Hey everyone! How are you? How was your weekend? I had a bit of a long one. Whew! Can’t believe it’s only Tuesday actually, but I’m feeling good.

Today’s Tank Top Tuesday submission comes from yours truly! I hadn’t received a submission from a reader in awhile and the last couple were from my very generous friends. So I wanted to jump back into the fray with you all, sleeveless and proud! Okay, no, that’s not entirely true. By the time this picture was taken I was proud, but most of the evening I felt terribly self conscious. I even grabbed a matching cardigan “in case I got cold” which is ridiculous as it was very hot that day. We had some friends over for dinner and I wanted to look cute, but…Nicole gave me this dress. Isn’t it lovely? I adore it! It’s not something I would ever buy for myself, but would fawn over in it the store only to walk away from it. Isn’t it strange how I was fine being sleeveless several different days last week (more tops from Nicole! Thank you gurl!!!) yet this dress put me right on edge?! My husband was very kind and encouraging, even when I threatened to change about four times. I think that’s the key though, to getting over this hump? Repetition! Because I was fine in the sleeveless tops I wore that week, but the dress? Why did it freak me out so? By the end of the night I couldn’t have cared less about my damned arms, but at the start I was beside myself with “OMZ! They will see my armz!”  And I am so sick of that! Why should I have to worry about how my bare arms make someone else feel? I’m done!

Okay, and then I see pics of myself like this and I think, “Wow! I look younger than I feel! Ha-ha!” Just sayin’! The dress is from Old Navy, but no clue as to when she bought it. It’s a 4x and is roomy up top, I may take it in a tad so it won’t pook out on the sides as much. but I love the colors! The accent looks red, but it’s a coral color trim. Lovely!

I am taking submissions from anyone who wants to exercise their right to Bare Arms for future Tank Top Tuesday posts! Email your pics here: notblueatall@notblueatall.com, please include the name you’d like in the post, a blog or etsy shop you wanna plug, your thoughts on bare arms or other fatty philosophies. It does not have to be in a tank top, so long as your arms are bare. Have fun with it!

Also, feel free to still treat comments as TMI topic/discussion/venting area! Feel free to ask TMI questions or just vent/rant about your own stuff. I love it! We all do! =0)

**Friend of the blog Erylin, has a clothing swap coming up in Kansas city mo. we will be having one on September 25th at the north Kansas city library right off of armour and I-35. (if you need more info leave a reply and we will connect you somehow). **

Sorry, that’s a lyric from Lykke Li’s “Get Some” and one of my most recent fave songs. But this post is about my arms. My big, fat, juicy, wobbly, strong, embracing, hugging, juggling, pale, freckled, occasionally sunburned or peeling from one, ARMS! While driving the other day, I was sitting at a stop light and felt the sun on my arm. I stroked my left arm from top to bottom and back again, unconsciously, to soothe the heat of the sun from it. This is when I looked down and it felt like I was looking at another person’s arm! It looked dry and sad and had lost it’s previously recognizable elasticity. *Whimper*

I vowed then and there that I would take better care of my arms! I even asked my husband to ask me when he gets home everyday if I’d moisturized my arms. So far he hasn’t asked me once, but I haven’t forgotten yet either, so we’re cool. My left upper arm was/is a bit flaky from a sunburn about two weeks ago. I knew this, lotion-ed it once, and went about my life. Why did I think that was enough? Why have I been ignoring my arms? Ugh!

Some history: Growing up my mother (who I have not seen since I was 16) was probably about the size I am now, give or take. She had large jiggly arms. But she also broke out on her upper arms a lot and would pick at them constantly. I always found this gross/disturbing/embarrassing, depending on my mood or where we were. It was an absent minded thing for her, if I recall. But I remember it and the way she would pull her arm flab towards her so that she could inspect and pick it. I swore to myself that I would never do that, that I would never be like or look like her. I lived much of my life living what I felt was the exact opposite lifestyle as her, only to have puberty kick me in the ass (hips, thighs, etc) and make me look so much like her. Only, my face looks just like my dad. Go figure!

