.SOMETIMES RAW.

Happy Holidays!

I want to thank you so much for being here, whether you’ve been reading my blog for years or just stopped by. I’m so grateful for this incredible community of smart, funny, thoughtful readers, and I love your comments so, so much. This year, I am fortunate to celebrate Christmas with my family. We laughed, we cried, we ate great food. I loved having my grandmothers with us and to see how much fun they had. “Be glad you are healthy, young and pretty, ” one grandmother said. “Being old and sick is no fun,” the other one added.

Of course, they are right. Getting older is perpetually complicated, especially when our bodies don’t feel as comfortable and cozy as they once did. It is difficult to watch a body shift and stretch and increase in capacity and size. As a woman, it can be even trickier to embrace who we are physically, to celebrate our unique aspects rather than compare them, and to be grateful for a fully functional form.

I will turn 39 next year. Wow! Time flies. Unlike many of my friends, I am pretty lucky and have not undergone major surgery, had a significant health diagnosis or experienced any physical trauma. Instead, my body has worn and grown in all of the usual, subtle ways. I may be wiser (ha!) now than when I was 29, but I have also accrued a few wrinkles. My body has simply changed. I also cannot (or rather don’t want) eat chips and drink wine every night anymore. Hangovers also felt a lot different in my 20s.

While the idea of self-acceptance is straightforward, the context is not. I don’t know if it is just me but I feel that today’s culture is too loud and confusing when it comes to defining what is physically desirable. I have wisened up and intuitively understand that reaching towards the unrealistic goals of beauty seen in the media is not a good use of my time or energy because comparing my body to others and looking at photoshopped models thinking that this is the norm is just ridiculous.

While my grandmothers spoke about the past they also mentioned ideas and goals based on what they used to look like, what they used to weigh, what size they used to wear and the evolving seasons of their life. I remember one day in my early 20s that I found myself in a fitting room with a rack full of jeans and summer dresses, hopeful that they would fit and cover areas of my body that I did not like. I remember this poorly-lit-fitting room and my very critical eye. I felt too big! My legs were too big! My skin was not glowing! I also remember leaving the fitting-room frustrated and sad. This scene has happened periodically over the years, but with growing irony until it just stopped.

While my grandmothers spoke, it became clear to me that no matter what age I am, it is perpetually tempting to look back, envious of my pre-marriage, pre-baby, pre-divorce, pre-job change and pre-whatnot.”I wish I would still look like that, ” my grandmother said while she showed me a picture of her on the wall. “You are beautiful the way you are, Oma,” I said.

See your body as a strong, healthy vessel. I believe that my current body is precious and healthy and beautiful as it is, rather than comparing it to previous iterations and images. I show compassion to myself and where my body is right now. Weight loss and gain can be normal, cellulite is not a curse, and hormonal changes are a powerful force within the body’s system. I have the power to elicit change. I can help myself to grow stronger and healthier, lose weight, or gain weight and that this is a privilege. Also, my friends, many changes take time as does anything worth embracing.

And, instead of seeing my body as personal billboards for all of the things that I am not, maybe it is smarter to look at it for what it truly is: a physical representation of the life I have been given, the life I have birthed, the places I have seen, the experiences I have had, and the memories that I have accrued.

If my body is my most tangible testimony of a life wholly-lived, well, then I’m choosing to celebrate the hell out of mine. Want to join me? I’ll bring some chips.

Mr. X: I don’t like alcohol anymore. I want to slow down drinking a lot! It just does not do anything for me anymore. Actually, I think it never did. It makes me feel crappy and anxious the next day. Even just one cocktail does it. Stop looking at me like that. I rather take sparkling water instead.

Alcohol: What do you mean? So you are thinking about breaking up with me. As unlikely as it may sound, you are not the first but c’mon. Chances are you have got a lot on your mind right now if you tackle such questions but I think you are making a huge mistake. Breaking up with me could mean a very confusing time in your life. You will miss me so much, I guarantee you that. Make sure you have examined the short- and long-term effects of straight-up dumping my ass.

Mr. X: I thought about it. I feel so much better without you. I am more creative. No headaches and I can have fun at parties, too. Minus the major hangover the next day.

Alcohol: F*** you! Don’t do that. I know you love me. Grow old with me. Don’t turn your back on the best thing that ever happened to you. You risk a lifetime of gnawing regret!

Mr. X: Breaking up with you does feel a bit overwhelming but I know it is the right thing to do. You know why? My health! I don’t like how you make me feel.

Alcohol: Health blablabla. We all going to die anyway. Why not party in the meantime? Leaving my sweet embrace will make you feel lonely. Imagine everybody drinks alcohol while you sip on your water? Pffff… hello???…. boooooring. Your dumping me will trigger a swift chain of events that culminates at a bar. All your friends will have fun, except you. Oh wait, some effects are more insidious. Should you really kick me to the curb, you must anticipate that I am going to sit on that exact curb eating chocolate. I will eat chocolate every day, sometimes at strange hours, because I have seen sad women do this. You might meet different non-alcoholic drinks but honestly, good luck replacing me. Do you find yourself doubting yet? Because breaking up with me would mean a huge scale of devastation that can be blamed only on you.

Mr. X: I feel so much better without you. Also, anybody who cares that I don’t drink has a problem with alcohol. Honestly, f*** off.

