When I was in middle school, known then as junior high school, I was the brunt of many jokes about being too skinny. “Vicki, if you turn sideways and swallowed a P, you would look pregnant!” This was embarrassing on a few levels. Since my older sister had gotten pregnant at 17, dropped out of high school, got married and then divorced, the idea of my having a baby was not at all funny to me.

These jokes, though my definition of a joke now is that it’s only a joke if nobody has to pay for it and certainly I paid for these “jokes”, made me feel rgly and sexless. I feared I would never be attractive to the opposite sex, I would never have a boyfriend, and I would grow old and alone. Every time I heard one of these comments I was mortified. Mortified. I wanted to die, be invisible, or at minimum be someone else.

The summer after my freshman year however, a 6 foot four graduated senior, all-star athlete and winner of the athlete of the year award from our high school, asked me to dance at a party and then we started going out. He had his own car and so much hair on his chest, which was sexy then, that it sprouted out the top of his T-shirt.

After being chosen by the  God of Maleness, I let myself believe I was attractive, that my skinniness would not prevent me from being loved. From that time on I have always felt attractive enough. Not beautiful, not alluring, and not even sexy, but attractive enough. From that time on I have never had any problem having a man in my life if I wanted one.

In college skinny filled out to slender and I stayed that way until I hit menopause.  When I was forced to make a choice, I could continue to be slender or feel homicidal and crazy. I chose to risk the weight gain for a gain in sanity.

When I met my husband Murray, I weighed less than he did. Since then, I gained 50 pounds. 50 pounds! I have the personality of a slender person, whatever that means–I think of myself as a slender person, and I could carry all this extra weight better than some women could. But when I saw a video of myself with the bones of my face hidden because of my weight gain, I no longer recognized myself.  I desperately wanted to go back to the time when I recognized myself and was healthier to boot.

I did not like the way I looked, I did not like how much energy it took for me to get up off the couch, and I did not like this feeling of frumpiness that was starting to define me.

Many of my friends are still slender, and I felt more and more like an outsider in my own life–an outsider to my own history.

No Diets for Me

I was slender all my life without much effort. If I gained a few pounds, I just took a little bit more care about what I ate, and the pounds went away. I have never been on a diet. I can’t do deprivation and suffering. Setting a goal out of self-hate contaminates the goal. And many diets are physically harmful, and I wasn’t interested in harming my body to alleviate my discomfort.

Because I had gained so much weight, almost overnight it seemed, I felt discouraged about how to take this all on. I’m legally blind, I don’t drive, I don’t do the grocery shopping, and I don’t do the cooking, so having to make specialized meals didn’t feel like an option that would be fun. And I’m all about having fun.

I’ve tried various strategies, various healthy strategies, to lose weight such as Acai Berry, gluten-free diet, and drinking Body Balance, which helped two of my friends lose a lot of weight. Nothing worked.

Take Shape for Life

Last July while I was in Portland staying with my friend Sue and teaching a class for teachers, I tagged along with Sue and her husband to a meeting with a health coach who was working with a friend of ours. This friend had lost 25 pounds in 2 1/2 months, and my interest was peaked.

He described a program which was developed twenty years ago by doctors. You eat five of their meals a day, one meal every 2 to 3 hours, and one meal you prepare which is called Lean and Green. The program felt sane and doable and self-loving to me, so I went home and did some research. The program has been studied at Johns Hopkins and is healthy and effective. I decided to give it a try.

That was at the beginning of August. I was wearing a size 16 then and just the other day I bought a pair of size 8 jeans. La Dee Dah!

A Typical Day of No Suffering or Deprivation

Here’s a typical day of eating for me: wake up and within a half an hour I have coffee mixed with a cappuccino meal. My meal is delicious, high in protein, sugar free and it’s only 110 calories.  Two hours later, I have oatmeal. For lunch I can eat stew, chicken noodle soup, tomato soup, or lots of other choices. For my fourth meal of the day I usually have cheese puffs. Granted, they aren’t as good as Cheetoes, but I like them just fine.

For dinner my beloved husband cooks us a very delicious Lean and Green meal. I get a big helping of chicken, fish, shrimp, or beef. Add to that a cup and a half of vegetables, flavored with Brag, an amino acid soy sauce substitute, and I’m eating well.

