This Messy Life— Navigating Sharing Kids, Divorce, Dating, and Blending Families

                                                                         (A photo from our walk last night) I struggle with black and white thinking. I have always been an either/or type of girl, rather than an AND. I know this often doesn’t serve me. Because there is so much that lies between this or that, so much to be found in the grey.  I’ve been thinking about this recently within the diet culture. For the last several months I had put myself into the anti-diet culture realm. Because I wasn’t following a diet, and quite frankly had tired of following diets, I assumed and felt I had to then be anti-diet. That I had to choose.  So I started following anti-diet profiles on Instagram. I started telling myself that I would and could be happier if I didn’t diet ...

I have the utmost blessing of having not just one daughter, but two soon to be bonus daughters that I get to help raise. Though it is always a blessing, there is a constant worry or obligation to make sure I am doing well by them. With my post yesterday, and acknowledgement that I do want to be lean, and strong, how do I instill healthy living values into my daughters without simultaneously making them feel that their value is somehow connected to their weight? The answer: I’m really not sure. I am doing my best all the while knowing that I may be screwing up. Our 3 girls are shaped very differently from one another. They range in weight and size and each is so very perfect in their body. I often wonder how I got so obsessed with my body when truly no one ever told me I was fat. I wasn’t fat. As a kid I was round. Round little cheeks, a round little tummy, solid and muscular little legs. I looked different than my sister, who happened to be more lean, and I think that may have been whe...

  I remember the morning I first posted on Facebook about my binging so clearly. My heart was racing as I drove to work at 530am. My secret was out. I knew by the time I got to work, inevitably there would be comments on my post from my friends and followers back east and the thought made me want to vomit.  Disordered eating, binging, anorexia, orthorexia, bulimia, body image dysmorphia: None of these are things we want to talk about, or associate ourselves with. But I have suffered with all of them. I wouldn’t say I have an eating disorder anymore, but I would say I still really struggle with disordered eating.  What does that even mean? For me it means that when people say we should all just intuitively eat, I laugh. What is that? How in the WORLD would I ever intuitively know when, what or how much to eat? Just by listening to my body? Nope. Not this body. I started betraying her nearly 29 years ago. And now I am going to expect her to TELL ME when she’s hungry and WHA...