Karen deBalbian Verster

It’s a parent’s worst nightmare to lose a child, an any age.  Mom was a mother figure to Karen, who died recently, and I know my mother has been hurting with that loss.

If I’m honest about it, I can’t say I’ve been eager to share my mother with Karen.  My status as the only girl among 5 kids has always been an important part of me, and so Karen’s relationship with Mom took a little bit of something away from me, or at least from the little girl inside.  I haven’t felt jealous of Karen though -- that’s not the emotion.  I could see their relationship was special, and I enjoyed Karen’s bright spirit when I was fortunate enough to have her in my orbit.  She was extraordinary.  Karen’s mother Claire was not there for her in the ways that Karen needed her to be, and so her friendship with Mom became fundamental because of that dynamic, combined with Mom’s own nurturing, fun, supportive nature.  I never felt that Mom preferred Karen to me… I don’t think she took the kind of pride in Karen’s achievements that she takes in mine.  So I’m not jealous.  I’m happy that they’ve had each other for all these many years, and sad at Mom’s painful loss.

I’m fortunate to somehow have an instinct that allows me to enjoy the fact that other people love who and what they love.  In the same way that I respect and appreciate Mom’s relationship with Karen, I’m never jealous of the other friends of my friends.  We should all have multiple good friends!  I would never try to get between Peter and surfing or Peter and mathematics.  Most people seem to have an infinite capacity for love, so it’s not an either-or kind of force.  We have limited time on the planet though, and that’s where the rub can come I suppose.  But I don’t see the point in jealousy or trying to steal or stifle someone’s passions.  I’m not sure if love begets love all the time, but it does ring true to me that the more you give, the more you get.  Unless you’re married to a thief, or a selfish prick or something.

Anyway, Karen and I had a rare, very long phone conversation within the past year.  The kind of call where your ear and your elbow are sore and your battery is nearly dead and you know you need to end it but keep thinking of things you want to talk about!  Karen voiced her concern that some members of our family might think she was taking Mom’s attention away from us if she were to come and stay with Mom over her 80^th birthday week.  I reassured her that was not the case and we would love to have her there.  We talked about our fathers, who were great friends around the time both left their families, and what that meant for us.  We compared notes on parenting and the writing process and what’s most important in life.  She turned me on to The Artist’s Way again, at a time when I was finally ready to dive into it, and it’s that book has become my bible.  I will never leave it.

In the same conversation, Karen expressed a sincere appreciation to me for having shared Mom with her for all these years.  I told her how much I admire her for so many things…for her writing and creativity, for how well she always seemed to know herself; for her strength and will and love of fun.  I told her what an inspiration she has been to me, how when I feel lazy or down on myself, I think of the stamina and energy she has found to do so many difficult and amazing things, and that image has been powerfully motivating.  I told her that we all know she is a force of nature. 

That were some emotional moments during our call, and much laughter.  I know we both felt that it was a great conversation, and I’m so grateful that we both took the time to connect when she was feeling good and I was eager and able to really listen.  There is a bigger part of Karen in me because of that call, and I am a stronger me now.

My Body, My Self, My President

Here’s a fun exercise.  Complete this sentence a few times for yourself.  Before I die, I want to….

Here’s the one that always comes to my mind.  ….love and accept every part of my body. 

I honestly don’t think I’m going to get there, no matter how many years I live. That makes me sad.  And mad.

So just change it, right? If only I could!  I HATE being stuck in this paradox.  I think about it a lot.  It seems that I live in a logic puzzle that logic cannot get me out of.  

I'm a feminist.  I have a partner of 27 years who loves my body exactly as it is, absolutely, all the time, for real (he's a foreigner, and incapable of lying, so I believe him about this).  I have 2 daughters for whom I want desperately to be an example of body positivity.  And yet, as much as I love my partner and my girls, I can’t make it happen. Despite being pretty normal in size, I can’t change my emotional response to seeing me.  No, I do not love or accept this body: these thighs, these wrinkles, these flabby, these dimply wings that my arms have grown, and especially not this beer gut that seems to have invaded my front side.  

