{a different mirror}

My husband always tells me I don’t look in the same mirror that he does. When I am having a bad body day and feel “fat”, when really I know that I’m not, but for some reason I cut myself down and say that I am. My hubby tells me I look in a different mirror than everybody else. These days are usually at the end of a string of days that start with me falling off my “clean eating” wagon. A day or two doesn’t hurt the appearance of my body, how I like my body to look, but a day or two more than that and all the sugar and toxic crap from sub-par foods starts to show up in a bloated hot mess in my mid section. My mid section is my gauge, that is were the crap settles in my body. It is different for everybody, this is where my “problem” area is or what I see to be my “problem” area when I’m not totally eating how I should be. This is when I have to step back and put things into perspective and look back at how far my body has come and ultimately what I want for my body and how I want to live my life.

I don’t want to be skinny. Before I got married I was skinny. Yay, right?! I thought so until I come across pictures when I was in the height of my exercise obsessed and bad dieting days, which I thought was good dieting. I looked skeletal. I weighed about 112#, 25# less than I weigh right now and I still didn‘t think I was skinny. I am 5’4”, I’m Mexican and Danish. I have half Latina genes and half 6’2” farm boy genes. 112# is not right for my body type. It is skeletal and not healthy. I would workout seven days/week and not eat any fat, because fat makes you fat, right? Wrong! I remember days that I would go out and run at 11:00 p.m. because I hadn’t had time earlier in the day and I was freaking out because I didn’t get a workout in.

Before I came to CrossFit I still wanted to be skinny. I wanted to be skinny because that is what society has made women to believe is beautiful. 

I look back at pictures before I joined CrossFit and I still looked skinny, but I never thought so. I weighed about 123#, about 15# less than I weigh now. I was a runner. I ran a few ½ marathons and running was my sport. I ran in the streets, I ran trails (which I miss) and ran in the winter, I ran in the dark with a headlamp and a reflective vest. I ran and these were my legs.

They were skinny. Yay, right!!! WRONG! I probably couldn’t pick a huge bag of flour off the ground with those legs! I could run 13 miles, but who cares. When in my life am I going to need to run 13 miles? I want to be strong to do everyday things. I want to pick up a 50# bag of dirt when I am planting flowers. I want to be able to move a piece of furniture by myself if I have to. I want to be able to do anything in my everyday life that requires strength. So these are my legs now.



They are not skinny. They fit into very few pair of jeans at the mall. My butt is probably twice as big as my running butt, I have a booty. My thighs look substantial in a pair of shorts in the summer. I have given away half my wardrobe because my shirts no longer fit because my back has gotten broad and I have big shoulders and arms. I have to wear large tshirts because mediums no longer fit. I will never be skinny and I love that. I weigh 12 pounds more than I did before I started CrossFit, but I am down one jean size. My body composition has changed so much. I went from skinny-fat to strong and lean. This is what I want for my body. This is how I want to spend the rest of my life.

This wasn’t an overnight acceptance of my body. For a long while after I started CrossFit I still wanted to be skinny. It took well over a year. After having surgery over a year ago I lost muscle mass as I was recovering and rebuilding my strength. There was an in between stage where I really liked what my body looked like, but I didn’t have all my strength back. I had to decide what I wanted more. A “smaller” body size with less muscle mass or did I want to be strong again which meant more muscle mass and a bit more size. Not bulky, but more size. I opted for the latter and I have never regretted it. I’ve learned to embrace my strength and know I will never be super model skinny and I’m okay with that because I think a strong, fit body is sexier and more attractive than skin and bones. I know. I have been there. So today I weigh an average of #137. This is the same weight I was after my first year of college when I had gained my “Freshman 15”. The two bodies don’t even compare. I have gained and lost and gained and lost and gained in my adult life. I am ending at gaining and my body is all the better for it.

On a side note, looking back I know now my desire and obsession with being skinny lead to years of struggling with infertility, as well. My lack of body fat resulted in a lack of ovulation. Each time I got pregnant it was after, for whatever reason, I had gained weight and I weighed about 130#. After starting to pay attention to my body I started to realize that my body won’t ovulate if I weight under 130#. So in my effort to be skinny I was killing my efforts to get pregnant. I took fertility drugs of all sorts to try to get pregnant and they never worked. All I needed was a healthy lifestyle. My body has never ovulated regularly until I started Crossfit. Not until I was 37 years old when I started making my body strong and balance and eating a clean, healthy diet did my body start to do what it is naturally supposed to do. Everything we do to our body and everything we put into our body makes a difference, it matters.

