Friends ...

I consider myself extremely lucky when it comes to friendships. I have a vast and very diverse group of friends. There are the childhood friends, high school friends,college friends,mommy friends ect ect...
I think that strong and true friendships is one of life's greatest blessings. Even if you don't see or talk with people as often as you wish you could, friends are those people that you know will always be there when you need them.

This past summer I did the Susan G. Koman 3 day walk for the cure in Boston with a group of women from all over the country. It was a life changing 3 days to say the least, walking 60 miles in 3 days was the least of it. The range of emotions, the touching stories, the people lining the streets cheering it was like nothing I can ever explain. But during those 3 days I built some amazing friendships, some of these women I had never met before these 3 days have now become like family to me. We are there for each other during the daily ups and downs of life, they are the first ones I call or text with news(either good or bad). I know that if I needed them these women would stop at nothing to be there for me. There are very things in life as precious as true friends, so take the time to tell those people you truly cherish just how much they mean to you.

Promises Promises

In life we constantly make promises, to our kids, to our partners, to our jobs, even to ourselves. The problems start when we can't keep all of our promises. Sometimes we make promises and life gets in the way of keeping them, sometimes we make them and then realize that they were a mistake, sometimes we make them and then it just becomes to hard to keep up or end of them. Each week,month,year,day I promise myself I will eat better, I will work out, I will stop eating junk. I do okay for a few days(or hours but who is counting) and then I go back to my old ways.
I promise myself I will leave my phone alone at night when I am home with my family and my kids, and then I check it quickly and lose myself in it for hours at a time.

8 years ago I promised my husband in front of our friends and family that I would love,honor,respect and love him till death do us part. I haven't always kept up my end of those promises. I am not saying I don't love my husband or the life we have together, but some where along the way I stopped putting in as much effort as a marriage requires. Life gets in the way of promises and unless we make them a daily priority it can spiral out of control. Recently I have noticed I take my husband and our relationship for granted, I stopped putting in the effort, we stopped making our marriage a priority. This isn't good for us and it isn't good for our family. So this month I am going to make the extra effort, each week I am going to try and do something(be it something small) to let me husband know that our marriage, our family, our life together is a priority to me. That the life we have built means more to be then he will ever know....

2014 Bucket List

So I decided that in 2014 I wanted to make a bucket list of things I hoped to accomplish. Some of them are one time things and some are recurrent life changes. I may or may not complete them all this year, but to me it is a goal to work towards, a goal about making my life happier,healthier and more involved~

2014 Bucket List

Fitness

1.Go to Zumba at least once a week

2.Focus on healthy eating and not on dieting

3.Start and finish the couch to 5k program

4.Sign up and finish the color run

5.Walk 2-3 times a week

6.Take a yoga class

 

Family

1.Plan a family movie night/activity for once a month
 
 2.Take the kids to the cape for a long weekend

3.Take the kids to the beach at least twice

4.Take the kids on the bike trail

5.Spend more one on one time with each of the kids

6.Start a family book(book to read as a family at bed time)

7.Do more arts and crafts with the kids

8.Take the kids to Disney

9.Take the kids picking seasonally (strawberries,apples,pumpkins)

10.Teach Elayna to ride a bike without training wheels
 
11.Take the kids to Boston 

House/Home

1.Plant a garden

2.Decorate our bedroom

3.Decorate the half bath/repaint

4.Plant flowers in the front of the house

5.Turn the front closet into an office/reading space

 

Marriage/Relationship

1.Do a monthly date night with Jim

2.Spend more time talking to each other

3.Do more activities as a couple(movies,concerts,take a cooking class)

4.A weekend away just the 2 of us

5.No phone after 7 pm two nights a week

 

Personal

1.Read at least 10 books

2.Make plans with a girlfriend at least once every other month

3.Add more color to my wardrobe

4.Learn to crochet

5.Learn to use makeup better

Weight shaming

In college I was thin, for most of my life I was thin and it came easily to me. I didn't worry about what I ate, I was active but never really was into working out. All of this was true until sophomore year in college.  At that time I was dating someone and not in a very healthy relationship. Actually to be honest toxic would be more accurate. He was not only emotionally abusive, controlling and mean he had also started to become physically abusive. Its started out small enough , shoves when I wasn't paying "attention" to what he was saying, him holding my hand a little to hard when he thought I was looking at other guys. Then the  emotionally abuse got worse, he would tell me I was gaining weight, he would tell me my clothes were to tight and I was only wearing them for attention. He started to tell me what clothes I should and shouldn't wear. But the constant harping on my weight was the worst, I soon became hyper focused on what I was eating, how clothes fit and my weight. I was told at 110 I looked "right" to him. So I began to weight myself daily, if the scale read 110 I was okay, if it read 110.5 or god forbid 111/112 I would stop eating for the day until I was back to my correct weight. I became an expert on moving food around on a plate to make it look like I had eaten, I began to make excuses to not go to meals with friends.  Soon my obsession with my weight and our relationship spiraled out of control and I had no idea where to turn. I am sure if my friends knew what was going on they would have stepped in, but I had become so good at hiding things.

