Living Out Loud Volume 2: your body is a wonderland

After the great success of our first Living Out Loud Project, let's try it again! Lately, I've noticed a lot of people lamenting their bodies. Maybe we've all reached that cold weather slump after our New Year's Resolutions and we're disillusioned with what we see in the mirror. We've been diligent with our grapefruit diet, we've gone to the gym, we got a new hairstyle and it's still just not cutting it. I'm sad, though, to think so many people would give their own bodies an annual evaluation of "Needs Improvement" year after year without any sort of positive reinforcement. You wouldn't do that to an employee, you wouldn't do that to your child, and yet your tell yourself every day that you've been measured (perhaps literally) and found lacking.

Our body is our closest companion and the relationship we have with it shapes every other relationship we have with the outside world. So now is the time for us to snuggle up and write down what we love about ourselves physically. You don't have to pick a certain body part, but you can if you choose. Maybe you love the way your hair looks fresh out of the shower. Maybe you relish in being double-jointed or missed your calling as a hand model. Maybe God graced you with a great rack. Maybe you take for granted that you can heft a 40lb. bag of dog food by yourself and not fall over.

Tell us what makes you hot stuff. Perhaps just putting the words down will affirm them in your heart. Everyone has something that sets them apart physically. It's part of the magic of our diverse species. So revel in it for a bit and share it with the rest of us.

This project has a second part to it as well. With your submission, I'd like you to provide a current photo of yourself that pleases you. This means don't submit your baby portrait, but a photo that when you look at it you think, "yeah, I should probably print that out." The photo doesn't have to compliment your essay about your aforementioned hot stuff (or exemplify how you can carry a bag of dog food unassisted). It just has to be a photo that pleases you. I realize this means some of you will have to pull out the camera and take a photo of yourself, but that's part of the fun!

To make it a little less confusing than last month, once you have written your entry (with photo), email me the link to your blog post. If you don’t have a blog or web site to publish your submission, feel free to email the text and photo to me instead. Any email entries I receive that aren't blog posts, I will publish (with credit to you) on my site so everyone can read them. Remember that if you are using LiveJournal and normally lock your entries, please make this one entry public.

The deadline for submissions is 5pm eastern on Sunday February March 1 (whoops). Once I have compiled all the submissions, I will make a list of them with links for you all to enjoy. And again, like last month, one writer will receive a prize for his or her efforts.

So have at it and flaunt what your mamma gave you!

Recap of the inaugural Living Out Loud project: an Open Love Letter

Well, 5pm came and went on Sunday and I call this first project a success. Sure it would have been great if there were 50 entries, but that might have overwhelmed me. All told there were six entries plus my own. I'll list them below with links. Ben's Love Letter to his wife Megan My favorite part of his letter was the line that "the very act of writing this letter gives me a feeling of warmth." Me too, Ben.

Megan's Open Love Letter to my Son This entry made me cry. I haven't gotten to meet Ace in person yet, but I feel for her frustration at not really understanding what goes on in his head but wanting more than anything to be on his team.

K's Sometimes things don't turn out the way we want I knew K was a good writer, but this really blew me away. I'm now going to impatiently stomp my feet until she creates a blog and keeps writing. Feel free to comment to her on the page with her entry.

Liz's Love Letter - of Sorts The fact that Liz participated in general meant a lot to me. She doesn't have a blog but wrote hers out longhand and then transcribed it into an email to send to me. I'm honored to host it for her. She reached out to so many deserving people. Again, feel free to comment to her on the page with her entry.

Kim's Dear Mom I have known Kim and her mom for many years and this also brought tears to my eyes. Kim and I talked at length on Friday night about all kinds of things and one subject was that we both talk about our dads a lot more than our moms online. I think this letter was a fine tribute to a not often mentioned force in her life.

Rich's Love means never having to make a savings throw Rich told me once that his teacher gave the class an assignment to write a letter to their favorite author. I think the teacher hoped to mail them away and get responses, thereby encouraging reading. Rich wrote this long tribute to JRR Tolkein and his teacher had to explain that Tolkein was dead. Rich was crushed. I'm glad he could continue his pattern of writing letters to dead men. I'm also not upset that Rich decided to write a letter to a gaming nerd instead of me because there are countless things he does for me that show me he loves me every day, the majority of which would earn him a restraining order if he tried them on famous authors.

Lastly, my contribution was in the form of an Open Love Letter to my Husband. It's no secret that I'm quite fond of Rich, but I wanted to try to count a few of the reasons why.

I hope that you all enjoy these letters that everyone wrote. It was a lot of fun for me personally. While it wasn't necessarily about any prize, I did want the opportunity to pick out one entry with a reward for the hard work. I'm pleased to say that K will receive a Flickr pro account for one year as thanks.

Thank you so much for participating, either by submitting an entry, pondering what you might like to write one day or just enjoying what others wrote. Now to decide what our project will be for this month!

Guest post: A Love Letter - of Sorts

The following letter was emailed to me from Megan's mom Liz. Ever since my daughter’s new friend asked people to write a love letter to someone in their life to be posted to her blog and my daughter suggested that I do it, I have been perplexed over to whom I would write this letter and also, in a much broader sense, what really is love. If you can’t define it, how can your write about it?

