Best

I saw this sign in one of my favorite breakfast places last Saturday:

It was a good reminder BEFORE I ordered breakfast, especially since I had a hankerin’ for something syrupy. My best wouldn’t have been to order the praline-stuffed French toast or the Indian pancake. My best was to order the egg white omelet with spinach, mushrooms, and smoked gouda. Nothing about smoked gouda would make me whine or complain that I didn’t have something with syrup. Booyah!

I’ve been thinking a lot about what my best is, especially since posting my last blog about depression. Depression can take away your desire to do what’s best and, instead, tell you it’s OK to settle for what’s safe or do what takes the least amount of effort. After breakfast, I thought about sitting around, pretending to write and do homework while actually playing Words With Friends. But it was a beautiful day and the lawn needed to be mowed, so no excuses. I chose to do my best. I got out of my jams and into my work clothes and I cut the grass. Except for the wood tick that embedded in my arm, it was a good morning of mind-cleansing, honest work.

Thank you so much for all the comments, both on my blog and via email, regarding last week’s post. As Sharyn wrote, I wasn’t looking for sympathy. What I got was a LOT of empathy. Many of you have been there, done that, still wearing the t-shirt. It’s not an easy place to be in. Depression can isolate like nothing else. Just knowing we’re not alone can sometimes make it less scary, and together, we can offer each other a hand up out of the dark.

One of the comments wasn’t so kind, but in hindsight, I wish I hadn’t deleted it. Anonymous (of course) wrote: “Uh…..how about an SSRI dumbass.” That stung a little at first, but I breathed it in and gave myself space to explore my response. I thought again, as I often do in difficult situations, of the Buddhist teaching of the second arrow, that when we encounter things like insults from anonymous commenters (when we’re shot with the first arrow), we have the choice of how we internalize that situation. We can whine, complain, or give in and believe ourselves to be dumbasses, thus shooting ourselves with the second arrow, or we can experience the insult of the original arrow and live from within that sting and work out the best course of action that will not further our suffering.

For me, that best course of action – doing my best – was to see inside the comment and to wander into the mind of who would write such a thing, especially to someone who was already feeling pretty badly. What I found there was pain and anger, emotions I am familiar with and could empathize with. To be angry with Anonymous would be the same as being angry with myself for those times I suffer like that. Spending time in that kind of petty anger is a waste of energy. Better to put that energy into something positive, like metta (loving-kindness)meditation, or, as others might do, offering a thoughtful prayer up to God.

My best is not perfect, but I’m not a dumbass.

Another awesome weapon I have in my “doing my best” arsenal is Alice T. Dog. She makes me want to do my best, and to not whine, complain, or make excuses. Walk you in the rain? ….OK…. Throw your Kong even though I’m in the middle of a Mad Men season 5 marathon? ….OK…. Thanks for letting me cry into your scruff, Al. Thanks for always being happy to see me, even when I’m not so happy. 

Al, on left.

I took Al to see her sister, Willow, a few days ago. They’ve been apart for six weeks, but Will remembered Al and she was so happy that she wagged her tail for the first time in weeks, her owner, Becky, said. Will is afraid of most everything and everyone, but under her sister’s care for an hour, Will was a little happier, a little more free from suffering.

Alice T. Dog: champion of best.

I See You. I Feel You.

I woke up this morning, as I have many mornings the last few months, lacking a sense of purpose. Depression does that. It anesthetizes even my most simple of intentions, and I struggle to remember that sunlight makes me happy, if only I would look outside and see it.

It’s been 13 years since I’ve felt this way. Twenty five years since the first time. It’s nothingness and futility, acute dread, and the stinging pain of powerlessness that turns every motion into an Herculean effort, both emotionally and physically. Who knew getting out of a chair could require such debate?

But unlike 13 years ago, I won’t put a down payment on a handgun. I won’t stare into the river and call myself Jezebel. I won’t hide under the sheets with someone who doesn’t love me or numb the numbness with a bottle of tequila.  

This time, I’ve packed a more useful toolbox to work through this depression. Notice I didn’t use the words “solve” or “cure.” Solving depression is like grabbing air. Depression is in my DNA, so it will likely return some day. I want to give its reincarnations a fighting chance at being less difficult and shorter in duration, so this time, I’m allowing the feelings in rather than trying to keep them outside. Just like the smell of skunk spray, sadness and worthlessness will find their way inside. Better to keep the windows and doors open to allow fresh air to move about and neutralize the odor.

