Earlier this week, I was browsing through the PriorFatGirl Community and came upon a post called “I am not…” This post caught my attention specifically because of a reference to an India Arie video called “I am not my hair.” I looovvee me some India Arie – if you aren’t familiar with the song, here is an acoustic version:
Do you love or do you LOVE?!
Anyway, the post in the community caught me at a point when I was reflecting how much struggling I was facing. The post caught me off guard and made me stop in my tracks. Here is the post from Carrie at No More Tomorrows:
I responded with…
I am not your perfection
and hit send. But I couldn’t stop thinking about what I was not. I pulled up the above video and listened to it a couple of times, letting my mind wander and then, I began to write.
I am not your perfection.
I am not your expectation.
I am not my limitation.
I am not my restriction.
I am not my temptation.
I am not my complication.
I encourage you to log-in to the PriorFatGirl community, click on the “Struggles” category and add your “I am not…” to the post. Let’s all join Carrie and scream our “I am not…’s” out loud!
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Loving the PFG Community!!
I am so happy that other people have connected with the idea. I assume men struggle with defining themselves by “stuff” in their lives also, but I KNOW we ladies do. And I know I do. Too often. I figured if I needed the reminder, then so did others.
Thank you so much Jen for the shout out.
We LOVE this! Thanks for sharing!
LOVE INDIA!! I hadn’t heard that song before. I listened to it 3x! :0)
Thanks for posting this.
It saddens me deeply that you can post such an inspiring song and yet so throughly miss the message.
Eating healthy, exercising, setting goals (as in runs), etc are all valiant efforts to lead an active and healthy lifestyle.
Don’t you get tired of worrying about every single pound though?
The struggle that you face day after day, worrying about your IUD, obsessing about those eight pounds, tracking every morsel of food that goes into your mouth; isn’t that tiring?
You’re going to have to be this obsessed with diet and exercise for the rest of your life to maintain your weight.
I don’t mean to be mean or cruel, but statistically speaking, 95% of people who lose more than fifty pounds can’t maintain that weight-loss beyond five years. The 5% that do, maintain that precious weight loss through torturing themselves the way you are doing.
From what I’ve read here, you’re terrified of gaining the weight back. However, wouldn’t weighing eight extra pounds be preferable to spending the amount of time and brain power you spend on counting calories everyday?
Gaining a bit of weight (or a lot of weight) doesn’t make you lazy, or a failure, or dirty, or undesirable, or whatever other associations you have with size that scare you so much.
Why do those eight pounds matter so much to you?
When she sings ‘I am not my hair’ she could just as easily be singing ‘I am not eight extra pounds’.
Be happy first.
You make some great points — thank you for commenting. If you don’t mind, I’ll use your comment for a post later this week
All respectful, of course – I appreciate your insight and think it is a good conversation to have {with myself} and here on the blog!
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