The thing that immediately came to my mind when I read the prompt was going for a long drive in the car. My parents were happily married for a while I guess but it was the horrible fighting I remember. My dad and mom both worked hard to support their 6 kids but my dad had a stressful job at times, so maybe that’s why he started drinking so much. He would come home drunk and with a bad temper. He would beat up my mom and sometimes he would beat us three older kids, if we spoke up to help Mom. But things were great on Sundays. We did not go to church, we went for long drives and everyone was happy. We didn’t stop to eat much because of the cost but when we got home, Mom magically produced a pot roast or fried chicken. There usually was a cobbler for dessert or pie. But it was those wonderful drives I still love to do. Since I got my drivers license so long ago, when I was worried or stressed out about something, I went for a drive. My kids are grown with kids of their own and this grandma still loves to go for a drive in the countryside. If my husband doesn’t want to go, I go alone.
When we first moved to our very rural house, my husband (who is Australian) marveled at the number of people who would "slow-drive" (his words) past our house. "What are they doing?!" I tried to explain the idea of "going for a drive" but I don't think he's every fully understood. I'm going to show him your lovely comment because it does a much better job of explaining. ❤️
I love a drive and we did one most Sundays. My parents loved to wander our beautiful Irish countryside and always the stop in for tea and cake somewhere
First I'm so sorry you had to endure abuse. I also used to love to get in my car and just drive. It is a wonderful thing to do alone. To think, to observe the beauty around us, and hopefully listen to some great music.
Thank you. My parents got divorced when I was 13 and my father quit drinking finally. After that I was able to forgive him and got to know him as a loving father.
Seventy years ago I awoke early one Summer’s morning, wandered out of the family house, quietly walked over to the nearby lake, and received a gift I still hold very dear: the lake was very still, ever so quiet, and a mist hung a few inches above the water’s surface. In that moment my six year old world was serenely peaceful, whole, and complete. I had been introduced to Nature’s loving embrace. My inner world and outer world unified. Nature birthed me. This taste of oneness and peacefulness still sings to me of a deeper lullaby, a state of mind and being, a possibility, yes, a possibility. Best, David🏮
I remember my early forays into the world alone. The feeling of independence was as strong as the impressions of seeing the world without instruction or caution. These are powerful experiences.
I could not sleep and saw this set of entries on my phone in the middle of the night here in the dark winds of Southern Oregon .
This concept of taking up space is a very interesting one, especially for women .
I was a tall child, but I’m a short woman . I got my period very early and never got that big growth spurt that everyone else did in puberty.
So as a child, I was not treated as a little, short, cute girl.
My dad was a teacher . He grew up in poverty during depression in the 1930s in Brooklyn. His father was a trolley car driver, only had a six grade education, but had a heart of gold. Before they were social services, if your husband died, children often went to an orphanage. My grandfather helped house a couple of his sister-in-laws, and their children in those times.
He encouraged my dad to value education, the ticket out .
My dad from the time I was a very little girl told me I was smart enough to go to college and to do whatever I wanted to do .
So it was a mixed message society saying don’t take up too much space girly, and my mom and my dad saying go for it !
So I might still be short on the outside, not quite 5 foot two , I am very tall on the inside. ( Most days! )
This idea of space and how much of it we take up , as females, is very interesting .
How much space do we take up …? On the physical plane ? social -emotional plane? On a powerful plane-personally or politically?
Many questions to ponder and layers to further pursue here!
Thank you for the provocative prompt!
Thanks also for the incredible show, “The alchemy of Blood”
My dad was about 5’3’ but 6’ in my mind. A great leader and encouraged us all not to set limits on our selves (got me in trouble,sometimes!!). I enjoyed your story.
This prompt, from Nadia and from Elaine, is acutely resonant with me right now - thank you :) Suleika, I hope that your body is treating you with care this week.
