Shunning the Silicone: New Year Resolutions gone rogue...

The majority of my childhood was spent in a major plastic surgery hub. Per capita it had one of the highest rates for cosmetic surgeries in all the United States. It also was notorious for being the anti-depressant capital, had alarming rates for eating disorders and even more horrifying pornography rates. It is a relatively quaint and small area. Very few people outside of Utah have ever even heard of this town. In this town, the most poorly kept secret was that most girls were awarded a boob job upon their high school graduation. If for some reason they were not granted this benevolent gift at graduation, it would later be offered to them as an engagement gift from their betrothed. My intention is not to villainize. I had a lovely childhood and some of the most saintly, wonderful people I know inhabit this strange place. Nor am I claiming silicone filled women can’t be saintly… there are numerous hearts of gold beating behind plastic racks…My intention in sharing is to explain the place I grew into a young woman and to illuminate how I came to initiate a full on war with my body…

I was not born in this town. I moved there at eight years old while my mother was attending law school. If being the daughter of a single mother in law school didn’t make me an anomaly, my outspokenness, wild hair and “curvy” body certainly did. Half way through junior high I became painfully aware that “beauty” was currency…neither my brain nor loud mouth would buy me anything in this peculiar town. I studied Seventeen magazine religiously, I exercised like a fiend, I straightened my hair daily, I bleached out any remnant of color from every strand, I laid out…During the beginning of high school I was a dedicated athlete. I played tennis, volleyball and basketball ensuring there was no season I wasn’t moving. Between seasons I was in intensive conditioning classes. I was in optimal physical condition. It didn’t matter. No matter how much I exercised or how hard I worked I was still freakishly tall and 15 pounds overweight. No amount of strength training, hair bleaching, tanning or running could make me 5’3 and a size 2. Before beginning my junior year of high school we moved away but the acrylic nails and body fixation followed me…

If I was angry at my body for its inability to be 5’3 and 125 you can imagine how exasperated I was when the cancer emerged… However with the cancer came the insight that the tumor in my brain had been wreaking havoc with my weight for years. Though the tumor was not responsible for my height or my inability to be a size 2 it was the culprit of my constant weight fluctuations and those extra 15 pounds… This was glorious news! Once the tumor was gone I would never battle with an excess of weight… I would be skinny… As it so happened, removing the tumor did not conquer those extra pounds. In fact the combination of treatment and stress threw my thyroid and hypothalamus into complete chaos, so much so that I gained close to 80 pounds during the course of my treatment. On one occasion a friend even remarked to me something along the lines of “you’re the only cancer patient I know to gain weight, I thought cancer patients were supposed to lose it.” I still haven’t lost those 80 extra pounds…

This year you will not see one of my New Year’s resolutions including the words “weight” or “lifestyle” (not that you would see my resolutions anyway figuring I seldom write them down…) This year will be the first year in almost twenty where one of those words will not appear on my list…While it may seem a radical choice seeing as I haven’t lost those extra pounds… I am choosing to write a list or resolutions only including the words: forgiveness, service and empathy. I honestly wonder what would happen if every woman chose to stop punishing herself for every flaw real or imagined and focused on cultivating forgiveness, service and empathy this next year? It would be a different world. During my undergraduate study I took a class evaluating the impact of child abuse. The professor for this class said something that has stuck with me ever since. She stated that warped body image was the sexual abuse of the masses and was particularly destructive because it was depriving a whole generation of nurturance. I have reflected upon this statement often. The war we have declared on the female figure and the worship of plastic parts has indeed deprived us of our ability to care for others and ourselves in the most needed ways. Ironically this fixation not only robs us of our emotional, mental, and spiritual health but most acutely of our physical well-being. For years I allowed myself to think only of the ways my body had failed me. I allowed myself to bring a cloud of self-doubt and loathing to a room of women by being disparaging about my own body or appearance. I allowed myself to miss opportunities to serve, listen and empathize by living in this fixation. There are two things I have found are universally true among women: first, most every woman I know claims the time in her life she both looked and felt her best was when she fixated on it the least. And second, no matter what, if one woman begins to be self-deprecating the entire room melts into feeling inadequate.

This year I am grateful for a body that has seen me through cancer twice, that has allowed me to maintain an eye amongst radiation, multiple surgeries, and injections. I am grateful for a brain that has had the ability to recover and rewire. I am grateful for the empathy my physical limitations have awarded me. This upcoming year I am choosing resolutions that will bring hope over shame. I am choosing resolutions that will illuminate and elevate a room. I am choosing resolutions that will make me more emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically healthy. I am choosing resolutions that will allow me to contribute a piece of nurturance back into this plastic world.