Now if you had asked me as a young or middle aged woman I could have told you exactly what love was and defined it in no uncertain terms. Then again, up til about fifty-five (55) I was sure I knew exactly about a lot of things and could unequivocally explain them whenever the occasion arose. I was so sure of so many things. Now, at the age of 64 and fast approaching 65, I have found that I am unsure of most things. The irony of this is … it doesn’t seem to really matter. In fact, being ambivalent, unsure and sometimes totally clueless seems to be rather a natural way of being. Isn’t knowing "nothing" the way of Zen?

So, to whom do I write this love letter? There are so many in my life, past and present who I have felt a deep care and concern for and who have added immeasurable happiness, contentment and joy to my life.

Do I write to one of my daughters; each one of whom embodies everything promising and admirable in young and growing women. They are joyful, fun, intelligent, and provocative in their thinking and, in many ways, I still can find the little girls in them that made my life so meaningful as they were growing up. Being their mother has always been a privilege for me and a rather awesome experience. By the way, I plan to continue being their Mother even when they chaff against me being so. There is definitely a love letter here.

Do I write this letter to my parents, both now deceased, who created a safe, secure and loving environment in which I was able to grow up (with the appropriate craziness for an Italian family on my mother’s side off-set by a quiet demeanor of my Spanish father)? They were always there, somehow always showing up if and when you needed them. Even well into my adult life when I was fifty-seven (57) my then eighty-eight (88) year old Dad drove five hours over the mountains by himself to spend Christmas at my house because he felt “the girls and I may need him” to be there since it was the first Christmas we would spend without their Dad who had left months earlier. Yes, there is a love letter here.

But, who do I write this love letter to? Do I write it to the man with whom I shared the majority of my life? From the age of 18 to the age of 57 this man was a constant in my life. Then I could say how love was suppose to look….I knew unequivocally that through all the tough times that LOVE would prevail and underneath all the problems, the heartaches, the betrayals, that there was something so deep that it could not be diminished. So, was that really love? What is odd or maybe not so odd, that after being with this man for forty (40) years and now being without this man for nine (9) years; after the sadness, the hurt, the disappointment, the anger, the shock there is still something that makes me not hate this person nor love this person in the way I once defined love. Instead there remains a regrettable feeling and sadness to know that we could not be happy together. Is there a love here or is it something different, something I can not yet describe? This, in itself, brings up an even bigger question! If you loved someone once can you stop loving them? Truly just stop loving them? Somehow I don’t think that you can reverse loving someone. Once you have loved them, the love remains….perhaps tempered, perhaps different, perhaps without such fervor or without the unrealistic hopes and dreams that we attach to the word love. But then, if it is truly gone (that feeling of love, whatever it is) perhaps it was never really there. There is a letter here, not sure if it is a love letter.

Who? Do I write this letter to so many totally kind, generous and committed friends who have shared my joys and my heartbreaks without judgment and with reservation. I have been most blessed in this area of my life. Do I write this letter to my sister who is so much more than a sister to me? She is a friend, a buddy, a role-model who also turns to me for help and support. She is a remarkable hiking, biking Grandma pedaling up the high mountains of Colorado who has for years has been my hero. Yes, there are many love letters here.

So, who do I write this love letter to? Is it all the wonderful animals that have graced my life? To the warm little wiggly bodies of my dogs over the years from my Star, Star 2 (collies) to Angus, Bonnie, McNeil and Angel (Westies and Scotties) and my beloved Chloe (my soul greyhound), Lakota and now Shyla. They have given me so much love, attention, support and pure joy in my lifetime. Do I write the letter to the wonderful warm, sometimes smelly, 1200 pounds of horseflesh that have given me the opportunity to be my total complete self as we cantered through the fields, who have been my constant and unending friends since I was a teenager. They (Sundance, Champion, Silly, Don’t Pretend and, my dream horse, Hellas who has been with me unfaltering for 18 years) have never let me down (well, they dumped me more than a few times but it was nothing personal) and have always there, never judging, never questioning and always nickering. Yes, there is definitely a love letter here.

So, perhaps I write this love letter to the quirky, fun-loving, caring and gentle-hearted man with whom I now share my life? How lucky am I to have found someone who is so easy-going and generous of heart and spirit, who makes me laugh more times in a day than I use to laugh in a week, who makes me feel like a woman always, who holds my hand even as I fall asleep, who never complains and who walks my dog, shovels out my horse’s stall, cuts up boxes and builds things with my grandkids and shows me each day how to “fall through life”. Actually we don’t use a word as loaded as love in this relationship so I really could not write a Love letter it would have to be a “Like” letter. So, yet another question. Is it more important to hear these words or see them in action on a daily basis? Is it more important to be treated and to be allowed to treat another in a respectful, joyful, caring and loving manner or hear the words? One thing for certain…there is most definitely a Love/Like letter here.

So, here is my dilemma. How do I write a love letter to only one person when my life has been touched by so many, in so many different ways? How do I choose and what really is love? Perhaps it is something that you don’t define. Maybe the lesson I learned first, from my Father and now from the man with whom I share my life, is that you don’t have to define it, you just have to live it in whatever way you know to live it, even if the other person can’t return it to you. As my hairdresser says, “It is all good! Share the love” whatever and whoever it is to you.

Liz Ribas