I say this more this year than I did last year, and more today than I did yesterday.

I really think it is.

That does NOT mean I have it each and every day, by the way.

Nor have I any way of knowing whether even the most famous celebrity body-love advocates feel absolutely zero pressure from the thinness-focused culture we live in.

Nor is it really any business of mine whether they do or not.

But I have had periods where I have really hated my body (the 15 year battle I had with anorexia and bulimia springs to mind) and also periods when I fell so in love with my body that every day felt like Valentine’s Day (like after my surgery in 2010, when I watched in awe and disbelief as my body knit itself back together in record time after being split nearly in half).

My mentor often reminds me that where there is hate, there is usually love too. And vice versa – it is the strong feelings that are the dead giveaway, not so much what those feelings are called.

At any rate, I recently happened across yet another Woman’s Day article (those post-40 monthly free magazines really come in handy sometimes) and this one claims that it can teach me how to love my body in 9 easy steps.

I was psyched. But then I started reading them, and realized yet again that while the steps themselves might be easy to list out, they are a lot tougher to put into practice!

I also realized that I already knew these 9 steps, and have been working my way through each of them (in no particular, or particularly linear, order) on an ongoing basis ever since I kicked my eating disorder to the curb a decade ago.

It takes the time it takes.

What seems to work best for me is to stop comparing body-to-body as if that is the sum total of the two people being compared. Would I trade my WHOLE LIFE to have that figure instead of this one? So far, the answer has always been a resounding “no”.

I also find great success with appreciating my body for what it can do, not just what it looks like. Looks are great, but since I find I can look very different to my own eyes from day to day, and from mirror to mirror (PMS, ladies?) focusing on the amazing multi-purpose usage we can get out of our bodies is pretty much a guarantee to rock your world with body love.

And I love verbalizing my commitment to body love when I’m out to eat with friends. If I start out our conversation with something like “I am just so committed to experiencing life where beauty can be found in every shape and size” I find that positive peer pressure automatically calms the “I shouldn’t eat that” comments that otherwise might be made.

Today’s Takeaway: What works for you to cultivate body appreciation, respect, and love? Where are you allowing impatience with the process of deepening your experience of all three talk you out of noticing that you ARE making progress?

The book is called Circle of Stones: Woman’s Journey to Herself by Judith Duerk.

It is currently in its 15th anniversary of printing – so pretty popular, I would say.

While I tend to be a rather structured reader in the sense that I read from start-to-finish, chapter by chapter, assuming that is usually the most useful way of digesting the contents of your average book, this book didn’t arrive with that sort of vibe.

My friend had recommended it to me because I am continuing to enjoy the aftershocks from turning 40 — more of a mid-life evolution than a crisis, I’d say — and she thought it might help me make some sense of my longing to transition from a daily schedule that basically consists of work-til-I-drop into something with a bit more work/life-balance.

That process, according to Judith Duerk, can reasonably involve connecting with other women who are undergoing the same.

Totally makes sense. Sounds like mentoring, in fact.

Here are a few of the jaw-droppingly wonderful quotes from “Circle of Stones” – a book I heartily recommend for its ability to heal something inside that you didn’t know was wounded.

NOTE: I should also mention that the quotes are the only parts I have read to date. I just haven’t feel driven to “read” this book in the ordinary way of a reader – and that more than anything else speaks of the mutual respect writer conveys to reader as she chronicles women’s stories and recounts their words for the benefit of all. So for now, I just read the quotes as I feel moved to do so, and each time, I find more wonderful words that let me know I am not alone in my quest.

Oh the time, the endless pressure of time. Even when I have a whole day, I still can’t get to my own things – I don’t even know what they are….

It was only when I lived through the summer solstice light, far above the Arctic Circle, the light of the longest day in our year, the totality of white, white, ever-pervasive light, day after day, that I experienced our desperate need for darkness, for shadow, for relief from clarity, sharpness, and rationality that this present world demands….a need for soft lines, blendedness, greys….to respect one’s need to be sometimes out of focus, unformed, blurred.