When I was 8 (or so), my parents began taking us on nuclear family-only vacations. As in, we still visited the grandparents and the joined cousins at the summer cabin, but my parents were able to set aside some budget for a week in a damp rented cabinet on Cape Cod for Just Us. New England summers are wonderfully unpredictable: the beach is glorious but the chance of rain is omnipresent, and hence, shopping, books and board games. A favorite outing for my mother was antique stores. She loved hunting for new furniture and great deals, but with three girls in tow she knew she had to give us a manageable motive as well. This came in the form of silver collectible teaspoons and tiny glass figurines. She bought us each an old typeset drawer to hang on our bedroom wall and fill with small glass animals (they were always animals); the chambers for the old letter stamps used back in the day were just the right size. As this caught on, my dad would look for tiny carved animals on his occasional work trips - a jade grizzly from Alaska, or an artisanal cat from a colleague in China. My grandmother would send the clay pigment-colored animals that came in a box of Rose’s tea in the 1990s (I think). Eventually we filled up our typeset drawer and perched new animals on the tippy-top, along windowsills, and on bathroom vanities. Eventually, we packed them up in yet another move and didn’t unpack them in the next home. Eventually, our divorced parents didn’t dedicate bedrooms for us to paint and fill with the things that describe the full arc of our lives. They ask us at the holidays to check just once more for the things we own that still lurk in their garages, and set a date to take them back. We dodge the question, pointing to our month-to-month leases and stacked shelves of ‘what-ifs’ hovering over our notions of home. But we don’t, and won’t let anyone, discard the boxes marked “glass animals.” Tiny baubles are not easy to protect in lives allergic - by nature or by requirement - to clutter, but each of us defends our dusty boxes year after year. Even though we haven’t looked at them in years we see them clearly in our memory, as we see the places we got them, the role they served in our early play, and even the way the after-school light could catch on them. Holding on to these tiny, compact sources of delight, these rewards of an afternoon errand-turned-treasure hunt, is a way of holding on to essential chapters of our simpler selves learning how to take up space.
Eleanor, I had a typesetter drawer hanging on my childhood bedroom wall as well. It was filled with lots of "miniatures," dollhouse collectibles, and yes, some small glass animals. I haven't thought about it till now, but I loved gathering and showcasing those treasures. Such an innocent, sweet hobby. I am glad you held on to your glass animals- a special gift to give your past, present, and future self.
Thank you so much for sharing! I recently found my mother’s dollhouse furniture, so many tiny and even late Victorian detailed pieces. It’s a sudden window into the past.
I love this. We have our daughter's playthings downstairs; some migrate up into our house. I myself am staring at miniature Zuni bears, Maneki nekos, and Lotteria cards (to name just a few) on a built in cabinet full of memories, too.
I dream, long for, am sometimes haunted by the memories of my first, real love. He awoke in me, a longing for more, always more. He crushed my heart, put it back together, countless times, and he still lives in it. But, he lives there with me at 19 and him at 21. We are not those people anymore. But, the love, the longing, the tragic tears, the angst, the ecstasy are all still mine.
How I love what you wrote that "the love, the longing, the ecstasy are all still mine" - there's such rich recompense in that - so potent and so beautiful. It will always be yours.
Green pepper. My father was violent and my mother decided to go to her grandmother’s house in south Phila. It was middle of the night and we had to take two buses, we didn’t have car. I had never been there before or met my great grandmother.
We went up to top floor of storied house. She stood in the middle of bed and screwed lightbulb in ceiling fixture. Never a word. We, sister and mother, slept in same bed.
Next morning was bright, woke up in strange neighborhood. But I loved new things for me it was an adventure to be away. My Russian, great-grandmother Fanny was boiling water because she didn’t trust the water.
Outside across the street there was little girl eating a raw green pepper. My mother said I could go across but don’t eat the pepper it’s not clean
When I went across, sure enough, the little girl offered me a piece. It was my first raw piece of green pepper. And I ate it. I knew I was on my own and hey, I loved adventure.
I love ❤️ these connections to vulnerable women who craft connections despite my inability to be so eloquent. I’ve used @Suleika’s treatise for journaling pasted into the front of little 4x6-inch lined booklets I give to participants who come to women’s groups to which I belong & am asked to give a program. In Suleika’s words, “I reach for the page like I reach for a prayer: to plead, to confess, to remember that all is not chaos, all is not lost.” This morning I journaled for the 562nd day because Suleika encouraged me to see that my thoughts & ideas & expressing them have purpose & value to start each day believing that I matter, even if only to myself!
Hello Jeannie, Beautifully put! I copied your words and Suleika’s.
I have been doing Morning Pages Journaling for decades inspired by Julia Cameron & her “Artist’s Way” book.
When I do not do that, my day feels skewed, so I almost always always start my day by writing my Morning Pages , then a teeny tiny haiku, then a Gratitude-Delight List!
Then I can greet the new day!
Thanks for sharing !
Deb from down a dirt road in the woods of Southern Oregon
I am getting ready for church but I thought I'd quickly read this piece because as a fat woman, I appreciate words of solidarity about taking up space in a fat phobic, misogynist world. But when Nadia Bolz-Weber says that she "tipped the scales at 230 lbs." after giving birth, I went cold. I have weighed 230 lbs. as a child-free, short fat woman many times in my life. We all know that "tipped the scales" is a deragatory term. Bolz-Weber's framing of her heaviest weight as being admissable because she just gave birth is a tell: when she can talk about having a big body in a way that doesn't denigrate fat women, I'll be more interested in what she has to say. This was a disappointment.
