I have a lot on my mind right now.  I’m thinking about several things: B’s breath-work, a close friends breakup, food, beauty, feminism, and honesty.  I guess I’ll start with the first one.  B did breath-work for the first time with me on Halloween night.  You can find more info on what his experience was on his blog, but I held space for him.  So, I wasn’t doing breath-work, I was more like the person who looked after him while he did it.  It is a beautiful thing, holding space.  It’s an experience of being there for a person like you never have been before because they are going through something so immense and powerful and you are there to give them what they need.  Breath-work, for those who don’t know, is a circular breathing, it is a very powerful way to go deep within your self and understand the intentions you have set for the experience.  Anyway, it was amazing to be there for his very emotional epiphanies.  

    A close friend of mine is going through a very difficult breakup and it’s so hard for my friend to deal with and I have never seen (heard) them like this before.  Their heart is broken and I continue to wish I could do more for S.  S is one of the kindest people I know and S is so sincere about this experience, I know S’s heart is broken.  I know I grew up eating out of the palm of Hollywood romance movies, but I have always wanted so badly for them to exist in real life.  I realized a long time ago that life is not a Hollywood romance and that was heartbreaking for me, I believed so deeply in it.  Don’t get me wrong, I love B with a passion, but I guess I never realized that after the prince and princess ride off into the sunset and the credits roll, reality sets in and life happens.  I’m not mushy, but deep down I am a hard core romantic and it hurts to see two people so perfect for each other break up over what seems to be, at the core, things that can be overcome, especially through love.  I tried to push a Hollywood ending onto S, but realistically, and sadly, life doesn’t work like that.  But I keep wondering if S had gone with my Hollywood scenario, would it have worked out so the sun could set and the credits roll or would it have made things worse and have one of those new fangled inconclusive or imperfect endings they have nowadays.  I guess I’m still hoping things will work themselves out and S will live happily ever after.

    I find myself thinking of food, not because I am hungry, I’m quite full of Indian food at the moment, but because of the way I am around it.  I don’t like to share my food.  Sometimes, B wants to split a meal and I just don’t want any part of it cause, I think, instinctively I feel I won’t get as much as I need.  I have always eaten very well and never starved, so it’s not from experience that I feel the need to horde my food, that’s why I feel it must be instinctive.  Because I can get to a point where I am full enough and then I feel free to share, just like a troupe of monkeys or pride of lions.  In those other types of animal groups where food is shared, usually there is a progression of who eats first, second and last.  I want to be a person who freely gives without a regret in their heart, but if I’m truly honest with myself, I want my own food for me and I’ll share when I’m good and ready.  For me, this is really only true about food, I just don’t know why.  

    I struggle daily with my looks.  I continue to feel unattractive and have for many, many years now and am very insecure about my body.  I think of this because I want to be someone who’s very comfortable with their appearance.  But every day women are surrounded with a very unhealthy expectation of what our society thinks of as beauty.  All you have to do is turn on the TV or look through a magazine and any woman starts to feel not only inadequate, but also extremely fat and ugly.  And understandably in a grotesquely overweight country, people are trying to be conscious of their weight.  I just have to wonder, though, if our understanding of “beauty” has affected peoples understanding of weight.  Women were not meant to be sticks.  (Yes, I know the media affects men’s looks, but I think it is much more focused on women, so I will just stick to one of the two and that’s the one I know…women.)  Every woman has a different body, weight, and ethnicity that affects her proportions.  Even the season’s affect weight and this is true in other species, as well.  Women also have different layers of fat than men for various reasons.  I was watching a clothes designer channel where all the women had Barbie bodies.  My mom once told me that they make Barbie’s body that way so her clothes will look good on her and look proportional.  Well, in the human world, I think clothes should be functional as well as stylish, the woman should wear the clothes not the other way around.  I saw a talk show where five women got a makeover.  It was all about their hair, makeup, and clothes.  No one gave a second thought as to why they felt ugly and depressed.  I think our concept of beauty is like a dirty band-aid on a very open wound.  It’s not just unhealthy, it’s potentially life threatening, as is seen in women who are bulimic, anorexic or even the cyclical feel fat, get depressed, over-eat process.  So even knowing all of this, I continue to feel fat and ugly, and there is nothing my educated mind can do about it.

    I have also had several wonderful discussions with some great women about feminism.  I call myself an anti-feminist feminist.  This is because, although I feel the women’s movement in its early stages did amazing things, it has gone a bit further than I feel is healthy for an “equal” society.  I agree with a lot of the principles of feminism, but I do not agree that women and men are the same.  They’re not.  They’re two completely different and unique types of humans.  And their differences compliment one another very well.  That’s the point.  So the moment the feminist movement decided that we women need to be equal and then began working to make women just like men in order to be equal in this system, I have to pull back and say now wait just a minute.  There is nothing wrong with the women, they do not need to change, and be tougher and bigger and badder and meaner (unless they really are).  It’s the system that has to change to accommodate the beautiful union of differences between men and women.  Women shouldn’t have to live up to white man expectations, they should have a system that not only recognizes but rewards a woman’s strengths.  And I know this is taboo, but many women are really good at healing and emotionally understanding the life around them, and that’s a beautiful thing and should be recognized as such, not denied so we can become a melting pot of men and men wannabe’s.  I just think that men and women, black and white, gay or straight, should just be who they are and have a system that doesn’t just accommodate that but celebrates all the differences that make the world go ‘round.

    I have been trying to be entirely honest with people lately about everything.  Because I feel that we should be able to look every person in the eye and ask them how they are and really want to know and tell people how we really feel and really tell them how.  The honesty thing is scary though, but so far I have been lucky on this journey to find such open and honest people, that they don’t run away the first sign of what our society has deemed “baggage.”  What a negative and uncaring way to term such a thing as the very deep and emotional scars we all feel the need to hide.  I don’t understand why.  Maybe it is a further way to disconnect and individualize ourselves.  Because if we really thought about it or talked openly about it with others from day one, we would have to realize that all the people we “hate” and all the people we step on to get somewhere are just like us.  Are deep and complex and are just as in pain as we are.  And then where would we be?  No, really, where would we be?