Do you actually speak...

When you are talking to others do you actually speak? Do your words come from your heart? And when you talk are you saying anything that is actually valuable? To you, as in your truth, the words that you really want to say that are not modified or held back for fear of offending or being rejected by another person!??

I've been trying so hard recently to walk my talk, and vice versa... And one of the hardest parts of this journey I've realised are words.. Said words, thought words, undefined words, unspoken words, unheard words, the list goes on.. I think in my world my biggest problem and my biggest gift are words...

Single life has been really challenging for me, being sociable, active and communicative all come easily but I'm being drawn more and more to the realisation that everyone else has a set rule of thumb regarding what is and is not said.. What is acceptable and what is a faux pas beyond measure.. What people want to hear being at war with what you really WANT to say...There are so many supposed 'rules', and not only do I not understand them it's not a game I choose to play.. Not anymore anyway..

I've met a number of guys over so many months, one whom I thought I could be myself but only he was allowed to speak and as soon as I did I became unacceptable and quickly 'deleted' from his life.. Another who I thought my friend yet he didn't hear me at all and what he did hear he used to romance me for two seconds flat, but still I wasn't worthy enough to keep around and actually 'talk' with.. Another I couldn't actually converse with, because if I had an opinion it was taken personally and so I felt like I couldn't speak.. Another I knew I could tell anything too and vice versa and I think we could have happily cruised along together but life and his relationship circumstances made me (and my sometimes crappy self integrity that always steers me right but doesn't get me what I want) back away immediately before even going there... I met another who I offered up truths too and disinterest became quickly apparent, and whilst I know it was because of my words it made me sad they were misconstrued and misunderstood... I felt like I had grown a dragons head overnight...

I've realised I can no longer be mindfully in a relationship, be it romantic or otherwise, with someone whom I cannot completely be myself and talk my talk too.. I need to be able to speak.. I need a partner in crime who allows that, just as I would allow them.. I also need a partner I don't feel the need to speak to and he gets that, and we can just be.. Sometimes I can do (and need to get away with) stupid talk, I can act like an immature kid and laugh and carry on, or I can rant and rave about the most idiotic things and yet I know that the other one is listening, even if it's with a sparkle of amusement in their eyes and they think I'm a complete dick.. Above all in the moments that I really need too, I need to know that when I 'speak' I can really speak, that my words when spoken are absorbed, I don't need them to be agreed with, not adhered to, but I most definitely need them to be heard..  

I've decided from now on, I am going to speak.. I will say what I want, when I want, to whom I want and if that scares people away then I really don't want or need them in my life to begin with.. As the saying goes, "It has taken me over 20+ years to really learn to like myself, I don't have that kind of time trying to convince you to like me as well".. You either like someone or you don't.. I am no longer going to put on airs and graces in order to attract a friend nor a mate, the right friend or partner will be the one who looks at me without the airs and graces and still thinks the sun never shone as brightly when I wasn't in their life....

The biggest present you can give anyone is to be present.. And the biggest present you can give yourself?? It's surrounding yourself with people who when you speak, you can actually speak and they in return listen... 

Ciao xx

Mama, madly xox

The unspoken journey....

Last night I watched Offspring, the show about the bumbling and relatively 'life' hopeless "Nina Proudman".. A show about how she stumbles through life, eclectic, eccentric and generally no freaking idea what she's doing.. Nina is a character I totally get and one that resonates within me.. Sometimes I laugh to the point of breathlessness because she could be me...

She lost her partner, her lover, her soulmate and the last few episodes have been dealing with her grief.. Her mothers character in the show 'Geraldine' said something thing last night to her daughter that I just got, I just felt on every level.. She looked at her daughter and vehemently said "It's your grief my darling, and fuck anyone who tells you how to do it.".. In that moment I loved Geraldine like she was my own mother...

I get grief, on my own level.. I grieved for nearly three years for my son who actually survived, my son who is still alive as I write this, but yet I grieved.. I grieved for the two times he died in my arms and in front of me, at 2wks old.. I grieved for his created disability after being born perfect and healthy and beautiful, and that my healthy baby suffered so severely from multiple strokes "just because he did"... I grieved for every single experience he would miss out on as a disabled child, I grieved for the life I wanted for him that he would not be able to live, I grieved for the struggle already past and the struggle yet to come, I grieved for his brother and sister, his father and myself.. I mostly grieved because for the first two years of his life we were told due to his epilepsy condition he would die, he would be a vegetable, he wouldn't survive and one day I would be a parent burying my own child, burying my own heart, my own soul, his life ripped from him before he'd even had a chance to live it.. I grieved so severely all the time not knowing that, that is what it was..

