On Friday, I began my year of rejuvenation. It all started by accident, and suddenly I have landed once again in the land of Oz and like Dorothy I don't know quite where I am going - but I am determined to walk down the yellow brick road. The idea of rejuvenation started to kick in for me once I landed back from my exhausting book tour. I came home with health problems that seemed to need "healing" and restorative care. I had to "diet". Me diet? How could I do that? I am about not dieting! But I had never approached dieting from a place of personal rejuvenation before. Before, it was always about me needing to look a certain way for somebody else to love me. To be perfectly honest - dieting was even on the table as a way for me to love me.
It took my shameless journey to teach me how to love the body that I am in, and for the first time I could perhaps seeing dieting or changing my eating habits as a way to heal my body. I never bought into that before...but that was before I had trouble swallowing!
And so I joined Weight Watchers as a way to heal myself - the same way that I climbed on the table of a Sacred Intimate to help heal myself. This was new to me. To be perfectly frank - I felt some shame around it! How could I the shameless woman who thumbed her nose at all conventions do something as conventional as Weight Watchers? I could do it because now that I had healed the issues with my body - and I didn't want anything to stand in the way of that celebration!
Honestly, I am not interested in being skinny. I am a curvy girl - and proud of it. But I am also going to do what I need to do to live a healthy, fabulous life. And if going down ONE size will do it - I am in. So, that was step one on my path to my year of rejuvenation. And then - quite by accident I met Dr. Bart Rademaker, a plastic surgeon - at a wellness conference. We really hit it off and he invited me to come for a visit to Tampa, Florida to explore helping him with his website. Being the marketing maven that I am - I accepted the ticket and headed to the very hot, hot weather of Florida in the summer.
To be perfectly honest - I have had a lot of judgement about people who did plastic surgeon or went the way of injections, botox and fillers. The people that I knew who did this like celebrities, looked weird to me. And I was determined to age gracefully - none of that was for me.
But that was so last week!
I had no idea what was going on in the world of plastic surgery until I met Dr. Rademaker - and spent the night listening to him wax poetic about stem cells and something called Selphyl where they take your own blood and extract your platelets and fibrin to rejuvenate your face! Organic plastic surgery? Really?
The more I talked to Dr. Rademaker, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee - the more I thought about this for myself. But it felt scary - and my own judgements about "just loving myself the way I am" came up for me. I posted on Facebook about exploring Botox and some of the other bag of tricks that Dr. Rademaker had in this tool kit and it was met with mostly excitement. But a friend posted and said that it didn't fit with my brand....
I felt judged, just as I felt judged when I started out on my sexuality journey.
Why can't I go on a journey of rejuvenation if I choose to? After all, that is what I did on my Shameless Journey - didn't I?
I am feeling called to explore this - excited even! I want to know what is possible with the body that I have. When I was 20 years old, I had a gorgeous body but I didn't understand it. Now, I understand my body - but it is aging in ways that does not always feel comfortable to me. So do I have the right to explore what it might feel like to have the entire package in the ways that feel comfortable for me? Or am I just setting myself up for more judgement?
We will see! But I have committed to this - and I am going to do it wide open and in public! I am committed to being Shameless and living my life as a woman in full according to me! Just as I encourage you to live your life in full according to you! You will be able to see You Tube videos - and lots of blogs.
So....I am beginning! Jumping off the cliff for my year of rejuvenation! What do you think?
