What If?

What if every woman learned to love every inch of her skin? That's the question a Dove ad asks. That's a good question. Right now I have way more inches of skin than I would like, but I should really learn to love them because it took a lot of time to get this many inches and it's going to take a long time to decrease some of those inches. It's frustrating. I gained most ofl these inches when I started having back pain and couldn't be as active as I was used to being. I couldn't do ballet any more. Pilates wasn't feeling too hot either. Walking was restricted to short amounts of time. I tried massage, physical therapy, chiropractic treatment. I got more inches as time passed and after the MRI and bone scan, it was determined I needed to have surgery to correct the problem. So I had the surgery, feeling like I really didn't want to expose all my accumulated inches to the hospital world, but not able to exercise those unwanted inches off. Surgery was successful but it was a very long recuperative period. Initially, I lost some of those extra inches because I was too busy healing to do much more than sleep, take pain meds and use the bathroom. Once I started feeling human again, I started eating. Eating without being able to exercise once again. I had to wear a hard shelled brace any time I was upright for the first three months after surgery. My biggest athletic adventure was to go down the stairs to the mailbox...maybe 100 steps. Of course I started accumulating more inches again. I think that I am lucky to be in as good health as I am since I have gone through so much in my life time. I should really learn to love those inches instead of cursing them. I look back to times before when I thought I was so fat and realize just how nice I looked back then, how healthy I was. Too bad I couldn't have enjoyed myself more then....I see myself in pictures from those times and it makes me sad to think I was so busy worrying about inches instead of enjoying the pleasure of just how wonderful it felt for my body parts to all be working so well, no pain, no strain. Now I have pain every day, just in varying degrees. I think all women should be more accepting of themselves and forget about those ads showing skinny little bodies with no hips and no muscles as being the norm. That's not normal for most women. Last Sunday I did the breast cancer walk with raising2kids and christhadasister and some others and I'm sorry to say I was the slowpoke turtle, using a friend's stroller to lean on while walking. The others had to stop many times to wait for me to catch up. I felt bad about making them wait, but I did feel such a sense of accomplishment that I completed that 3 mile walk in spite of the pain I was enduring---imagine that---at one time, my exercise routine was to run 3 miles a day and a half hour stretching routine and free weights every other day. Now I'm ecstatic when I can complete the 3 miles in a slow walk. So all you women in good health with sturdy, working parts--even if you think you have too many inches you need to love them ALL and be thankful they are in good working order. Inches come and go but you are still the same you, no matter how many inches you happen to be made of. :)