I have also finally embraced the body that I was born with. Thanks to genetics I don’t have a waist and that has always bothered me. I say I have an “H” shaped body, no defined waist. What’s the sense in whining about that? What can I do about it? Nada! That’s the waist I got from my dad. So, it is best not to wear belted dresses and tops and an empire waist looks better on me. I can live with that, fashion problem solved! So, I have no waist, but thanks to reconstructive surgery I have bigger boobs and it makes my waist appear smaller. Hallelujah for optical illusions. Slowly my body issues are being solved by the miracle of modern medicine J (seriously, this is not the way to solve body issue problems!). It has been a long slow process, but I have finally wrapped my head around how I want my body to be. I want my body to be strong, not skinny. I know that if I decide to add heavy lifting to my CrossFit programming I will start to get “thick” in my midsection. My back will start to broaden out and I may start to look like a linebacker in my clothes. I don’t always like this. This is when I have to stop and reconsider my goals. Is the change in my body worth the tradeoff to get a 300# squat or to make it to Regionals next year? After much thought the answer is yes! These are goals that I want to achieve and I will take what comes with it. It took me awhile to get used to my strong body and they way it has changed and the way it continues to change, but I‘m there.

Thankfully, I found a support group of women that I go to about five days a week that have helped me to be proud and content with my strong body. It’s our CrossFit gym. All these ladies understand that skinny isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. They all understand that jean shopping is not an enjoyable experience. We celebrate our CrossFit butts and have fun doing a “butt test” to see if we have the coveted CrossFit butt yet! (Yeah, I know silly, but we all laughed and had a good time with it!)

It’s a wonderful thing being surrounded by like-minded women and having every body shape and size celebrated for what it is and not what society has led people to believe it is. I love that my body is strong and healthy and that is a good place to be!

{smiles abound)

smile n. a pleased, kind, or amused facial expression, typically with the corners of the mouth turned up and the front teeth exposed.

I still have smiles on my mind.  I have always loved a beautiful smile.  The way they change your mood, change a person's appearance or change the energy in the air.  Your entire day can take a different course because of a smile.  A smile from a stranger can make you believe in the goodness of humanity.  A smile from a baby can make you giggle.  A smile from a love interest can melt your heart.

Since my friend started posting pictures of beautiful smiles I notice them even more.  Smiles on my mind made me immediately think of three pictures that I have saved on my computer.  A picture of each of my kids.  My favorite smile pictures that light  up my kid's faces and speak to each of their beatiful little personalities.

A trio of smiles that make me giggle, believe in the goodness of humanity and melt my heart.

{qualifying for state: day 1}

Boy, did we have a full weekend.  Times have not been dull in our lives lately.  We are up to our gills in kid's activities and I won't even tell you what we figured our monthly dollar amount is that we spend on said activities.  We are looking very forward to late March when several of these activities come to an end!  We have had wrestling, skiing, swim lessons and gymnastics going on at the same time, six days per week of kid's activities which means Tony and I have no social life and no time for date nights!  That's not okay with me, but it is a short while that we have so many things going on at once and then hopefully some of it will start to feel manageable.  Ok, who am I kidding?  Once a couple of these activities end then volleyball and T-ball start and we are right back to where we were before.  Kid's activities didn't seem so crazy until all three of our kids were old enough to participate.  So, like it has been for the past 6 1/2 years we are outnumbered.  There are many days when we need one more parent in our household, one for each kid.  If I had it my way that other parent would also clean and cook.  Especially clean, being so busy with kids stuff we are home long enough to make a mess, but not home long enough to clean it.  I think we will be spending the kid's spring break cleaning and mucking the house which will have them begging for school to start back  up!  Good times for all!

Anyhoo, back to our weekend.  We had a sports filled weekend starting with wrestling.  We had to be in Eureka (an hour NW of us) at 7:30 a.m. Saturday morning so Kenna could weigh in for her state qualifier tournament.  We were a bundle of tired, anxious, excited and unfortunately sick energy.  The night before Kenna ended up feeling sick and getting a fever after her brother started to go downhill.  So we were  hoping the worst of it would hold off and she would have the enegy to give 100% for her tournament.  Coach Dad was excited.  He felt she had a good chance of making it to state.  Kenna is quite a wrestler.

