I’m allergic to dogs and I don’t have many kids over to play with my two little girls.

I’ve never made homemade Play-Doh and I don’t plan on it either. I prefer my kids to eat ice cream out of dishes rather than from messy cones.

Mother guilt creeps up silently and throughout my day. It’s an ugly feeling and one I’m embarrassed to even acknowledge. But the thing is, I don’t want to be perfect. I want to be me, and I want to be real and genuine about myself with my kids. I want my girls to grow up and feel like they really knew their mom as a person outside of this special role. And I’m not perfect, but I am a great mom. Sometimes I have to consciously remind myself of this, with careful parts of equal logic and reason, alongside these unexpected, subconscious fears over my clear lack of mythical perfection.

I’m sure there are Pinterest-worthy moms in real life; ones who make homemade clay from flour and food dye, and who don’t have near panic attacks just thinking about sticky, food-covered fingertips; ones who don’t carry Wet Ones in their diaper bags. Having kids does mean messes, and I want it to mean messes. I want my kids to cook with me and experience the joys of dribbling watermelon juice down their chins in the hot summer sun. I want my kids to know that they are good enough exactly as they are—messy and beautiful—rather than who society will make them occasionally feel like they should be.

Yet the strange thing about mother guilt is that my kids don’t even know what their missing, and sometimes that alone is what makes me sad. Still, it’s important to gently remind myself that every family, and every mom, and every individual, has special things that we’re great at, as well as traits and quirks and qualities that are challenging. I want to teach my kids not how to be perfect, but how to kiss their imperfections. I want to display to them that Mommy knows how faulty she is, but that it’s my powerful choice to decide whether or not a flaw is something I choose to be embarrassed about or that I choose to embrace with the same kindness and love I try to show my kids.

Being perfect is boring. Being our original, badass, real-life selves is glorious.

Every time I catch myself internally harping on my failings, I stop. I observe where this feeling is coming from. I give myself permission to feel whatever emotional sensation that’s moving through me, even the uglier ones that I’d rather not experience, but then I’m careful to understand that just because an emotion is real, it doesn’t mean that it’s the truth about my life or who I am. It’s exactly like when my daughter told me she’s scared to go to her new, big-kid kindergarten school, and I hugged her and told her I understood what being scared feels like, even though I knew she would love it and be fine.

My kids are not cookie cutters, and neither is their mama—thank God.

The only truth is that comparison is a small death for our confidence, and for our abilities to find joy within our lives and within who we naturally are. Comparing ourselves, especially with how we parent, to other people steals what makes us unique and wonderful, too.

So there might be days when I tell myself today will be the day that I make Play-Doh from scratch, even when I know I probably won’t. I hope there are many more days when I look in the mirror and smile at how hard I’m trying to love my kids and myself.

The post Banishing Mother Guilt to Find Joy. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

I’ve read so many interviews in magazines from 30-something-year-old celebrities offering that closing in on forty and beyond is glorious, if only because they are finally happy inside of their skin.

For me, the girl who was picked on for being chubby when I was younger, and who became eating disordered, and who emotionally, mentally and physically has worked hard to care for and love this body that I inhabit, it seemed like a unicorn myth that once I hit a magical age, everything would become easier, naturally.

I was running errands the other day. I was in little yoga shorts and a tank top. I was with my two small children. As we piled in the car, and I buckled them into their car seats, I realized that I didn’t care what my butt and thighs looked like in these tiny shorts. Like—I genuinely didn’t care.

I climbed into the driver’s seat and just sat there for a second, and really took in this moment when it hit me that I had bought these little yoga shorts, and I wear these little yoga shorts, and I am so happy in my body that it feels normal doing it.

A few years ago I gave away nearly a dozen bags of clothes. Considering I’m not a big shopper, this meant I had hardly any clothing left. I felt free. Tucked inside one of these Hefty bags were at least two pairs of tiny yoga shorts my husband got me; shorts I never wore because I felt too insecure, even inside of my own house on my yoga mat.

Yet here I am, the woman who loves to wear makeup, but who doesn’t feel naked anymore if I’m not wearing any when we decide to go to the grocery store. The woman who wears short shorts in public and isn’t concerned with cellulite.

