a bit of a katie girl.

i need to preface this by saying that i absolutely love my church. and i mean that. i go to a great, progressive, interesting lutheran church in northwest washington d.c. that is filled with all kinds of wonderful, supportive people who have made my time here much less lonely.

i also happen to love liturgy. of the high church variety. incense, pipe organ, chanting the psalms…i can’t get enough of it. i love the structure and the order. i love that when i stand in the chancel with the augustana lutheran church choir and sing “a mighty fortress is our god” my parents and my brother are halfway across the country doing the same thing. i love that if i could look back to a sunday morning seventy years ago, my great grandpa draeger would be preaching a sermon in his little lutheran church in brownton, minnesota. and that if i looked back one hundred years before that, my ancestors would be sitting in a lutheran church somewhere in northern germany singing the same hymn, listening to the same stories, believing in the same god. so when people talk about “finding jesus” i feel a little confused, because in my family…we never lost him. my christian faith is a faith that goes back generations, it is communal, and i stand in my faith knowing that it is not entirely my own. it has been bequeathed to me by generations of faithful men and women. by a church that, although imperfect, still reflects the movement of a living god, here and now. in this place. in these times.

with all that being said, i move to the humorous part of the entry. this weekend at church the smoke alarm went off. right at the beginning of the service. this is largely because augustana has what i like to delicately refer to as “an incense problem”. we love the stuff. seriously. we use it as often as possible. and since we are still celebrating the easter season, we’re rocking it every week. along with “he is risen, he is risen indeed!”

it has recently warmed up in d.c. that lovely point where neither air conditioning nor heat is immediately necessary. so the church (full of stingy lutherans, god bless them), had neither on this past sunday morning. my guess is that this decreased the air flow through the sanctuary and the billowing smoke from the incense burner made its way to the ceiling and hung out there long enough for the smoke alarm to go off. right in the middle of “this is the feast”. but my favorite part about all of this is that nobody moved. no one said anything. sure there were smiles, perhaps even a few giggles (i plead the fifth on this one), but the service went on.

and when we started chanting psalm 68 (may god arise, may his enemies be scattered;may his foes flee before him. as smoke is blown away by the wind, may you blow them away)…no seriously, the service still went on. the ritual continued. as i sat there trying not to laugh i realized that this anecdote could be used in two very distinct ways as a metaphor for faith. either (1) you need to persevere in spite of interruption or (2) an emphasis on ritual can blind people to what is really happening around them. perhaps needless to say, i choose the former rather than the latter.

the thing of it is, god interrupts our lives all the time. in fact, there are times when i feel like my entire path in life has consisted of interruptions. there have been multiple times in my life when i thought things were going on swimmingly, when in fact there was a major detour coming my way. there are those of you out there who might call this fate, or karma, or perhaps even bad luck…but what i’m reflecting on this morning (and have been over the course of this project) is that the most complicated times in my life are often the most interesting. the interruptions in the path i’ve created for myself are where the real divinity in my life seems to sneak in. just like some of the most complicated women i know, the katie girls, are the most beautiful. they radiate the knowledge that life rarely turns out the way you have it planned…but somehow god, or luck, or buddha, or the universe…pulls a fast one on you and you end up in a better place than where you started.

when i was going through a “dark night of faith” a couple years ago, i had the following quote on my mirror from renowned christian author c.s. lewis:

“god whispers in our pleasures, but shouts in our pain. it his megaphone to rouse a deaf world”

what i believe, and what the smoke alarm reminded me of this weekend, is that the painful parts of life are often an awakening to something greater. put another way by john lennon:

“life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans”

and finally, from the gurus we all hold so near and dear, the sex and the city gals:

“maybe mistakes are what make our fate… without them what would shape our lives? maybe if we had never veered off course we wouldn’t fall in love, have babies, or be who we are. after all, things change, so do cities, people come into your life and they go. but it’s comforting to know that the ones you love are always in your heart… and if you’re very lucky, a plane ride away.”

more katie girl stories tomorrow, until then happy monday.

xoxo.
ellie

i really like kathleen norris. “dakota: a spiritual geography” is one of those books i wish i had written. that i think i could have written, if i had significantly better writing skills and a bit more introspection. in “dakota” kathleen norris writes of her family’s homestead: “(it is) my spiritual geography, the place where i’ve wrestled my story out of the circumstances of landscape and inheritance”.