For my last meal in the evening, I have a chocolate bar, chocolate shake, chocolate pudding, or soft serve chocolate mint ice cream. (You might have noticed a chocolate theme here.)

I’ve been losing about 2 pounds a week, which is healthy and steady. Sometimes I want to lose more weight, faster, I want to push the river, and that gives me plenty of material to take up with my Angel Committee.

I feel great, look great, and can drink one of my little chocolate shakes and watch people eat a full meal and not feel pangs of envy or loss. Yahoo!

I’ve lost weight and gained many insights in this process, and I will share them next week in Part Two of my Time Traveling.

Meanwhile, love yourself just as you are today.  If you need to listen to ‘Off the Hook‘, which I sent out in last week’s newsletter, feel free to do that. I’ve also included my song Love Me Just as I Am with this article to help you keep your sense of humor about life and its mysteries.

Note:  This article is part of a book I’m writing.  My new proposed title is: Habit of Heart:  Remembering What Matters Every Day. What do you think?

Since I’ve always felt like an alien in my family of origin, I’ve had difficulty coming up with ancestor gratitude.

I’m very grateful for my mother’s enduring love, for my singing and performing ability which I got from my father, and for my nurturing grandmother, who baked bread, canned cherries, grew flowers, and cooked the best fried chicken in bacon fat you ever tasted.

This morning, though, when I was dialoguing with my Angel Committee, I started tracing back my current gratitudes. I’ve been on an eating regimen for three months and have lost 26 pounds, thank you very much. I feel great, look great, and am enjoying the process of giving away my clothes that are now too big for me. Yahoo!

Here’s the anatomy of this gratitude:

• Phil, my health coach
• Sue, my friend I met when I was working for the Oregon Department of Education as a Distinguished Oregon Educator, who introduced me to Phil.
• Dan, the principal who nominated me to be a Distinguished Oregon educator.
• Sarah and others on the hiring committee, who hired a high school English teacher to be an elementary school counselor when she had no experience in elementary school whatsoever.
• Chris, who gave me a job as a teaching assistant in the English department at Oregon State University, which allowed me to go to graduate school.
• Tom, my first husband, who supported my decision to stop teaching and go to graduate school to get my masters in counseling.
• Eldon, the principal who hired my first husband and me to come and teach at South Albany Highest School which got me close to Oregon State University where I could go to graduate school.
• My Dad, who hired me to work in his bar in Phoenix, Oregon where Eldon met me when I was working as a waitress and hired me to work at Phoenix High School where I met my first husband, Tom.

I was amazed at this Gratitude Anatomy led back to my father. I’m not used to being grateful to my father for anything except the above mentioned singing and performing ability. My dad was a narcissistic violent alcoholic, who slept with other women while married to my mom, embarrassed me in front of my friends, and invited lecherous drunks into our home. He died in May of this year, which I found out by looking on the Internet in September. I had not seen him in 17 years.

Why is this important?

I just read The Survivors Club, and at the end of the book the author talks about the “Illusion of Isolation.” We are never alone; we never have been alone, but sometimes our shame convinces us we are broken and excluded.

Because I always felt like an alien, I had felt disconnected from the Mother Ship, as it were. Like an astronaut on a spacewalk, I felt my lifeline severed. I’ve been floating in space, enjoying the spectacular view and the freedom, but I’ve missed the solidity of being able to lean back into a line of ancestors supporting me, bringing me to this exact point in my life.

And guess what? When I trace my gratitude for my eating regimen to my dad, I run smack dab into my mother as well. And if I’m going to be grateful for my mother, I have to be grateful for her parents. Her mother died at age 34 when my mother was 15. Her name was Beatrice Lela and I think I would’ve liked her a lot. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a violent gambling sociopathic alcoholic. I never did like him.

But after having done my Anatomy of Gratitude, I think I’ve established a pattern that will support me the rest of my life. My ancestors, no matter how flawed, were essential in my being the person I am, with the wounds I have, and the wounds I’ve transformed into gifts. My ancestors have got my back.

And my guess is if I could get to know ancestors further back than these two generations, I might find an artistic, philosophizing, world changing woman thriving a hundred and fifty years ago. She would recognize me as her kin, see me for who I am, and share my triumphs and defeats. I might just dialogue with her tomorrow!

What does this have to do with you?