It hit me, as I sat in my hot driver’s seat on a sunny afternoon of errands with my children that, at 36, I’m experiencing this mythical, organic shift into feeling comfortable in my body. While a joyful personal revelation, it still saddens me that this comfort isn’t as readily available for women of all ages, especially women who are even a tiny bit younger than I.

I decided that the following are key pieces of why, as we age, women become happier with themselves.

1. The importance of everything else.

Having two children, feeling confident in myself as a writer, having a wonderful marriage and also having ups and downs—in short, experiencing these sensations of life, of loss, of work, of family—the importance of these other aspects of life becomes highlighted as we live through them. Conversely, the importance we place on thigh gaps, and bathing suit bodies, and under-eye circles, and other sad societal standards set through living in a patriarchal culture, and through magazines—they all drop away, at least a little, at least little by little as we go through life.

Taking the time to stop, regardless of our age and our life’s experiences, and consciously witness the value of who we are and what we offer to the world, and to feel the joys and sorrows, and the brevity of life in general, this helps remind us that while caring about our bodies isn’t necessarily shallow, there are significantly more important things in life than if yoga shorts give us muffin top.

2. My kids don’t care.

My kids have no idea if I have a few places of cellulite that show outside my yoga shorts.

They have never noticed that I still have a faint Linea Nigra from giving birth over a year and a half ago.

They don’t care at all if my stomach has rolls when I sit at our dining table writing.

They see me. They see Mom.

They see the woman who runs through the sprinkler with them. They see the person who spontaneously stopped working out when the sun suddenly appeared, and we left in my tiny yoga shorts to go for ice cream.

3. Self-care evolves.

Taking care of my body, as it ages, becomes much more than drinking Diet Coke, and calories, and workouts I don’t like.

My body now requires regular sleep. I can’t get away anymore with staying up past midnight, since I have two kids who will still be up by 6 a.m. I don’t even drink soda anymore. I haven’t counted calories in a decade.

Because now I focus on eating foods that make me feel fueled, and energized for my day. I exercise nearly every day, but I like it. I stopped moving for the sake of burning off last night’s wine, and I started doing things I enjoy. Yoga, lifting weights, taking my kids on walks—these are all things I look forward to doing.

I think a big part of this is that life becomes hard enough. Life is beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but adulting isn’t always easy, so the unnecessary battles have fallen away. The funny thing I’ve noticed, too, is that when I stop fighting myself, I make space to be my own friend.

4. My opinion matters.

Women, especially, aren’t always taught that our opinions matter. We are too easily told that we are too loud, or too this or too that. It wasn’t until I accepted that, yes, I might be loud, but there is no “too”—there’s just me—that I stopped judging myself when I don’t need to.

I value self-growth, and I value considering that others’ opinions of us might offer glimmers of wisdom that could be beneficial if we can drop being defensive, but there comes a point when our opinion of ourselves has to be the only truth.

5. I know myself.

I know myself, after living with myself for so long. Life experience offers self-awareness, and this awareness is the key, ultimately, to this comfort I longed for, for so many years.

All of the self-exploration I’ve done was beneficial, but so was learning to see worth in where I am right now; in who I am right now. It’s okay to have goals and expectations, but as I grow older, I see how so many of the things I wanted when I was younger are already here in my life.

Life goes quickly. And as I buckled my kids into my car, and turned on the radio and asked them if they wanted to go get ice cream, I looked down at my yoga shorts and saw a little spider vein on my thigh.

I understood it’s not that I’m 36 and think my body is perfect, it’s that I know how imperfect I am, and I love myself for it.

The post 5 Reasons I’m More Self-Confident in My 30s. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

Having children changed me, even without my meaning for this to happen. I hang out with two little kids all day long, and it’s impossible for this not to shape me.

I care more about some things than ever before—ingredients in store-bought foods, public schools and education—and I care a lot less about other things.

Six things I started caring about after having kids:

1. Rory Gilmore’s love life.

I didn’t watch television before having kids, aside from Seinfeld reruns and football, and the occasional food documentary. Now, however, I have a much needed date each night with Netflix and a glass of wine (and my husband, of course).

Parenting is the most rewarding, hardest job ever. Self-care and downtime are required.

2. The size of my pants.

I started caring more than ever about the size of my pants after having kids. I started paying attention to my attachment to my weight because I’m raising two girls and I want them to avoid the eating-disorder struggles and the self-loathing that I battled. So I’ve given myself permission to be honest about my body image, but to not negatively be defined by my physical self either.