I remember waking up one morning, an epiphany like a  burning ball of fire smacking me in the face, and realising that I was in fact not depressed nor not coping but I was in a state of grief and it was ok to be there. 

I will never understand anyone else's grief because it's happening to them and affecting their lives in a way I will never comprehend because no one thinks or feels or lives or breaths in life, the same way.. 

I've had a lot of situations around me in recent years that involved that impermeable wall we call grief, mine and other people's..  In those personal moments when I sat bundled into the tiniest ball trying to squish myself into a size that allowed no space for me to feel anything, and the darkness surrounded my heart and soul, it was excruciating and beyond any pain I had ever felt.. It made me realise I cannot understand other people's pain but I understand my own.. Its unfathomable to even think about walking in someone else's shoes because it is a path we do not know, and will never understand.. We can see the path and know what 'it' is but unless we are that person we can never own their personal pain..

Not understanding someone else's grief is understandable, but ignoring it or pretending it isnt happening or disregarding it or even wondering why it's not happening in this way or it is happening in that way etc is just not ok... We talk about grief rarely, we do it quietly and behind our hands with our eyes looking everywhere but at the grieving person, we are uncomfortable because of the emotion others grief brings up in us but from a personal point of view I can honestly say I never needed anyone to understand my grief I just needed someone. 

I needed my friends to step up and be my friends. I needed someone to cry with, to walk with, to talk with. I needed someone to crawl into bed next to me when I was curled up in the dark on a sunshiney day and just hold my hand. I didn't need understanding I just needed my people. I needed to know in my life in those dark moments when I felt like I was free falling, I was doing it somewhere safe and if I landed with a thud it would be less so, because they were there to cushion my fall.. Mostly I needed someone who would just be, who could sit in silence with me without the need to talk, who lacked judgement at my process and who didn't bat an eyelid when my laugh went to a cry and then back to a laugh and just sat on the ride next me, my own roller coaster of emotion. I needed someone to just be.

No one can or does or will ever know your grief. You will never understand another's. You will grieve over lost relationships, lost lifestyles, jobs, people, belongings, loves.. You will grieve over deaths, of your family and friends and pets or not deaths but things not turning out the way you had mapped out your life and dreams.. Sometimes it will be big losses like a parent or a child or a sibling or an unborn child.. It might even be the love of your life.. Be it big or small it's all grief.. Any type you grief you experience is ok because it just "is what it is".. No one can tell you how to do it.. You will do it how you do, the way you do, and it is all ok.. I don't hink my grief will ever stop.. it ebbs and flows, felt and unfelt at differing times and has become a part of me, of us, of our life but the one thing I can tell you though, from experience is that even in the most barren of winters, like a butterfly cocooned awaiting the right time to transform, even in the darkest of grief there is always growth and eventually it will break through to find the sunshine.. Sometimes there really is happiness breaking through even in the saddest moments if we just allow it without feeling guilty about it... 

The question is will you trust the process long enough to develop the wings to fly..?? Better yet will you support someone else who's movement appears to have stopped?? Because trust me at the end of the road there in nothing better than having someone look at you in the way they always did and say "hey!! There you are.. It's been a while I'm so glad you've come home.. Wanna dance!?"... Xx

Mama, Madly xo

The Majesty of being Mum......

I walked outside today, to say goodbye to my little girl.. I was on my way to a lecture and she had wandered outside to meet her father who was picking her up..

In that moment as I walked out the sun hit her hair as she twirled the way little girls do, and beautiful golden blonde streaks shone out from amongst her wild auburn locks that I love so much.. She was smiling and laughing, her beautiful green hazel eyes sparkled with delight and her freckles looked like little sprinkles of happiness dusted across her face.. In that moment that over whelming love we have for all of our children welled up inside and poured out in a rush of unadulterated joy.. I scooped her up in my arms and kissed her face all over beneath squeals of delight, and when we stopped laughing I told her how much I loved her.. She touched my cheeks next to my eyes tenderly and told me I was beautiful.. I laughed it off and started tickle wars…