Victoria, l feel you are brave in sharing you own truth just as Nadia is brave for sharing hers. We carry simple and very complicated burdens and joys that are thrust upon us, just because we are humans evolving. Thank god we do come with abilities to strengthen our stretching souls with as much grace as our experiences will allow. I think we are all so brave, so fragile and far more beautiful than we in our human forms can fathom. I've spent a lot of time working in hospice and with older adults with dementia. One thing I tried to do was meet to people right where they were. No expectations. The other day while listening to a podcast James Finley said "God meets us where we are". Hearing that moved me to tears as it reminded me that we are never alone. And as crazy hard as it may be to accept right now, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be...until I'm guided elsewhere. 😊 Blessings to you.
I will preface with the fact that I tend to weigh more than I appear to, so don’t think I have experienced the full stigma of fatness.
I don’t know if it is because I carry my weight in ways society doesn’t mind as much that people are very comfy with discussing scale numbers with me, but they are.
I remember in high school, when I was legitimately small, but very muscular, a girl straight out asking my weight, thinking I’d be x lbs like her. I was actually 40lbs heavier. I started thinking something was wrong with my weight in that moment.
More recently at a dinner with a group of women, a friend who’d recently gave birth said “can you believe I went up to 180lbs” as I was sitting there, after months of training with a personal trainer and counting my calories, protein and fibre, weighing much more than she did at her highest pregnancy weight. I was frustrated.
On both sides of the coin I think it’s is important to remember that the actual number that appears on the scale is very personal - some people “tip the scale” more no matter what. There is nothing wrong with 230lbs being heavy for one person’s body and a regular weight for another’s. I think slight people should be allowed to discuss their experiences with weight loss and gain as much as a person who goes through life taking up more space, so I wouldn’t want to censure that discussion.
However, with society’s preference for lightness, I do wish we could reframe the language to “I gained x lbs” and use the fact that weigh change is hard as the basis of discussion rather than defining the challenge by a specific number.
I was surprised when she wrote that as I am guessing she is 6 ft or more and all I imagined was her statuesque frame. It didn’t fit the rest of the story .
Joni Mitchell's lyric comes to mind: "I cant go back there anymore--y'know my key wont fit the door"...Going back not an option--nostalgia morphs into a prompt to let go. The old dutch barn of my childhood torn down and sold for parts, the field where I rode my horse now a Walmart. In my hometown---and in NYC for that matter-- I fall into "this used to be that" and so as not to be an insufferable sad sack I venture out into the world to engage the now and discover. (6' tall here)
I know I am not alone when I share that I have terrible body image issues. I am 30 lbs overweight and the prompt “taking up space” immediately makes me look at my appearance.
I’ve read stories of being tall, being short, or suppressing passions and desires as not to be noticed. But, my mind immediately goes to my width; my roundness.
I’m short, 5’3”…that never bothered me, likely because no one ever made me feel bad about it. Having vacillated between 5 to 45lbs overweight, I’ve heard countless comments.
I can remember walking into a store one time and a STRANGER…a man I had never seen or met before, say “you’d be hot if it weren’t for that fat ass”
Taking up space immediately makes me think about my weight; my unattractiveness and unworthiness.
I try to accept myself as is. I give thanks for all the things my body has done. But, I honestly can’t imagine a time in my life, even when I was most fit, that I wasn’t thinking about how much space my body took up.
The old me would have been so hurt by that rude man saying that to me but the person I am today would have said back to him something like “you would never be hot because you are an ass.!”
I would go back to my pink bedroom, in my childhood home on Gloria Drive, in Baton Rouge Louisiana. Shortly after my mother painted our bedroom pink (also had pink bedspreads, pink curtains and pink dressers) my father lost his job. In an apparent move to hide what happened, from the neighbors, we moved out to the country, to a small, dark and ugly mobile home. I would have serial dreams about returning to our house on Gloria drive. I missed my friends, my neighbors and my school. The job loss was hard on my father. He drank more, became addicted to pain meds and abused me and my mother. When I turned 18 I moved out of state. The house on Gloria drive is still there. I don't think I miss the actual house as much as I miss all of the good memories I have from my time living in it. Memories that inform my art and sustain me through the good times and the not so good.