One of the tools I’ve adopted is reading positive books and reading weight-loss/maintenance blogs (many of which are written by those of you reading my own blog. I’m out there lurking, just not always commenting), and blogs that deal with everyday, real life issues. I read other people’s words for a sense of solidarity, as well as to learn how others cope with their own struggles.

There are two books I’m reading simultaneously. The first is “The Power of Kindness: The Unexpected Benefits ofLeading a Compassionate Life” by Piero Ferrucci.

Ferrucci asserts that kindness is a “universal remedy – first for the individual, for we can be well only if we are able to care for ourselves, to love ourselves.” Being kind to ourselves means being honest with ourselves, to recognize a problem rather than to pretend there is none. To illustrate, he tells the story of his son, Emilio, who was going back to school after vacation.

“He did not like the idea at all and was filled with anxiety. To him, the approach of school days was like a monster that threatened him and wanted to squash him.”

As his parent, Ferrucci would do anything to ease his son’s fears, so he decided to give his son something that was considered taboo in his family: French fries from a fast-food restaurant.

“Usually anything that is prohibited appeals to Emilio, especially junk food. I thought I had the ace up my sleeve. But  no. Emilio’s reply ought to be chiseled in stone: ‘Dad, you don’t solve problems with French fries.’

“Touche. You don’t pretend problems do not exist, and you can’t solve them with ephemeral distractions. You have to face them with open-eyed honesty.”

My depression won’t go away by ignoring it. Only by saying, “I see you and I feel you” can I begin to dismantle the barbed wire fence that threatens to bloody my life.

One of the blogs I read is Brene Brown’s “Ordinary Courage.” I took Brown’s advice and bought Richie Norton's book The Power of Starting Something Stupid. I bought it because of a quote she included in her review, one that took her breath away: 

"People wait. They wait for the elusive day when they'll finally have enough time (guess what? - you never will), enough education (there's always more to know), enough money (no matter how much you make, someone will always have more)…People wait until that fateful day when they wake up and realize that while they were sitting around paying dues, earning their keep, waiting for that elusive 'perfect time' their entire life has passed them by."

Reading that last line, I realized that for the last few months, I’ve been sitting around waiting for depression to leave me, like it’s a houseguest who understands that her boarding pass must be used by a certain date. No, I realized, I have to be the one to kick out the houseguest, to tell her it’s time to go home now. Here, let me do your laundry, help you pack, and drive you to the airport. 

Only by engaging my depression can I learn what motivates it, what feeds it. This is my depression and I am only speaking to my issues. I know depression affects individuals in many different ways and often requires medical and pharmaceutical interventions. I do not rule those tools out, but for now, therapy, reading, meditating, and crying (yes, it can be a therapeutic tool, even if it’s an all-day cry) are making a small hole in that barbed wire fence. Someday I will pass through and I will once again intuit that sunshine makes me smile.  

Ready!!!

Alice will do anything for beef jerky or peanut butter. Anything, that is, except go up stairs.

In my ancient house, there are 13 steep and narrow steps to the second floor. One friend says climbing them is akin to scaling a wall. Not an unfair comparison, actually, considering you have to ascend and descend sideways, gripping the handrail like a safety rope.

So if two-legged creatures have issues with my stairs, imagine what a four-legged pup must think. In Alice’s case it’s, ‘Are you KIDDING me?’

I spent two-and-a-half weeks bribing Al with her favorite treats, the ones that make her “sit” and “stay” and reward her for doing her business outside. I would set a bit of jerky on the first step. She’d reach for it, no problem. Second and third steps? East peasy. Fourth step required a bit of stretching, but with a bit of snout and tongue maneuvering, she got it.

The fifth step took some contemplating and some pacing back and forth across the threshold. After she had time to think about it (“How bad do I want that jerky?”), Al would skittishly hoist her back legs on to the first step and stretch just far enough to nab the jerky before running into the dining room to feast.

When I set a jerky on the sixth step, she looked at me from below like, “Um….no, human. That is NOT happening.” Even though every time I went upstairs, she’d sit at the bottom looking up, wondering, no doubt, what was up there, the jerky treat sat on step six for days.

So imagine my surprise last Wednesday at about 9 p.m. when I heard something moving around upstairs. As far as I know, my house isn’t haunted, so I stood up from my desk and looked around for Alice. She was not on her couch or in her crate or sniffing around the garbage can. Windows and doors were all securely shut, so she hadn’t escaped. The only place she could be…

I looked up the stairs and there she was, peering at me from around the corner of the spare bedroom, her tail thumping against the door, like she’d discovered some secret passageway to Nirvana.