Whilst this was happening her father had turned up and in doing me a favour, was tinkering under the bonnet of my car which was suffering from a flat battery.. My little girl grabbed my face and said “Mummy, what’s daddy doing?” I explained about the battery and how sometimes we need to change them like in her toys.. She was totally fascinated with the engine and I was explaining bits and pieces to her being no stranger to having worked on cars myself, I’m a firm believer in anyone being able to do anything.. We spoke for a while and I eventually said “I have to go Honey, but Romy, maybe one day you could be a mechanic, and work on cars!!” To which she replied “No way, I am going to be a princess!!” “Aw my darling you already are a princess, a beautiful magical princess”…

My 3yr old daughter, my perfect, lovely, doe eyed, big hearted, porcelain skinned, English rose, freckle sprinkled, amazingly intelligent, witty, gorgeous three year old daughter turned to me and quite seriously said “No Mummy, I said I'm going to be just a Princess, I’m not beautiful……….”.. I nearly fell over.. She was told by both her father and myself in no uncertain terms that she was in fact absolutely beautiful, stunning, gorgeous, her smile was like sunshine and her eyes like little sparkling emeralds.. She did not need to be a princess to be beautiful, because she was beautiful ALL the time.. Even women who are mechanics are beautiful.. She laughed some more, hugged me and said “You are beautiful too Mummy”, and in that moment I stopped and realised my response was very, very important.. “Yes my darling, I am beautiful, and you are beautiful just like me”…

This is a blog for everyone, but more so today it is about Mothers and daughters. We as mothers realise we have an obligation to our daughters to raise them up, recognise their inherent beauty in all they say, do and are.. The one thing we forget is to also build ourselves up. We are our daughters first port of call on the self-esteem journey, we don’t think or choose not to see, that calling ourselves ugly or fat or having a bad ‘face’ day is detrimental to ourselves even though it truly is.. But even worse what we really don’t see is that little face peering at themselves and us in the mirror as we get ready to go out, copying our every move, wanting to be like us, trying to emulate the only ‘woman’ they know how to be, their Mum’s.. They see us, they watch us, they hear us, they feel us..
Every negative word you utter about yourself you are saying to you daughter. Every time you put yourself down you are putting your daughter down. Every insult you give yourself or accept from someone else without question or even in humour you are pushing your daughter’s self-esteem further and further down. You are teaching her how to be a woman, and even though you may think you are teaching her how to be amazing and strong and independent it’s those small quiet moments, the just you moments, the soft moments, the together loving moments, the one's in which you invalidate yourself that she subconsciously equates it to her own self-worth..

Please, all I ask is be mindful.. Love yourself, compliment yourself and remember every time you do you are building your most important little ladies platform on which she will stand heart in hand for the rest of her life.. You hand down your crown, is it worthy of your daughter or are you passing on a past of self loathing and hatred, a veritable crown of thorns..

She may be your princess, but to get there you have to be her Queen..

Mama, Madly… Xx

Gossipy gossipers and the darkness within....

It's been brought to my attention that I have many a story floating around the grapevines about me at the moment due to my current single life and how I am conducting myself.. I'd like to set the record straight, not for any real need to justify who I am but more for all the sad pathetic people out there who presume to know what I'm all about and have nothing more exciting to do with their time.. May they be humble enough to recognise a good starting point for change.. 

Whether people realise this or not I am an extremely private person, I only let you know what I want you to know, unless you are invited into my inner sanctum where very few precious people reside you actually know nothing about me, just as I like it. Those who are invited in, treat it like gold as it should be, and as I treat them in return. Do not assume to ever know what goes into making up me or how or why I live my life... Do not ever presume to know anyone.

I have finally after nearly a decade, found the courage to walk away from an extremely emotionally abusive relationship.. Where every movement, emotion, action, reaction and behaviour was controlled by threat, and even though it actually wasn't, it was..

Am I a truly happy person? Yes, that's the one thing I will continue to share with everyone, inner and outer circles.. I do wake up every morning thankful for the life that I have, even when I was with my ex I was thankful for life, because my son who held onto life so tenaciously, taught me that life is valuable and worthy and survival is the most important thing.. Eventually without you realising it, the dawn will come and the sun will rise and it will be a new day and everything could have changed without you even noticing..

To all the talkers and the judges and the gossipers, to the people who think they know me please check yourself, you know nothing about me.. In fact let this be a lesson because the reality is you don't really ever know anyone, you see what people chose for you to see and sometimes what you do see it is so clouded by your own judgement that you do not actually have a feel for anything remotely close to the actuality of a person or their entire existence..