I detest that I feel all of these awful things about myself.  I would love to have the courage? freedom? balls? to just accept my body, even to let this blob that is apparently my abdomen now just grow... to be free to drink wine and eat cookies.  Menopause is upon me, and it's natural as estrogen drops for a woman's body to take on Homer Simpson's proportions.  Yet I cannot feel comfortable as my belly grows and my clothes fit wrong despite a 300% increase in my physical activity level over the past year.  I see society seeing me whenever I look in the mirror, putting me onto the old woman train, writing me off completely, just as my "screw it" mentality and a deeper type of confidence are otherwise gaining traction. 

If I had to place blame for being stuck in this paradoxical hell anywhere outside my own convoluted persona, I would place it in the vague arena that is America’s cultural value on a woman’s appearance.  Deeply etched Puritanical values play out squarely on the shoulders of the companies that sell the products and images which convey and support the idea that women should not love or accept their bodies as they are.  

Take women's fashion, for example. Although 2 out of 3 American women wear a size 14 or above, most stores don't carry those sizes.  Apparently, fashion industry execs believe that would tarnish their fashion score somehow, so they just sell to the one third who can fit into a size 00-12.  If corporations truly were people, not only would they would feel bad for perpetrating this oppressive crime on their sisters, they would also change their business models to make profits in a way that corrects such misguided thinking.  There must be plenty more money in selling to the majority.  So why don't they do that?  Because corporations aren’t people (duh Supreme Court), and they don’t feel.  They do exist to make profits for shareholders though, so it makes no sense to leave so much money on the table!  The only explanation for why the free market has failed when it comes to women's wear is the massive force that is our culture's misogyny.

That seems perfectly conceivable to me, since it's white men who run and own corporate America from their own insular bubbles.  Sadly, they are ignorant to the body-image plight of the average she-person, or don't care.  I know a few men who are the exception, but far too many who reinforce this Tumpian conception of womanhood. The worst thought I have is that my petty mind's eye may actually agree with the distorted vision that is the viewpoint of one Donald J.Trump!

So why don't women do something about fashion industry sizing, for example?  Women drive 70-80% of all consumer purchasing in the US.  We have power as a group.  We need to call out these problems more, and help our brothers -- and ourselves --recognize and overcome the loathing that most of us have for women's bodies.  These deeply ingrained biases took centuries to take root, and it's likely going to take a very long time to eradicate them.  Like slavery and racial bias....it's a long hard climb that we're still the middle of.  Apparently, we haven't even managed to eradicate the plague yet so my optimism is more than cautious here.

I truly want to love and accept every part of my body.  But I can’t seem to be able to make that happen.  I’ve been thoroughly brainwashed.  How do I turn off that part of my brain that keeps hating my hot middle-aged bod?!  The part of my psyche that has, in fact, always found fault with my appearance?  We need a new brainwashing, a new female aesthetic.

This writing honestly did not start out with the following thought in mind, but I think a President Hillary Clinton might help launch a shift.  In the same way that President Barak Obama helped people see others with brown skin through a wider lens, and ultimately brought discussions about implicit racial bias into the public discourse, so too will our views about a woman's appearance go with Hillary into the oval office. Perhaps before I die I will find a way to see my body with compassion, if not acceptance. If not, I hope at a minimum that my efforts as a volunteer on Hillary's campaign will help weaken this particular long, thick chain that holds my sisters and daughters down.

Going Sane

I’m fascinated by the tension I’ve often felt between the pressure to conform and the drive to be original.

Caught in the Vine is going to be my outlet for survival in a master-planned community.  Starting this endeavor represents the end of stifling my voice or my creativity because of the oppressive vine that is my town.  Maybe that’s of interest to other people.  Maybe it’s not.  But it doesn’t matter.

I'm trying very hard in my life to care more about what I think of me than what other people think of me.  So I'm gonna say whatever I want, however I want to say it.  This will be good practice.  (If there is someone else reading this, consider that a language warning.)

Here's to going sane...