Flawsome

Recently, through the miracle of social media I had a friend introduce me to the word "flawsome". The word refers to the ability to embrace the flaws and still be awesome. Today, I had a chance to really put the phrase to good use. You see....I am a grandmother. A fairly new grandmother at that. My daughter had baby Bella almost four weeks ago. My daughter spent some time yesterday talking about how she wished she had been thinner before she got pregnant. She felt if this were the case, the post partum struggle to find her new normal would be easier. It made me think about how often important events happen and we begin to wish for something different that had come first. I think about a particularly difficult 10k I did some years back. In the weeks that followed the event I had ever so many blisters to make we wish I had trained more or well....at all. It is as if tapping the retrospective wish granting virtual fairy godmother would somehow have me wake up healthy and somehow conquer that race like an Olympian.

It occurs to me that the entertainment industry has made a lot of money allowing us to lose ourselves in the fantasy of the fairy godmother or even the genie in a bottle to grant our every wish. These are great escapes but far to often I think we lose ourselves in the notion of wishing for something better or different in our past to account for being somehow less than we think we should be in the present. For me, the constant wishing did absolutely nothing but hold me hostage to the failures and not looking toward where I could be.

The diet industry in a similar fashion has had their share of fairy godmothers and magicians promising a quick fix in a matter of days which is probably what makes a lot of them so attractive. Trust me. I drank the cabbage juice, took the pills, made the shakes and nursed the surgical scars. Nothing actually granted my magical wishes until I found the people who felt I was flawsome even when I was still wishing. These people helped me to see every little gain was to be celebrated until little by little every little change amounted to a huge leap into the place where I now am, almost two years into my journey. Some of these folks are friends. Some are family and some are my beloved trainers who laughed at me when I said "I can't" and held my wishes tight so I could learn to grant them myself.

I explained to my daughter that maybe she was not what she wanted to be in this moment, but she was better than she was yesterday and will be better tomorrow as long as she embraces who she is flaws and all. Then take her wishing and figure out what she can wish for today that is attainable. Apparently that wishful attainable scenario had something to do with wishing to replace cheap diapers as they relate the poop of a breast fed baby and a heck of a lot of laundry. Not being in medicine like me, her exposure to this sort of thing prior to now has been somewhat limited.  She met that goal yesterday and I think this Fairy God Nana may need to help that wish along with a cyber trip to Amazon. As far as her body image goes she has already dropped some of the baby weight and she is mothering like a champ. That is the most flawsome thing I can think of for her today.

As for me, my wish is to have a PR in something every single week. Inching along little by little making slow and steady progress. Like yesterday when a trainer decided he needed to take the class I was in and occupy the treadmill and later the weight station and later the rower next to me.   This was so daunting to try to perform for a member of the team that helped make me what I am today. These people have taught me to be my own genie in a bottle and I was going to show them just what I was now made of. The best news was I did not die or fall off the treadmill as I ran my best all out at 7.5mph. I did not die when I rowed at nearly 400 watts and I did not give myself a concussion doing a 25 pound single arm snatch all PR's for me. In those moments I was free from all those years wasted on wishing and overcome by the notion that the best is yet to come.

A final note to my dearest daughter....may you continue to be flawsome just like the rest of us. Do not give up on what you can be, kiss Nana's baby Bella, tell her I will see her in two weeks and most importantly may the rest of your  day be leaky diaper free.