Thank you, Nadia and Elaine. There is so much nostalgia that seeped out reading these posts and subsequent prompt. First from Nadia… size. Being someone average in height I was also more developed in grade school than my counterparts. Gently called ‘stocky’. Which to this day has served me well as I’ve been living with cancer for 14 years. And stocky has given me the muscle and impetus to do daily hikes and be strong. Ironically as body parts are removed and treatment persists, I joke and say, “Oooo I must be down a few pounds!” But sadly a breast here and there, a partial liver subsection, all weigh mere ounces. I’m still ‘stocky’. And the scale clings to 155 lbs. As it has for years. Which on the upside, gives me the incredible mobility needed to carry on…..One of my saddest memories was only a couple of years ago was when I saw one of my dearest friends die from cancer. We were diagnosed the same year. I saw her four days before she passed and a few of her last words to me were, “And to think I’m finally at my goal weight.” We both weighed the same for years. And now she was at her coveted 130 lbs. Short lived.
….Nostalgia is a funny thing. When I was briefly a skinny kid at the age of 10, and when little or nothing passed my lips, it was peanut butter on toasted white Wonderbread undercoated with a cheap layer of margarine. I’d pedal my bike to my friend’s house after school where they had 10 kids. We’d all gather on the livingroom floor watching ‘I Love Lucy’ after school eating copious slices of peanut butter on toast. Then I’d pedal home and sniff at supper, scarcely eating a bite. It was the peanut butter on toast that kept me fueled those days. ….And today, when I’m rushed or in from a hike, I still carry remnants of that desire. But it’s better quality – a rustic wholewheat sourdough and natural peanut butter undercoated with unsalted butter or coconut oil. And if I’m uber hungry I’ll top it with hemp seed and slices of apple. Ben dog and I after a walk… nibble on it together.
Thank you, Nadia and Elaine, for today's essays, prompt, and inspiration. Suleika, I finally (and fortunately) made it to The Alchemy of Blood last week, right under the wire. Thank you, to you and your mom, for sharing this beautiful and deeply moving art with all of us. And for teaching us. You, Suleika, are a fabulous teacher.
Today's prompt response:
I know I’m not alone when I say certain smells immediately take me back, evoking a sudden thoughtfulness about days long ago. Right now, leaves are falling from the many gorgeous trees in my backyard, and the signature smell of brown, yellow, burnt orange leaves, shed from red oak, maple, tulip poplar, jolts me right back to my five-year-old self. I’m rolling around in raked up piles with my next door neighbor, fellow kindergartener Emily. We pile them high and jump in them, over and over again, burying each other in crinkly, crunchy autumn bliss, breathing deeply, the smell of dead leaves. We laugh as we play, sometimes hiding from our brothers, completely covered in mountains of crisp leaves, and hushing each other as we try not to move. And then someone giggles, probably me, and we are found.
I still love the scents of autumn- and I often light candles to warm my space and indulge my senses- earthy, sweet, musky smells, of leaf piles, apples, and spice, transporting me back to my child’s play and those times when we were hiding, breathing in the dead leaves as they covered our faces, just for fun.
I’ll never understand why my queer body is so disgusting to certain groups of people when this body has done such marvelous things and holds as much Spirit as anyone else (perhaps more haha).
Grandmother, after bathing us, would wrap us in scratchy warm towels , papoose like, laying on the 4 poster bed.
Then she'd wring out the washclothes and attach them to the pink tile walls. Smoothed flat, they'd dry and stay. I still try to attain the little bit of making do, the even flat texture square on the wall. The joy of peeling them off again.
Rituals that keep you feeling loved and cared for.
I am nostalgic for the walk from my attached home to the frong gate and and walkway. When I moved in it was a shared space and then one owner claimed the land and now it is embroiled in a lawsuit and appeal. The walkway has no relation to me it is as if I live in someones backyard with kitsch, wire barriers and dead bushes and empty bird feeders. Now it is so heavily planted that plants are planted in established plantings which will kill the originals.. I have no say and live in walk by what would be compared to an Authoritarian passyyage without franchise.. I am nostalgic for the former time when the space was collective and for now and maybe forever it rests in memory.. greed ran amuck.
The thing that immediately came to my mind when I read the prompt was going for a long drive in the car. My parents were happily married for a while I guess but it was the horrible fighting I remember. My dad and mom both worked hard to support their 6 kids but my dad had a stressful job at times, so maybe that’s why he started drinking so much. He would come home drunk and with a bad temper. He would beat up my mom and sometimes he would beat us three older kids, if we spoke up to help Mom. But things were great on Sundays. We did not go to church, we went for long drives and everyone was happy. We didn’t stop to eat much because of the cost but when we got home, Mom magically produced a pot roast or fried chicken. There usually was a cobbler for dessert or pie. But it was those wonderful drives I still love to do. Since I got my drivers license so long ago, when I was worried or stressed out about something, I went for a drive. My kids are grown with kids of their own and this grandma still loves to go for a drive in the countryside. If my husband doesn’t want to go, I go alone.
