By Ox Drover
One of the things we hear frequently on LoveFraud and in self help books we might read is to “love yourself.” This sounds like great advice, but the thing is no one ever tells me exactly how to do this.
Some suggestions for increasing my “self love” and “self esteem” given in various books and articles are to use “positive affirmations” such as “I am wonderful,” or some other positive self talk that I should repeat over and over inside my head until I eventually start to believe it.
Even though I might say these phrases over and over, no matter how positive and “self affirming” they may sounds, somehow I never seem to truly believe them. After saying them over and over inside my head somehow there’s a little voice that repeats “Yeah, RIGHT!” in a scoffing tone.
If anyone knows my faults, it is surely me, and somehow I just have problems saying and truly believing the large statement, “I am wonderful!”
One of the things that really bothered me of late is “getting old.” I look in the mirror and see my grandmother’s face looking back. I really hate to have my photograph taken because I look at them and see this fat caricature of my youthful self looking out of the photograph. I started on a calorie control diet to lose some weight, and looked at my skin which has more than a few dark sunspots and a liberal supply of “laugh lines” (read: wrinkles). I pound on myself internally for not listening to my grandmother and staying out of the boiling sun until I became bronzed when I was young. The sunscreen I slather on now does little good now that my skin is starting to resemble the Marlboro man. How can I like myself when I look the way I do and there’s not much I can do at this late stage in the game to improve myself?
Even if I lose the excess weight, all I will accomplish is to let the “air” out of the wrinkles that the excess fat smoothes out somewhat.
So because I was feeling pretty bad about how I looked , and really, there wasn’t much at 63 years old I could do, outside of extensive plastic surgery I couldn’t afford, I decided to work on loving myself the way I look today, rather than bemoaning the fact I no longer look like I did “back then.” If I could tackle that and succeed, I could tackle anything.
One of the things I used to do was stand in front of the mirror and pull the skin on my cheeks back, like a doctor would in a face lift, smoothing out the wrinkles and the line from my nose to the corner of my mouth, imagining how I would look after a face lift. One evening doing some rare television watching I saw a former “sex goddess” movie star, now probably nearing 70, doing a guest shot on a series. She had obviously had copious plastic surgery and she looked like a caricature of her former self, almost like a melted Barbie doll. Looking at her face, and at her attempts to continue to “look young” through the marvels of modern surgery —surgery that seemed laughable, I threw back my head and I laughed.
Sure, I looked like my grandmother at my age, and I had loved that face—on her, but I was going to learn to love that face on myself. I was going to learn to love myself, starting with my body. Not the body I would have when I lost twenty pounds, or the face that I would have after I had extensive plastic surgery, but the face I have today!
How could I go about learning to love my body the way it is, the face the way it is? Well, first of all, it wasn’t going to be accomplished by standing in front of the mirror and asking, “mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of us all?” I am no longer a beautiful young girl with creamy smooth skin, but that doesn’t mean my body or my face isn’t okay.
My body is a marvelous machine, wrinkled or smooth, my skin, the body’s largest organ, does an excellent job of keeping me free from bacteria and viral attackers, of cooling and heating my inner body, and evaporating sweat! It is well designed for its purpose. It does a great job!
People have always said my eyes are so expressive, and they really are! I can shoot a look out of them that my kids used to say would turn you to a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife if I were angry! They are still expressive but much more inclined now to smile and crinkle at the corners with laughter. They still see far away very well, but I have to have reading glasses up close, but that’s okay. My eyes really work very well and I like them.
My hair is still thick and heavy, and has always been a good feature even now that some of the strands are turning silver. The silver in my hair, which I’ve never dyed, almost looks like an expensive frost job! I wear it in a style that’s becoming, not trying to look like the sex goddess gone to pot with flowing tresses down to my waist, or cropped close and permed into a “poodle do” with a bluish cast, but natural. I really do like my hair!
My legs are still shapely, well muscled and firm from decades of walking and riding horses, I really do like my legs. They work very well and generally don’t hurt, all the joints freely function, and I can still kneel or stretch. I’ve really got great legs with slim ankles.
My back is a pretty good back, sometimes it has let me down a bit and ached after a hard day’s work, but I haven’t always been very good to it. I think I will try to be more accommodating to my back. I’ve worked it awfully hard all these years so I’m going to be better to it. I’ll do some stretching exercises before going out to work, and I’ll use my legs more to do the heavy lifting than misusing my back muscles. I really am fortunate to have such a great back, considering how inconsiderate I have been to it all these years. Yes, I can be proud of my back.
