I FINALLY LOVE MY BULKY BELLY

There is something awesome and mind blowing about really, truly beginning to love your body. As I am thinking more and more about my impending double mastectomy, which involved taking the lovely fat from my abdomen to replace the breast tissue, I’m thinking about the parts of miss I’ll miss. Each blemish and scar tells a story, and I am just now getting it. The stretch marks I abhorred as a 19 year old, I now treasure as a reminder that my grown man was once a baby growing inside of me. A baby.  A baby who I loved and shaped into a grown up. Not one baby, but two babies. 

 I have scars from having my gall bladder removed at 22, which reminds of when I was highly over weight and unhealthy.  According to the doctors chart, I’m still over weight. But at 22, I was living off snickers bars, Pepsi soda, and KFC because I was working so much and on the go. I wasn’t exercising, I was eating lots of white starches and simple crabs, and mindfulness was a foreign concept to me. It was after this procedure I rediscovered exercise, switched to ground turkey and whole grains, and made water an addiction. Not to say, I still don’t crave fries and pizza, but I made life long changes that I could commit to. I discovered, meditation, pilates, yoga, zumba that I could do a 5k.
 On my lower right side is the scar from when I had my appendix removed.  And I was 7, so it was the old school "cut you open", in the hospital for 2 weeks, type of surgery. This little 2 inch long scar transports me back to that moment when I was in the hospital crying   “No” because the doctors said that I would need surgery immediately.  My father was so disturbed by my tears, he cried.I remember overhearing my grandmother tactfully tell him to basically man up, come back in the room and tell me that I was having the surgery and I would be okay. I was okay. I missed Halloween that year, but I got to get a happy meal with a chocolate shake in one of those jack-o’-lantern trick or treat buckets 
 as one of my first meals in the hospital. 


My latest scar is from having my ovaries removed the beginning of my journey to combat a disease that my grandmother and mother didn’t have the opportunity to.  And perhaps the most precious part of my stomach is my belly button...  proof that I was one connected physically to my mother by this remnant of an umbilical cord. And though a flat stomach is stomach I’ve always desired since Janet Jackson first introduced me to midriff, I love my ample, imperfect stomach, rolls and all. It still surprises me that today I’m so enamored by a part of my body that was the bane of my existence from age 11. 

For the Loved Ones

With the holiday season in full bloom, many people are in the mood to celebrate. But there are those of us who are suffering because the holidays remind us of the loved ones we've lost. I myself used to always get depressed after Thanksgiving because that was the last holiday I spent with my grandmother, even though she was bedridden. She died on Christmas morning in 1991, and since then my mother’s side of the family has not actually celebrated Christmas in the traditional sense. Without really acknowledging this, we just began to celebrate on Christmas Eve by coming together to exchange gifts, eat, drink and well…be merry.   On Christmas we all kinda do out own thing. 
   As time has gone on, I've been able to avoid this seasonal sadness, and really begin to celebrate. This is not to say that I don’t think of my grandmother everyday, because I do. But I hold my memories of her so close to me that I cannot help but smile when I think of her. I may cry, but they are tears of joy that I was so lucky to have her in my life, to have her love so unconditionally.

So for those of you out there who feel that emptiness because it’s that loved ones birthday, or anniversary of their passing, I encourage you to fill up on the love, the memories, and cherished time you did have. Easier said than done, I know. But it is also my belief that we are all energy, and energy never dies, it just changes form. So talk to your loved one, acknowledge them through candle lighting,  by going through old photos. or playing music (My grandmother loved Temptations’ Silent Night).  If you pay attention, they will communicate back, through that song on the radio when you first turn on the car,  that scent that you smell out of nowhere, or in that baby bird hanging around suddenly all over your yard, or that feeling of warmth that suddenly consumes you. They are always with you. 
My Ga-Ga is always with me.


"The things we love stay with us always, locked in our hearts..."- Josephine Baker