Swinging the Bat (a guest post by my brother)

Marty and me in 2011

It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since my brother, Marty, suffered a 12-hour seizure that left him with permanent brain damage and short-term memory loss. He’s endured frustration and great sadness, but what’s gotten him through it all and helps him continue to accept and adjust to his new reality is his optimism and glass-half-full spirit, an unwaivering commitment to helping others, and his unyielding faith in the god he’s trusted all his life.

Marty began writing essays years ago and self-published a collection of 100 of them prior to his seizure. It took him awhile to “pick up his pen” again after that fateful day in June 2011, but he’s been honing his skills, and I felt the one I’m posting below is his most thoughtful to-date. His words really kicked me in the pants since I feel lately some of my “at-bats” have been wasted. Read on and see if anything he says resonates with you, too.

Swinging The Bat

Like many fans of professional baseball, I enjoy sitting on my patio on a nice summer evening listening to my favorite team on the radio. I also enjoy watching my favorite team on television, too. Whether my team wins or loses really doesn’t matter. Where they are in the standings doesn’t matter either. I still turn on the radio or the TV to catch the game when it is on. I guess you can say, “Hope springs eternal” among true baseball fans.

There is one thing I cannot tolerate in baseball. That one thing is lackluster effort. It annoys me to no end when a player goes up to bat and then strikes out without even swinging the bat. They simply stand there with a zombie…like stare and watch the pitches go by until the umpire calls them out. These are not wildly thrown pitches out of the strike zone, but perfectly hittable balls. Then they simply turn and head back to the dugout. What a wasted at-bat.

I’ve always felt that you go to the plate with a bat in your hands to swing at pitches to try to get a hit. Standing there and watching as the ball goes by is unacceptable. You only get three or four chances to hit during a ball game. Why waste those opportunities with the bat resting on your shoulder without at least giving it a go? You can’t get a hit or a home run without swinging the bat. I have no time for people who do not try.

Now, I don’t mind it when a hitter goes down swinging at the plate. There are times when a particular pitcher is good and he is “on his game,” so to speak. That pitcher is throwing good stuff that is tough to hit. It happens. He may be throwing some nasty curveballs or sinkerballs that would test even the best of hitters. But as long as you are trying your best to hit his best pitches and you still strike out, there is nothing to be ashamed of. You gave it your best. Who knows? You may get the best of the situation next time you meet him again. The point is you tried.

I find this to be like life. We are faced with challenges all the time. Life has a way of throwing fastballs, curveballs, and screwballs at us. What we do about these pitches determines what kind of people we are or will be. Do we just give up as we approach the batter’s box and determine beforehand to not even swing our bats, to not even try our best, as we watch those pitches go by? Or, do we resolve to try our best to grip the bat a bit differently or stand in the box a bit differently and take a hack at the tough pitches?   

   

Ever since going on disability two years ago after losing much of my memory capabilities, I found it easy to get discouraged and even angry because of what I lost. It was also easy to just stand there at the plate and watch as those pitches went by. But, there are people and organizations that will not allow me to fall into that trap. They know that people like myself still have much to contribute and they are very good at helping people like myself to realize that and to…well…contribute.

Thanks to these people, I am swinging the bat. I volunteer twice a week at a local food shelf warehouse where I am very much needed and very much appreciated. I participate in a golf league and a bowling league for disabled people. I am not languishing around thinking about what I cannot do. I may strike out occasionally, but that’s OK. I may not be quite the person I once was, but that, too, is okay. As long as I am swinging the bat, my chances are much better that I’ll hit a double or a single.

What kind of person are you? Are you content to watch pitches go by as the umpire calls you out? Are you satisfied with lackluster and mediocre effort? Do you want to swing the bat and give it your best shot? We don’t have many opportunities or much time in life to turn things around. We need to start swinging our bats now! We need to give our best to life now! Tomorrow may be too late. We never know what might happen tomorrow. Ask me. I know about that. 

Trip to the Emergency Room

On Monday I fell in the parking lot of Day Care that is part of the Hospital I work at.  I tripped over crack in the pavement and twisted my right ankle.  I fell like a ton of bricks on to my left knee and knew there was no way I could get off the ground with both legs injured like that.

My purse and my daughter were still in the car.  I was walking around the car to get her out to take into the

AIM: Show Me Your Maintenance and I’ll Show You Mine

For this month’s topic, Lori, Debby, Shelley, Cammy, and I chose to take on an aspect of our lives that is unique to each of our maintenance journeys. One thing that sets me apart from my AIM friends is that I am a grandmother to three girls and a boy, and it is from that perspective that I wrote this AIM entry.

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My daughter, Cassie, mother to the grandbabies, sent me this link last week: “How To Talk To Your Daughter AboutHer Body.” After I read it, I thought about how I presented my own perspective of weight to my daughters as they grew up. They witnessed my diets, but for many years – mostly their formative teenage years – I was uninterested in losing weight. In fact, from 1997 to 2004, they witnessed my 130-pound gain.

