Woke up with a smile on my face.....

Oh what a difference a day can make. *smiles* I woke up feeling rested and so happy. The conscience choice to improve my life has really made that much of a change. I mean for a few years now, I have said i needed to get things back on track, but I never would get around to it. I always had a reason why I didn't get started, but they were just excuses. No matter how valid i might be able to make them sound, they are still just excuses for why I couldn't get motivated. I realize now why I just couldn't manage to get myself to follow through with all my plans. I was doing them all for the wrong reason. I wasn't doing it for myself. I wanted to do these changes for someone else. I wanted someone else's approval.

The funny thing is I have read similar stories from people. Not just about loosing weight, but for drug or alcohol abuse or even to quit smoking. They tried to stop because other people said they needed to, but it never worked out because they were not ready for the change. That is where i have been for the last few years. I knew what changes i needed and even wanted to make, but i just wasn't ready. I am not just talking about weight loss here. Yes weight loss is one of the major changes I am making in my life, but it's not the only thing I was putting off.

I was putting off furthering my education. Not so much that I wanted a degree, but more I just wanted to learn. The thing that has kept me from continuing my education is ADHD. Yep. I was diagnosed with this over 30 years ago, yet i didn't find this out til after I had graduated high school. My mother said her reason for keeping this from me was that she didn't want me to be put in special education classes. She was worried of the stigma associated with them, but in all honesty it would of been better than personally just thinking i was stupid. I would try my hardest in all my classes and barely scrape by in most. I did excel in math and art, but the rest were such a struggle. On top of that, my parents were constantly on me for not getting better grades like my older sister who was a straight A student. It hurt then, but it hurt even more when I found out that I had an actual learning issue that hampered my learning. It actually caused me to cry. It made me feel some what vindicated, as I had truly done my best. At the same time, I cried at what i saw as intentional cruelty. I eventually got past this, but i could not and will not forget. The adverse effect of this was that I was afraid to even try college. I didn't want to fail, so I didn't try so there was no chance of failure.

That in itself is a huge problem. Yes, it sounds good. Don't try and you can't fail because you never started, but this is a horrible way to live. I have a huge long list of things I want to do, but fear of rejection or failure has kept me from trying. A simple one is my art. I once painted something for my step-dad, and I was so incredibly proud of myself. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had painted, and the subject was something he was really interested in. I presented it to him. I stood there so excited to see his face when he saw it. With in seconds my joy was smashed against the rocks. I was told that the picture was okay, but then he gave it back to me and told me I needed to work on it some more. That was the last time i shared my art with someone. I was 15 at the time. It destroyed me.

I guess you could say, I grew up constantly being told by my own parents and siblings that I was not good enough. My parents would complain about my grades or insult my talent. My siblings insulted the way I looked and dress. It was nothing for my siblings and my step-dad to gang up on me, and make fun of me. Telling me my hair looked like straw. Making fun of the fact that I had a small chest compared to my sister who was very top heavy. They even made fun of my weight saying I was going to be so fat when I got older because of my stomach. The ridiculous part of this, at the time I weighed 92 pounds soaking wet. The reason I had a tummy was that I was so thin that when I ate I would have a tummy pooch right after I ate.

The reason I felt I needed to share this back story was that it sets up why I have a deep seeded fear of failing or being seen as not good enough. I was letting other peoples views of me and my talents skew my view of myself. I let that control me. The constant attacks by my family, the one group of people I should be able to look to for positive reinforcement, made me loose faith in myself. I only saw myself as they did. Ugly. Stupid. Lazy. Worthless. Because of this, any time anyone showed me attention I saw as positive, I did anything to keep that attention. I wont tell you all the things, over the last 30 years, I have done to seek the approval of people in my life. Some of them were what you expect, change hair color or type of clothes I wore, but some of them were much more extreme. Either way, I did all these things in hope to receive the approval of a  person, and in hopes of making myself feel good. The truth is that by changing myself to please someone else made me feel even worse about myself. I learned very quickly that I was only valued as long as I continued the charade that made them happy. I was not valued or loved for who I was, but for the part I played. Which meant that they didn't value the true me. This was incredibly destructive to my psyche which was already very worn out by years of mental trauma.

