Do you ever wish you could go back and make those painful teenage years better?

Do you ever wish you could make someone else’s painful teenage years better right now? 

Mara Glatzel of Medicinal Marzipan has taken that wish and turned it into a campaign of creativity, inviting bloggers all over the blogosphere to speak out about their experiences with body image, sexuality, and self-esteem during their teen years. This post is my contribution.

Wanna join in? Please do! Click here or on the banner above for all the details on how to get involved.

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Dear Teenage Me,

I know you can’t even imagine being 25, let alone 45, but I’m writing to let you know that you made it. Weird, I know — how can anyone possibly be that old? But it’s true. And life is much, much better, richer and more wonderful than you would ever believe.

They say life begins at 40, and for us, that’s not far from the truth.

But don’t worry — there was lots of wonderful stuff in all the years before 40, too. It’s just that there was also so much hard.

And so much of the hard just pains me to see you feeling right now, as I watch you from the future. Since I used to be a teenager myself (in fact, I was YOU — doh!), I know how critically important it feels to fit in, to be cool, and most of all, to be beautiful. And thin.

I know that somewhere, underneath all the programming from your steady diet of Seventeen Magazine and MTV, not to mention every fairy tale you ever imbibed with mother’s milk — underneath all that, you really do know that a woman’s appearance is NOT the true determinant of her worth.

And yet.

I see the nights when you sneak out into the bathroom to surreptitiously vomit up the meal you binged on a few hours earlier. I see the days when you can’t concentrate in English class, because the eraser keeps looking like a Hershey bar, and you’re revising your daily 600-calorie menu over and over in your head. I see you leafing through the pages of the latest issue of Seventeen or Madamoiselle or Glamour, tears dripping down your cheeks because you’ll never look like those girls, and it makes you feel like your worth is less than zero.

I see it, and it rips my heart out. And I wonder: what would you — what would WE — have been able to create with that vast intelligence and creative mind of ours, if you could pull even just a fraction of your attention out of that beauty imperative?

All that attention, all that focus, all that desperate energy — what might you have done with it, if you hadn’t been staring hatefully in the mirror, memorizing calorie charts and kneeling over the toilet?

What art might you have created? How might you have made a difference for someone else?

I don’t know if anything an adult could say to you would make a difference — even if that adult IS you. But what I’d like to remind you of is this:

At last count, very, very few of the people both Adult Me and Teenage You most admire, love and want to be around are, or ever were, supermodels.

In fact, at last count, the grand total was… zero.

Darling, sweetheart, wonderfulness, let me just remind you that the people you most admire, love, and want to be around come in all shapes and sizes, and you still admire, love and want to be around them.

Knowing that, could we open just the tiniest hint of a possibility that perhaps, just perhaps, regardless of your own shape and size, you might be worthy of the same love and admiration?

Just think about it, ‘k? Because great things are coming from you, and nothing — nothing — should get in the way of that. Least of all bullshit programming that tells you you’re anything less than absolutely wonderful and worthy.

Because you are. Wonderful and worthy. Please remember that.

Love,
Your Future Self

Announcement Time! Announcing my Free Living A Creative Life Monthly Hangouts!

One thing my teenage self really could have used was a regular hangout with other creative types. A safe space where who you are is more important than what size 501s you wear. Where big-hearted creatives gather to connect, inspire, encourage, learn from and empower each other.

Let’s make up for lost time! Join me at my NEW free monthly hangouts, a live streaming video get-together on the first Wednesday of the month, starting next Wednesday. You’ll find:

• a splash of live music (expect some ukulele!)
• a peek into my creative process (and possibly yours, too, if you want to share!)
• an interview/conversation with a different special guest each month–a creative person I admire, with cool stuff to share, who will inspire and/or amuse us
• Q&A with me and my special guest-of-the-month

All in my unique, Inspirationalist style. And yes, all live, on streaming video (with access to the recording for those who can’t make it live). But you gotta be on the hangout mailing list so I can send you info on how to join in live, and a link to the recording afterwards.

The first hangout is next Wednesday, April 4th, at 2pm PDT, with special guest, author, coach and educator Tara Rodden Robinson, the Productivity Maven.

If you struggle with procrastination, with using your time efficiently, with getting sucked into things that maybe aren’t the best use of your energies while your Important Work languishes, don’t miss this!

So mark your calendar! And click here to get on the list.