I invite you to do your own Anatomy of Gratitude. Pick something in your life right now for which you are grateful. Then trace back all the people who contributed to your having this wonderful thing in your life.

I’d love to know how this works for you. If you would be willing to share your process, I might even be able to share your results in my newsletter, anonymously of course.

Our brains and bodies love gratitude. There is no habit that connects spirituality, relationships, service, physical health, mental health, and emotional health better than the habit of gratitude. We can completely shift our energy by just taking a few minutes to really let ourselves feel our gratitude for the miracles that surround all of us every day.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.  If you’ve read this far, I invite you to assume your Angel Committee is at work again, and that you are being called to create your own Anatomy of a Gratitude.

I can hold my breath for thirty-five seconds.
You probably can too.  It’s not hard.

In thirty-five seconds I can reheat my coffee in the microwave.
I can hug someone and produce a credible amount of oxytocin, that “feeling loved” hormone.
I can appreciate the smell of a star-gazer lily,
Laugh at the absurdity of losing something I just had in my hand,
Kiss my husband all over his face
in just thirty-five seconds.

On January 12, 2010 Haiti had a thirty-five-second event.

In thirty-five seconds
250,000 people died.
Survivors fear 150,000 are still buried in the rubble.

In thirty-five seconds 1.3 million people were left homeless,
schools collapsed,
hospitals crushed those they were trying to heal:
Mothers with newborns,
Fathers, sons, daughters, friends, aunts and uncles —
Real people with loves and passions and hopes.
Some people, safe in their homes,

have postulated that all these people
brought this suffering upon themselves.

The Law of Attraction is at work you know, and,
Just as with the tsunami of 2004

All those people chose to be drowned,
Crushed,
Left childless,
Or widowed.

One teacher who survived the quake
Heard the cries of a student and went into the rubble to save him.
The building collapsed killing him,
But when they dug out his body
Rescuers found the child alive, cradled in his arms.

Or,
As some people who claim to speak for God claim,
These people in Haiti,
all those infants, toddlers, school kids,
They are all practicing the wrong religion
And that’s why they were punished.

Just as New Orleans was buried under water
for the sins of those wicked black people.
35 seconds.

Start counting now.
How long is thirty-five seconds of terror and destruction?
Enough time to end a life you’ve known and begin another life that terrifies you.
Enough time to lose everyone you love
And every familiar place,
Every store,
Every cafe,
And the home you have built.

Might you be stunned if you had lost everything in thirty-five seconds?
Might some people look at your stunned face and call it apathy?
Might you have difficulty mustering the energy, hope, and resilience
it takes to rebuild a country,

A country whose government was broken to begin with?
Broken by poverty, corruption, and violence?

Greed,

Would you like to take some action from your home,
Your safe, warm home?
Every little bit counts.

Go to this website for the Children of Haiti Project
and give what you can. Children of Haiti Project: www.childrenofhaitiproject.org/

I know these people.
They are good, honest people of courage and heart.
Give them a little something in the name of someone on your Christmas list,
Someone who has too much stuff anyway,
Which is everyone I know,
Including, of course,
Myself.

Bless you and bless the invincible strength of the human spirit.

This is an American Dream story, a story of overcoming addiction, social class, and limiting beliefs.

My 29 year old son is, in fact, collecting billionaires, but before I get to the specifics of that amazing phenomenon, I want to back up a bit.

My mother, daughter of a narcissistic alcoholic, dropped out of high school to marry my father, who, the son of an alcoholic, was already an alcoholic at seventeen.  My older sister followed in my mother’s tracks by dropping out of high school and getting married at seventeen.  She was pregnant.  That marriage lasted about a year and then she got pregnant by another man and bore his son, all this before she was twenty.

No one in my family was artistic, though my dad was a singer.  No one travelled or read books or talked about politics.  Most of my family probably did not even vote; I know my mother and father didn’t.

I grew up with a lot of examples of how I did not want to be.  It would have been easy to become a statistic and fulfill the default outcome of addiction and lack of self confidence.  All I had to do was pick up my feet, so to speak, and go with the flow of the river of addiction in my body.