my dad and i were talking about kathleen norris when i was home this weekend. we were also talking about our spiritual geography. my spiritual geography. about the fact that (on his side) i am a sixth generation resident of the prairies of southern minnesota. i know that in our increasingly mobile world, this is more and more rare. very few people have that kind of tie to a specific location. we have to create our own geography.

its like those advertisements for the phone company that combine the names of major cities to explain to you the places that call most often. for me its owaolaftwincitiesmetro. next year it will be washiolaftonna. or maybe twinonnawash. depending.

i guess the point of all of this is that the older i get, the more i realize that home isn’t really home anymore. at least not how i originally envisioned it. like so many other things in my life, it is never going to be again what it once was. your geography changes. and even the places you think haven’t changed, actually have. because they now mean something completely different. so while blast softserve is still on the corner of rose and north oak, and still serves my favorite cookie dough ice cream treats, i saw it with new eyes when my brother and i went there last week. same teal shutters and walk up window. different heart.

i was attempting to explain all of this to my best friend a. over dinner in northfield on friday evening and how much it used to bother me. how i used to look at the ice cream shop, owatonna high school and the steele county free fairgrounds and wish i could go back. that i could do it all over again and somehow fix things. prevent a broken heart. walk away sooner. live my life without being afraid of losing him. i used to look at these places, see these places, and only feel hurt and betrayal. the only thing i took away from home was how much i had missed. how much time i had wasted. the same with st. olaf. frankly, i decided to move to washington d.c. because i was terrified of missing my own life. which is what being at home used to make me feel like.

but as i told a., this trip was different. my lame-ass analogy went something like this: do you know how your foot feels when its asleep? numb, but when you try to move forward at all by putting pressure on it, it hurts like hell? that is what my life felt like, my whole body. i felt trapped by this searing pain every time i tried to move forward. because everywhere i looked i saw who i was. and i thought that was who i was supposed to be. but this time visiting home was different.

for the first time it felt like mine again. my own home. not the home of something and someone i’d rather forget. and while i don’t believe in signs, when i was driving up to st. olaf to visit some old friends, i heard the song. you know the one. that song we’ve all claimed as our own that resurrects the skeletons in the closet and makes a scarred wound feel like its bleeding again. mine happened to come on 89.3 the current just as i was pulling onto i-35. and i listened to it. for the first time. in two years. from start to finish. and there were no tears and no hurt. memories, certainly. like the time i recorded myself singing it on his cell phone. but as i remembered that it felt so distant from my life right now. more like a movie that i had watched once than a person i had ever been.

a couple months ago, when i was being super angst-y about staying in d.c. or moving home to minnesota, my brother (wise beyond his years at eighteen) said roughly the following to me: “i know that it took a lot of courage for you to move to washington d.c. and i know why you did it. but you’ve done what you went out there to do. don’t you think the really courageous thing to do now would be to move home and start the new life you’ve created here, where you belong, with your family?”

yes, russ. i suppose you’re right. and as much as moving to washington d.c. has complicated my personal geography, it has somehow managed to simplify it as well. home is home. d.c. is d.c. and i am myself in both places. finally.

xoxo.
ellie

ain’t vindication grand? thanks to a recent new york times article, i have discovered that i am not alone in my stringent literary requirements for potential beaus. i have spent years being criticized by family and heckled by friends because i adhere to one basic moral code. you are what you read. tell me the last book you’ve read and i’ll tell you who you are. let me talk to you about books and i’ll love you for life. my requirements for a relationship are simple but exacting. leave me alone when i am reading and we will have a foundation for success. because as thomas jefferson famously said, “i cannot live without books”.

this is how i see the world. i am a bibliophile. so it is only natural that when potential suitors come along “what is the last thing you have read” is one of the first five questions i ask. (the other four, in no particular order, are: do you like dogs? do you like red wine? how do you feel about the state of minnesota? and can you name three classical composers?) but the books. the books are a deal breaker.