I don’t know what motivated Alice to climb the stairs on her own, but I find great inspiration in her actions. No amount of bribing, cajoling, firm tones, soft tones, or words of encouragement from me were going to convince her that climbing the stairs was in her best interest. Only she knew what was right for her and when.

Al slept on her bed beside me that night, and I thought about the 19 steps that challenged me eight years ago. I had to climb them every day to get to my second-floor apartment, and every day I’d look up to the doorway at the top, draw a deep breath, and grab the metal railing. My knees crunched and my hips popped, and my lower back burned, and by the time I go to the top, my head was pounding and I could barely breathe. Then I’d sit down on the closest chair and tell myself, “That wasn’t so bad.”

But it was that bad, and everyone around me knew it. And yet no amount of bribing, cajoling, firm tones, soft tones, or words of encouragement were going to convince me that losing weight was in my best interest. Only I knew what was right for me and when.

Like Alice, eventually I figured it out, but I did it on my own terms and in my own time. Brave Alice and her determination to discover what was at the top of the stairs is no different than me or you or anyone else who finally says, “I’m ready!”

In the process of writing this blog over the last few days, I was fortunate to read Jen’s post, "Transitioning My Eating" (she writes the blog, “A Prior Fat Girl”) about her move to transition her eating from more to less processed foods. She wrote: “A lot of you have been very vocal in telling me I should do this for years. But I wasn’t ready then, mentally or emotionally. I wasn’t there yet. Something changed though…in the past couple months. Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching @dietitiancassie’s tweets, and the articles she’s sharing. Or maybe it’s because of the conversations with my co-worker, Darcy, over the past couple months. Or maybe it’s because I’m just ready.”

“Ready” doesn’t always mean “I'm super confident that I can succeed!” “Ready” means ready to take a chance on the process with a hope that the outcome will be in the ballpark of our expectation. And if the process or the outcome aren't what we thought it would be, if our path takes us somewhere else, well, then, we still took a chance because we were “ready.” 

AIM: A Girl’s Gotta Eat!

 

This is hardly a news flash for those of you who’ve been reading my blog for the last year: I’m not the tracker and planner I used to be. What might be newsy-ish, is that in and of itself – for me – that isn’t such a bad thing. I was waaaay militant about tracking and planning for years, to the point where I’d panic if I missed adding an olive or a couple of almonds to my food diary.

What I’ve found is a sort of left-to-middle ground, one where I call on my experience with food and the confidence I have in myself to know what’s best and not best for me. (Although, as you will read, I don’t always take my own advice, thus left-to-middle. I’m still working to find that perfect middle ground).

I decided for this topic I’d examine the “What Do I Eat?” portion on my FAQ page, written in 2009, and compare it to what is real for me now. The text in italics is from my original post.

I became a vegetarian after I got to goal in 2007.

This year, I have added fish back to my diet, particularly salmon, scallops, shrimp, orange roughy, flounder and canned tuna. I eat fish roughly three times a week.

Many people have asked…how I get enough protein each day. I strive to get between 55-60 grams of protein a day. 

I stopped tracking that stat a few years ago.

I don’t eat “fake” meat (except for Boca vegan burgers) because the sodium content is so high. 

That’s still true,

I like to make my own homemade bean burgers and keep them in the freezer.

I like to, but have I lately? Ummm….no. (Note to self: make burgers this weekend.)

My go-to protein sources are:

3 egg whites: 11 g

Cabot 75% reduced-fat cheese, 1 ounce: 9 g

Greek yogurt, ½ C: 11 g

Boca burger: 13 g

Soy milk, ½ C: 4 g

Edamame, 1/3 C: 12 g

Bean burger: 6-12 g

Lentils, 1 C: 17 g

All still true.

As for volume, I eat a LOT of veggies.

Not as true anymore. Where I used to eat up to nine servings a day, I struggle now to consume four or five. It may be because my meds have changed a bit, namely I now take prescription strength iron and B12, although I’ve found no literature indicating these things cause a change in appetite.

Many veggies I used to love just don’t taste the same, and so I’ve had to come up with new and more appealing ways to eat them. Also, salads – once a staple in my diet – don’t cut it for me anymore. I suspect overkill. I got bored.

I usually eat something every 2-3 hours.

This is still true most days. I eat a fairly big breakfast that includes protein (either egg whites or yogurt) and fruit and sometimes veggies. Once in a while I’ll include a grain such as an English muffin or toast, or opt out of the higher protein foods and eat oatmeal or cereal with fruit.