I remember how flat my abdomen used to be, back before I had children, and it’s not that flat now, but it really is a pretty good belly after all. It works well, it’s never let me down or made me seriously ill. Sometimes I don’t give it enough fiber and it complains to me when I mistreat it, but I think it has a right to tell me if I am not being good to it. Actually, there’s still a smattering of a waist there in spite of the fact it’s a bit over weight, but overall, I can’t complain about my abdomen. Actually, I think I like it pretty well and I don’t know anyone I would trade bellies with. Yep, my belly is A-ok.
The thing I have always been the proudest of in my entire self is my mind and my memory. Testing high on the “Bell Curve” of the intelligence test has given me a verification that “I’m smart.” Not just an opinion about my intellectual ability, but an actual objective piece of data. That always felt good. I generally made good grades in school and was at the top of my class if I even gave a modest effort to succeed in school, or in my job. That gave me a bit of pride, though I did realize that this was nothing I had done for myself or achieved for myself, but was a God-given attribute like my health and stature, it was more the result of my genetic make up than anything I did or didn’t do.
After my husband’s death in a tragic accident, to which I was a witness, I lost my mind. I lost my ability to remember things in minute detail. I panicked at realizing this, and even when my psychiatric physician and my therapist assured me that “it will get better, it won’t always be this bad,” I had great difficulty believing them. I was “not as good” as I previously was, forgetting many things, having holes in my memory for things I previously would have remembered without any effort. Finally, I complained about this so much that my therapist administered an IQ test, in which I still scored even a bit higher than I had ever scored previously. My mind is still good, and there is objective evidence of this. However, I know it doesn’t work the same as it did before the aircraft crash, before the ultimate stressor. I do have short term memory lapses, but that’s okay. I’m still me. I’m still smart, and what the heck does it really mean that my spelling has gone to hell, or that I can’t remember if I took the meat out to thaw for supper? Will the world end because of this? Does this mean I don’t have the intellect to make a rational or logical decision? Does this mean that I am “defective” and “no good” or “worthless” because I reach for a word, a simple word and can’t find it even though I can see the picture of a tree in my mind but can’t find that word? No, it doesn’t mean anything. I am still me. I still have a good mind, just different than before. I like my mind, my intellect, my ability to problem solve and even though it makes new learning more of a challenge, I still grasp large concepts, though I may no longer easily remember the name of the author. I have a good mind. I have a good intellect. I still like my brain even though it isn’t the same as before.
My “heart” both figuratively and physically, I like both of them. My physical heart has beaten well and steadily for 63 years now, and my physician has tested it and declared it a healthy heart. I depend on it to keep on beating well for more years into the future. I’ve tried to be good to it, by getting exercise and though I have mistreated it by smoking, I have decided to stop doing things that will injure my good heart, so I have stopped smoking cigarettes. I eat a “heart healthy” diet low in bad fat and other things that might damage it. I am happy with my heart.
My emotional “heart” is also something that I like. It is a compassionate heart and empathetic to others in pain. It is a generous heart, and one that will share the blessings of life that it has with others. In the past, my emotional heart has sometimes given too much to others and not enough to itself or to me, so I have talked to this heart and discussed a way that it can still be a generous and compassionate heart, but to also care for itself first. If my emotional heart gives all the blessings to someone else, it will not survive, so my emotional heart has learned to care for my body and itself first, so that I may continue to share with others. I like that about my emotional heart. My emotional heart is a good heart.
Looking over my body, mind and emotional heart piece by piece, I find that I like each individual unit just as it is. It isn’t perfect, it isn’t young any more, but it has matured with some grace and in many ways is far superior over all to the body, mind and emotional heart I had as a youngster. The packaging may be a bit wrinkled, but I wouldn’t change my body for anyone else’s, and I wouldn’t give up the maturity that I have gained with life and living.
So, I have found a way to learn to love myself, one part at a time, to enjoy living within the skin that protects me from the elements, and to savor the good parts of myself. I’m learning to love myself in a positive way rather than just chanting “affirmations” that are so vague and positive but have no real substance to my inner spirit who dwells in this mortal temple. I like my temple, I like my body, I like myself. I’m unique to me. I’m special. I’m one-of-a-kind, and I’m okay!