honestly, the reason why i love facebook so much is that i can heckle people’s literary choices. if judging is a sport then facebook is bat, glove and ball. if you have listed under your “favorite” books anything by dan brown or v.c. andrews, you will be judged. you will also be judged if you have something listed i know you have never read. proust, for example. or whitman. or adrienne rich. there are girls i went to high school with who i know for a fact have never picked up dream of a common language or leaves of grass…but there they are on their facebook profile. a testament to falsified intelligence and literary posturing. perhaps you read a quote you liked once…something about your whole body being a poem? while isn’t that nice. you haven’t read the whole poem. don’t put it down. quotes from robert frost on a facebook profile are also a key indicator of a feeble mind. you took the road last traveled. whoop dee doo. isn’t that original? (also an incorrect interpretation of the poem, i might add). i also hate girls who say that romeo and juliet is their favorite book. first of all, it is a play not a book. second of all, you don’t like the book. you like the story. you like it because you cast yourself as juliet and whatever moronic excuse for a pre-pubescent you are currently dating as romeo. get over it.

some of you may be offended by this point in the entry. i could apologize, but i won’t. its my blog. and when it comes to intelligence, books are nonnegotiable. i don’t care how smart or special your parents told you you were. if you’re not reading quality literature, you are not fully comprehending the world.

yes, i have opinions. as i told one of my favorite college professors, i have opinions on opinions. but i do listen. for the most part. the people i am most impressed by are the ones who argue for a beloved author intelligently. who are able to say what makes a book great. who can convince me to take another look. it happened with hemingway. it happened with steinbeck. it happened with emily dickinson. and i’m eternally grateful. it will not, however, ever happen with the davinci code.

i have gotten in major trouble for these opinions before. on one memorable occasion i was talking to my best friend’s new girlfriend and i asked her what her favorite book was. because i assumed my friend would date someone intelligent, thoughtful and well-read…i chuckled as i asked, “and don’t tell me its the davinci code!” it was. whoops. i would like to point out, however, that the relationship didn’t last. coincidence? i think not.

as someone once said and my mom is famous for quoting “we read so we know we are not alone“. thank-you, new york times, for assuring me that at least some of my neuroses are not unique.

xoxo.
ellie

addendum (slash shout out to my mother): when i sent my mom this article via e-mail (subject line: I TOLD YOU SO), she responded:

A few thoughts:

You should not be snooping at what people are reading, you should ask.

I have not heard of Pushkin (but now I have to look it up)!

For most of us, relationships are about helping each other grow, which leaves open the idea that someone can open up a whole new world of literature for someone they care about.

The fact that you found this article, Ellen, speaks to your need to get out more and read less!

Given how we love dogs, our opinion would rise if we found a friend with a book that implied that you can learn life lessons from dogs on their end table.

Stop with The Da Vinci Code!

Love,
Mom

yup, she’s a katie girl too. so in case you think i haven’t been toppled off my literary high horse a time or two, be assured that my sense of duty and filial obligation keep me perpetually grounded.

dear body:

i’m sorry about the cake mix but i just can’t give it up. i know you keep suggesting that i add an egg or some oil…at least a little water, but i can’t give it up. dry funfetti is my refuge and you are just going to have to deal with the consequences. on that note, i’m also sorry about the spoons full of peanut butter, the boxes of girl scout cookies, the giant bowls of pasta, the liter and a half of red wine per weekend, the greasy chinese food from that little place on seventh street, the death-by-chocolate, and the cheese sandwiches with no bread.

i’m sorry that despite feeding you all of this garbage i still wake up expecting you to look great. i’m sorry i take it out on you when my pants don’t fit and when i huff and puff my way up the 13th street hill. i can’t help but wish you had an abnormally high metabolism. or that you had not missed the class in junior high on how to starve yourself. i wish that you were the kind of body that couldn’t eat when it was upset. instead you face plant into a pan of brownies. and i really don’t like that about you.

do you know what else i don’t like about you? i don’t like that you grew such small breasts. that really pisses me off. in a world full of d cups, couldn’t you have at least worked your way up to a b? that would have been nice. instead you have the weight distribution of a butternut squash. i also can’t stand how your hair is always frizzy. how it never quite manages to be straight or curly and instead exists in this weird place that can only be called…ugly. i hate your toenails too, body. i hate that the left one fell off last summer at yellowstone national park and that when i should have been watching buffalo and geysers i was obsessing about whether or not people noticed how weird your feet looked.

