From the category archives:

respecting your body

What Wonder Woman and I Have in Common: It’s Not What You Think

July 6, 2010

For those of you who somehow missed the news, last week Wonder Woman unveiled her new look.
When I saw her picture, two thoughts flashed across my mind in quick succession:  First, she dresses a whole lot like me.  Second — and this is the one that stuck, overcoming any embarrassment the first ought to impart [...]

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Girls’ Night Out

June 1, 2010

When my friend Teri invited me to a girls’ night, my first idea of what to do was panic.
There was a time when I was all about the girls’ night out.  When I believed in a sort of aggressive-defensive-sexy Woman Power and cosmopolitans and thinking my friends and I looked like the gals in Sex [...]

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Lily Walks

May 14, 2010

It’s one of those favorite phrases of parents of young children.  “Any day now!”
“Any day now!” we chirp as cheerfully as someone as sleep-deprived as the parent of an infant can chirp when someone asks if she is sleeping through the night yet with unknowing cruelty.
“Any day now!” we promise as we watch her rock [...]

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Full Circle

April 19, 2010

I’ve been writing YogaMamaMe since Jake was younger than Lily is now.
This makes me think a lot of things:  How quickly time passes when you have kids.  How scary it is to watch time pass so quickly, especially when you have kids.  And how I seem to be repeating myself.
Take last night, for instance.  I [...]

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When a Fresh Perspective Requires a Fresh Perspective (Don’t Look at Your Butt Redux)

January 14, 2010

You’d think I’d have learned my lesson when I looked at my butt in a mirror at my sister-in-law’s house while four months pregnant.
You would, in fact, not be expecting too much to think after that shock I would be smart enough not to look at my butt in a changing room mirror at a [...]

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High Winds with a Likelihood of Anxiety

October 9, 2009

There are those (my husband) who will think me a little bit nutty for saying this, but windy days breed anxiety.
One might suggest that I am simply looking for something other than my mother to blame my anxiety on.  And that may be the case.  But I have it on good authority — my acupuncturist, [...]

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Are We There Yet? (Part One: Internal Version)

August 12, 2009

We got our first, “Are we there yet?” in the car on Wednesday.
Mike and I both grinned at each other like kids taking their first bite of a Quarter Pounder — thrilled but also queasily aware that we shouldn’t be.
The great, grin-inducing thing about Jake’s “are we there yet?” is that it lacked even the [...]

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What Happened to My Yoga Practice?: Lamentations of a Postpartum Mom

May 22, 2009

I was initially kind of excited when I sat down to breakfast this morning and discovered an article in the New York Times Style section about a yoga class I attended a few times.
It felt like a brush with celebrity, an acknowledgment of a past life maybe not steeped in but occasionally brushing up against [...]

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The Most Natural Thing in the World

April 29, 2009

What’s the most natural thing in the world?  Breastfeeding?  The naked human body?  Worms and cockroaches and creepy crawlies?  A little flatulence after a satisfying dinner of rice and beans?
Any one of them.  Except for breastfeeding.
This declaration, I know, sounds a bit aggressive, wounded perhaps, certainly not in keeping with the spirit of someone who [...]

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Everything Bad for Me Is Good Again (or at Least a Few Things)

April 27, 2009

There are a few things that feel unshakably bad for me:  Voluntarily being outside in the snow.  Spending my work weeks in an office building (and, even worse, a suit).  Wearing my pajamas all day.  Watching television in the middle of a beautiful afternoon.  And eating chocolate.*
* I understand that I have just alienated 90% [...]

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Feeding My Child without Starving My Soul

March 26, 2009

When I was pregnant with Jake I received a mysterious “congratulations, new mom!” package in the mail from a company whose name looked vaguely familiar to me.  Nestled inside the box were two shiny blue and white cans of Similac formula.
I was appalled.  Outraged.  And yet too lazy to pack them up and send them [...]

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I’d Rather Have My Mushrooms Fresh with Maggots than Processed with High Fructose Corn Syrup

February 16, 2009

I guess I’ve been thinking more lately about how to feed my children healthily (without instilling in them my own seriously warped food issues) because everyone has.  You know, that peanutbutter thing.
Then, on Friday, I read an op ed piece in the New York Times entitled The Maggots in Your Mushrooms. Suddenly, it all [...]

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We Should All Be the Pregnant Lady in Yoga Class Sometimes

January 27, 2009

Sometimes, you decide you must do something that is against your better judgment.
Ideally, these circumstances should not include going to yoga class.  Not because it’s never a bad idea to go to yoga class — although that is the first thought that comes to my mind, even when, as now, I’m writing about why going [...]

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Can a Sense of Self Come with Pink Polka Dot Boots?

December 9, 2008

Jake has been wearing his beloved pink polka dot boots pretty much non-stop for over a week now.

We have engaged in successful negotiations about removing them for bed time and bath time (for which he even removed his swim diaper the other night, suggesting he is finally over the traumatic poop-in-the-tub incident).  But otherwise, on [...]

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Zzzzz, or Do I Wake Myself Up or Honor My Exhaustion?

November 12, 2008

I do not deal well with exhaustion.
I feel demoralized, lazy, like I am squandering opportunities, watching the economy sweep the can-I-get-published? bus off the road and into the deep muck of a future in which Mike and I are — we know — crazy to imagine raising our children on freelancing and, even worse, journalism.
Mostly, [...]

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Maternity Pants, Fatigue, and Never Look at Your Butt in Your Sister-in-Law’s Guest Room Mirror

October 27, 2008

Fatigue.
I’m not talking tired or exhausted or however I generally feel after carrying Jake up the stairs for the fifteenth time at the end of the day.  I am talking about bone-crushing, crying-because-I’m-so-tired, unable-to-think fatigue.  Have-your-thyroid-level-checked fatigue.
It is, perhaps, no coincidence that it hit me after an afternoon spent at a three-year-old’s birthday party last [...]

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Yom Kippur, Spirituality, and a Pair of Black Chuck Taylor Low-Tops

October 9, 2008

It occurred to me, as Jake ate his lunch at Green Sage today, that having your child drop pieces of pork sausage in your lap may not be the most appropriate way to honor Yom Kippur.
Normally, I would spend this day fasting, meditating, reflecting.  Not, I must explain, in any kind of religious service.  I [...]

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A New Olympic Event — Caring for a Toddler While You Have the Stomach Flu

August 22, 2008

How about that Michael Phelps, huh? Single-minded determination, laser-like focus, conquering his body’s limitations. The ultimate competitor.
I’d like to see him take care of a toddler while suffering from a good bout of stomach flu. (Dara Torres has probably done it, but then she’s a goddess, being over 40 and an Olympic [...]

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Forget My Mind — I Lost My Cell Phone

July 24, 2008

Actually, “lost” is mother-of-a-toddler code for, “I left my cell phone in the pocket of the shorts I wore to the pool with Jake and ran it through the washing machine.” Raz-r phones, I probably don’t have to tell you, do not like being run through the washing machine.
When Mike first announced that he [...]

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The Moment Jake Went Down the Slide by Himself

July 18, 2008

Jake and I decided to go to the park after school on Tuesday. Usually we go home and play with the hounds or draw with chalk on the sidewalk or fast forward through Sesame Street on TiVo until we find good songs about dogs or the beach. But on Tuesday the weather was [...]

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