Some of you reading this might think that this sounds like I just need some good counseling. Over the years, I have done a little counseling here and there, but I still had that deep seeded need to be accepted. This caused issues with counseling. I didn't want the therapist to look down or think badly of me, and because of this i never dealt with my charade issues. Fear again stepped in, and I ran away.

Now, we come back to present day. I knew I would never be truly deeply happy as long as I continued to play the charade. It was a scary thought. Not just the idea that I would never be happy, but the thought that I would have to completely drop the charade in order to be deeply happy. The reason the later part of this is scary, is because the fear that I would loose what I had in my life. I was scared that my husband would love me less if I made these changes. I was just scared. I finally got up the guts to talk to my husband. I felt horrible having the conversation with him. Not just because of my fear, but even more how much it hurt my husband that I thought he would love me less. He was upset that I thought so little of his love for me. He said he loved me. He said he knew the real me, the me I hid from everyone else. This mentally knocked me off my feet. Tears were running down my face. I had been told this before by him, but I guess I never really heard him. I think this was my turning point. Not that I needed his approval to make these changes, but to know that me changing was seen as a good thing by him helped me know this was the right choice.

Is it going to be easy? Not at all. It is going to be a lot of hard work. It is going to take dedication. The saying 'Nothing worth having comes easy.' pops into my head. How true that saying really is. It is just like 'You get what you pay for.'. We all have learned that lesson the hard way at least once in our life. In life, you get out of it what you put into it.

I am determined to put all I have into changing my life. I want to get everything i can out of it. It might be baby steps, but each step gets me closer to where I am going. Just remember, it's the journey not the destination.

Why make a change?

What suddenly happen to make me sit up and notice i needed to make some changes? I looked in the mirror recently, and I didn't recognize the woman in the mirror. Mid life crisis maybe, but I couldn't believe i had gotten old? Last I remember I was in my mid 20s and had just gotten married to the most wonderful man. I look in the mirror, and I don't know who is looking back at me. Now, I am getting ready to have my 40th birthday this December, and just last November I celebrated 15 years with my husband.

As I continue to stare into the mirror, I can see more lines around my eyes, and when did I start getting these spots? I step back from the mirror for a better look. Turning side to side, I wonder what happen to my body. I look at other women my age, and some of them look better now than they did 20 years ago. So much has happen in the last 15 years.

I spent most of the last 15 years focusing on family life. Like most moms, my needs were moved to last on my list. Now that my youngest child is getting ready to turn 13 years old, I have more time to focus on me again. As I started to focus on myself, I realized i had pushed a lot of things to the back burner. My hobbies. My schooling. Most of all my health. All of these things are important to me, but had been pushed aside to focus on more practical and necessary family needs.

Like a lot of women, I had slowly put on weight. A pound here or there isn't noticed so much. Then I went up a pants size and another and another. Then one day i was shopping and went to try on jeans and realized at 5 foot 2 inches I was now wearing a size 22. I get winded if I go up the stairs to quickly. I buy slip on shoes generally so i don't have to bend over to tie or buckle shoes, as it is rather difficult to bend over. It really sunk in when I moved to my new house. It has a glass shower that is directly across from the vanity, which sports a large double vanity with a HUGE mirror. I always take my glasses off to shower of course, but once day I didn't. I wasn't going to wash my hairs, so i left my glasses on. I happen to look to the left, and I was actually shocked. Shocked at how I had let myself go without even noticing.

Now don't get me wrong. I am not saying that every woman needs to be a stick figure, but every woman needs to be healthy. I am NOT healthy. At 5 ft 2 and 190 pounds, I am greatly over weight. That extra weight is taking it's toll on me. My knees hurt most days. I can't bend over and tie my shoes. There is even the very embarrassing part of how i now have hanging skin that causes several other issues. The excess skin hanging causes sweating, and the sweating causes chaffing. Those of you who have never had this happen, consider yourselves lucky. To those of you that have dealt with this, you can feel my pain.

