We are women – hear us ROAR!

I just saw an anti-diet commercial.

It’s three ladies smashing all the containers in the diet aisle of a store.  This commercial had one major flaw…all three of the ladies were stick thin.

This could have been the best commercial in the history of advertising if they would have used real women – size 12+!

Those teeny, tiny women are not the ones with the anger issues towards diets…pulllleeeeeeaaaasssse!!!  It’s us “real” women who would LOVE to handle that sledgehammer when it comes to diets pills and powders!

And think about it – those skinny little things wouldn’t have the strength to wield that sledgehammer anyway!

The sledgehammer, the anger, and the smashing reminds me of my favorite scene in the movie “Fried Green Tomatoes”…Toooooo Wandaaaaa!!!

Which brings me to a story about my oldest daughter Alex and I.  Back when she was in 7th grade she was diagnosed with a bone issue and I had been diagnosed with Sjogren’s Syndrome.

We were both extremely frustrated with our downgrade in activity level from “energizer bunny” to “pause”, so what did we do?  We decided to paint our basement and tear down a brick closet to make room for a “karoake” stage.  The sledgehammer came out…we each took a few whacks at the brick walls to the closet and resorted to calling my husband.

Yup…wimps r us.

The thought was there, however, we enjoyed watching Tim finish the job.

Our lesson in redoing the basement?  It became our therapy.

Alex had danced since she was 3 and was benched for most of the year.  I had always done 10 things at once and all of a sudden had no energy and had the “achy” flu feeling every day.

We painted and painted, and not only painted, but we REALLY painted…we painted 6 Henry Matisse paintings on our basement rock walls; floor to ceiling, and made a karoake stage.  And after Tim put up our “wall of doors” to partition off the area, we painted those each different colors too.

We blasted Pat Benatar music…we blasted Cher music…all those powerful-strong women songs – and we sang along at the top of our voices.

We had fun and took control of our lives when we felt we didn’t have a lot of control.   We had our moments of self pity – were our conditions life threatening?  No, but two type A personalities being forced to slow down does not make for happy campers.

We pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps and moved on.

I hope you can find your creative muse…

your get strong/stay strong music…

and your power.

That power that only YOU have deep inside…that nothing or no one can take away.  A very wise and wonderful friend once gave me that advice and  I believe now is the time to pass it on.

Be you and be strong…without the sledgehammer.

Use your mind, use your brain, use your willpower…and eat right and exercise – to hell with the diet crazes.

We are women – hear us ROAR!

God Bless!

Patty O

ps…I’ll post pictures of the basement at a later date – we’re in the middle of touching up paint and reorganizing!