Built From Love…

Imagine a sunny day. You want to go house shopping. You spend a lot of time looking for that perfect house. No ordinary house will do. You want a house that works for you and for your needs.  You have it in your mind how you want the house to look. How the kitchen will look because you plan on cooking really wonderful meals in that kitchen for your family. You know that you want enough rooms for you little family. A nice yard, maybe a pool or a swing set.  Finally after all the time looking and hunting you decide that you will build the perfect house for you and your family.  By choosing to build you know that it will turn out exactly as you wish. Once it’s built, you move all your things in. You have carefully selected the colors of the paint, the furniture for each room and then you start to fill this house with all the things you love.  Everything that you do with this home represents you, sure over the years there will be normal wear and tear… there will be replacements and things that will break… and you of course will take care of it because it is YOUR home, Your shelter.  YOU will obtain home owners insurance to protect it and the things you love because you love your home that you built, and you want to live there with the knowledge that you are insured and covered when bad things happen.  Why wouldn’t you? It is your investment.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about this because me and my fiance have recently picked out a home, and soon enough we will move in and fill it with lots of happy memories and all the things we love.  We would never intentionally set out to destroy something so precious to us.  So this made me think of our bodies, our well being and our health.

My physical therapist told me a story today during my MLD session, I think she told me the story because I was saying really hateful things about myself and my fat legs, butt and thighs. She told me of  doctor that had shared a story with her. It was about one of his patients that had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The lady was beside herself and distraught… what would she tell her family, her husband and her kids?  A few days later she came back to the doctor and told him that if she was dying she was going to learn to  ” LOVE” herself.  Yes. That is what I said, Love herself?  She started meditation and soon followed with yoga, she did deep breathing… she saw herself as beautiful, every inch of herself, every molecule.. she simply loved it, she loved her cancer, she loved her scars, she loved everything about herself.  You see to her there was nothing left to hate. Soon enough it was time for her to come in for more tests, to the doctors surprise she was doing remarkably well.   She is still alive. She is still breathing and she is no longer terminal.  I thought about this all day. I thought about it on the way home and I am still thinking about it.  To love myself completely would just be amazing. Then I thought of my body. Then I thought of our upcoming wedding and our house.

My body is my house.   IT is MY job to fill my home with LOVE.  I didn’t purposely cause the damage that has been done, but I didn’t do enough to be proactive in it’s care either.  For 20 years I knew that something was wrong.  I allowed doctors to fill my mind with self doubt and shame. I poisoned my body because I didn’t know.. and I didn’t know because the 20 plus doctors didn’t know.  They only diagnosed me with a million other things but always at the top of the chart it said “Obese” …  even when I lost a lot of weight it still said  ” Obese” even when my body looked good and somewhat proportionate it said  ” OBESE”!!! If  I had known that certain foods make it worse, that exercise can go against you, that sweating and shaving was bad… that hormones were poison, would I have brought those things to my home? My temple?  NO WAY…

20 years and two very different bodies later I have to forgive myself. I have to give myself the love that I quit giving… I have to accept that this is me. Every curve, every dimple and every breath in me needs and deserves love from me.  To do this,  I have to fight for it, I have to demand that my insurance company sees that this is the hand I have been dealt because doctors are just now learning of this disorder/ disease.  I have to hope and pray that they see that 45k in 6 surgeries is needed and they should pay because I too deserve to have a better quality of life. 45k pays for a car, half a house… how am I supposed to come up with that kind of money.. especially when I have insurance to protect my investment, my home… my temple?  I am no different than a chronically  ill patient, a cancer patient or someone diagnosed with a rare disease.  I will love myself enough to fight for that.  Lipedema is not a case of being lazy, it is not a case of  ” woe is me” …   it is a case of not enough doctors being educated and not enough insurance companies understanding what just one day living the life of a Lippy lady is like.  I don’t have high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol ….. but one look at my body you would certainly argue with me, even my brother has. I  have gotten so used to looking down, to frowning down at the scale,  crying when I left numerous doctor’s offices because NO ONE WOULD LISTEN TO ME!!!! I am not crazy people, I know what I have been dealing with and you can’t tell me that there was no indication that something just wasn’t right!!!  In college I threw the shot put, the javelin, the discus… I was active, but I remember many times going to the doctor with leg pain and I was stumpy from the waist down back then too…

Age 20

20 years difference, 20 years of me not standing up for myself. 20 years of me not loving myself because I stood out in so many ways from others.  Today that changes.   Tomorrow is my birthday. I will be 41, for the next 20 years I plan on loving myself a lot more. I plan on loving all of me. I plan on sharing my story as much as possible. I will fight for my body, I will fight for the care of my body.  I hope that I have the chance to do that.. I want these next 20 years. I need them.  This is my happy beginning.  I will share with anyone I can my story and other ladies like me. It is my goal. I will not look down. I will look forward, and I will cast every stone of judgement that has been cast at me.  I will breathe deeply and I will appreciate every moment just a little more.  And when I am down, I hope that I can be reminded of how important it is that I stay positive and love the woman I am.  Maybe soon enough the world will change some with new awareness, maybe we will be approved for medical treatment more often and to the doctor’s that are by our side pushing for a change, let us remember that change begins within you, within your home and within your mind.