Looking back, it wasn’t how I talked to my daughters about their bodies that could have fanned the flames of negative body image because there was really nothing to talk about. Neither of them obsessed about the shape of their butts or thighs, and as far as I know, neither of them dieted or thought too much about food. The more likely breeding ground for negative self-image was in how I talked about (read: berated) and treated my own body. I wasn’t exactly kind to myself and I ate too much of even the healthy stuff, thus part of the reason for my incredible weight gain. My girls, on the other hand, knew when to say when, and frequently witnessed me cleaning their plates. They, thankfully, did not follow my example.

In 2005, when I decided 300 pounds was way more than I could handle, Carlene was 21 and finishing college, and Cassie was 20 and working her way through nursing school. They were excited that I was taking my health seriously and encouraged me all the way down the scale, never once comparing how they looked and how they ate to how I looked and how I ate. If anything, they teased me when I became so militant about food that I wouldn’t even eat a slice of birthday cake without torturously imagining gaining 150 pounds with one bite.

I don’t know how I got so lucky, but Carlene and Cassie don’t internalize my obsessions. If anything, they mirror them and help me see how ridiculous I can be.

Claire, Audrey, Maelie, and Luca

What I like about “How To Talk To Your Daughter…” is the emphasis on creating space for a girl to grow up understanding that her body does not define her, but rather, is part of her strength and her character, no matter what it looks like. This is something I need to let sink in and accept into my own personal body image. It’s not often we get second chances, but this time around, I want to be more conscientious about how I project my body image to my grandchildren, particularly Claire, Mae, and Audrey. Anyone who’s spent any amount of time with a 5-year-old knows they hear everything and forget nothing.

I remember three years ago when Claire was 3, I showed her my driver’s license from when I was 300 pounds. I asked her, “Who is that?” and she said she didn’t know. I said, “That’s Grammy.” She looked at me like my head was on backwards. “Nunh uh,” she said, shaking her head. It didn’t occur to me until I sat down to write this blog that one day my grandkids might construe as obsessive my many sizes and diets and Oprah and People and CNN and my blog and my verbal assessments of how I look and what I eat. 

Grandparents are not left off the hook on this subject, not by a long shot, especially those of us who are maintaining a significant weight loss or who were, as I was long ago, ridiculed by their mother/grandmothers/aunts/friends-of-the-family for not being thin enough or pretty enough growing up. We grandparents also need to be especially mindful about how we present our views on our aging bodies to younger generations.

I’ve always said there is nothing I wouldn’t do for my grandchildren. Easy to say, not so easy to do. I need to pull all that diet/weight-loss/weight-maintenance stuff together and clean up my own body image so I can best help my daughter and son-in-law create the healthy space in which their children will develop their own body image. I will seek to incorporate a few of the suggestions in “How To Talk To Your Daughter…” namely this one: “Don’t you dare talk about how much you hate your body in front of your [grand]daughter, or talk about your new diet. In fact, don’t go on a diet in front of your [grand]daughter. Buy healthy food. Cook healthy meals. But don’t say ‘I’m not eating carbs right now.’ Your [grand]daughter should never think that carbs are evil, because shame over what you eat only leads to shame about yourself.”

Maintenance is no longer about me. There are four sets of eyes watching and four sets of ears listening to everything I say and do in their presence.

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AIM: Adventures in Maintenance is Lynn, Lori, Debby, Shelley, and Cammy, former weight-loss bloggers who now write about life in maintenance. We formed AIM to work together to turn up the volume on the issues facing people in weight maintenance. We publish a post on the same topic on the first Monday of each month. Let us know if there is a topic you'd like us to address!

Lori @ Finding Radiance

Debbie @ debby weighs in

Shelley @ My Journey to Fit

Cammy @ The Tippy Toe Diet

The Hope of Impermanence

There’s a smell in the countryside of western Pennsylvania that I’ve never smelled anywhere else (and it’s not the smell of fracking…yet). It’s the smell of hardwoods and evergreens, lichens and fungus, and leaves rotting on the forest floor. On summer mornings, whether I’m taking a walk  or riding on the back of the Irishman’s Harley, I want to continually inhale as it blows through my hair and bathes my skin in its cool familiarity.   

That smell is as grounding as a cleansing breath in meditation. It reminds me that home exists inside myself and that it’s possible – and preferable – to be comforted with something as simple as a smell.

Strangely enough, I am also comforted by the truth of impermanence, the Buddhist teaching that – put simply – everything organic and emotional will change, decay, and die. Understanding that truth and, more importantly, reminding myself of it (I have a really bad memory sometimes), I am better able to accept and live within painful body states and emotions.