Have I moved on too quickly? Too quickly for your liking?? Is it your business? It is?? Well how about this just to juice it up for you, to really prove you have absolutely no idea what your petty minds have created, here is something really real that most of you do not know... I moved on in my heart over 8yrs ago, the first time I was smacked in the face. Yes, the first time..  The first time his condition made him lash out because he couldn't sensoraly cope and that is how his coping manifested itself... A part of me almost died a long time ago, laying dormant, spirit crushed, soul destroyed, heart broken. Awaiting the spring, a time to awaken and take back the light that always shone in the centre of who I am.. To finally be able to twirl with joy in the sheer simplistic beauty of being alive.. It's just taken me a long time to pick myself up and rebuild and trust the universe and the few amazing fortunate people I love with my heart and soul whom I allow into my private world.. There is an *NB below this blog explaining Aspergers and ODD which is what my ex partner suffers from..

I spent so many years excusing my life and hiding the truth, the shame unbearable because people are revolting and judge before ever knowing the reality.. Finding it hard to explain that even in those awful moments there was also moments of love and happiness.. Happy children never being exposed to the severity of it but knowing something wasn't quite right.. That the bad moments got less and less over the years, as he learnt to control his condition, and I always mindful as much as it felt it, it wasn't personal, not that it made it any less horrible, and when it was good it was wonderful and when it was bad it was hell on earth.. The need to escape never leaving.. The fear of leaving always there, making sure no sudden movements were made.. Just stuck and alone..

If you feel ashamed right now because you know you've been that judgemental person to anyone, use it, turn that guilt around and use it to better yourself and be mindful everyday that your thoughts can either poison the energy or build someone up who really needs you to be their champion at that time, even if you don't realise it.. People, men and women alike, are stuck in these situations all the time, and sometimes just need a kind word.. Don't judge me, I would never, ever, judge you.. Don't judge anyone else either..

Have I moved on? Am I socially active? With a wonderful life and group of friends?? Do I smile and laugh everyday? Is every single day like looking at a magnificent sunrise for the first time?? Is the promise of new love and nurturing calling to me? Of course it is.. I'm a human being, I'm a woman, and at the age of 37 I finally am in a space to know I deserve happiness, so much happiness, and I have so much to give.. I am no longer being held in stasis by the judgements of those who do not know me and have never ever walked a day in my shoes let alone can understand even on an intellectual let alone emotional level the path I have travelled.. I have an appreciation for life and living most people will never be able to understand, to actually fathom it on the levels that I even just feel it.. I have a zest for life that I refuse to hide for anyone.. It permeates all that I am..

I am a courageous warrior, a fighter, a survivor, and I take pride in where I finally am...

We only have one life, I'm living it.. If you're invited into mine instead of judging, cherish the opportunity.. Cherish every invite you receive into anyones life and heart.. I'm like a stained glassed window, it's taken a lot of colours and shapes to get to my bigger picture, to get where I am, but when the sun hits I will shine beautiful on you because that's me..

Peace..

Mama, Madly xox


**NB: Just before anyone passes any more  judgement on my ex partner of which I know most will, he does suffer from Aspergers Syndrome.. And he is ODD which is Oppositional Defiance Disorder, which means he is incapable of having reactions like normal people.. Both disorders are of the Autism family, and both make the sufferer not only reactive but also particular and unable to function within the normal thought patterns most of us are capable of.. They get overloaded senses and have what is called sensory overload which in fact can cause them physical pain.. Even just repetitive noises can do this.. My ex's and my son is also an Aspie/ODD sufferer and also has these meltdowns.. They may sound like acts of violence but facts are, and ask any psychologist, they are reactions that just manifest on a physical level.. My ex ,whilst appearing aggressive and a horrible man is in fact a good man who just suffers from a horrible neurological disorder.. And is in emotional agony consistently about his own behaviour but does not have the capabilities to control it, yet he is trying and changing daily.. Also in saying that it does not mean I have to put up with it, nor does it excuse it.. I could no longer live with it, which he actually agree's with me, doesn't make the choices easier but definitely doesn't make me want to stay and try either..

Strengths and weaknesses...

I had a friend say to me recently "you are the strongest most independent woman I have ever met, I only wish I had half your backbone, and I could do it on my own half as well as you"....

