Not Sorry

Lucinda
 

This is my grandmother, "Cindy".  She is someone who married young and had a tough life.  A daughter of German and Lithuanian immigrants, she made her way through this world by sheer grit.  As is not uncommon of mother-daughter relationships, my own mother does not speak fondly of Cindy, but spent many of her last five years caring for her with quiet resentment seething beneath the surface the whole time. 
What I remember of my granmother is that she was always cooking and always always laughing.  She had this contageous laugh too, so that I could not be around her and not be giggling along with her.  Many times, while covered in flour or other baking ingredients, she would pause to let out a loud belch and then laugh about it!  As a child, this really tickled me, as an adult I admire her sense of rebellion and the fact that she just didn't let such little things get to her. Belching not ladylike? Meh who cares!  Life is too short to worry about all that.  After all, she was raising 8 rebellious kids and caring her in-laws who were in ill health.   She herself had diabetes and while I always remember seeing a special diet plan taped to the fridge, she was always overweight (she was in her early 40's when I was born).  My grandfather had suffered a head injury as a child, which led to him being prone to seizures so he could not get a drivers license until he was middle aged.  They were poor, and probably suffered more than I know, my grandfather a cold bully of a man, but Grandma Cindy was still always laughing.  I sometimes wonder what it was inside her that made her able to laugh when she wasn't super happy.  When my grandfather passed, she confided to my mom, " I could have done better for myself."  It was bittersweet for me to hear that, because I know deep inside she was probably pretty sad that her life wasn't as fulfilling as she had dreamt of.  I wish I had taken the time to know her on a deeper level, to find out how she kept her positive facade up.  She was from a different time and upbringing, where women weren't at liberty to speak of disapproval in the marriage, particularly when they were not contributing financially.  Still, she could have been a grumpy, sad lady but she wasn't. 
I've been on thyroid medicine for 2 weeks now and I am amazed at how much better I feel.  I have lost weight and look better, but I also feel less pain, and have a lot more energy- a normal amount of energy.  That is a huge blessing.  For the past little bit here, I have been feeling like the mental and physical energy required to try and make any kind of changes in my life was too tall of an order.  I was running on empty, blaming it on myself for being uncommited and lazy, and feeling so very defeated.  Now that I am feeling better my mind has returned to the idea of trying to put myself in a better position.  When I think of food I wonder how to eat in a way that will benefit my body without triggering my compulsive eating with thoughts of restrictions.  I am a creative person and can find ways if I put my mind to it.  I have caught myself looking at my flabby arms (which were growing fatter faster than the other parts of me- to a level I have never seen them, even when I was at my heaviest) and thinking about how I can make them look better.  I was fat-shaming myself before I knew it and feeling bad, using that as a motivation to consider a diet and exercise regimen.  Not that I am saying those things are bad, but I have to wonder if I was partly to blame for my underactive thyroid by all the yo-yo dieting I did.  So I have to remind myself to be like my grandmother and brush off that stuff.  I am not dying, I don't have some autoimmune disease or cancer; I'm not going through what one of my friends is right now, having extremely excrutiating pains in my stomach which no doctors can figure out the cause of.  I, for the most part, am healthy.  All the things that are not healthy(other than my thyroid) are things that I can fix on my own (blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugars).  My mindset has to be about maintaining the things that are good and helping the things that are not as good in my body.  I know I can fix those three things all in one fell swoop by cutting back on processed sugars and limiting starchy carbs.  I know that I have had success and felt pretty good when I have done that in the past, and it made me stop craving those things too.  I know that I can move more and should (spring weather makes it easier to want to).  The food is ever-evolving but it's getting there.  More energy is the key to all of it, so I am so grateful to have that on my side now!  I have decided that I am going to be more like Grandma Cindy this summer; I am going to complain less and laugh more.  I am going to wear sleeveless dresses if I feel like it when it's hot, and let out what needs to be liberated.  Even if it is a giant belch, while I'm cooking and laughing.  Life is too short to worry about what my arms look like, or how many wrinkles or gray hairs I have this week.  I am what I should be.  Unappologetically.  Grandma would be proud!