and don’t even get me started on the stretch marks. why, oh why, do they have to zig zag across my stomach like perverted lightening bolts? why do i feel like hester prynne every time i have to change in front of anyone? here they are! my very own, personal scarlet a. except instead of a it should be b. for broken heart. or ben and jerry’s. for the sixty pounds i gained after i got my heart broken. for the scars i will always carry with me from the food i couldn’t stop eating because i wanted to fill myself up. because i needed the empty space left inside of me to have something real in it again.

and on that note, body. why do you have such a breakable heart? why do you let other people take a hold of it and smash up and why do you offer it up still? why did you let it keep going back and back and back and back and back to him until we were no longer recognizable? what ever happened to we? because i think the biggest problem, body, is that you are you and i am me. we stopped being us a long time ago. he took that away. and i let him.

he made you feel worthless and sinful. he told us we were wrong to want him. he shut you down and left you wanting. he did that to me too. i pulled myself apart and then did it again. i had to rethink, renew, relive and recreate my life. and i did. and i am here. and i am wonderful, brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous again…i wish you would be that with me. i feel you sometimes underneath the dregs of that long-ago failure. stirring. begging to be freed. how can we do that again? how will i find you? who is going to save us this time?

maybe me. maybe me and you. maybe its about putting our neuroses and the past behind. maybe it is about taking down the last picture. about looking ahead and seeing you as part of that vision. about reclaiming the us and refusing to settle for anything less than being completely healed. maybe it is about making room for god or buddha…karma or fate. or even just a little more of that inspiration stuff. we’ve got to start moving forward because we cannot keep looking back. we’ve got to reclaim what was ours all along. self-love. dignity. laughter. strength. courage. and the pure unadulterated joy that comes from knowing you are exactly where you are meant to be.

dear body, i’m promising you today that i’ll be better. and well i’m at it, thank you. because no matter how much weight you are carrying you still get me up everyday and put one foot in front of the other. and i’d like to think you instinctively protected me when i was hurting by insulating my heart. you can still run a mile, body. you can still toss a log. you still get up everyday and try, and i love that about you. we’ll get there body, i promise. but i don’t think it will look like either of us expected it to. so if you’re ready for that, i am too. and i promise that, for us, the best is yet to come.

ellen.

author’s note: this entry is in response to blogher.com’s request to write a letter to your body. i wrote it quite awhile ago and have been debating whether i should put it up or not…but here it is. in all its glory. so enjoy. i wish you all courage and success in your own battles with self image.

i’ll be the first to admit that i sometimes tend to focus on fashion and urban living in this blog. little do you know that inside of me is an outdoors loving, sigg water bottle toting, birkenstock wearing, rei shopping, bona fide crunchy. and although i do love a good pedicure…i’m actually at my happiest when i’m anywhere near lake superior or the boundary waters canoe area. so for all you katie girls out there who defy the socially constructed definition of what it means to be female…this one’s for you.

oh, and in case you are wondering…i am, in fact, tossing a log. this picture was taken last fourth of july in the boundary waters while i was competing in the caber toss competition at wilderness canoe base. as i remember, i came in third for the ladies. not a bad showing for an amateur!

i am going to tell you a story, but in order to understand the context, i need to first share with you a few key pieces of information:

(1) i am an expatriate minnesotan currently residing in the district of columbia as part of a volunteer corps program
(2) i like to make lists. i have many of them. my lists include “goals for this week” “goals for the next six months” “goals for this year” and a “bucket list” of things i want to do before i die.
(3) on my “bucket list” (besides going to africa and taking at least one clandestine lover) is to ride the tram that goes from underneath the house and senate office buildings to the u.s. capitol.
(4) i am a katie girl.

my story begins sometime last month when a certain d.c. roommate who shall remain nameless signed us up to attend a weekly constituent breakfast with a certain minnesota senator who shall also remain nameless (hint: rhymes with robochar). the breakfast basically consists of doughnuts and coffee in the senator’s office…followed by a few pictures. we were scheduled to go today, so said roommate and i woke up at the crack of dawn to be down to the hart senate office building by 8:30 a.m. for our breakfast with other minnesota constituents. we arrived right on time at the senator’s office, only to see that it was being gutted completely. there were a dozen men (and a few women) in suits waiting to meet the senator outside the office, where a perky intern immediately informed us we would be going over to the capitol building to meet the senator there. with all the men in suits.