Dear Flowerpower,
Well, believe it or not I am an Ox Drover, trained several pair of oxen (which is a term for cattle trained to work, not a special breed of animal) and that makes me somewhat unique as I am the only woman teamster in My state and there aren’t many in the south. It gives me a psychopathic high to get in front of 4,000 pounds of oxen with a switch the size of a number 2 pencil and be IN CONTROL! LOL Hee hee
I no longer have working cattle, but did have for years, now I have mammoth donkeys (horse sized donkeys, propperly called asses. to ride or pull my wagon.) I was a tomboy when I was a kid and now I am a Tom-old lady! LOL But, I can put on the ruffles and “pass” for anyone’s feminine grandma now, and back then I could pass for the Prom Queen, but I just do wahtever is proper for where ever I am.
Glad you liked the article. I feel kind of “old” too, but I’m starting to adjust to being 63. I’m actually in pretty good shape for my age, but at the same time, I have’t had plastic surgery and don’t look like Raquel Welch (she looks great for 70+) at least on TV don’t know what she looks like up close, but I think I’ll take the growing old with grace and dignity part before trying to depend on my LOOKS (which, folks, ARE fleeting no matter how beautiful you were as a young person). I think what we are INSIDE, is the most important part of US, of OURSELF, and judging the book by the cover isn’t really very wise.
Look at Stephen Hawkin, Mother Theresa…..and I could name many others….they are not “pretty” or “hot” or “sexy” but would you rather be Paris Hilton or Mother Theresa (assuming she was still alive)? Looks and fame are some pretty shallow rulers to judge the value of a person by. My skin may be a bit like a prune, but you know, I’m getting more and more satisfied to be living in it. I think we have to start to value ourselves for something besides our exterior shell.
I loved this article. And after the last couple of days, I needed to come back here and read it again. Each time taking the inventory over and over.
Funny what they do is to tear out your identity and replace it with an abyss of self doubt and castigation. Its real, that empty lost feeling which follows an encounter and like a bad flu it come up again and again like a weed in a garden. Each time it has to be dealt with. I love this inventory because it is like a walk down through the pathways of a garden to see what is growing and blooming and producing precious fruits.
New information over the last couple of days has turned my heart upside down again. It doesn’t refute what is in plain sight, but it causes me to question everything I see and fear that I’ve misjudged. I’ve gotten lost in that place of uncertainty and it is a fearful place. Like walking in a deep fog over terrain where you know there is a cliff, but you can’t see where it is.
Whatever IS true, the fact is that what was told to me contained lies of comission and omission. And the thing we talk about here all the time is that the first indication of trouble is lying. I’ve uncovered so many.
If he’d told me, I guess nothing would have happened. I often wonder if there is any chance that what was true about up together and face to face could otut weigh those things and there could be reasons for some of the odd behavior.
And then it comes to me: this is just too much. If I buy into it, I will never stand on firm ground in clear weather again. And, life, like love just doesn’t have to be so hard. In fact, its not if you just say: No.
I don’t bite on confusion, I won’t walk in fog and if it isn’t speakable then there is a problem.
I think what we don’t get is that these perpetrators take away our own natural state of joy and then release the hold such that we get glimpses of it again. And it looks like the joy comes directly though interacting with them, but it doesn’t. It llike the beautiful inner garden that Ox Drover wrote so clearly about is always our own.
I invited the SPATH to walk with me in that garden because I believed that the sunshine he was blowing up my skirt would help it grow. Well, the sun still shines.
And if it is true that whoever he is could walk in the light and speak what is true and be what is real, that would be fine. I hope he will and I hope he can and that when he does Angels walk with him.
Not having seen it, I don’t expect to. The past is prologue…..
Dear Silvermoon,
You keep on walking in that internal garden, girl friend! The house of clay that we reside in now is just that, and what is inside is what is important! We must cultivate that garden, with love and care!
You are a gentle spirit and your path is toward the light! The FOG of fear, obligation and guilt has no place in our gardens!
AND, we have enough fertilizer without the BS! ((((hugs)))) and always my prayers!
Dear Silver, really he {your ex spath,}does NOT deserve your good wishes that Angels will walk with him. When satan fell from Heaven, a quarter of the Angels chose to fall with him and they then became demons! So, yes, angels do walk with him but they are black angels, ie, demons!