For the first time maybe ever I genuinely love myself. I’m one of those unicorn-moms who wears yoga shorts and doesn’t care what my butt and thighs look like. Deciding to accept that I’ve held myself up to meaningless societal standards for a lifetime ironically helped me purge them.

(It helps that I don’t know my true size, since the yoga pants I live in aren’t that specific.)

3. If I’m liked.

I do care if people like me, but the people pleaser in me largely went away when I had a better reason to grow up and like myself regardless of unimportant outside feedback—my children.

4. If I have food between my teeth.

I do still appreciate a heads up if I have salad from lunch wedged between my two bottom teeth, but since I generally have food on my clothes, or in my hair, it’s really less significant now.

5. Tomorrow.

Planning for our future as a family, and for my kids, is more important to me now than ever, but regularly reminding myself to stay right here in this beautiful chaos that is life with little kids means more than ever, too.

6. Perfection.

I’ll always be a little bit Type A and a lot anal-retentive, but my previous ideas of perfection are nothing like my current ones. Lately, if my house is clean, and the kids and I are clean, and cared for, and fed, then everything else is icing.

Because we have these ideas of what a parent looks like—of what a mother should be—and I, at least, work every day to try to be this ideal creation.

And then I have to force myself to stop; to look in the mirror; to see the real woman looking back at me—to choose to care about her and like her, exactly as she is.

There is no perfect woman.

There is no perfect mother.

We are all perfect.

We are all deserving of love and respect for living authentically inside of our skin and our lives. I hope to teach my daughters this, too.

The post 6 Things Besides the Environment I Started Caring More About After Having Kids. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

The real reason I dyed my hair blue at age 36 isn’t what many people assumed.

It wasn’t because rainbow hair colors are in. (I’m such a big dork that I hadn’t realized blue was the newest hair trend until after I’d already made the plunge.)

It wasn’t because I’m having a momlife crisis. (While I do sometimes feel like running away from home, I have a lot of freedom in my life as a mother and writer and a wife.)

I dyed my hair blue for one reason, besides the simple reality that I felt like it, and because it’s fun–my kids.

How am I supposed to teach these fragile, resilient children they are perfection just as they are if I don’t also display to them my love for my own individuality? Dying my hair neon blue is such a clear, visual example to my daughters that beauty doesn’t have to look like a magazine cover, or even an idea of what they slowly become molded to think women should be, or look like.

My kids are only 5 and 1. To be fair, I don’t have teenagers that would be mortified. Rather, my girls match their clothes to my blue hair, and my oldest is completely obsessed with having everything blue now.

One day my kids were…not being easy. I’d dealt with a lot of poopy diapers, and whining, and my normally pretty cool children were driving me up the wall.

I went into my daughter’s room to grab yet another diaper, and while closing the closet door, I got a glimpse of bright blue hair in the mirror. I grinned. My shoulders relaxed. This tiny appearance of my blue hair reminded me in a brief second that I’m a unique person outside of changing diapers and loving two tiny people; outside of my marriage and my family and my normal, daily life.

It reminded me to smile–of the freedom in lightening up a little. It reminded me that we are all extraordinary people living extraordinary lives, at least in some small way–we are all special, and our lives are purposeful–and they should have glimmers of fun, even on the most ordinary of days.

I’m not saying we all dye our hair vivid colors, or, equally, that we forget our individuality shouldn’t come at the expense of other people–and coloring my hair was an admittedly louder fashion statement than I originally intended.

Yet dying my hair blue was a quiet way to remind my kids that they can do “crazy” things and I’ll always love them.

I might not want them to think they have to do obvious physical changes to be seen or heard by me, or by anyone, but I do want them to know their mother loves and celebrates the people who make up this family–that their dad and I honor and welcome diversity.

I hope one day when they’re 36 that they love and accept themselves exactly where they stand in that moment.

At the very least, I won’t blink if they come home with blue hair.

The post The Real Reason I Dyed My Hair Blue at Age 36. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

Today, I feel grateful and ready to enjoy my day, and it’s not a special one.

It’s not an anniversary, or a holiday, or a birthday, or even a day when I’ve had enough sleep or coffee. To be honest, this past week has been emotionally trying, but I’m giving myself permission to choose my positive attitude this morning.