now i am never under dressed. i pride myself on never being under dressed. and even though my gut feeling had told me to dress up a bit more…i had opted to wear a khaki skirt and my chaco sandals. i also went by what j. (nameless roommate) was wearing…jeans and a t-shirt. although j. isn’t exactly a style maven, she had gone on the website and seen pictures of the (very casually dressed) constituents who normally participate in this event. we had even giggled as we imagined our white-legged brethren wearing shorts because they were so thrilled about the warm d.c. weather. and maybe even one of those fbi t-shirts. well, let me tell you that there was nary an fbi t-shirt nor a white leg in sight. except for mine.

so the senator’s chief of staff (!) comes to escort us via tram to the u.s. capitol building. insert squeal here. i was actually achieving one of my life goals. something that was on my bucket list. and do you know what i was thinking about? my freaking outfit. and the truth is, i didn’t stop thinking about it for the next hour and a half. and i’m still thinking about it. i’m also thinking about whether a guy would have felt the same way if he had showed up under dressed. would it have mattered nearly as much?

the fact of the matter is, j. and i had an incredible experience this morning. we met a senator. we stood inside the u.s. capitol building. we rode the tram. and i’m still focused on what i was wearing. and how i felt in it. i know they say that clothes make the (wo)man, but what i’m really tired of is how they always seem to unmake me. i am so focused on pants sizes and making sure i carry my kate spade purse label side out that i miss what is really happening around me. a once in a lifetime experience. i am so obsessed with reading about everyone else’s sense of style in fashion magazines, what they weigh, what they eat…that i miss the goodness in my own life. my own style.

the fashion industry makes billions each year exploiting women (and men) by telling them that they have to dress a certain way to be a certain way. that some clothes don’t look good on you unless you weigh 115 pounds. i open up glamour every month and each page becomes a new wish. to be thinner, better dressed, more chic…and while i do believe in the power of a little black dress and kitten heels…what i don’t want, what i’ve never wanted, is for what i wear and how i look to define who i am.

so what i’ve decided is i’m going to have to figure out a way to get back onto that tram. and this time i’m not going to think about what i’m wearing. i’ll be thinking about the sheer awesomeness of democracy (insert audience groan here). or maybe about how surprisingly quickly those bad boys move (and they really do)…or maybe just about the beauty of having an experience you’ve always wanted to have. chacos and all.

xoxo.
ellie

I’m a Katie Girl because of society. Society has created a mold for me that I am simultaneously trying to fight and fit into. Societal pressures are so much a part of me that I can no longer figure out the difference between what I want and what society wants me to want. This makes me complicated.

Who I am in the context of my society allows people to make assumptions about me. For example:

I am female, and therefore must love chocolate and hope to one day have a family.
I am from middle-class white suburbia and must therefore be naïve about issues like racism and poverty.
I am 23 and therefore must enjoy alcohol and going out on the weekends.
I am blond and therefore must be not so smart
I am from Minnesota and therefore must like hot dish and cold weather.
I am from the U.S. and therefore must know how to read and write.
I am a feminist and therefore have to be pro-choice.
I am a math minor and therefore must a nerd.

These are only a few examples, and while some of these stereotypes are true, some are false. Some I embrace, some I fight tooth and nail. Why do I do this? Why am I so afraid to either meet or not meet these expectations? Why do I care about what society says I should or shouldn’t be? I act different around my parents than I do around my friends. My co-workers see me in a different way than my clients do. I am always trying to figure out what people’s expectations are of me first and then deciding whether or not I want to try and meet them. I continually try to decide what I feel and what society has told me to feel. Despite years of searching, I still haven’t figured out who I am and who I want to be. That makes me complicated. That makes me a Katie Girl.

i’d like to offer my formal apology to this week’s katie girl for taking so long to put her entry up on the blog. and for always eating her chocolate chips. thanks for such a thoughtful response. for more information on the katie girl project or to submit an entry, click here.