I have had to give up ‘winning big’ because I love my life when I am connected to it, and I hate it when it and I get caught up in competition and deadlines. Then I have an overriding sense of impatience….my foot taps…I swallow food whole, I spill the coffee as I pour it, I burn myself on the stove…I rip, and wrench, and tear. There is a violence that takes over every act and shrieks orders at me.

And one more:

I’ve been more in touch with my own anxiety and sadness. I’ve allowed myself not to hide it under a pile of achieving busy-ness. I’m allowing myself to cry when I feel sad…..and then I feel better….more balanced, whole…That’s part of me, too.

Today’s Takeaway: Read these quotes and get in touch with the deep compassion that pours through each woman’s words. Whether it is through reading a book like “Circle of Stones”, through talking with a counselor or mentor, conversing with a friend, watching a favorite film, or just going for a walk in nature, what can you do to begin adding more work/life-balance, more self-gentleness and natural rhythm, to your daily life?

We are often cruel….but I for one continue to believe that our ultimate goal is to be kind.

Whether we are investigating the January 2012 unveiling of the hotly contested Atlanta billboards denouncing the dangers of childhood obesity, or a recent Glamour magazine readers poll that reveals that a shocking 97 percent of women are mean to their bodies each and every day, I just cannot believe that we all wake up in the morning with the intention to spread our inner meanness out into the world.

Rather, I think we wake up with the fear that the meanness that is already out there will find us – and those we care about most – if we don’t do something to keep it out.

We are like caped crusaders – heroes, really – but we keep misunderstanding our mission.

As our focus on changing our bodies, changing our faces, changing our children, changing our spouses, and changing our communities continues to adopt a heavily skewed highly critical and image-focused bent, we neglect the damage we do to the inner being in an interest to quickly right what is sometimes a very legitimately dangerous outer wrong.

This is not impossible to find. We just have to commit to kind solutions before they will present themselves.

Childhood obesity IS dangerous. But so is shaming someone who is a child and is already obese.

And it will not fix the problem, because the shame will likely become an impenetrable barrier in between the threat and its resolution.

We have to do better.

We can do better than being cruel to be kind.

As women, as adults, we can start with ourselves – we are the only person we can control anyway, and if what we are doing makes us feel crappy (like telling ourselves how ugly our body is every time we catch sight of it in the mirror) then we have a lot of self-work to do before we have any business trying to help anyone else anyway.

It is okay to have problems to work out and issues to resolve. Everybody does – that is what it  means to be human.

It is HOW we work them out that matters.

Today’s Takeaway: Where do you notice self-cruelty in your own life? Are you mean to yourself when you look in the mirror? Are you mean when you are feeling down? Are you mean when you are feeling anxious, or when you have had a tough day? Are you mean when you are happy – telling yourself you’d better work harder or it will go away? Start here. Cultivate self-kindness, and as your ability to be kind to yourself increases, your intuition will give you accurate guidance about how to help others heal from cruelty as well.

This month, we recognize National Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2012, which is taking place from February 26 – March 3.

Dubbed “NEDAwareness Week” by the sponsoring organization, the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), this year’s theme is “Everybody Knows Somebody.”

Through my own work with MentorCONNECT, the non-profit eating disorders mentoring community I run, I happen to know several thousand somebodies whose lives are affected by eating disorders, but whether you know one (you) or many, there is a way for you to take part in this important awareness-building and fundraising effort.

The NEDA website lists all kinds of activities and events that are taking place in recognition of NEDAwareness Week.

MentorCONNECT, in the spirit of the online-based community that we are, is also hosting a “Virtual Walk“, where instead of joining a walk (think sneakers, water bottle, t-shirt) to raise awareness in your city, you can “walk” (think Facebook, Twitter, email, blog posts) wherever you are – even if you are currently orbiting the moon!

This effort is a partnership between NEDA and MentorCONNECT, and this is the second year we have co-sponsored it. Please join in if you can – or if a Virtual Walk is not your cup of tea, then use it as inspiration to decide what feels right for you to do this year.