Is this why I’ve neglected my arms so? If I was so passionate about not being anything like her, why let the arms that I rely on so much for every damned thing I do in the world go? Eh, actually, I’m done with the whole “letting it go” bullshit. I ignored these babies and I need to rectify that shit, pronto! And so I moisturize them everyday. I inspect them. I try to think loving and happy thoughts when I do this, too. I try to soothe my arms and let them know that I do care about them. This may sound so silly, but my arms ain’t what they used to be in terms of the skin itself. I would like more strength in my upper arms, but I struggle with keeping with anything I attempt to do to find or achieve that strength.

I preach self-care a lot on this blog. I try my best to practice what I preach, I really do. I am honest about my failings. And this is certainly one of them. I was surprised by this huge gap in my self-care routine. I was shocked at the visible changes in my arms that I’d somehow missed or ignored. I wonder what this means, if anything. Is it just simple neglect or taking them for granted? Or is this something more deeply seated within my subconscious due to the facts above about my mother? I don’t know, dude, I just don’t. But I do know that I willfully choose to change this. As I am staring age 34 down here real soon, I know a bit about skin elasticity and what I’ve got left I wanna take extra good  care of. Skin is so important, it keeps your insides, well, in! Ha! But seriously? I want to care for my whole self, all the bits and bobs, and maybe even help someone else discover what they’ve been neglecting, too.

Do you neglect (willfully or not) part of your body? Is there part of you that you purposefully ignore? Not just in looking, but in caring for, too? I would say that in America, a lot of people neglect their feet. They don’t care for them properly. I say this because my BFF P used to work in a shoe store for work shoes (constructions, nurses, etc) and he would tell me horror stories. People just ignore the hell outta their feet, man, and that makes me sad. I hope we can find a way to love our whole selves and not just the parts we prefer. Thanks for reading! <3

“This show has taught me that there is a common thread that runs through all of our pain and all of our suffering. And that is unworthiness. Not feeling worthy enough to own the life you were created for. Even people who believe they deserve to be happy and have nice things, often don’t feel worthy once they have them. There is a difference, you know, between thinking you deserve to be happy and knowing that you are worthy of happiness.”

“We often block our own blessings because we don’t feel inherently good enough or smart enough or pretty enough or worthy enough…

This show has taught me that you are worthy because you are born and because you are here. You’re being here, you’re being alive, makes worthiness your birthright. You alone are enough.”

“We are all looking for validation. Every person you will ever meet, shares that common desire. They wanna know, do you see me? Do you hear me? Does what I say mean anything to you? …Try it with your husband, your wife, your boss, your friends, validate them: I see you, I hear you. And what you say, matters to me.” Oprah Winfrey (Her very last episode)

The above quotes weighed heavily upon me and stayed in my thoughts for a few days after the fact. I just watched her last three episodes last week. I’d saved them and put off watching for some reason. Good stuff, honestly! I was surprised. I’ve never followed Oprah closely. I’ve admired and respected her from a distance. You probably know why, too. That she is self & fat hating. But I do think she has begun to see the error of that thinking as time goes on. But this concept of unworthiness? That struck me! Like a bolt of non-lethal lightening!

Worthiness. We see that as something attainable, somehow. Yet just living makes us all worthy! I love that! You are enough! Just as you are! I wanna shout these phrases from rooftops, y’all! I feel like it’s something that shouldn’t be a secret. For all I have been through in my lifetime, all that I have seen and been a witness to, all that I work for and toward…To know that I am still worthy? That is meaningful to me. I feel more grounded by the thought of that. It connects us to each other. It connects us, I hope, to our planet. I feel more a part of the universe itself, it’s limitlessness humbling and comforting me.

And it also terrifies me. To grow up feeling the need to prove myself worthy is a difficult thing to shake. I still catch myself trying. I hear myself say things to prove what I say or believe or just know. As much as I try to focus on the energy I bring with me where ever I go, I still find that I am that poor kid. Maybe now more than ever because I understand things I never did before. I have a different perspective than I could have had back then. My defenses may never leave me, but perhaps one day I will stop feeling the need to prove myself to anyone…even to myself.

