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Day 17: Something I don’t usually share is…

… something I will not share online. Ever.

For some reason this prompt takes me straight to my reasons for using social media. I’m here for two main purposes: to practice writing for public consumption and to listen to people’s response to the writing, to their stories and opinions.

Along the way I’ve made friends, learned, changed my mind, promoted a podcast, connected with people in the profession, and so much more. I will always be grateful.

But I’m still here partly because I choose daily to keep the majority of my life private and away from my writing. That is on purpose.

I’ve heard writers call instagram their virtual living room, and it’s always amused me.

Would we ask someone in our real living room to sign up for our newsletter? Buy our book? Download our episode?

I couldn’t do it.

It seems to me like we have to build these communities online for the purpose of capitalistic success. Even if the intentions are the purest and best, there is still an outcome of personal profit involved, yes? This is uncomfortable especially if personal vulnerability is what’s required to build that community.

So here’s a permission slip for those of you who use social media to build a business or a platform for something. You are not required to share the most intimate details of your life with the public. It doesn’t make you inauthentic. You don’t need to commodify your life for a following. You can keep most of your life for the people who show up for you (and if they are online - wonderful!).

I’d love to hear what you think about this and how you see social media in your life. Tell me in a comment.

#onedaymay #thelifechangingmagicofgrowingup #boundaries #writersofinstagram #writersofig #boundaries #socialmedia #findyourflock #soulscripts

Day 15: My body is telling me… .. to eat There

Day 15: My body is telling me…

.. to eat

There’s no way to get around the cliche of women writing about body image on the internet in 2022. Here we are. Still.

Maybe you’re like me, and your earliest memories of food had to do with hearing the people around you discussing weight loss and weight gain, which foods were bad and good. I search my memories for women in my early years who had good things to say about their bodies, and I find no one.

A woman’s body was subject to critique by those closest to her. A woman’s body was an object of catcalls and whistles by the men on the street corner. A woman’s body was a source of temptation to the men at church.

A woman’s body needed to be contorted, diminished, controlled.

I learned all of these lessons before I was a teenager.

It won’t surprise you that in the decades that went by, I’ve gone through a number of diets and sizes, worn ill-fitting clothing in the name of modesty, and wrestled with what I saw in the mirror. I’ve made my body very small, and I’ve taken up space. I’ve had seasons of rest and seasons of turmoil.

There is no refuge in our culture for women who are hungry after years of dieting. Everywhere you turn is the message that our bodies could look different, BE different if only we (worked out, dropped gluten, eliminate sugar, add protein, start eating at noon). Who profits from our hatred of our bodies? Who benefits because of our disappointment with what we see?

Today I’m grateful for the lesson of breastfeeding, for the way it reorients me toward my hunger because I am hungry all the time.

Deep-inside hunger. Hands-shaking-if-I’ve-nursed-before-breakfast hunger. So I eat.

I eat porridge, smoothies, and supplements. I eat donuts, almond croissants, and muffins. I eat asparagus, green beans, pasta with mushrooms, rice, bowls of pork bun, a double quarter pounder from McDonalds, roast beef, chicken soup, and pizza.

I eat like a woman who has never eaten before.

I eat to feed my hunger.

I eat to remember that I can because my body needs food.

I eat to remind myself that food is good and so am I.

📷 @becmathesonphotography

#onedaymay #thelifechangingmagicofgrowingup #dietculture

Day 12: Throwback version of me Nearly 11 years

Day 12: Throwback version of me

Nearly 11 years ago I had my first child, and if I could go back, here’s what I would tell her:

It is so sweet, and it is so hard.

When people ask if you need help, say yes even if you don’t know what you need.

You can leave the baby with your husband for a few hours or a few minutes. Just leave the apartment and go for a walk.

Doing the work is part of what generates the love. Every diaper change, every feed creates more room in your heart for love.

You will cry a lot, often because you’re happy, sometimes because you’re sad.

Ask for help.

Lay down again. Even if you did a few hours ago.

You’re allowed to think this is the best thing ever.

You’re allowed to dislike it, too.

The memories aren’t lost with every stage, they’re written on your skin, carved in your heart, remembered by your muscles.

When you’re angry, follow it like an arrow. It’s inviting you to be honest about something you’re denying.

The body needs time to heal.

It takes a long time - maybe a lifetime - to learn how to mother. You’re at step 1. Be kind to yourself.

Share this post with a new mom in your life ♥️.
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#onedaymay #thelifechangingmagicofgrowingup #motherhood #melbournemama #newmum #newmom #mumlife #momlife #wellwateredwomen #soulscripts

Day 8: Something I believe Complementarity Years

Day 8: Something I believe

Complementarity

Years ago I was listening to Krista Tippet interviewing particle physicist Frank Wilczek on @onbeing. One of the ideas they discussed was that when the deepest questions of the universe are explored, you can find that two opposing things are true but perhaps not true at the same time (this is my best attempt at a summary, podcast link in stories).

His example was light. It is both a particle and a wave, but he said they are not both at the same time. To say light is only a particle or only a wave is not true.

I heard this conversation when we were members of the most theologically conservative church I’ve ever been a part of, and week after week I could see my faith dying under the weight of “the only right preaching is verse by verse” and “the sovereignty of God.”

They tightly drew the box around God, limiting what the Bible said to the boundaries of the young, the restless and reformed. And week after week, the smaller God became.

Frank Wilczek, who is an atheist, and his words were an invitation from God to me that day into a deep, wide, and ever expanding universe that offered the oxygen of many questions.

It invited me into a way of living where holding two things together was possible even if I didn’t understand the way forward.

I love my children, and my children exhaust me.

The world is beautiful, and the world is terrible.

People heal each other with acts of kindness, and people tear each other apart.

There are truths that defy explanation.

Maybe the point isn’t a fearful clinging to what we believe to be true in order to escape what we know is also true.

Maybe the light just has to be a wave when it’s a wave and a particle when it’s a particle. However the light slides into your life, you know because you can see.

#onedaymay #thelifechangingmagicofgrowingup #frankwilczek #particlephysics #kristatippett #onbeing #theology #christianliving

Day I-can’t-remember: What would I tell myself a

Day I-can’t-remember: What would I tell myself a year ago?

Let go.

Anyone else find it hard to believe we are living through (lived through) a global pandemic? Yeah me too.

In two years we spent 262 days in lockdown. I did some head-splitting math, and that’s over 30% of two years spent at home. I still don’t know what to do with that.

This time last year we were between lockdowns.

I had a miscarriage in March, and in July I’d find out that I was pregnant with Benjamin.

What do we even do with the strange and unexpected ways of life, the matters we do not control?

I have no idea except to let go.

What has it meant to let go? I stopped looking for the what-does-this-mean factors. I stopped wondering if the events of my life pointed toward decisions I needed to make, I stopped wondering if there was a bigger picture. I just kept going one day at a time. It was all I could do.

Wrangling meaning out of the everyday is kind of one of my hobbies, but sometimes the events are too much, too complex, and then your big kids are doing at-home learning and well, need I say more?

Letting go for me meant saying I’m just going to keep moving. I do not need to understand. I can trust this will come back to me when I need to deal with it.

- for #onedaymay with @laura.tremaine

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#letitgo #thelifechangingmagicofgrowingup #lockdownlife #lockdown #miscarriage #posttraumaticgrowth #healthylife

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