When we first moved to our very rural house, my husband (who is Australian) marveled at the number of people who would "slow-drive" (his words) past our house. "What are they doing?!" I tried to explain the idea of "going for a drive" but I don't think he's every fully understood. I'm going to show him your lovely comment because it does a much better job of explaining. ❤️
I do those alone, too. It may start out with a need to escape, but can turn in to a different way of seeing. The day, the color, a road untraveled.
This conjures up scenes from my childhood too - funny how these customs stay with us - thank you.
I love a drive and we did one most Sundays. My parents loved to wander our beautiful Irish countryside and always the stop in for tea and cake somewhere
First I'm so sorry you had to endure abuse. I also used to love to get in my car and just drive. It is a wonderful thing to do alone. To think, to observe the beauty around us, and hopefully listen to some great music.
Thank you. My parents got divorced when I was 13 and my father quit drinking finally. After that I was able to forgive him and got to know him as a loving father.
That is a huge blessing!
Seventy years ago I awoke early one Summer’s morning, wandered out of the family house, quietly walked over to the nearby lake, and received a gift I still hold very dear: the lake was very still, ever so quiet, and a mist hung a few inches above the water’s surface. In that moment my six year old world was serenely peaceful, whole, and complete. I had been introduced to Nature’s loving embrace. My inner world and outer world unified. Nature birthed me. This taste of oneness and peacefulness still sings to me of a deeper lullaby, a state of mind and being, a possibility, yes, a possibility. Best, David🏮
Love this. Those magical moments with nature. Reminds me of the absolute joy of hiking over four days to Machu Picchu, the sights we saw
This is so lovely. I feel as if I can inhale mother nature's aroma from your poetic words.
Serenely peaceful, whole and complete…. This beautifully captures the magic of nature. Thank you for your post David.
I remember my early forays into the world alone. The feeling of independence was as strong as the impressions of seeing the world without instruction or caution. These are powerful experiences.
I so get you...
Hello Suleika and friends,
I could not sleep and saw this set of entries on my phone in the middle of the night here in the dark winds of Southern Oregon .
This concept of taking up space is a very interesting one, especially for women .
I was a tall child, but I’m a short woman . I got my period very early and never got that big growth spurt that everyone else did in puberty.
So as a child, I was not treated as a little, short, cute girl.
My dad was a teacher . He grew up in poverty during depression in the 1930s in Brooklyn. His father was a trolley car driver, only had a six grade education, but had a heart of gold. Before they were social services, if your husband died, children often went to an orphanage. My grandfather helped house a couple of his sister-in-laws, and their children in those times.
He encouraged my dad to value education, the ticket out .
My dad from the time I was a very little girl told me I was smart enough to go to college and to do whatever I wanted to do .
So it was a mixed message society saying don’t take up too much space girly, and my mom and my dad saying go for it !
So I might still be short on the outside, not quite 5 foot two , I am very tall on the inside. ( Most days! )
This idea of space and how much of it we take up , as females, is very interesting .
How much space do we take up …? On the physical plane ? social -emotional plane? On a powerful plane-personally or politically?
Many questions to ponder and layers to further pursue here!
Thank you for the provocative prompt!
Thanks also for the incredible show, “The alchemy of Blood”
My dad was about 5’3’ but 6’ in my mind. A great leader and encouraged us all not to set limits on our selves (got me in trouble,sometimes!!). I enjoyed your story.
I am 5'2" ish and love hearing about being tall on the inside. That's how I feel, too!
This prompt, from Nadia and from Elaine, is acutely resonant with me right now - thank you :) Suleika, I hope that your body is treating you with care this week.
