Journey to Mee-dom

There are so many posts these days (and really forever and always) about women's bodies. They still seem to have this flavour of what they "should" be; that strong is the new skinny, that real bodies look like this (insert photo of a woman with curves here). Let's not shame any-body, let's just love ourselves right now, in this moment right where we are at! The good news is, and I can see it from all the posts like this - that things are changing. Self-love and acceptance are on the horizon! I am working at loving my body, more everyday. It's a struggle, and still I feel that old pull of "you aren't skinny/sexy/feminine" enough. BUT I can honestly say that I am proud of amazed by this wonderful body, what it has done and what it continues to do. This pride/love I hold didn't come after my body changed, it came first and it will always come first - unconditionally and without warrant. It just is. I am the strongest I have ever been and ye...

Danny called me all day the day he found her. He sent pictures, and texts and even tricked me into to calling him by saying "Call me. It's not about the dog." I agreed to let him bring her home for the night (not that I had a choice), and 1 night turned into 3 before we heard news from her owner. Danny called me and said "Her owner called. I don't want to call him, cause I don't want to give her back." I convinced him to be honest and ask the guy if maybe he was looking for a new home for her. Sure enough, when Danny explained how much she was fitting in with our family the guy thought about it and called back and said "yeah man honestly I work so much, if she is happy there it might be for the best." So Milly (the dog we had named Maggie) was ours to keep. It didn't take her long to  fit in and for us to figure out that she could open push down latch doors. Almost everyday she would push her 70 lbs fierce pitbull force past me and shoo...

As I was leaving this morning to go teach my first yoga class, Danny was asking the kids if they wanted to go hiking and picking mushrooms after I got back. Lilly's bottom lip quivered as she asked "Up a mountain?!?". As she began to cry, feeling her fear, which I came to realize was due to the unknown - out there maybe getting lost in the wilderness - I found myself feeling the exact same thing about my class. It was the unknown for me, uncharted territory. I realized I was friggen scared. I remember, not so long ago, saying to someone who asked me if I would ever teach yoga "I really love yoga, but I don't think I ever want to teach it." The truth is, I wanted to teach yoga SO BAD I could taste it. So why in the hell did I say that? Well, my fears got the better of me, that's why. What better to do with a big scary goal than pretend like it's not something I want to do anyway?! Good call Grace - you are safe...for now. It wasn't more than a...

What’s meditation got to do with body image issues? Well hang on, I will tell you... There’s been a lot of buzz about meditation. Kinda seems like everyone and their cat is doing it (I don't think dogs meditate). I fought the idea of even trying it out - long and hard. I sort of just classified myself as someone who had such a busy mind that I wasn’t going to be able to do it. I outcasted myself from the meditation club. My mind never shuts up, no seriously – never.  It’s so hard to get the damn thing to stop, when I describe to people that it's like a hamster running on a wheel I start analyzing what kind of hamster it would be, and how fast she would be running, and where the hell she would be trying to get to, or if she is aware that she is simply on a wheel going nowhere? ...Case in point.  I had so many questions that I (thought) needed answers to before I started.  1. WHAT: I needed to know exactly what it was...so I could judge myself on how good...

If the vagina ain't happy ain't nobody happy. Yeah that’s what I said...in a sing song voice - kinda like Bobby McFarrin when he sang “Don’t worry be Happy”, which I sing to my vagina - No, no I don't.  I wrote at the end of my post 'What She-Ra and My Period Have in Common' that it was to be continued, so here it goes.... I am sure you are not shocked by much that I write/say at this point but I have been thinking a lot lately about sharing my 'happy vagina monologues'.   I think vaginas are the neatest and I have mad love for such a miraculous body part so I've been compiling a list of all the elements of a happy creative crevasse  I have come to realize that we don’t typically (and of course there is exception) know how to make conscious decisions to take care of our Yoni’s .  Warning: This post may take you a while to read. There are a few links that I highly recommend, and hope you will share and spread the word on. That being said, I know th...

I used to wonder all the time what it would be like to be a mother. I obsessed over it, and I judged everyone based on how fearful I was on how little I actually knew about rearing humans. I made a bajillion oaths about what kind of mother I was and wasn't going to be. I would see women in grocery stores with their kids, kneeling down explaining in great details to them why they couldn't have Smarties and I would smile at them as if to say "nice work!" and then think "Yep! I'm going to be that kinda-mom!". I would also see the exhausted mom and have no idea what she was going through, who would abruptly reply to her kids "Because I said so!" and I would think judge "I'm NEVER going to be THAT kind of mom." Well guess what. I've been both. The truth is that I didn't know who the hell I was before I had kids so how the hell did I know what kind of mom I was going to be? I had not been through even 1% of the trenches tha...

As I have often experienced in Kelowna since I moved here - there are no in between seasons. Not from Winter to Summer anyway. Spring is usually barely budding before it gets mowed over. We have snow and then BAM - it's 30 degrees celsius. As luck (for lack of a better term) would have it my air conditioning in my 2003 hub-cap-missing-no-radio-having-sweet-ass Carolla decided (cause it has a personality all unto it's own) to cease working two days ago just as the heat hit harrrrrd (say with PEI long "a" accent). So I seriously was fucking mad. Pissed right off, to be exact. We took it in to the Air Doctor on Enterprise (shout out Air Doc!) who is, coincidentally a super nice honest guy and he couldn't quite figure out the problem, nor could we find the fuse box for that matter. *To the guy who decided to hide the fuse box behind the steering wheel, what the hell buddy? I say "guy", because no woman would ever do such a thing. Today when I was on m...