there is this video of my eighth birthday party that i love. my cousin taylor is there, along with the rest of our crew from washington elementary school. i am opening presents and screaming with the sheer joy of it all. i’ve always been a bit melodramatic. i am wearing this red and white striped t-shirt with a hood and as i clutch the many and various gifts i’m unwrapping you hear my dad’s gentle voice telling me to calm down a little bit. then you see it. those defiant blue eyes flashing at the camera. my dad immediately realizes his egregious error and you can hear him chuckling in the background. i can just about imagine what he was thinking as i continued screaming with every shred of wrapping paper i tore off. that’s my daughter. my katie girl.

i wonder sometimes at what point in my life that lightness left me. that insistence on joy at all costs. when do adult worries start creeping in? and how old was i when i started thinking about the number of calories in a piece of birthday cake?

i’ve always treated birthdays as sacred. along with new year’s eve they are the one day a year when i always remember exactly where i was and what i was doing the year before. my favorite birthday in recent memory was my 21st. i was in the middle of what was to become an odyssey of sadness surrounding a breakup that changed my life, my direction, and my sense of self. but that birthday, somehow, was a respite from all of the hurt i had recently been bequeathed. my mom took me out to this fancy dinner with three of my closest girlfriends and afterwards i got drunk with p. on a liter and a half of very expensive red wine (it was the inaugural evening of that particular activity, which has now become a staple of our friendship). although there were certain other complications to the evening (and i’m sure p. is laughing right about now), what i remember clearly is being out on old main hill on one of the first warm spring evenings of the year, looking at the stars and realizing that i was alone. for the first birthday in five years.

i guess it is a little strange that i have such poignant memories of that day. that i celebrated my favorite birthday without having a hand to hold or someone to buy me dinner or a fancy present. without those romantic cards that you keep in a shoe box under your bed and reread when things are difficult. or when they end. cardboard covers with pink and white promises of love and fidelity…repentance for the mistakes of the year and hope for a future–together. thankfulness for your very birth. and without him, where are you? who witnesses the milestone of another year gone by? another step in the inevitable march of time?

but the truth i learned when i was 21, and what i’m reflecting on today, is that there are always people to witness your life. to mark the passage of another year. because when you are alone on your birthday, your friends know. and they are there. they plan parties. they buy you cards with pictures of half naked men on them and get you a second round of cosmopolitans. they put up signs in the kitchen of your row house and they bake you cakes with pink gel frosting. they sing to you on your voicemail and they make sure to tell you they love you. and that no matter what difficulties this year has brought, however many pounds you didn’t lose or not-so-happy endings you had to recover from, next year will be better. and if it isn’t, well they’ll be there then too.

so today i am twenty three. and although i’m not sure if you can dedicate a birthday, i’d like to. to the katie girls (and guys) who have made this day, this year, this life, one that dances with extraordinary on a daily basis. to my family and the people who love someone who isn’t always too lovable. i am forever indebted. you are my grace.

so here’s to another year of complication, of relationships (some good and some bad), and of too much red wine. to a year of more yoga, more travel, and more patience. to a year of ditching some vices (gossip and complicated men) and embracing those that i’ll never conquer (books and dark chocolate). to a year of indulgence, of celebration, of joy…and yes, maybe even a little more love.

xoxo.

ellie

i think it should go without saying that this woman is a serious katie girl. i met her at an awards ceremony this fall and couldn’t even speak in the presence of such an incredible activist. i tried to tell her all that her work had meant to me as a woman and as a feminist…but ended up only managing to cry and blubber something unintelligible. i would give anything to go to the upcoming v^10 conference, but since money constraints are preventing me from going to new orleans this year, i’ve been reading all i can.

so you can just about imagine my enthusiasm when i came across an entry on blogher.com informing me that maria niles was doing an interview with ms. ensler and would be taking questions from member bloggers. so i submitted a question…and maria asked it during the interview! click here to check it out! while you are at it, be sure and listen to the entire interview.