Tony sent me a text during a tournament that I couldn't go to.  "I love the moans and groans from parents when they find out their kid has to wrestle Kenna." :)  It is awesome!  She has quite the repuation for being tenacious and relentless.  It is very much her personality.  She doesn't stop.  She has been this way since she was an infant.  She keeps going and going and going.  While this has the tendency to drive us crazy we have also said this will serve her well someday.  Well, that someday, right now is the wrestling mat. 

Round One. Beginner Bracket, 60#.  She got a pin in 14 seconds!

The week prior to this tournament she won a quick pin trophy, 7 seconds!  That poor boy didn't know what hit him! :)

Round Two.  She got a pin about halfway through the second period.

I had Tony pick the picture for this match.  He said, "Look how deep the half is!", with a proud shake of his head.  I pretend to know what all this means.  I run the camera and scream encouraging mom things at her.  This is where my knowledge of wrestling begins and ends, through the lens of a camera and my lungs.  There is also the throwing of my arms in the air like a victorious Rocky a the end of a training run when she wins.

Round Three.  Loss in overtime.

There were tears and, to me, this is where things started to go downhill a little bit. She wrestled this boy twice last year and beat him twice, both matches going into double OT.  I am positive he remembered her, his coach remembered her and his parents remembered her.  Pardon my language, but his coach was a dick.  She got hurt toward the end of the match so Tony stopped the match.  She got hit in the mouth and was bleeding.  The other coach said it was bull#$&* and his boy should get a point.  The first thing I thought was, "He knows his boy isn't guaranteed a win.  He knows he has a chance of losing to Kenna again."  At the end of the match Tony went up to him and said he was just looking out for the safety of his athlete. The Columbia Falls coach said, "I didn't see her get hurt, she was crying because she got taken down!"  Tony said, "No, she got hit in the mouth and was bleeding." Columbia Falls coach, "Oh" and shook Tony's hand.  This coach didn't represent his team in a positive light on Saturday.  But on a positive note, the boy she wrestled was a little sweetheart and did represent his team in a positive light!  After the match when they shook hands he went right up to her and said, "You did a really good job!" and when they left the mat he made a point to go up to her and say it again to her.  Then when we we went out to eat after the tournament the little boy was at the same restaurant with his family and waved to her.  When we got inside I heard him say, "That's Kenna!" 

It took a bit to get her ready for her next match.  She was sad, she didn't feel good, she took a good smack in the mouth and she was full of tears.  You could see it in her she wasn't ready to go again.  Coach Dad had a good sit down with her and that helped a little bit.  She was sitting in the stands with me and Abigail waiting for her next match and I asked her if she was ready.  She said, "no".  I gave her the usual, you can do this and you are ready, wah, wah, wah , wah, wah, but she couldn't get the tears to turn off.  So I changed  up my mom speech, "You know what Kenna?  That kids coach was a jerk to your dad.  You know why?  Because he knew you that his boy couldn't beat you easily.  He wasn't sure his boy could beat you and he was being a jerk about it.  He knows you are that good.  You know what else? Before that match when you were going onto the mat I heard a dad stop another dad and say, 'have you seen this girl wrestle? You have to watch her.  She is tenacious!'"  I told her, "That's what all these people that don't even know you are saying about you.  These people watch you wrestle every weekend and they know how strong and good you are.  You are that good!"  It worked, her tears slowed down and she sat a little straighter.  There was still sadness in her eyes, but she was a little closer to being ready for her next match.

Round Four.  Three full periods and a loss. :(

My poor girl.  She battled it out to the end.  She got beat up in her last two matches.  But like Tony said, she could have rolled over and gotten pinned, but she didn't.  There were many more tears.  She didn't feel good and took a pounding.  It was a bit more than her tender little heart could handle for  a Saturday morning.  It destroyed her.  She was sitting with Tony on the edge of the mat after her match sobbing when a man came down out of the stands, a man we had never seen before, and he crouched down in front of her and said, "You did a great job.  I have been watching you wrestle and you are the toughest girl I know."  Then he asked Tony if she was his daughter, he said yes and the man responded with, "You are doing a good job!"  This man later saw us at the restaurant and made a point to catch Tony's eye and give him a wave. That is the kind of wrestler my daughter is.  She may not have qualified for state, but she left an impression on people and sometimes that is better than the prize.