Here are three everyday ways we are in charge of our own happiness:

1. Self-love.

We can choose to look in the mirror, literally and figuratively, and take in what we don’t like—or we can choose to focus on what we do.

While there are tons of things I could want to change about myself, I value the person I’ve worked hard to become, and the person I am innately. I’m not suggesting that we put up blinders to our flaws, or that we can’t work on becoming better people, but there comes a point where if we want to love ourselves, then we need to embrace who we are completely—right here as we stand in this present moment.

2. Perspective.

Nobody escapes this life without challenges or difficulty. However, how we perceive these difficult moments and spaces within our lives is what sets us–and our attitudes and our levels of overall fulfillment—apart.

There will assuredly be periods of heavy sorrow, and grief, and even a little wallowing from time to time—for all of us. Yet choosing to see these people and situations that challenge us as opportunities for growth, as well as temporary setbacks, is paramount for generally enjoying our lives.

3. Imperfection.

Expecting perfection sets us up for not being able to enjoy life.

People will never be perfect, so this means that our marriages won’t look like romance novels, our jobs will always have days when we greatly wish that we were somewhere else, and those we love will have their own needs, challenges and struggles, too.

Expecting bumps in the road, and flaws, helps us to equally choose to witness life’s natural beauty that’s always simultaneously right there along with them.

I’ll give you a nerdy science example from my geologist’s heart:

An emerald, for instance, is a variety of the mineral beryl, and trace amounts of chromium and occasionally vanadium are what give it its rich, green color. Essentially, emeralds are desired because a colorless beryl is “flawed” by the inclusion of these metals, but we don’t look at an emerald as flawed.

A flaw, much like beauty and happiness, lies in how we choose to perceive it.

Our days are like this.

Ultimately, our lives can be seen as a direct result of an accumulation of our chosen attitudes.

The post 3 Everyday Ways Anyone Can Choose Happiness. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

Breasts are utilitarian.

I realized this after giving birth and beginning to breastfeed my baby. This realization was, I can almost guarantee, not a unique experience for a woman…with breasts…who decides to feed her newborn.

And, for a little while, my breasts were more than newly discovered nourishment for life. They were two parts of my body that hurt, and bled, and cracked, and that I hated as much as I felt gratitude for them—until this nursing-mother difficulty subsided and meshed into normalcy; into a part of life that was routine.

I’ve breastfed two children so far. I’m currently within my second round of nursing a toddler, which is an entirely different experience than a smaller baby.

My toddler now, for instance, tells me when she wants to nurse. I no longer have to guess. She also looks around the living room for a toy to bring with her. (These days, I’m typically found breastfeeding a baby that simultaneously looks at a book underneath my armpit.)

I started to wonder, “Is she too old?” But I repeatedly come back to, “No.”

She wants to nurse and, frankly, she’s not even 18 months old, and she really only likes to drink water. (Trust me, I’ve tried everything—she really likes water…and breastfeeding.)

I stopped nursing my oldest child a few months after she turned two, and that was largely a schedule issue. (I was taking a yoga teacher training, and it ran past her bedtime; forcing me to finally give up our still ongoing nightly nursing.)

I don’t know exactly when I’ll stop nursing my youngest because, as parents often find, we can have plans, but plans with kids are meant to change.

While I am a (pro-)nursing mom, I get sick of seeing boobs pop up constantly on my Facebook newsfeed, and on the online websites I read. It’s partly my own doing, since I actively support artists, like photographers, who themselves support breastfeeding. I read parenting sites. In short, I—a breastfeeding, nursing-advocate mother—am the ideal candidate for these types of stories.

Yet they still get old.

Perhaps it’s especially since I see my own breasts several times a day, and since I’ve had friends that breastfeed, and because I do feel that it’s normal and natural (for those that choose to nourish babies this way). Maybe it’s because of this utilitarian, practical experience with my breasts, that these pro-breast posts begin to feel not only unnecessary, but almost counterproductive.

In some way, it has begun to feel slightly exclusionary of women who choose to not breastfeed. We nursing mamas are so ready to defend are rights that I’m noticing a near-equal amount of articles about why it’s okay to choose formula feeding.