Stick a needle in my eye if I lie...The truth about surviving

I am an honest person. For better or worse I am genuinely the world's worst liar. I am so bad in fact, I can only remember telling one solitary lie in my entire 27 years. I still remember it. I was five years old. We had weird neighbors at the time. They were green to the point that they used neither organic deodorant or even baking soda... In their defense they were green before Whole Foods even existed and organic deodorant was available for purchase. Though they were "free love" in theory and generous with sharing their body odor... they were rigid in opinion and the type of people who believed it was both their right and obligation to parent all the children of the neighborhood. I was both fascinated and terrified by them. On one occasion my brother appeared to be aimlessly wandering through the neighborhood, my neighbors demanded to know what he was doing and where he was going, I fearfully responded with "He is searching for our stolen lawn mower." Yes, I wasted my one true moment of blatant dishonesty on this excuse. There isn't a great moral or metaphor to be found in this example, my only purpose in sharing is to illustrate that while I have many vices, lying is not one of them. Most who know me would say I am unabashed to a fault. On the rare occasion I am able to exercise self control and not verbalize my every thought, my face is a dead giveaway. My siblings are a fair amount older than I am so their courting years were concurrent to my monstrously honest childhood years. I would give my opinion to every date of theirs who came to our door. I was so open about my feelings I even went as far as terrorizing the boyfriend of one of our houseguests. I found him abhorrent from the first time he stepped foot on our porch. To make my feelings known I snuck out of the house and poured multiple cans of diet coke inside his Lexus... I know I should feel bad about it but to this day I don't. I sometimes wish I still had the courage to both literally and metaphorically pour my diet coke into the Lexuses of many of the DudeBros I have encountered over the years...

For having seldom lied, I believe I have suffered an unfair share of needles in my eye. Literally. On average I have received an injection in my eye every three months for the past few years. This summer I suffered from such a significant infection in my eye I had to receive consecutive injections without numbing. The doctor feared because of the radiation damage to my eye I would not be able to tolerate the lidocaine. This past week while admiring an immaculate makeup job in the mirror, I noticed my typically green iris was half red...Though festive for the holidays I obviously panicked at the sight of my bleeding iris. The funny thing is bleeding irises, periodic injections into my eyeball and a whole other slew of problems that have come as side effects from my radiation treatment have become the most routine part of my life. I get far less nervous about needles in my eye than I do about airport security or riding a very crowded subway.

If I am being perfectly honest, there are days when survivorship is hard. There are days when I feel as though I have to survive survivorship. This is not to say I am not humbled or profoundly grateful for the miraculous preservation of my life, I AM. I feel guilty when I allow myself to feel discouraged, I feel guilty for the moments I am unable to keep things in perspective.
There is nothing more challenging for a survivor than to encounter individuals who have lost friends and loved ones to the disease, tragedy or event they were spared from. Most times I feel the people who are taken are far better people than I could ever imagine being. Feeling the weight of survivor's guilt only increases my need to feel "on" every single day. It increases my need to feel purposeful and to feel at though I am making a contribution. The thing is I don't feel "on" every single day. I don't feel an overwhelming sense of urgency and purpose every minute of every hour of every day. Somedays I truly believe my calling in life is to stay in my jammies and watch One Tree Hill on Netflix all day...

Last week when my iris started to bleed I was inconsolable. Prior to the bleeding incident my eye had been calmer than it had been in almost a decade. I was frustrated when the glimmer of hope for a season without visiting the eye doctor suddenly seemed a far less shimmering possibility. I wondered why God always seemed to have something he wanted to teach me. I wondered why I was not granted a holiday vacation from life's tutoring? When I finally went to the doctor he informed me I had Rubeosis and that the blood would clear in a couple of days. He then explained to me "Rubeosis" was given its name hundreds of years ago because the eyes of people who suffered from the disease would turn the color of rubies...

Neal A. Maxwell, one of the most beloved leaders in my church, also happened to be my best friend's grandfather and my neighbor growing up. He influenced my life in profound ways and though he is now gone I still visit his words frequently to find comfort, wisdom and perspective.  When I was a young girl he was diagnosed with Leukemia and presented with a significant fight. Recently another leader of my church recounted advice Elder Maxwell had given him when explaining his battle with Leukemia. He shared the thought that "Not shrinking is more important than surviving."

My family celebrated Christmas early this year as my sister and her family were only in town for a few short days. One of our traditions is to each share an experience or insight from the past year where we have seen the hand of God in our lives. There were triumphs and trials this year for all of us. As I listened I heard a common theme of "not shrinking." I was humbled as I looked around the room of people who all had "survived" in their own ways. Each of them received survivorship graciously and beautifully. Since then I have realized there is a reason my latest ailment is named after a precious gem. Though it strikes me as odd to name a blood filled eye after a ruby, I recognize the experience as shaping. Jewels are developed through heat and heavy pressures. Becoming and receiving life's jewels means there will seldom be winter vacations.
Truthfully, being a survivor is hard and this past week I felt bogged down by it. Luckily, I was poignantly reminded it isn't really about being a survivor but becoming someone who does not shrink.

The Ghost of Christmas Cleavage: Conquering your inner Christmas Goblin...