Click on this image to go right to the virtual walk page and sign up to participate!

Today’s Takeaway: What are your plans to recognize and participate in NEDAwareness Week 2012? Or if you are not affected by an eating disorder and don’t know anyone who is, then what important awareness event can you partake in this year to help those who suffer?

Snowball, Animal Planet star. Photo courtesy of Irena Schulz and Bird Lovers Only (www.birdloversonly.org)

Outside of a few celebrities (Kate Winslet, Jamie Lee Curtis, Adele and Liv Tyler come to mind) who are adamant that they love their curves and plan to maintain them, finding visible role models who genuinely seem to like their bodies is an ongoing challenge.

Which is why sometimes I turn to non-humans for inspiration.

Take Snowball, for instance.

Talk about a positive body image mentor!

Snowball is a young sulfur crested cockatoo.

He was dropped off at the Bird Lovers Only bird shelter by his frustrated former owner, who couldn’t deal with the well-publized “terrible twos” that cockatoos and other large birds often go through.

But Snowball’s owner also left a DVD with the bird, and instructed shelter co-owners Charles & Irena Schulz to make sure to pop it in and watch what happened next.

What happened next was that the couple discovered that Snowball realllllllyyyyy likes the Backstreet Boys.

And that “rocking his body” was a favorite pastime that he enjoys with any song that has a rockin’ beat.

How often do we not rock our bodies – whether in the outfits we select, the way we hold ourselves in social settings, or our seeming inability to tear our eyes away from every reflective surface we pass by?

Check it out. For more than four straight minutes, Snowball demonstrates his feathery dance moves, without one hint of body shame!

Snowball dances to “Rock Your Body”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7IZmRnAo6s

Today’s Takeaway: What can you take from watching Snowball shake it? How much fun would it be to hear a great beat and just go for it – regardless of what you are wearing, whether your shoes are suitable, or who is watching?

When I first published Beating Ana and launched MentorCONNECT, I was pretty starry-eyed around folks I considered to be “eating disorder celebrities.”  So when I first started getting email from Thom himself, I nearly fell over.

But he liked what we were up to with MentorCONNECT, and proposed a collaboration. His idea involved “teleconferences,” which made technologically-challenged me feel a bit faint for other reasons. His part would be to lead them. My part would be to run the teleconferencing program.

Needless to say, it took awhile for us to get the thing up and running.

But to date, Thom has presented 9 amazing teleconferences for us, and the 10th is right around the corner on February 9th.

So I thought I would invite you to attend!

The event is totally free, and it is called “The What’s, When’s, How’s and Who’s of Eating Disorder Recovery.” The focus will be on developing a solid recovery plan that supports you in your efforts to heal. If you are not suffering from an eating disorder, but have battled alcoholism and drug addiction, you will benefit equally, because Thom is recovered from both himself and has a strong 12 Step background in addition to his counseling credentials.

I hope you can join us!

Get more information about the event here: http://thomrutledge.eventbrite.com/

p.s. If you are not able to attend on February 9th, we also podcast these events and you can subscribe on iTunes or visit our Events page to listen to past podcasts – you can find all 9 of Thom’s past events there and it is FREE to listen and download them!

Today’s Takeaway: What do you really need to support you and uplift you in your efforts to heal right now? Are you giving yourself the time you need and deserve to feel supported? Who really inspires you, and how can you arrange to spend more time with them virtually, in person, or through their words?

Is your own body language comforting to you - or does it make you feel, well, all twisted up inside?

When I turned 40 (one year and one month ago pretty much today) Woman’s Day magazine just started arriving in my mailbox.

They knew.

In the mysterious ways of modern marketers, somehow they got an alert when another gal hit the big 4-0, and they were already prepared to deliver timely advice about reducing middle age pudge, covering up grey hairs (I’ve had that move mastered for years), menopause meds, and other helpful tips.

Most of it I don’t actually find that helpful….yet….some I find a bit scary.