When I was 8 (or so), my parents began taking us on nuclear family-only vacations. As in, we still visited the grandparents and the joined cousins at the summer cabin, but my parents were able to set aside some budget for a week in a damp rented cabinet on Cape Cod for Just Us. New England summers are wonderfully unpredictable: the beach is glorious but the chance of rain is omnipresent, and hence, shopping, books and board games. A favorite outing for my mother was antique stores. She loved hunting for new furniture and great deals, but with three girls in tow she knew she had to give us a manageable motive as well. This came in the form of silver collectible teaspoons and tiny glass figurines. She bought us each an old typeset drawer to hang on our bedroom wall and fill with small glass animals (they were always animals); the chambers for the old letter stamps used back in the day were just the right size. As this caught on, my dad would look for tiny carved animals on his occasional work trips - a jade grizzly from Alaska, or an artisanal cat from a colleague in China. My grandmother would send the clay pigment-colored animals that came in a box of Rose’s tea in the 1990s (I think). Eventually we filled up our typeset drawer and perched new animals on the tippy-top, along windowsills, and on bathroom vanities. Eventually, we packed them up in yet another move and didn’t unpack them in the next home. Eventually, our divorced parents didn’t dedicate bedrooms for us to paint and fill with the things that describe the full arc of our lives. They ask us at the holidays to check just once more for the things we own that still lurk in their garages, and set a date to take them back. We dodge the question, pointing to our month-to-month leases and stacked shelves of ‘what-ifs’ hovering over our notions of home. But we don’t, and won’t let anyone, discard the boxes marked “glass animals.” Tiny baubles are not easy to protect in lives allergic - by nature or by requirement - to clutter, but each of us defends our dusty boxes year after year. Even though we haven’t looked at them in years we see them clearly in our memory, as we see the places we got them, the role they served in our early play, and even the way the after-school light could catch on them. Holding on to these tiny, compact sources of delight, these rewards of an afternoon errand-turned-treasure hunt, is a way of holding on to essential chapters of our simpler selves learning how to take up space.
What a gorgeous mini-essay hidden away in the comments! ❤️
Thank you Holly! A beautiful prompt :)
Yes! Many gems shared in this community!
Eleanor, I had a typesetter drawer hanging on my childhood bedroom wall as well. It was filled with lots of "miniatures," dollhouse collectibles, and yes, some small glass animals. I haven't thought about it till now, but I loved gathering and showcasing those treasures. Such an innocent, sweet hobby. I am glad you held on to your glass animals- a special gift to give your past, present, and future self.
Thank you so much for sharing! I recently found my mother’s dollhouse furniture, so many tiny and even late Victorian detailed pieces. It’s a sudden window into the past.
I love this. We have our daughter's playthings downstairs; some migrate up into our house. I myself am staring at miniature Zuni bears, Maneki nekos, and Lotteria cards (to name just a few) on a built in cabinet full of memories, too.
I am glad you hold onto these glass animals. They are full of wonderful memories and stories.
I dream, long for, am sometimes haunted by the memories of my first, real love. He awoke in me, a longing for more, always more. He crushed my heart, put it back together, countless times, and he still lives in it. But, he lives there with me at 19 and him at 21. We are not those people anymore. But, the love, the longing, the tragic tears, the angst, the ecstasy are all still mine.
How I love what you wrote that "the love, the longing, the ecstasy are all still mine" - there's such rich recompense in that - so potent and so beautiful. It will always be yours.
The gift of an intense first love. ❤️
Green pepper. My father was violent and my mother decided to go to her grandmother’s house in south Phila. It was middle of the night and we had to take two buses, we didn’t have car. I had never been there before or met my great grandmother.
We went up to top floor of storied house. She stood in the middle of bed and screwed lightbulb in ceiling fixture. Never a word. We, sister and mother, slept in same bed.
Next morning was bright, woke up in strange neighborhood. But I loved new things for me it was an adventure to be away. My Russian, great-grandmother Fanny was boiling water because she didn’t trust the water.
Outside across the street there was little girl eating a raw green pepper. My mother said I could go across but don’t eat the pepper it’s not clean
When I went across, sure enough, the little girl offered me a piece. It was my first raw piece of green pepper. And I ate it. I knew I was on my own and hey, I loved adventure.
I love ❤️ these connections to vulnerable women who craft connections despite my inability to be so eloquent. I’ve used @Suleika’s treatise for journaling pasted into the front of little 4x6-inch lined booklets I give to participants who come to women’s groups to which I belong & am asked to give a program. In Suleika’s words, “I reach for the page like I reach for a prayer: to plead, to confess, to remember that all is not chaos, all is not lost.” This morning I journaled for the 562nd day because Suleika encouraged me to see that my thoughts & ideas & expressing them have purpose & value to start each day believing that I matter, even if only to myself!
❤️❤️❤️
Hello Jeannie, Beautifully put! I copied your words and Suleika’s.
I have been doing Morning Pages Journaling for decades inspired by Julia Cameron & her “Artist’s Way” book.
When I do not do that, my day feels skewed, so I almost always always start my day by writing my Morning Pages , then a teeny tiny haiku, then a Gratitude-Delight List!
Then I can greet the new day!
Thanks for sharing !