It’s kind of like the “post-baby body” campaign. I’ve written on this topic myself, primarily to offer—like many other new mothers—that comparison to our bodies “before” and “after” children isn’t healthy, for ourselves or for our children or for feminist society in general. Still, we need to talk about why it’s important to normalize breastfeeding. We need to address, too, that our bodies change from having children—we change.

My breasts have bounced between sizes I never thought I would see myself in—A to C to DD. Unexpectedly, however, I didn’t care about what size my breasts were, because my focus has consistently been on “simple” things like wearing bras that won’t leak or shirts that I can open up easily.

I’ve also walked around the NICU with pretty much only pants on, and I’ve accidentally given the UPS guy a glimpse of me in just my bra. This is part of life as a nursing mother, and this functional comfort with my body is a lot of why I think it’s such a wonderful experience for a woman to go through.

I fell more in love with my body after each child that I bore. Each cycle of pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding reminded me of how strong, capable and loving my body is for me and for my children. But my boobs are mine. They don’t belong to my husband. They don’t belong to my kids. They—like the rest of me; mind, body and heart—are mine to care for, love and offer to others.

I wish for every mother out there who wants to breastfeed the opportunity to experience it.

I want for each mom the freedom to not feel shamed for properly caring for her children in public.

I hope for every woman–my own daughters one day, too—the ability to feel comfortable in our own skin.

Maybe it’s time we not put the boobs away, but we consider that there’s a point where empowerment and pride shift uncomfortably towards financial branding and—pun intended—over-exposure; when we are potentially, inadvertently creating more of a problem than uncovering one.

The post I Want to Live in a World Where Breasts Are so Normal They’re Boring. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

There are two kinds of people: those who pretend that incredible—and wildly fake—desserts can be made with a rice cake, and those who eat the actual dessert that inspired this pathetic creation. I am not the former.

There are also two kinds of people at the play area in the mall. Actually, to begin with, this should be prefaced with why I even went to the play area at the mall.

I started going there kind of by accident—I think desperation is often involved with the mall play area. I’ll admit to this straight away–desperation to finally sit down, or to give our kids the opportunity to play, or to finally make it in to a Sephora store.

My kids were bored; it was another cold-as-hell, end-of-winter, everyone-is-getting-antsy sort of afternoon. We went to the mall, which alone is something that I never do. (Okay, I’ll be honest–I went to take my kids to Build-A-Bear, and I didn’t even know that it had closed a year ago.) So, now I’m trying to make up for the fact that they aren’t making stuffed bears, and, obviously, I do the one thing that—up to this point—I have not been desperate enough to do: we go to the mall play area. And they freaking love it.

I’m having mini panic attacks. I’m watching the way that the other kids are running around like Lord of the Flies. I actually felt proud of my daughters, and of how aware they are of other people, and of their environment, and, mostly, of their manners. Many of the other children are seriously acting insane. Which brings me to the two kinds of parents in these scenarios: those types that are relaxed, and those of us who aren’t.

I’m the latter. I have to force myself to sit back, and pretend that I’m not screaming internally.

I have to, for instance, repeatedly ask a child to stop picking up my baby, and placing her inside of kid-sized toy cars and rocket ships, and I’m looking around wondering why I’m asking her and not her own mom and dad.

I’m also watching my oldest child’s face emit pure joy as she goes down the slide, and as she makes a friend to play with. I watch the baby cautiously enter a tunnel instead of squeezing through it without any concern over another kid being already in it. I see also how my little one goes down the slide like her sister and the other big kids, and how delighted she is with herself; how delighted I am with her.

I notice a mother smile at my girls when they come over to say hi. I can’t help but pay attention to a mom who is acting like it’s her first time here, and she’s literally hovering over her son.

Yet I’m not relaxed either. At one point, a child runs out of the play area, through the one entrance-slash-exit, and a parent catches her and holds this tiny girl up calling with increasing volume, “Who is this girl’s parent?” Finally someone grabs her, and they are in the Starbucks nearby, and not even inside of the play space. I’m shocked. I’m surprised that anyone would want to be totally relaxed here.

I know that my kids need me to sit back and pretend that I’m comfortable—to give them the space to explore and learn, and to fall, and meet new friends—but that they need me to watch over them, too.

My kids are 5 and 1. My kids are the average ages present. This is good practice for me, and for all of these other parents of little ones, on learning how to straddle this line of over-protection, with the uncomfortable area of un-caring.