I feel bad because I don't think I had a very good mom reaction.  I was frustrated and I didn't want her to "quit".  I wanted her to muster everything she had and beat these boys.  But, I know she did, she wrestled hard and gave it her all.  I didn't want her to cry on the mat.  I didn't want anybody, like the Columbia Falls coach, to think that girls shouldn't wrestled because they will cry when they are down.  But, she is a girl and she has the biggest, most tender, beautiful heart and it is okay to cry when you are sad or you are broken and she was.  What isn't okay is if you stay sad and broken and she didn't.  She rallied and found peace in that tender, beautiful heart.  She knows she is strong and she knows she can wrestle with the best of the boys.  "Play like a girl beat the boys."  She didn't have to prove that to anybody, but she did by doing what she does and doing it well.

So her wrestling season has mostly come to an end.  She will still be able to wrestle at state but just for fun and experience.  Our club is hosting the state tournament and their head coach wants all his beginners to wrestle so there will be a separate bracket so these kids can participate.  Then maybe freestyle season and freestyle state.  We will see.  She wanted to try volleyball and that starts next week.  It's a hard thing. We want her to try different things so we are glad she is going to try volleyball, but Tony and I both hate to see her not be able to give the practice time to wrestling while the season is going on.  I want her to find HER sport though because she is a strong, powerful, natural athlete.  Maybe it is volleyball, maybe next year she will find it is wrestling.  It's a tough call, wrestling will continue to be challenging as she gets older and is up against almost only boys.  There is just a brute strength there that boys have and I think it gets to a point where it is hard for a girl to compete, not that they can't, but it would be tough.  We will wait and see and support her in whatever she chooses.  Gymnastics is still an option, too.  We are just fortunate that she has the opportunity to try so many different things to find what makes her happy.  Whatever it is I hope she does it with the same tenacity that she wrestles with!

{who knew}

I'm trying to give my blog some new life.  I am trying to commit time to it, make it something that people want to continue reading, make it something I am dying to sit down work on.  I'm cleaning it up, adding to it and trying not to be so damn blog illiterate.  I know there must be a lot of fun things I can add to it and make it a place people want to be.  While doing all this to make my blog "the place to be" I am going back through and cleaning up posts that I typed up, but never posted, deleting partially worked on masterpieces, etc.  While doing this I came across a complete blog entry that I never posted and I wondered why?  I like it.  Maybe I was to busy to remember to post it. Maybe I didn't like it at the time.  I don't know, but I am going to post it now.  This goes back to almost a year ago, but I am still posting it because when I read it I was taken right back to that day and I remember all of this vividly.  So read and enjoy and got back to "me" almost a year ago.

May 2011
This is kind of a random post, but it is one of those random posts that prompted me to start this blog. Real experiences. Personal experiences with breast cancer. Not the medical, factual, clinical stuff you can get from your doctor. The personal experience stuff that your girlfriend would tell you. Kind of a "Girlfriend's Guide to Breast Cancer: Stuff Your Doctor Doesn't Tell You". So this is one of those posts. Random, but stuff that I have experienced and that rattles through my head. As always, remember, it's breast cancer, boobs are usually front and center. ;-)

Many people equated my reconstruction with "Woo-Hoo! New boobs!" Ummm, not quite. Well, at least for me, unfortunately, it didn't quite work that way. Very early on in my meetings with my plastic surgeon she told me my experience isn't like somebody coming in to have a breast augmentation. They are choosing to have implants. They want their new body. I didn't have a choice.  Well, I had a choice when I chose reconstruction, but losing my breasts was not a choice. She told me, "You aren't going to love them. You don't want the change in your body. But, I am going to make them as beautiful as possible." And, you know what? I didn't love them. I REALLY, REALLY disliked them for a long time. I would look at them and they looked so unnatural on my body. I have never had much in the "boob" department and for a long time they didn't look anything close to "natural". They were very huge and swollen all the way up to my collar bones. I felt like I had to stand on my tip toes to see out over my boobs. Pre-mastectomy, I had some great cheater bras that provided great false advertising, but at the end of the day when I would get undressed I was greeted with MY body. My body that I have always had. My body that I knew. Now, a new body was looking back at me, a strange, misshapen body.