And yet I keep reading each month, out of curiosity if nothing else about what the coming years may bring.

One article in January’s edition caught my particular interest – it was titled “Body Talk,” and the author, Annie Finnigan, interviewed several experts to find out how what we aren’t saying verbally often gets said anyway.

This was really interesting to me because learning to read social cues has been one of the issues my mentors have really had to help me with as I have continued to make progress in my own recovery.

Scientific research being done through scanning the brains of recovered anorexics and bulimics is now yielding evidence that people who are predisposed to develop eating disorders are also predisposed to higher degrees of anxiety and rigidity, which can include difficulty in accurately perceiving what is going on all around them.

I can relate to this. And it just makes sense – if a person (let’s say, me) is feeling very anxious, I will be in “control my environment” mode – totally focused on protecting myself.

Therefore I won’t be turning my social radar outward in a connected manner – but rather in a manner designed to armor and protect me from others and the world at large.

And if I am rigid (which my mentors will readily admit to my being even if sometimes I will not) then if I felt rejected, hurt, or any other manner of stressful emotions the last time I interacted with my boss/a guy I thought was cute/my friend Nancy/etc then I will be predisposed to expect that in advance – or even create it so my need for uniformity and structure will hold up.

This article, “Body Talk,” shares that we relate to people in three main ways:

1. Verbally (using words)
2. Vocally (with the tone in our voice)
3. Visually (with our body – often called “body language”)

When all three “V’s” are in alignment, the article states, we have smooth sailing.

But if we are in (what I like to call) “politeness mode,” if we are people-pleasing, if we feel threatened or fearful, if we are anxious or depressed and out in public, then V1, V2, and V3 may be in opposition, and this can cause chaos in our relationships whether we mean for it to or not.

Interestingly, the mouth apparently is the seat of where most of the misalignment can be detected. Apparently we have a harder time controlling the mouth movements we make when we are uttering words that are not in sync with our thoughts and feelings.

Even more interesting still, it seems that more than half of what the article calls “behavior patterns” (ie our temperament, personality, and body language instincts) are determined by our DNA.

They can be changed to a certain extent, but this genetic programming is what scientists call “traits”, and can include a predisposition towards anxiety, depression, perfectionism, rigidity, black-or-white thinking, negativity, and other elements that can make achieving a healthy balance of the three V’s more difficult for some than others.

So the best approach is to simply notice when we are feeling uncomfortable in our own company or in the company of others. If we are telling ourselves we “should” feel comfortable with ourselves, or with this-or-that person, then this is even more valuable information.

Today’s Takeaway: When you start to notice that your own personal three Vs are not adding up to synchronicity, consider digging a bit deeper by asking yourself what you need, what is scaring you, or what is repelling you about the connection so you can course-correct to be more a more authentic person.

For extra insight, you can read the Woman’s Day article here: How to Read Body Language

If there were even a chance of loving yourself this much - or more - would you spend the time it takes to get to know you better?

You are you.

And I am me.

Sounds simplistic, right?

But how well do I really know who “me” is? For that matter, how well do you really know “you”?

Would we be able to pick ourselves out of a lineup? Sure – if we saw a picture. But what if the only thing we were given was a written description – our likes, dislikes, personality type, strengths, weaknesses, preferences…..would you know you? Would I know me?

Answering just for myself here, I am not sure.

I am 41 this year, and frankly I feel like I have learned more about myself in the past 12 months than I have in the previous 39 years.

Maybe that is also because I am more interested in myself than I was in the previous 39.

These days, I find myself just fascinating.

Maybe it is because I realize that in another 40 or 50 years, “me” will be gone – so this is my one and only chance. Like studying a vanishing species, I have finally realized that I am the only “me” who ever was, is, or ever will be, and if I want to learn about myself, I’d better hop to it, because I don’t have forever.

We have this one precious, fleeting opportunity to get to know – and like – who we are. What will we do with it?