One night this boyfriend showed up at my dorm unexpected and I was walking in from dinner with a friend(a male friend), I knew right away things were going to get ugly. He held my arm in a death grip all the way up to my room, we were barely in the door we he started with the name calling, asking if I was sleeping with every guy I could. I wish then that I knew I should be angry and not hurt, his words were not a reflection of who I was. I told him I was sorry and that the guy was just a friend and he said he didn't believe me, that I was just a slut who didn't deserve him and that he should leave. I told him that maybe he should and that was when he slapped me. I was so broken at that moment that I thought it was my fault. That what he said was right, that I was fat and I was ugly and no else was going to love me but him. He had broken down my spirit so much that I felt worthless.

I tried to apologize and I told him I was sorry and he looked at me with such hatred and I was truly scared. He told me I was lucky that he would be with someone like me, that I should be grateful that he was trying to make me a better person. When I went to check in the mirror to see of I had a bruise on my face he told me I was vain and self obsessed and he couldn't understand why since I was such a fat ass. I turned to tell him he was being mean and cruel, he shoved me . I slipped on the tile floor and hit my head on the cement block my bed was propped up on. I could feel the blood the minute it started pouring out, I was in total shock and didn't know what to say. The pain was so intense and then he started screaming at me about "look what I did and it was all my fault". He told me he was so angry at me that he was leaving, and he did. He left me bleeding in my dorm room from the back on my head. When I was finally able to sit up and get a towel the blood was pouring down my neck. I knew I needed stitches but had no idea who to call. So I called a friend and told her I slipped on a shoe and needed a ride to the er. 6 stitches later I knew I had to get out. Once back in my dorm, I called him and told him that if he ever contacted me again I would go to campus police. He laughed at me and said I would be calling him back, begging for him to forgive me and to take me back.
I will admit there were days I felt so alone and so bad about myself I almost called him. But I kept thinking what I would do if I knew someone was treating my friend, my daughter, my sister that way and I didn't call.

I would like to say that after that point I cared less about my weight, that I "forgave" myself for not being perfect all of the time with food. But that would be a lie, I have struggled for years with my weight and my body image.

Fake it till you make it ???

First and for most blogging on an iPad is not as easy as you would think. Not having a real keyboard makes it a bit hard to type. But alas I will struggle threw.

So along for my weight loss journey is one of my close friends(I won't name her here incase she doesn't want the world to know her business ;)

So this wonderful brave friend offered to come with me to my first ever Zumba class. Let me start by saying I am not the most coordinated person and I have little to no rhythm. But off to Zumba we went, and I have to say it was pretty fun. I mean I probably looked like someone who was being stung by a colony of bees but as the instructor told us at the start of the class "just keep moving" is the most important part. And move we did, 75 minutes of Zumba is a work out for sure. I would say about 99% of the time I  had no clue what I was supposed to be doing , but we faked it and kept moving and dancing and sweating. We laughed and laughed and that has to burn extra calories right??
Going to class made me realize how out of shape I really was, but it's s great way to try and get things back to where they belong.

So all and all I think Zumba could be a new and fun way for me to get back into shape and work on being more active and more healthy.  Learning the moves to Zumba much like losing weight is going to take time, patience and hard work. Life changes don't happen over night, they take hard work and sweat and tears and a lot acceptance ......

Learning to accept and learning to let go...

For as long as I can remember I have battled with my body and body image. From being to short, flat chested or having bad skin, its been a uphill battle. But the older I got the more down I became on myself, then I became a mother. I realized the more negative things I said about myself the more my daughter was learning to hate her own body and that scared me.

So I decided that it was time I learned to accept who I am and to start making some healthier choices. This year I will be 35 and I have decided the biggest gift I can give myself is acceptance. I need to stop putting myself down for the weight I don't lose and focus on making better choices daily. I need to work on being the best me I can be, I need to focus on loving myself . I need to stop the battle with food, the roller coaster of fad diets, I need to realize that perfection is not obtainable but love is.

I want my daughter to realize how amazing she is, I want her to see herself for all she is an all she can do. But if I am constantly filling her life and world with negative comments about myself she will learn to be full of self doubt and disappointment .

So this year I am determined to learn more acceptance, to learn to love myself and to make myself a priority. Its not going to be easy and its not going to be fast but I am determined to live a better, healthier and happier life. I want to enjoy things with my family,I want to be in pictures and not just taking them. I want to make memories with my kids,not just wish I was playing,swimming or running with them.

A very smart woman once told me that you always need a plan, that you need to put out into the universe what you really want out of life. I know this advice was about job success but it applies to daily life as well. I need to learn to accept my mistakes, learn from them and move forward.

So this year I am starting with acceptance and looking forward to a healthier and happier life.....