FYI, future guests will include:

Emilie Wapnick – fellow Passion Pluralite, Chief Multipotentialite at Puttylike.com, and author of Renaissance Business: Make Your Multipotentiality Your Day Job. (May)

Christyna Lewis – intuitive Financial Coach at Beeventures.org, known for helping creative types make friends with their finances. (June)

C.A. Kobu – Creative Alchemist and Project Midwife at WakeUpAndFlourish.com, and creator of the amazing A Year With Myself program (aff) (featuring yours truly in last week’s prompt). (July)

Sue Ann Gleason – Writer, Speaker, Culinary Nutritionist, inspiring women to trust their intuition, unravel their food stories and take back their plates, one luscious bite at a time, at ChocolateForBreakfast.com and ConsciousBitesNutrition.com. (August)

With more inspiring amazingness to come…

It’s free, and fun, and something of an ongoing experiment, guided by yours truly, and shaped by everyone involved. Join us!

Now tell me: What would you like to say to your teenage self?

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Usually they’re in for a pleasant surprise.

I keep a journal (admittedly intermittent, but still) partly for the same reason — so I can remember where I used to be and to mark my progress.

Going to Jazz Camp West and CCMC every year (except last year — long story, and big mistake) serves as a great marker for my singing and guitar skills. “Wow! A year ago I couldn’t do that! Hey, I have my own original songs now! I have a CD! Remember when that was just a dream?”

Looking back to focus forward

Whenever times are especially tough, it’s a good idea to pause and look back. Usually, when I can sit “outside the distress,” as it were, I can see that things are actually on an upswing overall. Even when it doesn’t feel like it in the moment.

This past week has been kinda rough. Systems breakdown + impending deadlines = no time to work toward any Big Goals, no time to make art or music, no time do My Important Work or to do much of anything except tread water.

How is this progressing toward the life I really, really want?

Then, deep breath. Poke head up above the clouds and look back.

Confessions of a former bulimic

People would never guess this about me, but not so long ago I was caught up in an addictive behavior pattern that is as tough to deal with as any substance abuse. The “substance” was food (something we’re all technically addicted to, if you think about it), but food was not really the issue.

Still, it ruled my life. I would wake up every morning and plan, to the calorie, what I was going to eat that day. Starvation rations, usually.

Inevitably, I would “blow it,” then binge. Frequently until I was so stuffed I could barely move. Then I would purge, which is a polite way of saying I would force myself to throw up into the toilet. For a time I ate ex-lax like candy, too.

Some days were better, some worse. On a really bad day the cycle might repeat a few times. I think six might have been the record. On a good day I might make it through the day without falling prey to the cycle, but my thoughts always revolved around food, my weight, my body.

My body image was so distorted that at 5′ 8″ and 120-130-some-odd pounds, I felt “obese.” I was a modern and ballet dancer during most of the time I struggled with this eating disorder, and what’s “normal” and “beautiful” in the “regular world” is unacceptably “fat” in the dance world.

But the seeds of my illness were sown long before I started dancing at age 16. My family had a “scarcity” attitude towards food (when those brownies are gone, there are never going to be any more!), and my beautiful, image-conscious mom was always trying to lose “that last 5 pounds.” But I was facing forces much more powerful than my family.

Let’s face it: females growing up in the US (or any Western culture) are heavily programmed to believe that these false statements are god’s truth:

1) beauty is a girl’s/woman’s most important asset

2) being thin is essential to being beautiful

Look at any magazine aimed at women. Turn on any television program.

I hate to admit it, but I bought this message, hook, line and sinker. It wasn’t until I had my “radical Feminist awakening” in college at age 20 that I started questioning this idea, and understanding the concept of “the personal is political.”

Imagine if the time, money and energy women spend obsessing over body image and looks were suddenly liberated to do other things! What might we accomplish!

Slow and steady healing

It took me years to heal from my disorder. My radical Feminist awakening in college was the start. Not being in front of a mirror in a leotard and tights for hours every day helped too, as did meeting a man who believed — and convinced me — that I was beautiful just as I was. (One of the many gifts from my ex-husband.)

Improvement was slow, and there were plenty of set-backs. For years I believed “once a bulimic, always a bulimic.”

But you know what? Today I don’t think that has to be true. I’ll admit I still have “fat attacks” once or twice a year, when I start spiraling into a bit of a panic, and eat to feed something that isn’t physical hunger. I’ve gone through this cycle enough now, though, to know that it will wear itself out, and I’ll reach equilibrium again.

The amazing thing is that today, not only do I have a better relationship with my body than I did 20 years ago (when my body was more “ideal” according to cultural expectations of female beauty!), but I have a healthier relationship with food than just about any woman I know.

That is a miracle I never thought I’d see.

Anything is possible

So today, at the end of a challenging week, when my goal of creating the life I really, really want feels out of reach, I’m reminding myself of the miracles I’ve accomplished already in my life. If I can beat bulimia, and emerge a stronger, healthier person, I can achieve just about anything.

Baby steps. One step at a time.

It may not feel like I’m getting anywhere, but I’m keeping my notes and practice sheets to pull out down the road so I can see how far I’ve come.

Onward!