Because I might be the sort of person who doesn’t believe in gross, phoney “healthy” desserts—and I am this way because I believe in moderation. Parenthood is the ultimate lesson in moderation.

I’ve learned to have two glasses of wine—but not the entire bottle (on most occasions, at least).

I’ve learned that I much prefer enjoying a few pieces of dark chocolate on most nights, than to pretend I’m happy with an unparallelled substitute.

But motherhood is different. It takes more practice than ever before to let a child fall, and to trust our children that they can figure out how to get back up on their own. It takes even more careful attention to have them think that we aren’t either waiting in secret on the other side of a ginormous playground caterpillar the entire time, or that we’re out of sight worrying, since they’re at school, or somewhere else that we have to trust because we physically cannot be there to catch them.

I cannot catch my kids every time they fall. I have to learn not to want to catch them every time they fall.

Part of love is trust. Part of love is balancing our own needs to want to protect and nurture with recognizing when the loving thing to do is step back.

The post Learning How to Parent from the Other Side of the Room. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

She asks to put on a crown, and I let her.

I’m surprised by this request, because playing princess is not something we do. It’s not that I’m opposed to it, but she just cares more about coloring and puzzles and reading books.

She points to this crown that, for some reason, is sitting on the dresser in her bedroom. It’s old and the metal is not shiny—it’s actually from a Halloween costume of mine, from easily 15 years ago.

I pick it up, and its heaviness is not expected. I put the little combs fused to its sides onto her already-existing crown of curls. She looks immediately in the mirror and smiles. She tells me that she’d like a picture taken, in her favorite spot in front of a door in the living room, which is again something she hasn’t wanted to do lately. I realize later, after this picture is taken, that she has carefully and quickly chosen her princess doll to haphazardly hold in this photo.

Earlier that morning, she was in the bathroom with me, and she held my husband’s childhood stuffed dog by one ear. I looked at her and silently took in this image, of her so immersed in childhood that she held this toy dog loosely, and without over-thinking it, yet not unkindly. This rumpled appearance of my daughter’s still-sleep-filled eyes and her belly kind of sticking out from her pajamas, in the bathroom with me after waking up made my heart swell almost indescribably.

Childhood is fragile. It’s here, and then—in a rush—it’s gone. It’s shiny and new, curious and inventive—and then it’s faded, and worn, and from long ago.

I remember, as a little girl myself, feeling torn between wanting desperately to be older, while also knowing that this meant the loss of something that was beyond my ability to truly grasp.

She walks around the house proudly in the crown.

Suddenly, she does a huge dive onto her bean bag chair, and the crown flies off.

Disappointingly, she gets up to find it, and I tell her that this crown isn’t exactly meant for her more typical roughhousing, but that maybe she can wear it for a bit and then take it off to play. She looks at the crown, now in her hand, and gives it to me, shaking her head and saying “no.” I breathe in a sigh, relieved that she’s not yet ready for this crown, today.

The post The Brilliance of Her Growing Up. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

A letter to myself.

1. Breathe. When the day seems unbearable and you face challenges beyond your control, breathe through it, one inhale and exhale at a time.

2. When you feel weak, remind yourself of your strengths.

3. When you look in the mirror and see something you don’t like, walk away, go look at your daughters and your husband, and remind yourself not only of what matters, but of the impermanence of our physicality; how trivial, beautiful, wondrous, and temporary all of this is.

4. Look up at the sky every day.

5. Look down at your feet and put one in front of the other when you feel stuck, but, equally, take time each morning and each night to pause and stand still.

6. When you are about to lose your temper, walk away.

7. When you didn’t walk away in time, apologize.

8. Ask for what you want.

9. Give without wanting anything back.

10. When you dislike someone, imagine them as a child needing love.

11. When you dislike someone, remind yourself that your behavior is your responsibility.

12. When you dislike yourself, remember how hard you have worked for self-love.

13. When you feel defeated, acknowledge all that you have accomplished.

14. Ask others how they are and really listen when they answer.

15. Ask for help.

16. When your children ask you to read a book, stop and do it.

17. Listen to your daydreams.

18. Stop buying unnecessary shit.

19. When your daughters want to help you cook, but you don’t want “extra work” from the mess, remind yourself that it’s worth it.