Deb from down a dirt road in the woods of Southern Oregon
I am getting ready for church but I thought I'd quickly read this piece because as a fat woman, I appreciate words of solidarity about taking up space in a fat phobic, misogynist world. But when Nadia Bolz-Weber says that she "tipped the scales at 230 lbs." after giving birth, I went cold. I have weighed 230 lbs. as a child-free, short fat woman many times in my life. We all know that "tipped the scales" is a deragatory term. Bolz-Weber's framing of her heaviest weight as being admissable because she just gave birth is a tell: when she can talk about having a big body in a way that doesn't denigrate fat women, I'll be more interested in what she has to say. This was a disappointment.
Victoria, l feel you are brave in sharing you own truth just as Nadia is brave for sharing hers. We carry simple and very complicated burdens and joys that are thrust upon us, just because we are humans evolving. Thank god we do come with abilities to strengthen our stretching souls with as much grace as our experiences will allow. I think we are all so brave, so fragile and far more beautiful than we in our human forms can fathom. I've spent a lot of time working in hospice and with older adults with dementia. One thing I tried to do was meet to people right where they were. No expectations. The other day while listening to a podcast James Finley said "God meets us where we are". Hearing that moved me to tears as it reminded me that we are never alone. And as crazy hard as it may be to accept right now, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be...until I'm guided elsewhere. 😊 Blessings to you.
There is no distance between us. ❤
Nancy, have you ever heard of the term "spiritual bypass?"
I had a similar reaction to “230.”
I will preface with the fact that I tend to weigh more than I appear to, so don’t think I have experienced the full stigma of fatness.
I don’t know if it is because I carry my weight in ways society doesn’t mind as much that people are very comfy with discussing scale numbers with me, but they are.
I remember in high school, when I was legitimately small, but very muscular, a girl straight out asking my weight, thinking I’d be x lbs like her. I was actually 40lbs heavier. I started thinking something was wrong with my weight in that moment.
More recently at a dinner with a group of women, a friend who’d recently gave birth said “can you believe I went up to 180lbs” as I was sitting there, after months of training with a personal trainer and counting my calories, protein and fibre, weighing much more than she did at her highest pregnancy weight. I was frustrated.
On both sides of the coin I think it’s is important to remember that the actual number that appears on the scale is very personal - some people “tip the scale” more no matter what. There is nothing wrong with 230lbs being heavy for one person’s body and a regular weight for another’s. I think slight people should be allowed to discuss their experiences with weight loss and gain as much as a person who goes through life taking up more space, so I wouldn’t want to censure that discussion.
However, with society’s preference for lightness, I do wish we could reframe the language to “I gained x lbs” and use the fact that weigh change is hard as the basis of discussion rather than defining the challenge by a specific number.
I was surprised when she wrote that as I am guessing she is 6 ft or more and all I imagined was her statuesque frame. It didn’t fit the rest of the story .
oops, *derogatory.*
Joni Mitchell's lyric comes to mind: "I cant go back there anymore--y'know my key wont fit the door"...Going back not an option--nostalgia morphs into a prompt to let go. The old dutch barn of my childhood torn down and sold for parts, the field where I rode my horse now a Walmart. In my hometown---and in NYC for that matter-- I fall into "this used to be that" and so as not to be an insufferable sad sack I venture out into the world to engage the now and discover. (6' tall here)
I know I am not alone when I share that I have terrible body image issues. I am 30 lbs overweight and the prompt “taking up space” immediately makes me look at my appearance.
I’ve read stories of being tall, being short, or suppressing passions and desires as not to be noticed. But, my mind immediately goes to my width; my roundness.
I’m short, 5’3”…that never bothered me, likely because no one ever made me feel bad about it. Having vacillated between 5 to 45lbs overweight, I’ve heard countless comments.
I can remember walking into a store one time and a STRANGER…a man I had never seen or met before, say “you’d be hot if it weren’t for that fat ass”
Taking up space immediately makes me think about my weight; my unattractiveness and unworthiness.
I try to accept myself as is. I give thanks for all the things my body has done. But, I honestly can’t imagine a time in my life, even when I was most fit, that I wasn’t thinking about how much space my body took up.
The old me would have been so hurt by that rude man saying that to me but the person I am today would have said back to him something like “you would never be hot because you are an ass.!”
Yes! Not that we don't have feelings that can be hurt, but it is good to have outgrown the thin skin. Excellent retort!