I came home, sat on the floor of my shower, and cried.. I sit in my shower a lot and cry, it's the only place I can do it alone.. Where no one can see me..

What I've come to realise that even in moments of weakness there are those of us out there that persevere, those of us who continuously put up a front, never show what's underneath because as far as I have always known being strong is what gets you through.. If I give in to what I feel sometimes in the pit of my heart or the depths of my soul I don't know that I could arise everyday with the strength to put one foot in front of the other..

Sadly for those of us who have been strong for so long, we find lowering our defences to the softer ones hard.. Soft people find our strength cold and jagged and precariously unappealing, if only they could see the burn inside.. We find opening up brings us to a state of vulnerability that makes us fear, if someone actually peered inside us, its a world that's so tightly bound it might unravel and what would we do then!? How would we survive!? Especially If we opened up and invited someone in, allowed them to see the reality of who we really are, and then they left.. How would we be able to shut it all back down after it's been held and loved and decoded and then abandoned..

I'm just like any other girl out there, my heart is big and full and beats true to the rhythm of my soul.. I want love and affection and feel a need to be enveloped by someone who wants to be the one to explore that with me.. It's just learning how.. How to open, and to trust, to be vulnerable and show need of another..  Just like every other girl I know, I want romance, I want devastatingly passionate love that sweeps me away into another place, with someone I can depend on to sometimes be strong enough for both of us, and other times allow me to be their strength when they are feeling weak and need protection from the outside world..

I don't know if it's my age or just a rite of passage, but I yearn for deep unabiding, unapologetic real love.. I want my partners arms to be the safe place that I can fall, when the world is too much and I need comfort and sweetness and light.. I know how to attract it, I just don't know how to trust & keep it yet, but it's a path I've finally stepped on, and I'm hoping the fates are kind.. I hope I stop saying "I am ok" and "I am fine" and "it's all good, I'm easy", because I'm not, not always.. I am real, I am a woman, I have a heart that's bursting with love to share and yet I consistently push people away with thoughtless words or unforgiving backbone, I have hurt others feelings, and have had mine hurt in return because sometimes it is what is left unsaid that breaks a heart more than what could ever be said.. I also know on more than one occasion that people have felt they cannot provide me with anything because supposedly I have my proverbial shit sorted, which I so don't.. 

I am so sick and tired of being told by everyone that "You will be fine" and "You'll kick it's arse".. You know what!? I want someone who will kick its arse for me!! I don't want to slay dragons anymore, I want someone who will slay dragons for me, because of me and on occasion with me.. I can do it, and I will and I would for the one I love but it would be nice to know If I cant and If I fail I have a strong hand on the small of my back to support me.. I do have space for softness, I just don't let many see that side of me, because recovering from being hurt can take longer than the moment or the second it took to create the hurt in the first place.. I have space at my table, there is room for people there to bring forth that which they can offer, hell I'm all about a good feast of life and love and laughs..

I don't know where this new epiphany or journey will take me, but realising today finally that sometimes my strength is my biggest weakness may finally allow me to step into all that I am and not feel, even when I am feeling weak, that it's not enough..

Maybe it's just realising that just me is enough..

Love love..

Mama,Madly xox

Moving on....

It's funny how when a relationship ends you go through a myriad of emotions.. I've done this a number of times before so I knew what to expect when I finally called 'cut'.. And then the strangest thing happened.. Nothing.. I felt nothing of what I'd expected, not a smidge, not a quiver, just nothing..

I'm not one for denial, trust me I really go there.. I always really 'feel' my feelings.. The heartbreaks I feel deep in my heart, like it is shattering into a thousand pieces that could shred and tear at the very fabric of existence, let alone rip myself apart at the seams.. The loving fun happy times, make my soul feel like if it expanded within itself anymore, I would implode and smash holes in the universe like sparkling stars of light and love etc..

I was not prepared  though, to reach the end of a long term relationship and not only say 'enough' but feel it with such a conviction that everything slotted into place in the utterance of that one word..

It's like my mind suddenly opened up where my soul has been for the longest time, they looked at each other, my soul muttered 'finally' and scooted over as my mind wandered in fashionably late and just a little bewildered by this turn of events and sat its suddenly light arse down..