Til next time, Stay blessed and love yourself more today, less than tomorrow and more than yesterday!

Lady In Hiding

When I have someone take a photo of me I always ask them to take it from the waist up. The same goes for videos. I hate showing my whole body. I have lived years and years in the scrutiny of others so much that I decided why put myself out there to allow myself to be hurt by the ones I care about. Social Media didn’t exist when I was younger. The only way to share pictures was by having the film processed and sharing them or a Polaroid. As I grew older and computers became more available to us, we shared via email. I have always loved Photography and through the years I became exceptionally good at capturing the best of nature, people , Places and animals.

It became easy for me to hide behind the scenes because I always had my camera. If I was the one taking the pictures then there was no need for someone to take a photo of me. It was normal for me to have my camera everywhere I went. I have thousands and thousands of pictures. Not to long ago I asked a friend to take a video of me while I was singing. I asked him to be sure to take the video from the waist up. Later that evening I watched it and my heart sank because my hips and bottom were clearly visible in the video. I was disappointed. My husband takes photos of me all the time showing my whole body, I get upset with him and ask him please don’t post that or share it…. he will simply state it’s his photo and he has no problem with the way I look. Wow, that man really does love me. He loves all of me.

I often wonder when I started to become so self conscious. when did I start hiding? I am pretty sure that it started when I was still married to my ex. He was the kind of guy that like to keep me hidden as well. I never met his friends, never went to his work, never to a office party… and when we did run in to someone he knew I could tell he was ashamed to be seen with me. A few times he made sure I knew it. I was ashamed of myself too. When we would go grocery shopping, he went one way and I went the other. I became so conditioned to this way of living that even after we adopted children, I hid from their friends and the kids parents, it was a never ending cycle of shame. Through all of it , I really don’t hate him. I don’t get angry anymore at what i went through then. I just wished I would have loved myself more than I did during those years.

Now I am in a place where I now have to grasp the fact that I am this way because this is how God molded me. I don’t have to fear eating something and feeling really bad about it… I can quit being angry at myself. Now my anger turns elsewhere. It turns to all the doctors that I visited and begged for answers, pleaded in fact. It goes to all those people out there that didn’t want to take to the time to know me without casting judgement. Going out to restaurants was hard because I worried about whether I could sit in their chairs, because if they had arms on them… I couldn’t fit in them usually. It wasn’t just dining out that was problematic, it was everything… going to peoples homes, sitting in the front seat of cars comfortably, doctor’s office waiting rooms…. the list goes on and on and then there is Social Media.

Having a social media account has its pros and cons. I love the fact that am able to keep up with all my family members, friends from high school, my kids. I am blessed everyday to send messages and receive messages, post pictures and share with groups and create groups. IT really has been nice, all the while I have stayed hidden behind the computer and the lenses of a camera. I couldn’t dare let my grade school and high school friends see all of me because I was, in my mind …3 times larger than I was in high school. With Social media comes the sad side of things to. Like when you hear of a friends passing away by someones post… or the cruelty and harsh words of a stranger that just so happens to take a photo of you while you are dining out with friends and plasters it all over the internet calling you names and thinking that they are funny when in fact they should be ashamed of themselves.

I am learning now that there will always be someone out there that will have something bad or negative to say. People are just that blind and oblivious to others and what they are going through. Until they walk a day in my shoes or any other lady that has been diagnosed with Lipedema, they will remain clueless. I didn’t realize just how much I had these types of people hurt me and affect me until I started writing this blog and wanted to share pictures… I never noticed how often I hid behind everyone because I didn’t want to show myself as I really am. I found lots and lots of photos from the waist up, even with my children… some how all these years I managed to hide. I don’t want to be that person anymore. I want to start accepting myself as I am. I know that learning all that I have this far, I can’t really stay angry at myself…. I can’t expect miracles and I can’t hide because my family needs me. It’s about time I let the world know that YES I am a very large woman, but I am also a large woman with feelings and I am learning to love myself and if you can’t open your eyes and see me without prejudice then keep walking by because I don’t care anymore! I don’t eat with you, I don’t live with you and I don’t owe you any explanation and further more… you don’t deserve it.

Awareness comes from speaking out, it comes from sharing, it comes from putting it out there for all to see. Awareness comes from being educated and teaching, it comes from listening and learning. I am still learning. I am still speaking for those who feel just as I do. Those ladies that struggle with everyday activities just as I do, the ones who for many years couldn’t understand “why me?” ….. the ladies who drain their savings or whose families do all kind of fundraisers to help them get costly surgeries to help them have better qualities of life…. the ladies who hid behind the cameras or whose heart races at the thought of meeting someone new, or running the opposite way when someone stops in for a visit unexpectedly….. We are all human, we are all learning and we are all praying that someone cares just enough to say ” what can I do to help you make more people aware?”……………

I would simply say ” you can start by sharing my blog with others ”

I am no expert. I just want to help as many ladies as I can. I want them to know that I share their heartbreak. I am ready to learn as much as I can. I want to take pictures

and be OK with myself without worries of what others will say. We are our biggest cheerleaders ladies. Hugs and blessings to all.