Entirely carb-based snacks leave me unsatisfied. I like to eat a bean burger, edamame, some almonds, a piece of cheese or a hard-boiled egg. Sometimes I’ll have PB2 (Bell Plantation’s dried peanut butter that you mix with water to make it smooth) with a banana. I also love squash. Any kind of squash: butternut, acorn or spaghetti. Leftover squash makes a great snack. For butternut and acorn squash, I mix it with a small amount of reduced-fat butter and maybe a bit of brown sugar. I put butter, pepper and Parmesan cheese on my spaghetti squash.

I want to be THAT person again! OK, so I’m not that far from that person, but I admit it’s been awhile since I’ve bought a squash.

Hummus is a must-have in my house, too. I prefer to make my own, but some store-bought is good, too (particularly Trader Joe’s brand).  

I haven’t made homemade hummus in months. I found the Giant Eagle store brand to be far superior to even Trader Joe’s! I keep it in my fridge at all times, along with cottage cheese, something I rarely purchased before.

I also like to have a vegetable soup on hand for a quick snack. Other soups I make are usually bean- or lentil-based and they make good lunches or dinners.

Yes and yes! So…maybe I’m not as far from the old me as I thought.

I limit my fruit intake to two servings each day. My other rule is no more than one tropical fruit serving a day (i.e. bananas, mangoes, pineapples). I also try to limit my grain-based carbs to two a day (reduced-calorie bread, crackers, cereal, etc.), I rarely eat pasta, and I limit potatoes to once a week (I used to eat them 3-4 times a week).

This is actually still very true. However, fruit is another food I lost a taste for, so I don’t always eat two servings a day. I also eat potatoes maaaaybe once or twice a month, although I confess I discovered Kettle Brand baked chips and I do munch on them sometimes…in moderation. I make pasta salmon salad a few times a month, too, and use whole wheat pasta. Otherwise, pasta doesn’t do much for me.

What else that's different from when I wrote “What Do I Eat?” is I socialize more, which means more restaurants, more food on the go, and eating more frequently at friends’ homes. This trend has tried to lead me by the hand to my old ways of eating, and I confess I don’t always resist in the way that would be best for my body. Bread baskets and butter pats, full-fat dressings, a bite here and a bite there of appetizers, desserts, or the meals others are having….all have found their way back into my eating behavior.

But while clearly there is room for improvement in the ways I eat away from home, I am more mindful of these patterns than ever before. A huge improvement in the way I used to maintain any weight loss. I reign myself in faster, tweak my diet quicker, and say no to myself more often.

I’m no longer a slave to food, but a student of food, which is a BIG step further along my path to the perfect middle ground.

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AIM: Adventures in Maintenance is Lynn, Lori, Debby, Shelley, and Cammy, former weight-loss bloggers who now write about life in maintenance. We formed AIM to work together to turn up the volume on the issues facing people in weight maintenance. We publish a post on the same topic on the first Monday of each month. Let us know if there is a topic you'd like us to address!

Lori @ Finding Radiance

Debbie @ debby weighs in

Shelley @ My Journey to Fit

Cammy @ The Tippy Toe Diet

Tag, I’m It! My “Next Big Thing”

The Next Big Thingis a blog meme going around in the blog-o-sphere, and Cammy at Tippy Toe Diet asked if she could tag me to keep it going, sort of like Friendship Bread only carb-free!

Cammy’s Next Big Thingis a gathering of goals she’s put under the umbrella of “daring greatly.” She was tagged to continue the meme by Sharon at Midlife Moments, whose Next Big Thing is menopause.

My Next Big Thingwill make noise. Literally. And I hope to god my mother isn’t reading this.

I’m going to learn to drive ride this (A reader corrected me saying you ride a bike, both as the person who is in charge of it and the person riding on the back. It seems confusing, but if that's the rule, that's the rule!):

This is the Irishman’s Harley, a 1999 Sportster 883, that I’ve had the pleasure of riding on the back of only once and only briefly because spring didn’t get the groundhog’s memo that it’s supposed to start warming up.  

I rode on the back of a motorcycle for the first time two years ago (see “A Mental Miracle”) and went from scared-to-death to badass-in-love in zero to 60. Motorcycle Owner and I only dated for a few more months, so I didn’t get too much additional riding time, but the thrill of the ride never left me.

