It was my birthday this week and I generally don’t pay too much attention to it or get too reflective about what birthdays mean, but this year I turned 28 and I thought about the fact that I’m creeping towards 30. This fact makes me think a bit about about time—how quickly it passes, how we spend it, how little time we have on this planet, and how much time and energy it will take to make a different world for animals. The more I think about that, the more I realize I don’t want to waste a moment. I literally pack my days—with a million writing projects, school and research, reading new books on animal rights and other subjects, teaching—all trying to get educated and motivate change for animals. And also try to pack my days with care for the animals who are close to me—taking Maizy to the park or on a walk, doing work for Pigs Peace, spending supervised time each day with our two feline companions, cooking food for myself and Eric, and doing things (like cleaning and gardening with Eric) that make our home a more nurturing, peaceful place. It feels good to me to be busy, to be productive and active and get to the end of the day exhausted. When I rest I try to really rest. I’m a very hard, sound sleeper and relaxing for a couple of episodes of TV before bed is integral to my mental health.
Creeping towards 30 also makes me think about my body—how I feel about it, how I care for it (or don’t), how necessary a thing it is to have a body and how wonderful it is to have a body that functions well and allows me to do all of the things I do, how impermanent bodies are. I’ve been thinking a lot in the past year about how much time I’ve spent since I was a teenager not liking aspects of my body, looking in the mirror and feeling like I’m not good enough…if I could just lose that 10 or 20 pounds, I would feel differently. I’ve never had any kind of eating disorder, but I’ve definitely fallen prey to the (what seems to a widespread) attitude that women should look a certain way, and should do what it takes to get there (i.e. dieting, exercise or more extreme methods like plastic surgery). About a year ago I started reading the blog JL Goes Vegan. JL is in her 40s and has resolved to “stop chasing skinny.” She had spent most of her life trying to lose weight by exercising and dieting. When she turned 40, she realized that she didn’t want to chase skinny anymore and she shifted her focus to eating and exercising for health and not worrying about her weight. I love this idea and I’ve been eager to understand how a person gets to this point. It seems relatively straightforward to me that you could stop dieting and do moderate exercise that feels good, but is not excessive. The more difficult thing for me to imagine is how you change your own perceptions of yourself.
How do I look in the mirror and truly accept what I see? How do I turn off that ruthlessly harsh inner critic? How do I stop that self-deprecating talk mixed with humor? Intellectually I can see that this self-deprecation is such a waste of time. And it’s time and energy that could be dedicated to working for animals. It feels frivolous to even think about body image when animals are suffering and dying, and yet, I feel that this is inner work I should be doing in order to find some kind of peace that would make me a more effective advocate for animals. Working for animals and being vegan, for me, is based on a fundamental commitment to non-violence. Practicing non-violence with regards to animals was a natural extension of a practice I’d grown up with. Finding Tibetan Buddhism, too, was about a daily, lived practice of acceptance and compassion for others—a commitment to avoiding violence at every opportunity. I could talk for hours about various forms of violence in our world—structural violence, physical violence, emotional violence, silent violence, etc.—and yet, I ignore a very real, destructive form of violence that is as close to home as it can get. This self-deprecation and unwillingness to accept myself for what I am is violent. If I’m truly committed to nonviolence, this has got to hit the road. I’ve got to clear the decks so that there are fewer distractions from what’s really important. Of course, this is nice to say, but HOW?
I don’t have an answer to this question, but JL just recently posted about a book called Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self-Acceptance by Rosie Molinary. Radical self-acceptance… Radical self-acceptance. RADICAL SELF-ACCEPTANCE! I love that. Since I read the title, I’ve been repeating that phrase in my head, like a mantra, trying to understand what it means and what it would look like. I just got the book and there is a daily exercise for an entire year. I’m going to try it and we’ll see how it goes.
In the meantime, I’m feeling a little exposed having shared such personal thoughts on the blog…but I think this is probably part of the process of healing from nearly two decades of self-inflicted violence. Any thoughts from you all on body-image and/or radical self-acceptance and what that looks like?
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What you write here really strikes a chord, Katie. In fact I could have written this post myself. I spent the first three and a half decades of my life hating my body, constantly plotting ways to make it smaller, obsessing over the softness of my thighs, stomach, and rear. Forget that I was a college athlete and remain extremely active to this day; forget that I never have weighed much more than 110 lbs. and that my jean sizes were always petite. Those facts and stats meant NOTHING in the face of this overwhelming certainty that I was larger than I should be. Fat days were lost days, and there were far, far too many of them.
At the same time, much like you, my relentless self-deprecation lived alongside an equally relentless awareness that my energy could be channeled in MUCH better ways. Instead of lambasting my beautiful self, I could be helping to heal our beautiful planet — including the animals crying out for intervention. I have had to grieve the loss of so many years of my life, knowing that (a) there’s no getting them back and (b) pointing blame — at “society,” at the media, at whatever — doesn’t help. What HAS helped is living just as you described: busily, intentionally, lovingly. I am so happy for you that you are waking up this early in your life! Stay the course. My wish is that you (and I and ALL other women) lose not one more precious moment of our lives . . . for the animals and for ourselves. Happy birthday.
Melissa, Thank you so much for your lovely, honest and kind words. I’m glad the post struck a chord with you. It’s been building for a while and I feel like I’ve just barely scratched the surface of this subject, but I’m at least going to try to intentionally engage with this topic in my daily life, with the hopes of moving on to more productive ways of being in the world. I’m delighted also to discover your blog. I just gobbled up a dozen or more of your beautiful posts and have added your blog to my Google reader. Looking forward to reading more. 🙂