Today’s Takeaway: How curious are you about yourself? Would you be able to pick yourself out a lineup with a written description alone? When you contemplate carving out more time to spend with yourself, what feelings come up? How could it potentially benefit you to get to know yourself better?

If you look in the mirror and see this face, then now is a great time to wait.

Years ago, my mentor, Lynn, told me, “if you are feeling anger, then it is not the right time to act.”

Lynn is still my mentor today, and she still tells me this from time to time.

I have also learned that it applies equally well in situations where I am feeling sadness or grief, anxiety or indecision, and, well, anything other than peace, basically.

Peace, Lynn has often explained and re-explained to me, is like finding true North on a compass, or the North Star in the midnight sky. It is always reliable. I can trust it. I can walk in that direction with confidence.

But anger might be pointing me South.

Sadness might ask me to go West.

And anxiety might have me heading off far to the East.

So if I don’t feel peace, it is always the right time to wait.

The transformative power of waiting is awakened when we first realize that “to wait” is a viable option. Waiting is an action word. Waiting does not, as our culture might have us believe, have as its synonym “laying down and giving up.”

Waiting, in most circumstances, is also an expression of wisdom. In any situation where an emotion other than peace is goading us to action, waiting is always an expression of wisdom.

We can feel very angry, sad, confused, or anxious, as I have often felt over the years, but choices made and actions taken in the grip of emotions like these are often seen in hindsight to be self-serving, self-negating, selfish and shortsighted.

We often regret these kinds of choices after we cool down and realize there was definitely another kinder, more useful and more healing path we could have chosen for the benefit of all.

But choices made in an oasis of calm, with patience and careful forethought born of a measured, big-picture perspective, often yield surprisingly miraculous results – even where not much hope for such an outcome previously existed.

Today’s Takeaway: Think back over your past choices – choices you are proud of, choices you regret. Which choices were made in the presence of inner peace and calm? Which actions were taken in the grips of passing strong emotions? How can cultivating the transformative power of waiting help you to make more choices you can be proud of now and in the future?

From the front, that self-wall may look impenetrable. But with awareness comes opportunity....and the strength to break the wall down.

Not too long ago, I made a huge breakthrough in my self-work.

I had long been aware that there were certain walls – protective or otherwise – that I had through the years erected and even for a time maintained against others, be they situations, people, places, or even memories.

But it wasn’t until more recently that I realized I also had a wall up, and in place, against myself.

It started with my morning meditations.

I used to try to meditate at night before bed, but who are we kidding? At some point, at least in my world, it becomes pretty difficult to tell the difference between “meditation” and sleep.

So I transitioned to doing my primary meditation in the morning just after awakening.

This has been helpful on several levels. I have always been a prolific and vivid dreamer, and meditating in the mornings helps me to take valuable messages from my dreams. Also, for many years I have woken up each morning with a vague “anxious” feeling that no amount of therapy or self-inquiry seemed to be able to extinguish.

It was by meditating into that place – the place of unknown anxiety – that I discovered my self-erected wall.

A few posts ago I shared a helpful four-step technique that my life coach taught me. With this tool, you notice, name, feel, and release feelings as they arise. It was while practicing this technique, while feeling the nameless anxiety during my morning meditation, that I noticed the wall.

I was hiding from myself. I felt ashamed of not being able to “solve” the morning anxiety, ashamed of many feelings and thoughts and things, actually, and so I just didn’t allow myself to acknowledge them – even to me!

Without allowing myself to acknowledge their presence, I refused to acknowledge their impact. By refusing to acknowledge their impact, I refused myself any opportunity to reach out for help so I could heal.

The morning meditations had become (unbeknownst to me) an olive branch I was extending from me to me, a simple, safe, and trusted medium through which I could say to myself, “Now will you tell me what is wrong?”

Today’s Takeaway: Are there times when you suspect you might not be telling yourself everything there is to know about you? Do you withhold the truth from yourself, or even the awareness that there is a “truth”? How could breaking down the wall against yourself free you to build a true friendship and partnership with yourself instead?