In which I rant again and also post a naked pic of myself.

So I recently posted on FB this :


Ok my friends. It is time to just stop this business and freaking LOVE our beautiful bodies already. It is breaking my heart the way we (I include myself) beat up and insult ourselves. Repeat after me... my body is strong and beautiful and sexy. Now everytime you say in your head, "I'm fat" replace it with that.
Start-- NOW


So people respond like crazy... I know some of my friends think it was aimed directly at them, and certainly I was thinking of some recent conversations I had with woman... But this is an old refrain.  We hate our bodies.  Too skinny, too fat, too flat , too big.... now I like working out, I like feeling strong and healthy.  and I'm all about goals for strength and good health and good endorphins.
But this self hate.  It is terrible.  It is tragic.  I know woman of every shape and size... and they use terrible, cruel heartless words on themselves.  Words they would never use on anyone else.


Now I'm going to tell you a secret.  I love my body.  I love my rounded tummy.  My I'vehad5kids breasts.  My unruly hair.  My yogabutt. My pretty feet.  My small wrists. My ugly, capable hands.  My strong dimpled thighs.  I love how I smell, both clean and dirty.  I love the c section scar that means my fifth baby didn't die.
I photograph myself nude all the time.  I am unafraid to show those images because as an artist, I can see that they are beautiful and interesting.
I love this body... but I am also afraid to.  Afraid that if I become comfortable and happy in my skin I will become complacent.  That I will get fat and lazy and ugly and not know because I'm happy.
Ok.  How sad and sick is that?
I have DAUGHTERS.  I have a responsibility to treat my self image with joy.  Not disgust.
It's time to change.  It's time to walk confidently in my skin.  I'm ready, even if every day I have to remind myself to push out the cruel thoughts and replace with kind.
It is time.

Heaven

And well I believe in Heaven even on the days that I know I only believe in god because I want to believe so I won't feel so alone.  But Heaven, oh hell yes, I believe.
 I believe when I die I open my finally clear eyes to an door in front of me with the numbers 340 next to it and I'll push it all the way open and walk through it... through the small and paneled porch with the tangle of green living and to the living room filled with people who shout my name and jump to their feet, ignoring that Cubs game on tv as they engulf me in their arms and their laughter and their questions and how pretty I look just like my mother.  I will kiss their cheeks and take their hands and pick up the babies and turn my head while the shout by Harry Carey - Cubs Win! comes from the tv and and everyone cheers and I hand back the babies
and walk thru the little dining room with mirror covered in cards and photographs, I'll stop and pick up a cookie from the table and stuff it in my mouth... from the bedrooms is the sound of the radio playing irish music someone is singing If I had the wings of an angel, over these prison walls I would fly... and I peek in the other bedroom where a little red headed child puts down her dolls and smiles sweetly, sweetly.
I'll head to kitchen and pause and let my breathe shudder out in a tremor and place my hand on the doorframe where the lines and dates and names mark the growth and passage of time... and then there is her, she looks up at me where she is sitting at the table in the nimbus of light flooding through the kitchen windows in that little kitchen.
She puts her coffee cup in it's saucer and stands up, looks at me, she takes my hands with her capable, calloused ones and she is young and ancient and she kisses my face Squeakycheeks, she says and touches my hair, so beautiful and frizzy like your mother . And we just stand there with world spinning all around us, through the open summer windows is the sound of all the children of generations and their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and they shout and laugh and argue and head across the way the to the Forest Preserve Race you to the Indian Tree and over her shoulder and through my tears I can see the steeples of St Andrew's , when I close my eyes I hear the bells ringing Angelus and filling my lungs and my head and my heart and emptying the years of heartache and loss and pain until even they become part of the joys and loves and beauties of my life , filling me up like a wild river flooding over it's banks, spilling across the land to feed the new growth and the whole world.
She smiles,
We've been waiting.

Sure, it takes a village.

Do you ever just think you need to say: thank you thank you thank you  and hope that karma or god or fate or whatever you believe will spread it to ears of those who should hear it?  I think it right now.  And also,
 I love you I love you I love you -- if you think there is a chance I mean you in any of this, well you are right.
You've heard, we all have-- it takes a village to raise a child.  Now you're gonna roll your eyes or sigh or stop reading because you've heard this already.  Well, why don't you listen.  Yeah , it takes a village to raise a child, it takes mama friends and daddy friends and childless friends and teenagers and other kids to raise a child... but thats not what my thank yous and i love yous are for.  Because you know what else takes a village, we do each one of us, no one lives in void.  No not you, tough sexy artist guy, not you awesome stylish childless woman, not you hippy mama, suburban mother, you somewhere in between mama.  No we need each other.  It takes a village to raise me.  Me at almost 38, I'm on FB , on blogs, on the phone, text, posting, meeting at coffee shops, bars, front porches... Ineed you to tell me what shampoo you use, what to do with my baby's cough, that I'm okay, that you like my top, that you care what I think about politics and dinner and that book and where I bought my jeans and if the world is crashing down around us.  I need you, you need me... pretend you don't and you are lying. 
It takes a village to raise a child, to embrace the adult and someday to lead us to the next step, what ever you believe comes After.
Lately my village is sending a lot love my way, it is coming sprinkled like pixie dust thru the invisible lines of the internet and in the irl voices of friends.  So you know who you are, my village.  Thank you.  I love you.

(three of these are mine, two are from my village-- so sorta mine, too)