20. You are doing a good job. Most importantly, remember that you aren’t doing your best for other people, you’re doing it for you.

The post 20 Things to Say “Hello” to next Year. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

F*ck feeling fat:

My 5-year-old grabbed my hip the other day while we were in the kitchen cooking.

She kind of wrapped her tiny fingers around my hip bone and gave me a sort-of-gentle squeeze.

She said, “It’s hard!” I asked, “What, my body is hard?” She said, “Yes, it’s really hard.”

Considering I had just done leg, glute and back day of my weight lifting regimen earlier that morning, one of my first reactions was to think, “Hmm, cool!” However, I did not respond this way out loud.

Instead, what I said was something like this: “Oh, my body feels hard. That’s interesting.” And then we had fun talking about “hard” versus “soft” things; I intentionally chose to make this a lesson on comparisons for a pre-school age child rather than a lesson on body shaming for a young girl.

What struck me later, as I relayed this experience to my husband, was the profound importance of not attaching any positive or negative connotations with either the words “hard” or “soft” in relation to a female’s body, especially to a young female child.

We learn a lot about our bodies by how the world responds to them.

For women, what the people around us are saying about bodies—both our own and those around us—is imparted at an early age by the adults we are surrounded with, particularly parents. Fat shaming the world, through actual verbal words and even subtle gestures, is easily picked up by intuitive, sponge-like kids. This judgment and, conversely, praise for an arbitrary standard of beauty of fictitious perfection, are turned inward as girls grow into young women.

In short, how I choose to talk about my body, and the bodies of people in general, will later impact how my daughters perceive their own bodies.

I struggled with an eating disorder for most of my life. While my oldest daughter is only 5, I’m still hypersensitive to raising two girls; to what I should be saying, as well as to what I shouldn’t.

I do not allow the word “fat” to be used in my house. More, I never “feel fat,” or in any way associate the word fat with any form of negativity.

This isn’t to say that I don’t, on occasion, feel hormonally bloated, or even better all around after I exercise, as compared to when I’m sick and skipping days of working out. The difference is that when I internally “feel fat” I check back in with my emotions and my lifestyle and use rational thinking to assess where this “feeling” is coming from.

Further, I never, ever express “feeling fat” out loud, even without my kids present.

I would rather my girls use the word fuck than fat.

Curse words aren’t the purpose for this article, but, still, I would find it less offensive and intensely less damaging if my girls thought the “f-word” was fat and not what it actually is.

Life is hard enough for women. It really is. And yet I love being a woman. I love how, in my case, I chose to be a mother, and I embrace female friendships and sisterhood.

Women are definitively a minority and we are, by default, everything that goes along with that label: belittlement, discrimination, treated with hostility covertly and overtly. However, women are beautiful. All women are beautiful.

Being a woman, for me, is something I’m thankful for, and I’m even more grateful for the opportunity to be raising two female children. I want them to know what a privilege and honor it is to be a woman, even if we also need to own and acknowledge the adversity we’ll face too.

My daughter used a curse word the other day. I have no doubt she learned it from me.

We had a talk about why she shouldn’t use this word yet and, also, I’ll be honest, I told her that she shouldn’t say it if she can’t even use it in the right context. I suggested a temporary, supplemental phrase, more appropriate for her age: “Oh, sugar!”

I would have been much more upset if the word she started using was “fat,” and it makes my normally-dry tear-ducts well up just considering her using this word as a derogatory descriptor for her body.

I can’t tell if I’ll be successful in my mission to raise girls with healthy body images. They are so young, and there are far too many factors outside of my control.

Things like peers, difficult to process emotions, and life experiences outside of our little home will help tip the invisible, but all-too-real scale, towards my daughters loving the bodies that they inhabit, or not.

I will try my damnedest to make sure they know that they’re beautiful and, more, that they are loved, regardless of clothing size, body shape, curves, lack of curves, and any other fill-in-the-blank criterion they might be offered from society.

I would rather my daughters feel overwhelmed, scared, heart-broken, or a myriad of true, if unwelcome, emotions, as opposed to “feeling fat.”

Feeling fat is ultimately a cover for these types of actual feelings anyways.

So fuck that.

The post I Would Rather My Daughters Use the Word F*ck than Fat. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.