in case you don’t have time to check the whole thing out, i wanted to be sure and share this with you…a quote from eve that i think embodies the spirit of this project:

i think what it comes down to is this: we have a choice as women to be good or to be great. to me, what it means to be good is that you are polite and you’re well behaved, you don’t say what you feel, you don’t make waves, you don’t get in trouble and you’re not messy and you spend your life obsessing about your body and trying to be skinny…you are so good that you disappear and you don’t exist anymore. or you become great. you make a decision that you are going to be great. and what that means is that you are going to stand up for what you believe and speak your truth and know that there are going to be people who don’t like you and people who love you. and you’re going to be whatever shape, whatever size, whatever color, whatever age you are and you are going to be proud of it and you are going to stand in it. and you are going to end up having a life that is full of mystery and excitement and outrageousness and joy and difficulty. and you are going to be able to withstand being alone, in your own self, by yourself, in the world. and i think you have to make a choice as a woman which life you want…if we really are serious about saving the human species we must take the energy, time and attention you spend fixing your body and direct it toward fixing the world.

i don’t know about you, but i’m putting this up on my bathroom mirror. as i read this i keep thinking about the difference between journeying toward good health and a positive body image and being on a diet. what should our real goal as women be? i know for me it is all too often a number on the scale. a number that represents who i was before i was hurt…before i grew up and before life got so damn complicated. maybe the real purpose of this journey is to redefine strength. to redefine beauty. to create a space for myself where i can feel comfortable…somewhere between a box of thin mints and actually being thin, there has to be a place where girls like me belong. who are never going to be a gym queen and sometimes take a second piece of pie but who also love to hike, do yoga, and swim. who would rather beat the boys on a scrabble board than a soccer pitch. who want to be loved and seen and known as a whole person…not the sum of a few attractive parts.

xoxo.
ellie

In first grade I shoved a rock up my nose. It got stuck. In fourth grade every girl in Grandview, Missouri, got the bright idea to shave only the back of their heads. It was some kind of rebellious fashion statement, and one I rarely admit to doing. In sixth grade I started my period and insisted that it wasn’t normal. I was so persistent that my mother had to take me to the doctor. I refused to believe that my mother, a nurse, knew what she was talking about. In seventh grade I received my first kiss. Ken Willert was the one to give it to me. My friends and I were at Mitch Karsten’s birthday party, girls on one side of the room and boys on the other. The kiss was strategically planned, not romantic or spontaneous in any way, and I refused to kiss him until I found my Dr. Pepper Chap Stick. I had to make sure my lips were soft after all. Two years ago I dated a guy named Ben. I was bored, and he was cute, until he turned in to a stalker. I had mentioned that I liked Batman, and one day I came home to find him in my apartment in nothing but a child sized Batman cape. I sent him home. Three weeks ago,I accidentally found out that the father of my son is having a baby. This was quite a shock to me because he had been trying to get back together with me for months. He would tell me how sorry he was for things that happened in the past, tell me he loves me, and wants nothing more than to have his family back. I knew that even though there were still feelings on both people’s parts, I couldn’t ever go back to that relationship. I didn’t want to be with the father of my child, but he should damn well be miserable and pine over me. I figured that he deserved it after everything that he had done. I spent the rest of the night throwing myself a pity party and avoiding his text messages and calls. Unfortunately when I was ready to talk the only thing that could come out of my mouth, after some alcoholic beverages, was, “I hope your baby has five legs.”

I thought about how immature that phrase was for about a week, and then I realized something. It is ok to do things I regret. I’m not saying I should go out and purposely do things that are stupid, but all of my experiences have taught me something. For example, I now know that rocks do not belong in body cavities, that being a woman is a normal biological thing, and I have learned that clippers should only be used on members of the male species. Spontaneous kisses that hold feeling and meaning are the best, and I no longer worry about having Chap Stick. I figure I am a little old for Dr. Pepper flavor and so have now matured to Tropical Punch Kool-Aid. Dating someone because I am bored never goes anywhere and is a waste of time. Maturing enough to consider someone else’s feelings is something that I am glad to have learned. I can now just tell someone that it isn’t working out rather than hoping that he gets my subtle cues and disappears. Even though I still do not like the idea of my son’s father having another child, a baby with five legs just wouldn’t be a good thing.

Learning to let things go is not an easy task, and I have not mastered it by any means. I am positive that I will have more moments that I am not proud of, and I welcome them. I figure it is how I handle myself during and after them that shapes who I am. I can only hope that as I age and mature that I live a life without regret and have many stories to tell.

i’d like to thank this week’s contributer for such an incredible essay! for more information on the katie girl project or how to submit a piece, click here.