so much more

Recently my friend Kim blogged about a Body Restoration class she's taking, on a site called Brave Girls Club. I'd never heard of either, but the names both intrigued me. After clicking over to the site, I was in love. And wanted to do it so badly, but I knew I couldn't budget it or even come close to budgeting it so I resigned myself to just follow along with Kim. And then just a few days later, Brave Girls Club opened up a contest offering free classes to sixty people (how generous is that?!). I entered as soon as I saw, but my comment was one of hundreds--imagine my complete happiness when I found that I won a Body Restoration class. It felt so right. Then I looked at the lessons and I kind of panicked a little. It required so much art! Although I used to be artistic to an extent, it's been years since I've had the time to do anything like that. Who was I kidding? Still, I went and bought art supplies on Monday. Tuesday was an incredibly stupid and stressful day. INCREDIBLY. The kind of stress that shows no signs of stopping any time soon, which is frustrating in eight hundred ways. I came home with the boys, set up my new sketch book (spiral bound because it was cheaper, naturally), and set to work. I gave them paint, too, and they were beyond thrilled. I painted. I cut. I decoupaged. I used to decoupage all the time! It's been ages, but I used to go through jars of mod podge on a weekly basis. I decoupaged everything. If someone sat too still, I would decoupage them. I'm only half kidding. I love the stuff. It's like glue on steroids. And I felt better. It's certainly not pretty or artistic or even neat, but that's okay because it made me feel better. This week's theme is how you're so much more than your body. Those are my eyes, of course. I chose words that spoke to me, about all the things I do that are so much more than my body. I used pink because it's my favorite color and sparkly green because I like glitter. Most importantly, when I was done with this and the two journaling pages that follow it in my book, I felt better. The stressful situation was and is still there, but it settled from a huge lump in my throat to a slightly smaller one. I'll take it. Part of the course also involves thanking your body for the things it does today. When I ran on the treadmill after work, instead of glaring in the mirror at my wobbly bits (seriously, fitness room designers, a wall mirror two feet in front of a treadmill? NO.), I tried to keep a running thought of how strong my body was and what it's doing for me. And then I accidentally hit the emergency stop button and almost fell off the back of the treadmill, so I instead began thinking about how much of a clumsy spaz I am, but that's okay because at least I wasn't focusing on those wobbly bits--because those wobbly bits? Yeah, I'm so much more than that.