This understanding didn’t come easy. For most of my life, I’ve clung to the hope of permanence and rebelled against change I didn’t create or welcome. I’ve moved so many times in almost 50 years that when I moved into the duplex I live in now, I promised myself I’d never plant another perennial. I’d never again leave a piece of me behind. Then, after growing tired of looking at the empty space between two day lilies, I bought two coreopsis plants, something I grew in my most recent former gardens in my most recent former house. They make me smile now, in this moment, and one day I hope they make the people who will live here after me happy, too.

It is my trust in the teachings of impermanence that I have decided it is time for another change, one

Al, left, with her sister, Willow

that I don’t like, but is in Alice’s best interest. The precarious nature of my knee means I don’t know when it will go out next, and I’ve been struggling lately to give her adequate exercise. Alice can’t live with me for a few months after my knee replacement surgery in September anyway, and so her sister Willow’s family has generously offered to foster Al while I attend to my knee now and after the surgery.

Of course, Alice doesn’t understand impermanence, and that’s what grieves me most. My sweet dog, with whom I’ve worked so hard these last four months – who walks perfectly on a lead, understands “No jump!” and runs like the wind (especially when fetch is involved), stands patiently while I bathe her and clean her ears, and earns her “good girl” treats every single day – will not understand why I’m not there to walk her or feed her or play with her or scratch her belly and call her Alice Tiberious Dog. She won’t be able to find me when it storms. I’m pretty sure I’m her best friend. She’s definitely mine. And letting her go is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life.

But…this, too, is impermanent. Her feelings, my feelings, my physical challenges…they will morph and change and mutate into something different, most likely better, because I’ve put the best people in place to give these transactions their best shot at success: Willow’s family, my family, my doctor, and my friends.

 

I will not bury the sadness I feel today. I am allowing it to bathe me with its urgency, just as I let the smell of the Pennsylvania countryside wash over me this morning when I took Al on her last (for a while) walk around our neighborhood. I am comforted by the hope of impermanence, that this, too, shall pass. 

AIM: Maintaining Support…Or Not?

I was standing over the stove yesterday whisking a cheese sauce for a new recipe I was trying (Baked Spaghetti Squashand Cheese…totally worth the time to make!) when it occurred to me that I used to sit down to whisk a cheese sauce when I weighed 300 pounds. My lower back killed me any time I stood longer than a few minutes.  

I’ve written more than a few times about how there’s no way I’d be where I am today – 150 pounds lighter than I was 8 years ago – without the support of some pretty amazing people, both in my “real” life and online. As I was losing weight, I was in touch daily on the Weight Watchers 100+ discussion boards, sometimes posting for hours in order to work out a difficult food or body issue. My friends and family were always there with words of encouragement and to help celebrate a milestone.

In maintenance, the support I need is more subtle. In fact, I often don’t recognize support as “support” until the moment has passed. At this end of the scale, support is a reminder, an experience, an appreciation. It’s remembering that at 300 pounds, my back ached while whisking cheese sauce or, in the case of this photo, rolling out lefse. I remember exactly how I was feeling and thinking at that moment my aunt told me to smile. I wanted to cry my back hurt so much, but I refused to sit down because I refused to let others see that my weight was causing me such pain. After all, I wasn’t really THAT overweight! (Oh the lies I told myself…)

Support is a friend sharing her own realization that I could appreciate and make my own. I had lunch last weekend with my friend, Chris, whom I had met on the 100+ boards eight years ago when I was just starting my journey and she had already lost more than 100 pounds. During lunch, she lamented a bit about how she’s gained some of her weight back, then almost in the same breath, she corrected herself and focused on the positive.

“It’s been 10 years since I weighed over 300 pounds,” she said. “I’ve been maintaining a weight far below my highest weight. That’s a huge accomplishment!”

Yes, it is. And her “Eureka!” moment was all the support I needed to remind me how far I’ve come as well. While I, too, would like my scale number to be a little lower, I have maintained a large weight loss for more than six years. While I can’t rely on that reminder alone to keep the weight off (yes…it still takes daily concentration and dedication to maintain), it’s sometimes a good idea to step back and look at the big picture (pun intended). 

Each of us can be our own best support system. Even if you’re still in the process of losing weight or if you’re stuck on a plateau or feeling blah in maintenance, support yourself by reminding yourself how far you’ve come. Maybe do it the next time you’re at the gym or out for a walk or run, or even when you’re standing at and not sitting by the stove whisking a cheese sauce.

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AIM: Adventures in Maintenance is Lynn, Lori, Debby, Shelley, and Cammy, former weight-loss bloggers who now write about life in maintenance. We formed AIM to work together to turn up the volume on the issues facing people in weight maintenance. We publish a post on the same topic on the first Monday of each month. Let us know if there is a topic you'd like us to address!

Lori @ Finding Radiance

Debbie @ debby weighs in

Shelley @ My Journey to Fit

Cammy @ The Tippy Toe Diet