I knew if I did not want to repeat the past, I needed to start swimming early to get out of the strong current that wanted to take me down with all my other alcoholic aunts, uncles, and cousins

My mother’s love, public school, and my brain wiring saved me from repeating the cycle of addiction and domestic violence.  I was a good student and hung out with good students who were headed to college. I made a vow that I would graduate from high school, go to college, and be able to support myself, so I would never have to stay with a man who drank, slept with other women, and beat me

Breaking the Cycle

I broke the cycle of addiction in my family when I began my recovery as an Adult child of an Alcoholic in my early thirties.

When I was twenty six I married the son of a missionary with a huge extended family.  My first priority was to marry a man who would make a great father, someone my children could count on to support them, love them, and never, ever be violent with them.  I was hugely successful.

Along came my two children, a girl and then a boy.  Both of them have done very well and are living meaningful, productive lives full of love.  They are hard workers, and both excel in their professions.

Middle School

But there were some rough times.  When the father of my children and I divorced, my son was in middle school.  I lost my central vision about that same time, and both of my children suffered.  My son did not do well in school, getting sent to the Problem Solving room frequently for not doing his work or for laughing when he and his friends were scolded.

His school counselor told him he was an underachiever, and he tried to use this with me as an excuse once

“Who said you are an underachiever” I asked incredulously?  Who would do such a thing?  When he told me his school counselor had given him this pronouncement, I replied with a mild swear word and told him he was no such thing.  What a stupid belief to plant in a twelve year old boy’s brain!

We survived middle school and when my son got into high school and band, he started getting straight A’s.  He won a tuba scholarship, went off to college and graduated with a Ph. D in computer science, cryptography version.

He was hired as an intern and then as an engineer at Google.  He is now a manager and will be spending three weeks in India in January to help the Google engineers there stay connected with the flagship in Mountain View, California where he works along with about two thousand others. Worldwide, Google has twenty thousand employees.

He lives in San Francisco with friends who have all graduated from Stanford or Harvard.  The colleges he attended, while excellent, do not carry the weight of a Stanford or Harvard.

While in college my son started playing Ultimate Frisbee.  His team went to nationals and he has been playing ever since.  He met his roommates through Ultimate.

Where Do the Billionaires Come In?

One of the founders of Google plays Ultimate, and has played with the Google inter-mural team.  My son broke his hand recently, and this billionaire asked someone how my son was doing.  The first billionaire who knows my son’s name.  Very cool!

Then, a few weeks ago, my son was visiting his girlfriend, also a Stanford graduate, who is now getting her MBA at Yale.  While there, they met up with one of his roommates, whose father happens to be a billionaire or close.  He got to go to their penthouse apartment with its view of Central Park and decorated with original art, of course.

Then they went out to dinner with another billionaire, the founder of Facebook, then on to a nightclub.  A professional basketball star recognized the Facebook founder and came up to shake hands.  My son had to explain to Facebook founder the identity of the sports icon.  Hang out in this moment for a bit.  Is this cool or what?

What Does This Have to Do With You?

Look where I started and where my son is.  We both had a lot of support, but we both have worked hard to overcome the odds.  My son had no connections which might have helped him get into a famous school, but he still got a job at Google and is doing very well indeed.

He had a night on the town in New York City most of us will only be able to dream about.  He spent the next night in his girlfriend’s basement apartment eating macaroni and cheese in the shape of Toy Story characters and enjoyed it just as much — well, maybe not quite as much, but you get my point.

He is grounded and grateful and a hard worker and smart and creative.  He is not even thirty and he has met at least two more billionaires than I have.  And it didn’t go to his head.  It was fun and cool and an interesting experience, but so is every day of his life.

No matter who you are, no matter what you were born into, transformation is always possible.  We all need to step up, lean in, let go of our excuses and commit to staying in the game.  If my son chooses to have children, they will have to overcome being raised in affluence and with connections.  Some people thrive in this setting, but many do not.  In fact, I can’t wait to talk with my son’s roommate whose family owns a penthouse in NYC and a private jet. How did he turn out so unaffected?  He asks his Ultimate friends to take off their shoes when they come over for a meeting to protect the light carpet. He is no spoiled brat.

We get to make it up anew every day we wake up.  We can choose to change the stories we live in if they do not serve us.  So what if your father didn’t love you?  How long are you going to cry before you let go and dance?

Blessings,

Vicki

Note: this article is part of the book I am writing tentatively titled Recovery Buffet– All You Can Free. What do you think of the title? Should it be Welcome to Your Recovery Buffet–All You Can Free? or should it be Welcome to Your All You Can Free Recovery Buffet? I really want to know what you think.