He may walk in the Light, but it is the FALSE light of Lucifer, which means the bearer of Light.{flase light of deception.}
Christ was and is the TRUE Light of the world, and He knows His sheep by name{that includes US by the way!},and He said,”NO_ONE can pluck them out of my hand.”These sick souls, the spaths and narcs, are doomed to eternal darkness until and unless they confess their crimes, and apologise from the HEART. As this is unlikely to happen,as they are heartless, they are doomed. Dont feel sorry for them, for YEARS I felt sorry for my spath daughters, NOT ANY MORE. They KNEW what they were doing, and CHOSE to do it anyway. To inflict unbearable pain and mental anguish, with their eyes wide open.Let the dead bury their dead. From now on, I intend to give all my love, care, attention, and cash if necessary, to people like Roya who love and appreciate me back. Why waste time, affection, caring and sympathy on spaths who give nothing back except worry, grief, sadness, confusion, pain,and rejection, the ultimate cruelty.You are doing GREAT Silver!! TOWANDA TO YOU!! Love, Mama Gem.XX
Hi geminigirl babe! Things are going ok, I’m putting one foot in front of the other and still plugging along… thanks for asking! Your idea of a name change would be a lift!! LOL
I could stop pulling my face cheeks back and staring
at myself in the mirror,
that’s why I’m not on LF much these days,
too busy admiring my reflection in the mirror!! ROTFLMAO!
Dear Chic,
I can see a lot of things the mirror can’t see (I am super woman and have X-ray vision through the computer) and I can see what is inside your sweet heart and you are beautiful!!!!!! ((((hugs)))))
(((((((((Silver))))))))) – ‘I invited the SPATH to walk with me in that garden because I believed that the sunshine he was blowing up my skirt would help it grow. Well, the sun still shines. ‘
you do know how to turn a phrase. 😉
row, row, row your boat…..it will come right in the end silver, because YOU are true.
I gained a lot of weight after I kicked my ex-sociopath out…I wasn’t eating more, it was a combination of menopause and fear so intense I couldn’t sleep.
A year and 1/2 later, my PTSD is much better. I have lost about 20 pounds….probably have 10 to go. My pants were falling down in Walmart yesterday! I looked in the mirror today, and smiled. For an old broad (52), I looked like a million!
Speaking of menopause….my hot flashes have been fewer and far between, but do they ever stop? I eat healthy, exercise, and don’t have any bad habits. I would ask a Doc, but I’m on Medicare.
Thank you, One.
So many times I write these posts as much for myself as for others because it is so very hard right now to synthesize the part of me that knows what is true and the part of me that is grieving for the loss and the lifetime.
I find no beauty in the acts of betrayal nor in the rejection of it. I accept the wisdom I have learned and I ache at the same time. I am lost in the divison of heart and mind.
To go outside and walk literally in the garden, to see myself in the gardens where friendship lives and grow is so much for me place for finding that reflection or at least pieces of it.
When I come here and post, it is like a little grandmother whose beautiful teacup is broken and she is mending it piece by piece with glue. Knowing that it will never be the same, but that repaired will be her personal moment of triumph for having saved something precious from having been destroyed and discarded.
I weep today for tradgedy of it all. I have not come to the place where I hate and the knowing that there is really trouble for which I can make no response pains me to the core. That the “system” is not responding after weeks and weeks makes me furious. That what is true is shattering to find revealed. And it seems to drag on an on like a slow, painful motion.
By all that is true here, I do the right things, I know the right things. And of them all there are two which stand out as absolute: first to bring myself together into a single entity where the noise of the concious mind does not fill me, but the joy of being does. And, second, to let go of HIM as I knew him gently, lovingly and peacefully with the kind of forgiveness that recognizes he came into my life for a reason and that the reason is served.
I will never stop hoping he finds the place where he walks in light with angels because he did not come into this world chosing to be evil as much as I would not conciously have chosen to have been betrayed.He has been fouled by the very DNA which made him what he is. What he is was not an option. What he does has been a clear and calculated choice. For that he does suffer. I take no joy in the suffering of any. It is the way things are sometimes that there is nothing I can do about it. This is one.
But the choices are the ones made by this specie and there is no good to come of my hating a snake that bit me. I just need to let it go its way and to heal. Or wring its neck and be done. And to be wary the next time I see one.
There is a purpose and a season for all things. He has taken a turn in this garden, but it is still mine to tend. ….