Knowing this, a friend suggested I take the a Motorcycle Safety Training class after he took it and bought a used Honda Sportster last year. It seemed absurd at the time. Learn to drive ride a motorcycle? Such a foreign concept. As liberated as I am, driving  riding a bike seemed like a guy thing. Women rode on the back. But a seed was planted, and like the crocuses in my yard - despite the wicked weather - it will bloom.

One in 10 motorcycle owners are women. Not great stats, but those women are out there, and I am determined to join their ranks. I just have to learn how to drive ride one first, something I know almost nothing about. But, hey, I didn’t know anything about driving a stick shift when my dad took me with him to test drive a 1974 Mustang in 1980 when I was a junior in high school. He drove us to a parking lot, got out of the car, and said, “If you drive this back to the dealership, I’ll buy it for you.” Believe me, I learned REAL fast how to drive a stick.

When I married farmer Bruce, he taught me to drive a skid loader, an old Ford pickup with the stick on the column (the 3-speed “H” pattern), a tractor, and a 10-speed Mack truck. Getting behind the wheel of an enclosed vehicle is always fun. But there are no steering wheels on motorcycles. Or doors or windows or anything holding you in. You shift with your left foot, including your toes, and you brake with your right hand as well as your foot, and people warn you about how dangerous they are and they call people who love motorcycles “organ donors” and you’d think that would be enough to scare me away.

But it doesn’t. This is just the kind of challenge I’ve been looking for. Something so outside my comfort zone that I need field glasses to see it. It also gives me something more fun than my 2013 taxes to save for.

I’ll start small (and used), perhaps a Suzuki Marauder GZ125. It weighs what I did at my heaviest!

Or a Honda Rebel 250

Or a Star Motorcycles V Star 250. Look how awesome she looks driving that!

Or a Yamaha Virago 250. Not sure I can pull off leather pants, but I'll definitely get chaps.

So there you have it. My Next Big Thing. I promise I’ll do everything within my power to stay safe. In the meantime, I’m hoping for warmer weather very soon so I can start riding on the back of that Harley and begin learning all I can about driving it one day.

I’ve tagged Sharon from Gains and Losses: Life ThroughSharon’s Eyes to keep this Next Big Thing chain going. I just know she’ll come up with her own uber cool challenge!

The "C" Word

Someone once told me I think too much. He meant it as a dis, but I took it as a compliment. “We are what we think,” said the Buddha. “All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.”

Something I’ve been thinking about and working to understand for quite a while now is “commitment.” How do I define it? How have I succeeded or failed, and why I’ve succeeded or failed? It’s been a difficult and yet, as best I can tell, an honest inquiry.

Commitment is not easy for me. I’ve known this for years. When my husband died, I subconsciously identified commitment with suffering, or more specifically, I believed if I committed to someone, they would leave me. Commitment became less of a promise and more of a tentative maybe, a “let’s wait and see” thing that offered an out if things got difficult, scary, tough…fill in the blank.

This isn’t to say I lack the ability to commit to something. It took a lot of commitment to lose 150+ pounds, and it’s taking even more commitment to maintain. But it’s easier to make a commitment to myself than to others. If I let myself down, I only hurt myself. Letting someone else down not only hurts myself and others, but it spawns guilt, and who wants to live with guilt, right? Ergo, don’t commit too much to someone else.

Since my divorce in 2010, it’s been crazy strange living alone, and at first it was very difficult. But I’ve come a long way since I wrote “Let The Mauling Begin” in May 2011. Living alone has helped me understand myself better and has taught me many things, from the simple (grocery shopping for one, cooking for one) to the more complex (changing the locks on the doors and turning off the main water valve to the house). I was in a relationship for a while, and have recently started dating again, but I’m not looking to commit to anyone, at least not in the long-term. Part of that is my still-exploratory look at my relationship to commitment, but it’s also become clear to me – through journaling and meditation and hours spent talking with friends and Julie T. Therapist – that there’s more of me for me to know. Alone.

However….just because I’m not looking to share a toothbrush holder with a two-legged creature doesn’t mean I don’t want to share space with a four-legged one. A dog seemed a better conduit to embracing relational commitment than the two-legged right now. And so I spent the last few months looking for Alice. I finally found her – through the help of a network of rescue organizations and their dedicated volunteers – at a shelter in Marietta, Ohio, where she’d been placed after being removed from a home with 28 dogs.