I would go back to my pink bedroom, in my childhood home on Gloria Drive, in Baton Rouge Louisiana. Shortly after my mother painted our bedroom pink (also had pink bedspreads, pink curtains and pink dressers) my father lost his job. In an apparent move to hide what happened, from the neighbors, we moved out to the country, to a small, dark and ugly mobile home. I would have serial dreams about returning to our house on Gloria drive. I missed my friends, my neighbors and my school. The job loss was hard on my father. He drank more, became addicted to pain meds and abused me and my mother. When I turned 18 I moved out of state. The house on Gloria drive is still there. I don't think I miss the actual house as much as I miss all of the good memories I have from my time living in it. Memories that inform my art and sustain me through the good times and the not so good.
Thank you, Nadia and Elaine. There is so much nostalgia that seeped out reading these posts and subsequent prompt. First from Nadia… size. Being someone average in height I was also more developed in grade school than my counterparts. Gently called ‘stocky’. Which to this day has served me well as I’ve been living with cancer for 14 years. And stocky has given me the muscle and impetus to do daily hikes and be strong. Ironically as body parts are removed and treatment persists, I joke and say, “Oooo I must be down a few pounds!” But sadly a breast here and there, a partial liver subsection, all weigh mere ounces. I’m still ‘stocky’. And the scale clings to 155 lbs. As it has for years. Which on the upside, gives me the incredible mobility needed to carry on…..One of my saddest memories was only a couple of years ago was when I saw one of my dearest friends die from cancer. We were diagnosed the same year. I saw her four days before she passed and a few of her last words to me were, “And to think I’m finally at my goal weight.” We both weighed the same for years. And now she was at her coveted 130 lbs. Short lived.
….Nostalgia is a funny thing. When I was briefly a skinny kid at the age of 10, and when little or nothing passed my lips, it was peanut butter on toasted white Wonderbread undercoated with a cheap layer of margarine. I’d pedal my bike to my friend’s house after school where they had 10 kids. We’d all gather on the livingroom floor watching ‘I Love Lucy’ after school eating copious slices of peanut butter on toast. Then I’d pedal home and sniff at supper, scarcely eating a bite. It was the peanut butter on toast that kept me fueled those days. ….And today, when I’m rushed or in from a hike, I still carry remnants of that desire. But it’s better quality – a rustic wholewheat sourdough and natural peanut butter undercoated with unsalted butter or coconut oil. And if I’m uber hungry I’ll top it with hemp seed and slices of apple. Ben dog and I after a walk… nibble on it together.
Thank you, Nadia and Elaine, for today's essays, prompt, and inspiration. Suleika, I finally (and fortunately) made it to The Alchemy of Blood last week, right under the wire. Thank you, to you and your mom, for sharing this beautiful and deeply moving art with all of us. And for teaching us. You, Suleika, are a fabulous teacher.
Today's prompt response:
I know I’m not alone when I say certain smells immediately take me back, evoking a sudden thoughtfulness about days long ago. Right now, leaves are falling from the many gorgeous trees in my backyard, and the signature smell of brown, yellow, burnt orange leaves, shed from red oak, maple, tulip poplar, jolts me right back to my five-year-old self. I’m rolling around in raked up piles with my next door neighbor, fellow kindergartener Emily. We pile them high and jump in them, over and over again, burying each other in crinkly, crunchy autumn bliss, breathing deeply, the smell of dead leaves. We laugh as we play, sometimes hiding from our brothers, completely covered in mountains of crisp leaves, and hushing each other as we try not to move. And then someone giggles, probably me, and we are found.
I still love the scents of autumn- and I often light candles to warm my space and indulge my senses- earthy, sweet, musky smells, of leaf piles, apples, and spice, transporting me back to my child’s play and those times when we were hiding, breathing in the dead leaves as they covered our faces, just for fun.
I’ll never understand why my queer body is so disgusting to certain groups of people when this body has done such marvelous things and holds as much Spirit as anyone else (perhaps more haha).
Grandmother, after bathing us, would wrap us in scratchy warm towels , papoose like, laying on the 4 poster bed.
Then she'd wring out the washclothes and attach them to the pink tile walls. Smoothed flat, they'd dry and stay. I still try to attain the little bit of making do, the even flat texture square on the wall. The joy of peeling them off again.
Rituals that keep you feeling loved and cared for.
I am nostalgic for the walk from my attached home to the frong gate and and walkway. When I moved in it was a shared space and then one owner claimed the land and now it is embroiled in a lawsuit and appeal. The walkway has no relation to me it is as if I live in someones backyard with kitsch, wire barriers and dead bushes and empty bird feeders. Now it is so heavily planted that plants are planted in established plantings which will kill the originals.. I have no say and live in walk by what would be compared to an Authoritarian passyyage without franchise.. I am nostalgic for the former time when the space was collective and for now and maybe forever it rests in memory.. greed ran amuck.
I feel this for you