This is where fat liberation connects to worthiness. Fat liberation (I know many of you prefer or have only heard acceptance, it’s the same thing really, but I prefer liberation), gave me the permission I needed to live my life now. To just accept and love and enjoy myself and my life. It gave me hope and cause and reason and passion. What am I saying, it gave me…it still gives me these things!!! It fuels my fires, baby! Ha-ha! Fat liberation gave me a new prescription in my spectacles that allows me to see beyond the mass-fed bullshit! And I love that!

And I am worthy. And you are worthy. And why can’t we just take that with us everywhere? (Where is my worthiness backpack?) I want to. I want to take it and share it with everyone I know! This should be part of the UN or something, I dunno. But it’s so important! This is amazing! This is a universal communication:

Do you see me? Do you hear me? Does what I say mean anything to you?

Think about that awhile. Think about actively using it. I want to. I will try to.  I have said such things to my friends, but I wonder how that feels to hear it? I mean, without some sort of prompt? I guess it could come off as strange or pushy, maybe…well, I won’t stop. It’s such a powerfully positive thing! I had no idea such a simple concept/word could affect us all so strongly. But it does and I feel better for knowing it!

Happy Friday to you. Thank you for reading. Thank you for seeing me and hearing me and letting me know when something I say means something to you. You make me feel worthy. You are worthy, too! <3

“Nobody, but you, is responsible for your life. It doesn’t matter what your mama did, it doesn’t matter what your daddy didn’t do. You are responsible for Your life. And what is your life? What is all life? What is Every flower, every rock, every tree, every human being? Energy. And you’re responsible for the energy that you create for yourself. And you’re responsible for the energy that you bring to others.” Oprah Winfrey (from her very last episode)

This can be a difficult concept for many to fully understand let alone believe or try to incorporate into their own lives. I’m actually a firm believer, but not fully there in practice yet. I work on it everyday. I notice it most, though, when around people who have no idea what energy they bring with them everywhere. Have you ever been at a friend’s or perhaps at a party and someone arrives and the energy of the entire room shifts? Not always in a negative way, mind you, but it definitely changes.

Last week my husband and I were having this very deep conversation, and it was almost like a stream of consciousness type of thing for me, but the phone rang and so I got up to pee while he answered it and we just couldn’t find where we were again, energetically, and so we dropped it. While having that conversation, though the topics were heavy and dark, I felt sort of energized or like I was tapping into something important. Once that phone rang (oh noes! The outside world!) the spell was broken.

It’s sort of like when I was a kid hanging out at my BFF Riana’s house all day long and then it began to get dark but we didn’t want our good times to end so we would beg our parents for a sleepover. We felt like there was just no way for us to pick up where we left off the next day, ya know? It felt like the end of the world. Like a big bummer cloud decided to park right over us and pour down it’s bummer-ness. Boo!

I find that as I become more mindful of my own energy and how I carry it with me, the more sensitive I am to negative types. I mean, I can generally make conversation with anybody, but sometimes I will be frozen in place by someone’s total negative vibes, man. It can feel suffocating. It can stop me in my tracks, literally! Yet I would probably never feel comfortable enough to explain that to them. How could I? Yet they affect me so greatly.

I do know that when I am feeling drained/low/exhausted/stressed, it helps for me to sort of check in with myself energy-wise. What made me feel this way? Can I do anything about it now? What would help? Is there a first step I can take to get the ball rolling? If it’s all no’s, then I breathe deeply a few times, listening closely to my breaths and try to picture something tranquil. It doesn’t always work, but it can help a bit. I’m not talking about severe anxiety/panic episodes. Just blah-ness or feeling rough in general.

How do you channel or use your own energy? What have you experienced in regards to others’ energy affecting you? I’d love to hear more thoughts and ideas on this subject. Thanks for reading! <3

We learn to judge sometime in our childhood. We learn to judge others and eventually ourselves. We begin to see the world through this new lens, but when we turn that lens upon ourselves we choose (or are taught) to see the negative. I think this self-judgement only worsens with time/age/environment. And I think that right now, in time or this year or whatever, it is worse than ever before in history. Women and girls see their self-worth directly tied to their weight and beauty. We push ourselves to a previously unfathomable degree and then sit back in shock and horror when such behaviors blow up in our collective faces. When breaking away from this type of thinking or behavior lands you in the “other” category or worse getting bullied.