I introduced you to Alice last week after I sprained my knee and aggravated my arthritis (see “A New Dog and an Old Knee”). One of the hardest things to convince people with arthritis to do is to move, and I’m no exception. Over the last several months, unless I’m going to my volunteer job or babysit the grandkids, my morning routine is: get up, make tea, sit down, and sit. And sit some more. Then around 10 a.m. I decide…sigh…that I should work out. After all, exercise is something I’ve been committed to for nearly six years! But working out means standing up and…whaaaaa!! It’s easier to sit! Then Alice wakes up and snorts and paws at me, and so I bundle up and take her out, and darn it if walking her doesn’t loosen up the old knee! And because we walk more than once a day, I stay more limber throughout the day, which in turn, makes me more excited about working out.

Who’s a good dog?

I understand that commitment is a choice and a promise – not a tentative maybe – and it takes a conscious effort every day to stick to it, through thick and thin. Have I been happy with some of Alice’s choices? No. But that’s why god invented carpet cleaner. Has she been happy with some of my choices? Probably not, as evidenced by the vomit she left in the back seat of my car. But I’m committed to helping Al be the best dog she can be, and, while I can’t speak for her exactly, she seems pretty committed to making me a better human.

A Day Like No Other

Today is the 30th anniversary of the day my life changed forever. As many of you know, my husband died on March 22, 1983, when I was 19 years old and our daughter, Carlene, was 11 days old.

I suspect we all have a day or a moment in time that changed us, either by choice or by circumstance. Please, if you feel you can, share your day or moment in the comments below.

Here’s a glance into a few hours of that day, a day so long ago and yet still stings me to my soul:

It was a Tuesday. My Aunt Mavis called the house just before noon. My mom, who was staying with us for a few weeks, answered the phone while I folded laundry and watched “All My Children.” She put her hand over the receiver and asked, “Did Bruce go to town?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I thought he was working in the machine shed. Let me check.”

I opened the front door and called out his name. The sun was bright and the air was a promising 40 degrees. I saw a train stopped on the tracks a half mile from our farm and remembered hearing a whistle blowing longer than usual about an hour earlier. I called to Bruce again. Duke, our German Shepherd, was curled up on the rug at the bottom of the step, a sure sign Bruce wasn’t on the property.

I went back inside. Mom hung up the phone. Mavis heard there’d been a train accident, she said.

My mouth went dry.

“Call David,” I said and turned off the television. David was our pastor and a member of the volunteer ambulance crew.

David’s wife answered and Mom asked her if there’d been an accident.

Please, please, please say no. Please say no. I covered my heart with my hands.

Mom’s face went sheet white.

“Thank you,” she said and hung up the phone. Our eyes met. I knew.

“Lynnie,” her voice trembled. “Bruce is dead. David’s on his way here.”

You know how when you rip off an adhesive bandage and the pain doesn’t hit for a few seconds? The same thing happens when you find out your husband is dead. It takes your brain awhile to understand what you just heard. Even then it doesn’t sink in because the reality is just too big to grasp in the space of a few seconds.

I walked into the kitchen for a glass of water and to turn off the pork chops simmering on the stove. I stared out the window at the south end of our lawn. I thought about the garden I wanted to plant there and made a mental note to remind Bruce to till that up for me. Then David’s car and my brother-in-law’s pickup came speeding around the corner. 

Wait. Bruce isn’t here anymore.

I met them at the door. They’d both been crying.

David wrapped me in his arms and I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t cry. I wanted to throw up.

We sat down on the couch and I asked Mom to get my wedding ring out of my jewelry box. I’d taken it off a few months earlier because my fingers swelled. My hand shook as she handed me the small band, and I forced it past my knuckle.

“Do you want something to drink?” someone asked.

“No.”

“Eat?”

“No.”

“You’ll need to keep up your strength to nurse.”

“I know,” I said. But I didn’t eat for another day.

I looked down at my body clothed in gray sweat pants and Bruce’s long-sleeved South Dakota State University t-shirt. My breasts leaked like sieves, and I was littered with stitches and hemorrhoids. It was one thing to feel vulnerable because I was overweight. Fat I understood. On my wedding day, my first thought as I walked down the aisle wasn’t, “I’m getting married!” It was, “Oh god, people are going to look at my ass!” But no amount of feeling fat prepared me for what crept through my bloated, post-partum body; a feeling so raw that it settled in my bones like damp winter cold.

From what little experience I had with the formalities of death, I knew people would soon come to our farm armed with casseroles and desserts to pay their respects. Still shaking, I changed out of my sweats and hoped no one noticed I hadn’t dusted or cleaned the bathroom in a week.