mean, validate*), but I shook that off and went out anyhow and realized the world didn’t end when it saw my face. What a relief.

(kill your tv image found here: www.peersunited.com/tv-effect-on-teenagers )
(fakebeauty image found here: www.nowfoundation.org (national organization for women)
(the other two are my own)

“You should be a model”

Should I be? Why? So someone can cake me in makeup, drape me in fancy (or ridiculous!) clothes, and take pictures of me and use photofinishing until I look nothing like myself so you can look at them and see some kind of fake beauty that pleases you and other idiots, while causing unrealistic ideals of beauty for other women who look nothing like the picture of me that I also look nothing like?? Why SHOULD I do that? Would it make YOU happy? Do you think that’s all I should be? That, for being small, I somehow owe that to people?
I have a small body, long hair and eyelashes so that’s what i SHOULD do?
To please who? For what gain? Its all bullshit.
Don’t tell me what I should do.