I've always been a bit of a dork, a little behind the times, somewhat retro even in spirit so I was pretty chuffed when I finally caught up with myself and realised I had already moved on.. Somewhere in the past, in between the loving and the fighting and the ego's and the drama and the life that always gets in the way, I had just moved on, and it was quiet, and it was self reliant and it didn't indulge in an emotional tirade that my younger self had always done.. I had grown up, and I hadn't even realised it.. I had come to a fork in the road and I could either travel it in abject misery with all the pretence of happy families or I could step out on my own and finally be free to find not only more of me, but another love that may fit me in the way that love should fit.. Unconditionally, without waning, in a simple way.. It should fit by just fitting.. It really is that easy... 

I guess my proudest moment after my big 'wake up' was realising I had been so brave, I dared to travel alone, let alone on a lonely untraveled path that I did not know.. And why did I do it!? Finally for the one reason I should have always been travelling my path but never had.. I did it for me...

Just because you're moving doesn't mean you're moving on, and most of the times you do move on it's during the times you are in fact finally still...

Merry, merry..

Mama, Madly xxx

The weight of the world.......

So lets talk taboo, in this seriously long blog post *apologies in advance*... I am overweight, I have been fluctuatingly overweight for many years now and with that came fluctuating shame and self loathing.. When I was younger I was always just that little bit bigger than all my friends, looking back in hindsight and at old photo's, I was incredibly skinny and I had stick insect friends.. But at the time I always felt like, the 'fat' one.. even at less than 50kgs with a broad, never a fragile structure, at 5ft7, I still felt like a beast, and never a beauty...

When does this happen?? When do we start looking in the mirror and stop seeing us for who we are and start seeing us for what or who we are not, or what we are lacking?? and Why? why is this ok, and why is this the norm....

I have a daughter, and she will be tall, around 5'11 if the docs are right, and hopefully she will be big boned and strong and healthy because that's all us mama's want for our babies.. I know she will be beautiful, I'm her Mama, she will always be beautiful to me and at the moment any form of chub on her is considered sweet and cute and something I love and equate to her being healthy and robust.. I'm dreading the day she looks in the mirror and worries about what she see's...

When I had my first son I was young, 20yrs old, a sz.10-12 worked on my feet flat out exercised daily, and walked everywhere because I did not have a car. I was healthy. Beyond healthy, I ate well, lived well, exercised daily you name it, I did it.. And then when he was 4mths old I began to gain weight, at a ridiculous speed, I put on just over 50kgs in 4mths and the doctors laughed it off.. Equated it to bad eating and post natal.. Me, the healthfoodie, walk everywhere Mama, who had a background for years in being a gym junkie had pretty much doubled my weight, I was miserable, my doctors were not listening., and at 20yrs of age when you are told by your trusted family doctor "well obviously you overeat and you're lazy!! just face it, you're fat!! do something about", you tend to believe it.. Even when doing something about it doesn't result in change..

It took a few years, really hard slog, but I lost a lot of it, not all of it, and then came son number two 9yrs later. I lost heaps of weight during pregnancy and BAM when he was 4mths old, I started piling it on.. This time 48kgs.. yes seriously!! Aside from anything else my son being in hospital for months on end with medical issues, due to my worry and stress I wasn't eating enough to justify the gain.. At all.. In the slightest.. and then my back went, and I swear I wanted to die.. I was ridiculously fat and uncomfortable in my own skin, and my discs were gone in my lower back, my son was life threateningly ill and somewhere in the back of my head was the black shadow where I lived in constant shame of my weight..

I ended up being what I would now call 'pushed' into surgery, It's not something I talk a lot about, but its not a secret either and there is a reason for that which I will explain later.. So at my doctors insistence I had Lap-Band surgery and in 100% honesty can tell you exactly what I told them at the time, "It wont work because I'm not an overeater and I don't binge"..  'no, no', I was assured it was about slow feed and kicking my metabolism into action.. Please don't be offended by me saying overweight people are all overeaters or bingers, hell I'm in that category and I certainly never was, but it has been proven medically effective for people who are overweight for those said reasons to have that type of surgery.. Because its the best for overweight people!!! I can most assuredly say, It was the WORST decision of my entire life.. And I wish I could relive those years and just say 'NO'.. But I didn't at the time, because my shame made me feel as if I had brought myself to this point and I had to do something so extreme to relieve myself of this burden.. I wish I knew then what I know now...