The book will help people create their own daily program for recovering anything they’ve lost — joy, hope, courage,peace of mind, the ability to stand up for themselves, or perhaps even an ability to throw a party without stressing. (My husband and I are Masters at this!)

When you create your own Recovery Buffet, you can tackle any and all addiction issues, and it doesn’t matter how messy your life looks at this moment. All you need to do is have the willingness to try something new, and make a little progress every day. Progress not perfection is what matters.

This is a great segue to my WHAT MATTERS Daily Recovery Plan. (And I’d like to take moment to celebrate the word “segue,” which I learned just a few short years ago. Where had it been hiding all my life? What a great word!”

WHAT MATTERS: the “H” In WHAT stands for happiness habits.

What is a Happiness Habit?

I’m defining a happiness habit is anything we do that raises our vibration. When you practice a Happiness Habit, you will feel better immediately. Will you be cured forever of all pain and suffering? No. If that is what you want I suggest either a lobotomy or a methamphetamine addiction. I hear meth works very, very well the first time.

But that’s true for most addictions. The first time you go on a shopping binge to make yourself feel better, you do feel better. Somewhere your body says, “I felt crappy and now I feel alive and powerful! Whenever I feel bad all I need to do is shop!” We can exchange the word “shop” with, get angry, drive fast, get busier, drink, have sex, even throw five parties for your two year old.

Why do we need to develop happiness habits?

Whatever we practice we become good at, and we’re always practicing something. If we get intentional about what we practice, we take responsibility for our lives and we are no longer victims. By making the commitment to ourselves to practice one Happiness Habit every day, a habit that can take one minute or less, we are taking action to free ourselves. Happiness Habits are something anyone can do, anytime, anywhere. You’re going to have to throw your excuse of “I don’t have enough time” in the Cosmic Toilet for this one, because no matter who you are, you can always find one minute during the day to consciously shift your vibration.

I want to emphasize that though a Happiness Habit doesn’t take long to develop, it is extremely effective. I know we don’t trust things that are simple, I know we have this tendency to make everything more complicated, but truly, taking one minute a day to consciously evoke happiness will make a big difference. I dare you to try this for two weeks and tell me it isn’t helping free you to think more clearly, feel more gratitude, and absorb more beauty around you. I dare you.

Happiness Habit #1: I really love it when…

(I got this tip from Carol Look, an EFT master. You can easily find her on You Tube.)

Finish the sentence “I really love it when…”  as many times as you can, putting in as many sensory details as possible.

Here is a sample list from me to juice up your imagination:

• I really love it when I’m in the process of writing a book I believe in, a book I know will help thousands if not millions of people.
• I really love it when I’m picking raspberries off the raspberry bushes in my backyard and they are warm from the sun and ridiculously sweet in my mouth.
• I really love it when my husband and I have those moments of just putting cheek to cheek, and being completely in the moment appreciating each other.
• I really love it when I start listening to a new book and I think “Yahoo! This is going to be a doozy!”
• I really love it when I take warm clothes out of the dryer, and they smell so sweet and fresh and friendly.
• I really love it when I get a new software program or piece of technology that makes my life easier and richer.
• I really love it when it’s raining really, really hard and I’m snug and cozy by my fire, listening to the rain on the roof.

Get the idea? You can write your sentences down or say this out loud to yourself, which is a great idea. But if you’re a little shy and you’re out in public you can just look around and talk to yourself.

More examples:
Grocery shopping: I really love it when I picked the right line, and I get through that checkout fast.

Driving in traffic: I really love it when there’s nothing I can do and I am forced to slow down because the traffic is so thick. I think I’ll sing along with the Black Eyed Peas. “I gotta feeling…”

The first time you go to the bathroom in the morning: the Jewish tradition has a prayer for this moment –  it goes something like “ I really love it when all the pipes are working.” (I have, of course, paraphrased this blessing.)

When you start creating your own customized Recovery Buffet, you will discover the Happiness Habits that work the best for you. I have lots of suggestions, but you can start collecting your own Happiness Habits. If you already have some, I’d love to hear from you and I’ll put them in this book, giving you credit of course.

Want to give this a try for two weeks and let me know what happens? That would be cool.

Blessings,

Vicki