So, as you can imagine during this process I went through a crazy roller coaster of emotions getting used to my body. At one point I would break down crying every time I saw them in the mirror or had to tend to my incisions. I went through a time of just avoiding looking at them in the mirror. But, then I would have sweet, wonderful moments of "You know what? It is what it is. I will get used to them. They will be okay." These provided a wonderful release of heaviness on my heart. Then I would stumble backwards and loose some ground, but slowly I made it to where I am right now. Where I am now is a lovely, lovely place to be. Dare I say the other side? A point where I can't stumble back far enough to lose ground. I think so. I think I can actually say I am kind of enjoying my new body and digging my new curves. Add Monday's surgery to the mix and I have new tummy curves to add to that. Even all swollen from surgery, bruised all over and not really being able to see anything "pretty" I can totally see that things are coming together so well. I just told a friend I think I am just so happy to be at a point where I just get to heal and truly move forward. No future surgeries or procedures looming in my future. Just heal and get strong.

So with my new body comes some fun stuff, especially moving into summer. New bra wardrobe, new swimsuits, new summer tops. But, not all is what I thought it would be. This is where I have found myself thinking, "Who knew?" Some of the things I thought were going to be very fun aren't as much fun as I thought. Some things are more fun than I expected and some things I just didn't expect. Who knew?

Unless somebody warned you before you went shopping for new bras who knew push up bras are no longer an option with implants? At least implants with a reconstruction. I have no idea how that works with an augmentation. Those babies don't push up. They stay in one place and that push up bra pushes down and just doesn't work. Who knew it is hard to find a selection of bras without push up in them? Who knew I would have to find bras that are shaped exactly like my boobs because their shape doesn't alter at all to fill in bra cups because I no longer have breast tissue, only pec muscle and implants? Who knew that I can now wear fun lace-only, "non-functional" bras because I don't need any support at all in a bra. My girls aren't going anywhere. Who knew I would be totally horrified and in awe at the same time when I tried on a bikini? That is going to take some getting used to and I need to find some bikini tops with a little more coverage if that is possible. Not to comfortable being THAT out there. Who knew I would toss some of my summer tops in the donate pile because I just feel totally obscene in them? Who knew I would discover that I lived in a strapless bra all summer in my summer tops and now realize I am having a hard time finding a strapless bra that works with my new body to wear and enjoy my summer tops? Who knew I would find that I am more comfortable in slim fitting shirts because tops that hang loose off my new body make me feel dumpy and frumpy? Who knew that I would find so many ways that my new body is affecting different clothing choices and that some I am liking and some I am not. Who knew? I am finding that this whole process is a long list of "Who knew?"

When looking for some info on bras and reconstruction I Googled "reconstruction implants bras". I mostly found a lot of breast cancer forums with women asking questions and giving advise based on their personal experiences. While reading through many of these forums I found that I am very thankful for my plastic surgeon, her skill and my experience with my reconstruction. My doctor doesn't like to use tissue expanders to make room for implants. She feels they are old school and in her experience she has found she can bypass the awful experience of the expanders (she just doesn't like them) and go straight to the implants. So many experiences that women posted were reconstruction results they weren't really pleased with going from a tissue expander to an implant. I have no idea if this is how it is in general, but it makes me so thankful that my doctor does reconstructions the way she does, how my reconstruction results turned out and the direction I am going. I'm happy to be where I am now and far more aware of the possibilities of the "who knew" moments so as not to be totally shocked or surprised by anything. Thank goodness for this place that I have come to be right in this moment.

"I can be changed by what happens to me but I refuse to be reduced by it." Maya Angelou

{what makes you happy}

About a year ago, the night before my surgery I quickly posted a blog entry listing many of my happy places and asked for people to quickly post their happy places, because it was a day when happy places where definitely in order!

So, tonight a friend was posting beautiful photos of smiles that just make you happy and smile when you look at them.  So I started thinking of my happy places that make me smile.  One of my happy places is a coffee shop, a hot cup of coffee and a good book.  So I went out looking for a pic that made me think of this happy place.  This was one of the first pics to pop up.  I love hearts!  So this spoke, ok, shouted to my happy place.  Find your happy place, curl up with it and enjoy your life!

What is your happy place?