I had the surgery.. and would you believe it, It didn't work.. I ate carefully, exercised heaps, tried so hard, was so very mindful, literally (and this is because even now I cant eat more than my 2yr old does) ate barely anything at actual mealtimes, and it still didn't work.. Oh sure I lost weight, but exactly the same amount.. at the same time.. in the same way.. I had done before, after my pregnancies, before surgery so I'm thinking its defs not the band by this stage hey.. This is why I don't talk about it, because for such a long time, at that time, I equated it with me doing something wrong, not realising if it wasn't working it had nothing to do with me, or was in my control.. I knew other ladies, who also had the surgery and it worked brilliantly and I remember thinking 'why them!!!! why did it work for them and not me!!" and I would begin another round of self loathing and shame..

I have also had another child since, and same thing happened, lost heaps of weight in pregnancy and gained a truck load after she was born, and I finally clicked that maybe the docs were wrong and I was right!! Amazing hey, a simple person possibly knowing what is medically right for them when doctors cannot seem to work it out lol.. I asked my doctor (the one who had pushed me into surgery and who was verbally very unhappy about the fact it wasn't working) to send me off to an endocrinologist because maybe, just maybe there was more going on than he had ever tried to understand.. And I got, after his hearty laugh, "don't be ridiculous Blaise, I'm going to refer you to an obesity specialist, I wouldn't waste an endocrinologist's time with your issues"... Needless to say not only did I get a new doctor, I also had a light bulb moment, I realised in a very validating way that I had even gone as far as having surgery to lose weight and that didn't work so it couldn't have been anything I was doing! It wasn't me???? IT WASN'T ME!!!!!!!

My weight has really shaped my life, stopped me doing so many things, being so many things, leaving behind situations or people that don't support me, making room for new ones who don't know me or my world or don't fit neatly in my cache, Its all fear.. Rejecting new experiences because you already reject yourself, not trusting that anyone will not end up rejecting you or  that any situation will ever work in your favour.. Or even that you know what is right or wrong, because hell lady, you cant even work your own body out!!! .. It's not because physically I cant do any of these things, I'm a fluctuating, well rounded on occasion or slightly smaller sometimes bigger sz.16, not the size of a truck.. So many amazing, gorgeous, women are a sz.16 for Christ sake, but because I had so many head and heart issues about who I was with the fat, without fat, aside from the fat, it all revolved around the fat and self esteem completely wrapped up in it.. Being told you have an amazing heart, or a wicked witty humour, or its what's inside that counts, a pretty face, amazing eyes, phenomenal hair, you're gorgeous aside from your weight etc etc none of that makes up for from a very young age when you're just coming into your own becoming so self conscious you cover up who you are, in this physical world, on this physical plane, because your body is you...

I have finally found an amazing doctor, she could give me a heart attack with her costs, but she understands people systems and after running a billion tests has revealed mine is severely lacking, to the point of parts of my system that regulate weight and hormones don't work at all (yes, which we are beginning the slow process of fixing) and if my doctors had listened to me, and addressed it all those years ago maybe I would never have had to go through this barbaric situation.. Maybe I will lose the weight, maybe I wont, currently I'm just happy working out the underlying issues and getting healthy.. It might take a year or two, but I'm finally on the road to health and a comfortable weight.. Start trusting yourself, asking questions, seeking causes. Stop accepting, allowing defeat to overwhelm and overcome, and emotionally beating yourself up that it is somehow your fault. Even if it is from your own doing, beating yourself up will not help you reach a healthy destination it will just keep you stuck and imprisoned in this sad world that has become you but is NOT YOU!! 

It would be nice to wear clothes without feeling self conscious., but not at this cost.. It would be amazing to eat an actual plate of vegetables or salad and a big fat steak, and be able to eat them completely, because trust me lap band make eating healthy hard, and I am a foodie, I love tastes and smells and cooking and creating and healthy fresh manga!!!.. Anything natural with a husk or shell or skin becomes almost inedible with a band due to it being unable to be gotten down or held down... If you are considering this surgery please do homework first, its horrible!! It's a horrible way to live.. Dinner parties and dinner dates are hard, family feasts and summer time picnics are hard, gourmet brekkies between you and a lover are hard.. It's just such a hard path.. Its even harder when you have to live it and it doesn't work..

When I say drop your baggage, I mean all of it, emotional and physical, because being overweight isn't always something we have control over.. Don't carry the weight of YOUR world on your shoulders...

Mama, Madly xxx