Alcohol: It is with near certainty that, if you really break up with me you will break my heart. Also, don’t think you can just break up with me and head on your little “Eat Pray Love” – style journey. You neeeeeed me. You waaaaaant me. Always remember that. Many people need me. This is a conclusion based on years of data collection and analysis from bars, my friend. Oh, you won’t go to bars anymore either now? I could go on and on. You just make me angry. Breaking up with me is a very personal choice. No one can make it for you. Damn, I think you feel pretty strong about this.

Mr. X: I do. Honestly, it is fun to drink but one drink is usually not enough. I have another one, which leads to another one. I rather have a clear mind to live in the here and now and be fully present.

Alcohol: I really hope for you that you have gained a helpful new perspective, one broad enough to confront the fiery, drought-ravaged world that awaits you in your sobriety. Alternatively, we could stay together and preserve this beautiful friendship we have had over the years. I eagerly await your decision. You know I will be around for comfort. I always was, I always will be.

Mr. X: We were never friends. I always considered you a lying, backstabbing friend who never made me feel good. I consider this moment a brave act of not allowing a poisonous substance to dim my bright light. I know alcohol is never the answer. I am.

A friend asked me the other day, how she can balance ambition and security. My first reaction was that this must be one of the most fundamental conflicts of human experience and that she might already know the answer. It was right there in her words: She is taking a leap, and now she cannot find her footing. I guess she cannot be airborne and grounded at the same time? It is an apt metaphor because ambition and security share a similar mutual exclusivity. To leap or not to leap? It is not the question, but it is always its own kind of answer. One of the other but never both.

I think it is right for anybody in a situation like that to feel untethered. If you leave something you know for something you don’t it is always strange and weird at first. Why? Because you are suspended in uncertainty, one of the squirmiest, most unpleasant emotions. I have made similar leaps myself that, in hindsight, have changed my life for the better, but I’ll still go to great lengths to avoid the feeling. In previous dark moments, I even hoped for someone or something to decide my fate for me just to save me from it. Which is to say: Learning to maintain your wits right now is good practice for life. You can, of course, try to level your unease with a truism like “everything will be okay” (impossible to prove), but I think you know this is what you have chosen: to lose your footing and float a little. But sometimes, it is the only way to move forward.

I understand this desire to establish a sense of structure though. For me, it is done by laying the foundation of a new world and putting up the proverbial shelves that I will find my way back to the ground. I think this comes naturally. For example, I signed a lease, found work, met new friends and explored a new city to exhaustion. I developed affection for a particular street corner and memorized the peculiarities of my commute. I tried, fucked up, did better the next time. Imbued with the learnings of my previous “life”, these are the new rhythms and habits by which I will live, and they will give me a sense of certainty and security that looks so attractive right now. Of course, these are also the tenets which, when overemphasized, can make me feel stuck. For me, this is the tension inherent to safety versus freedom.

Safety is knowable and certain. It makes me feel secure and protected even though deep inside I know that nothing is for certain. It can also be suffocating, making me yearn for the expansiveness of freedom, openness, and adventure. Freedom says anything is possible when safety says only some things are. Freedom implies a kind of lawlessness while safety favors order. Too much of the former incites fear and insecurity, too much of the latter can inspire an existential kind of dread. I think that these two notions are connected like joy and pain, each emphasizing the other in ways important and cruel. To me, a life well-lived entails a constant negotiation between both.

There have been times in my life where too much of one sent me running toward the other, like when I was 23, arrived in New York and felt so urgently stagnant that, in the span of a week, I started five creative projects and designed to change all the habits I believed were nurturing my complacency. I also believed the Sex and the City lifestyle is real. In instigating a flurry of change, I felt inspired, energetic, and a little afraid but loved the adventure. For a while, this harkened a unique era of fulfillment, but within six months, I was burned out. I had become so tapped into the life I wanted, I had come to resent the life I had. I needed a period of calm reclusion, a return to stability, which then stretched into months until, of course, I felt itchy again.

So, I rode the roller coaster for a long time, never quite sure which one was “correct”. Hustle or relax? There was a time in my life when I studied and worked full-time. Do I want more or be grateful? But the answer was not in committing to one of the other, it was in learning to let these parts of me cooperate rather than fight to the death. This balance looks different for everyone of course, but for me, it means being careful to balance routine with risk, deadlines with creative freedom, long days with time off. It is decorating my comfort zone while also stepping outside of it enough to remember why I have it in the first place. This leap will teach me about myself, about what I want, what makes me feel good, wrong, attentive and fearful.

From experience, I suggest that whatever you do, embrace the inimitable perks of freedom you have unlocked by leaving an established structure: the sense of movement in your body, the breath-taking number of possibilities on the horizon, the unknowability of the next move. They may give you vertigo. It did to me, but what good things don’t come at a cost? And when I eventually spun a new safety net for myself (and my son), that security will feel all the more satisfying for what came before it.

This emotional binary is not reserved for life’s most significant peaks and stalls. We pursue and avoid the trappings of freedom and safety every day. We seek solace in maintaining a habit, and pursue adventure in breaking them. We cling to what we know then resent it, lust for something new then grow sick of it. So, isn’t it that we all just dance a delicate dance between tending to what we know and courting what we don’t? Always dance, but stand steady on your feet.