My weight was just one of the things in my life i had put on the back burner, but it was the most noticeable since it is physical. Something else I put off was school. I put off college right out of high school for a few reasons. First, I got married to my high school boyfriend half way through my senior year of high school. Not because i was pregnant, but it was more a 'sure why not'. I had been living with him for a few month, and his family was really pushing it. Once I got married, I focused on trying to be the perfect 50's housewife. I wanted to be just like June Cleaver, and so I didn't even think about going to college. I will admit it now, it was a huge mistake. Actually both were huge mistakes. After 5 years, my marriage ended in divorce. Leaving me a single mother to my 2 year old. This made me need to focus on working and providing a life for my child. Once again, I had to put myself on back burner and focus.

One day without warning, love jumped up and smacked me in the face. A casual friend I had met when I was married showed a more than friends interest. And let me tell you, I was knocked off my feet when I actually realized this. I mean he was a HOT 19 year old, and I was a recently divorced 23 year old single mom. In one swift moment, I went from a unwanted wife to desired single mom. We dated and quickly things got really serious. Him and I both grew up with working mom's. So when we moved in together, he offered to let me quit my job so I could stay home with my daughter. I was so grateful  and put my focus on my daughter and my new relationship. Over the next few years there was a wedding for me and birth of my 2nd and last child. Life was busy and it took everything in me to keep up with life.

It is now 21 years since i graduated from high school and my kids are at ages that I can focus on me again. School is part of that focus. I decided that I wanted to start off slow, and I am taking a few free classes from www.coursera.org. The don't get college credit for the classes, but I do get certificates of completion. More than anything, I get the knowledge from the class and the pride in knowing I am bettering myself. This was my first major step in focusing on me. I can't explain how happy i was to sign up for my first two classes. I am so ready for this.

The next step I took was to focus on my hobbies. I love to craft, sew, glue gun, paint, crotchet, and so on. Here and there i would work a little here and there on something, but for the most part did do much. I decided that needed to change. I dug out all my sewing and painting stuff, and i transformed a basically pointless room into my open studio space. I didn't realize how much this would jump start my need to create. Within a few days of setting up my studio, I had altered several pieces of clothing from something i was going to toss into something hot. I even finally finished a couple simple projects i had started years earlier, but I hadn't finished them. It was a great feeling to step back and look at what i had done. With my own two hands i create beauty. It is my super power.

I had started working on two of the things I had pushed to the back burner, and now i decided it was time to take on the hardest of all. My health or better put my weight gain. I have been thinking about this change for a while now, but I just wasn't ready to do it. I kept trying to get started on it, but I failed because I was doing it for the wrong reasons. I wasn't doing it for myself, and each time I failed. I wanted to do it to be 'hot', or i wanted attention from others for my looks. The reason i decided to do it now, I want to walk without pain in my knees. I want to be able to go up and down the stairs without getting winded. I want to be able to bend over and tie my shoes. Most of all, I want to be around to see my kids grow older and start their own lives and to have their own kids.

They say getting started is the hardest part. Bull. It is staying going once you started. My first step is to make exercise part of my regular routine. I know if I can keep my routine up for a couple months, it will be second nature. I will do it out of routine without even having to think about it. I am going to start off easy. One of the biggest mistakes people make with exercise is trying to do too much too fast. If you over work yourself from the get go, there is a greater chance you are going to just give up. What you do is start off simple and easy. You establish the exercise as a routine. Once that routine is solid, then you intensify your exercise little by little. With this in mind, I am going to start off doing a half hour step class and yoga. Both are low intensity and are something I can do at home without a bunch of gym equipment.

I hope you will join me in my journey through the good, the bad and the sweaty. I desire is that by sharing the struggles I go through, I can inspire others. Working hard to juggle focusing more on myself while still taking care of my family. I will be share a frank and open view into my life, and I look forward to hearing your feedback.