The holidays can bring out the goodness, warmth, kindness and generosity in people, it also can bring out the wacky, erratic, selfish and peculiar. Though I pride myself on remaining relatively even during the season I have certainly embodied the deck the halls duality we both fear and crave on an occasion or two... Allow me to share my top three favorite cautionary tales from my inner Christmas goblin: the Ghost of Christmas Consumer, the Ghost of Chirstmas Wall Street and the Ghost of Christmas Cleavage.

The Ghost of Christmas Consumer:

As a child I was a live and living cherub... in appearance... (still am... never grew out of my baby face) Rosy cheeked and enviably blonde and curly, I hid my inner Christmas goblin. At this age I only had two loves, wreaking havoc... and the Disney store. On a particularly wearied and weathered holiday shopping spree my mother asked my brother to stay with me near the mall's fountain while she snuck into the Disney store to purchase my Christmas present. (I know what you're thinking, she jumped and swam in the fountain or stole an excessive amount of change from it... sadly for the sake of the story but luckily for the sanity of my family I was not quite that diabolical or clever) The fountain is only relevant to the story as it was the center of traffic for the entire mall and had remarkable acoustics. I was irate! I could not understand why we were at the mall that housed the Disney store and I was being kept from it! I grew increasingly upset... I threw myself down prostrate on the ground and began to kick and scream, kick and scream and then kick and scream some more. My brother made feeble attempts to console me. He could not. People stopped and watched. My screams echoed. Eventually after five consecutive minutes of my screaming the Salvation army man threw down his bell, stormed over and demanded my brother "Control that child!" My brother looked at the bell ringer helplessly and responded, "Would you like to try?" To which the man retreated back to his bells. The combination of the mall's acoustics in this specific spot and my sheer loudness carried my screams to my mother. She quickly purchased my gift, came to save my brother from the Salvation Army stink eye and took me to the Disney store.

The Ghost of Christmas Wall Street:

The entrepreneurial spirit has seldom come to visit me. I have no idea how one even makes money or what motivates one to make a gross excess of it. I spent a good chunk of change to pursue the most obscure, made up, hybrid profession of all time. Combine the words, art, therapy, and teacher and not only will all the suits point and laugh the children will too! However, when I was approximately six years old, the day after Halloween, the entrepreneurial spirit paid me my first and only visit. My best friend and I decided that year we would capitalize on Christmas! And if the stores could start the day after Halloween so could we. We began to go caroling. Every day. Our neighbors were quick to let us in, after all who could resist the seasonal charm of two sweet young girls singing Christmas favorites at the top of their lungs in their foyer? After completing our final song we would then request compensation. Our first request was money but we would also settle for Christmas goodies. For some this only made our act all the more endearing, though our cuteness quickly wore off on the occasions  we grew belligerent after not receiving change or cookies. When our parents discovered our business practices were not above code we were quickly shut down. If only our mothers actually regulated Wall Street...We never did a seasonal sell again, though the following summer we did attempt to sell custom made dishrags door to door after ripping up old towels and drawing on them with magic marker...

The Ghost of Christmas Cleavage:

My grandfather retired at fifty and took up painting as a hobby. (bet you didn't expect to read "grandfather" immediately following the word "cleavage"...) My grandfather is strong willed to say the least. Let me put it this way, the only time in my entire life I have dropped an f bomb is after fighting with my grandfather... The fight was over why the Swiffer was preferable to a mop... I love the man, but we drive each other absolutely crazy at times. A few years ago without my knowing my grandfather decided to bury his inner Christmas goblin and give me a very sentimental gift. He decided to give me one of his very first paintings for which he also built a new pink frame. A few days before Christmas my mother pulled me aside and told me she had something to warn me about concerning my grandfather. I panicked. I worried she was about to tell me he was terminally ill or something was seriously wrong. I was both relieved and puzzled when she pleaded with me not to overreact to the gift he would give me on Christmas morning. She made sure to tell me how hard he had worked on it and though it was a bit strange he had put a great deal of thought into it. That Christmas morning I was anxious to see what would emerge as my gift. Nothing could have prepared me. Nothing could prepare you... My ninety year old  grandfather pulled the large pink frame from behind the couch and proudly placed it in front of me. Staring back at me was a painting of Marilyn Monroe. Posed as a mermaid. Completely naked. My Christmas goblin and I battled furiously in this moment. It wanted me to both shamelessly laugh and hysterically cry. I won against the goblin in this particular moment. I was able to graciously thank him. Though the goblin quickly took control again as my grandfather was both bewildered and hurt as to why I chose not to hang his gift on my bedroom wall...

The moral of the story is this, if you want to avoid Christmas catastrophes you would be wise to do the following things:

1. Do not put an excessive amount of glitter on your fingernails...
2. Do not dress up as a sexy Mrs. Claus no matter how tempting Mean Girls makes it look...
3. Do not bring Disney store dependent children within a ten mile radius of malls during the holidays...
4. Do not argue with your grandfathers about cleaning supplies or practices...
5. Do not mingle with MBA's over Christmas cocktails (or in my case mocktails and inordinate amounts of sugar) or start new business ventures...

Tis the season!