I am still on my own personal path to a judgement-free life. I know it’s possible, I feel as though I am halfway there. I see people like Yoko Ono, the Dalai Lama, Oprah Winfrey and more, teach these concepts and practices hoping to reach even a few minds ready for change. And that is the crux of it, isn’t it? Change. It is what drives us and freezes us in terror. The unknown is what scares us. Change is what we think we want when we feel positive. But it is when things are drastically wrong that we rally together for that change. When we are instructed or asked to change for our “own good” we resist with a resistance against it like little else in the world. As though changing one iota of ourselves for health or well-being or for the health and safety of our loved ones, would change yourself and your personality for good. I used to believe that people do not actually ever change, but I know now that that just isn’t so. I have changed so much that when I look back I am often horrified at the person I was or the shit I allowed to be done to me or brought into my life.

With every passing year I think I see the world slightly differently. It used to be me against the world. Then me and my husband against the world. Now it’s just us trying to live in harmony with the world as best we can. That is a major shift! I used to walk around with a black cloud overhead, the living gal version of Eeyore. I believe at one point that I was so worthless that I didn’t even deserve death, that the best punishment for someone like me (I was in my mid to late teens) is to live in misery and agony for the rest of my natural life. I believed that in my heart of hearts (where did that saying come from?). I bought into that self-created philosophy for many years. Even got a tattoo with Chinese characters that say “Everlasting Pain”. *HeadDesk* That is not the person I am now. Not even close! But I changed. I grew. I evolved and I opened myself up to new things and people and concepts and lifestyles and ideas and I made informed changes in my life.

What inspired this post is an article about a woman who gave up mirrors for a year. I was struck by that concept, especially how it might pertain to Fat Liberation. When we look at ourselves in the mirror we see what others see (or so we think). A good friend of mine once told me a story about shopping at a local Target and seeing an older but stylish woman looking at her from behind a clothes rack. Well, that woman was her! She was alarmed at how much older she appeared in the mirror (though don’t get me started on department store mirrors, yo). She and I are one month apart in age. I found the story humorous, but poignant, too. At what point do we hold onto an image of ourselves and refuse to let go? I have been exposed to a large swath of the population and it varies, I can tell you that much. I have found that for men, 21-25 is their ideal image of themselves (no research was done, this is a guestimation y’all). And for women it can be much younger or older than that. I think it has more to do with what was going on in their lives than anything else, hindsight being 20-20 and all.

This all reminds me of a quote from Andy Warhol, “I know a girl who just looks at her face in the medicine cabinet mirror and never looks below her shoulders, and she’s four or five hundred pounds but she doesn’t see all that, she just sees a beautiful face and therefore she thinks she’s a beauty. And therefore, I think she’s a beauty, too, because I usually accept people on the basis of their self-images, because their self-images have more to do with the way they think than their objective-images do.” That Andy knew what was up! I think that girl is me! Ha-ha! seriously! I don’t own a full-length mirror anymore (not intentionally, just situationally) and thus can only view myself from the shoulders up. Sometimes I see myself as a beauty, other times I just look tired. But I am who I am and I accept that. I try not to dwell on that reflected image, either.

Could I (could you?) give up mirrors for a year? I don’t know. I mean, I suppose I could, but driving? Hmm, that would be the hardest bit. To resist the ultimate temptation of looking in the rear view mirror at myself? I don’t think I could. But I don’t hate what I see in the mirror anymore. I know who I am and while certain aspects of my personality may always be in flux, I know that the core of my being is good and kind and strong and capable and important. I hold that closest to me. I remind myself often. I have to. Because in this world, right now, with the hate flowing from every pore and person? I have no choice but to love me for me, I can’t expect to receive or buy that anywhere else. There’s no installment plan for self-acceptance.  It takes work and it takes a willingness to be open to that concept to begin with.  And I am a much better person for having found it! I now have more meaningful relationships and work to honor and value them. I hope that you can find a way to accept and love yourself, too. For now, accept that I love and accept you just as you are, right now!

<3
S