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You know when you stumble upon something really fantastic, or really smart, or really thought-provoking, and you think, “Dang, I wish I had thought of that!”

That’s what happens every time I wander over to Happy Bodies.

Happy Bodies is a blog that rocks my socks off every time I read a post. The strength of the site comes in part from the fact that it’s an outlet for a multitude of voices. It shows that there’s truly power in the collective. It also comes from the fact that those voices are stellar.

Covering topics from depression self-help books to fat phobia to Pepsi’s skinny can, the ladies of Happy Bodies lend a unique and powerful dimension to the body positivity movement. They’re all students or former students of Carleton College, an itty-bitty liberal arts school in Minnesota. The concept for the site was born when founder Becky sent co-founder Jill a post about how Oprah should learn to love her size. The two decided that a space was needed to talk about bodies –

“We wanted to talk about our own: what they look like, what they do, what we think about them. And we wanted to talk about all our bodies: health and positivity, discrimination, sexual violence, and power,” they write. [See more about the evolution on this video.]

And that they do. The topics are varied, the content fresh, the ideas stimulating. They’re bring feminism back in a powerful way, and they don’t apologize for it.

And they welcome new voices on the site. Becky told me recently, “We really value personal narratives about people’s relationships with their bodies, as well as any other thoughts about bodies in the world!” She added that anyone who is interested in guest posting should check out the guidelines for submission and writing prompts on the site.

To get you started, here are a couple of my favorite posts since I’ve been following:

 “Manorexia”, “Metrosexuals” and belittling male experience of eating disorders.

Reclaiming body acceptance: a disability perspective

The evidence for fat phobia

The Last Time

What, me worry?

Alright, if you’re still reading this post, stop it and go check out Happy Bodies now.

What keeps your body happy?

{image credit :: notsogoodphotography}

When the time had finally come for the exam, I suddenly understood fully the idea of one’s stomach doing summersaults. I had always thought this was an expression, and now I was quite certain that this organ was competing with Shawn Johnson for best all-around gymnastics performance.

As my body started signaling fight or flight – and I soon recognized that fleeing or throwing punches at my professors was not an option – my mind raced with all the ways in which I was about to royally screw this up. I was facing my clinical competency exam, a multi-part test that assesses one’s knowledge and acumen in the field of psychology – and a requirement of graduating. The scariest part involved sitting in front of two of the professors I had revered for years and stammering, I mean discussing, my rationale for huge reports I had written.

My mind told me that this was it. The moment that it would be all over. There was no more hiding. They’d soon know the truth.

I. Am. A. Fraud. Period.

But you got into graduate school! Don’t you remember? [That’s my rational, not so informed mind speaking.]

Yes, but that must have been a mistake! The numbers of applicants were low. Or they mixed me up with someone else and then didn’t have the heart to kick me out. Or, worse yet, they felt sorry for me.

But you’ve thrived here so far! You get good grades. Professors and supervisors like you. C’mon…

You c’mon! Sure I can schmooze. But when it comes time to buckle down and show ‘em what I’m made of… well, the proof is in the pudding. And my pudding ain’t crap.

Oh sure it is. You’re smart. You’re insightful. You’re responsible. You’re even a good therapist.

Where the heck do you get your information, missy?

… So you can see where this is going. More bantering until I was finally called in to show my stuff. You can figure out the ending (I passed – Yippee!), but the sad irony was that my fraud mind could justify even this. (“Oh, well, just wait until you try to defend your dissertation. You think you know research? Who are you fooling? No one soon…”)

Sad, huh?

Sadder still is just how many of us suffer from this conviction that we are actually a fraudulent version of ourselves. Psychologists actually have a name for this (this is actually how we spend our time – coming up with clever names for interesting phenomena!). We call it the imposter syndrome.

This happens when we can’t seem to internalize our accomplishments – when we’re convinced that no matter what fantastic things we achieve, it reflects a deception we have created rather than just how freaking talented we actually are.

This phenomenon runs rampant among women, particularly successful women (that’s not just my anecdotal evidence there – there’s data to support this).

For many high-achieving women, acknowledging that their success might actually reflect internal skills, knowledge, and talents is incredibly difficult. It’s kind of like what I was discussing when I told you about hiding my academic prowess in fifth grade.

This is sometimes considered a remnant of (or evidence of ongoing) sex stereotypes, in which, due to years of gendered socialization, it’s hard to wrap our minds around woman as powerhouse. For the sake of our not rocking the proverbial boat (which hasn’t even stopped to ask for directions), our sex roles stay firmly, albeit subtly, in place.

Another potential reason for the imposter phenomenon was explored back in the day by Clance and Imez. They suggested that women’s roles in their families contributed to this version of self as an imposter. Some of these women, they argued, were told that their sibling was the truly gifted one, and they never felt that any of their accomplishments really stood for anything. The other subset is full of women whom were told that they were so awesome (and smart and wonderful), that they felt they could never live up to the expectations established for them. They were always working so hard to live up this superhero version of themselves that others created, they came to believe it was just that – fictional.

Lending support to this idea, psychologist Carol Dweck found that when faced with novel and challenging tasks, the girls with the highest IQs were the quickest to give up. Bright boys, on the other hand, doubled their efforts when faced with the challenge. Could it be that it’s these stories, these perceived expectations of perfection and achievement, that rob girls and women of their sense of being capable?

However it’s defined and explained, the imposter syndrome is alive and well in classrooms, boardrooms, and even the blogosphere. Have you ever thought to yourself, “I’m not a real runner,”? Or, “If they really new me, they’d realize that I’m a total fake. I always use a calculator.” Or, “One of these days the world will figure out I can’t really write. I’ve just been getting by on people’s kindness.”

If these thoughts plague you, know that you’re not alone. You are also not really a fraud. It’s just your mind’s way of trying to hide you from your greatness – that sneaky little devil trying to slyly sabotage you. Lucky for you, you have a choice to make — buy into that thought or let it pass by you like a leaf on a stream. I choose the latter. And that’s 100% the real deal.

I am honored to have written a post for the fabulous site, HealthyGirl.org. Sunny Sea Gold, author of Food: The Good Girl’s Drug and tireless advocate for those struggling with food issues, was kind enough to have me share my thoughts on a tough one – what to do once you’ve engaged in a binge. Here’s a bit of that post:

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Your eyelids reluctantly lift from their resting place as the harsh light washes over you, signaling it’s time to rise from this intoxicating slumber. You’d like to pull the warm comforter back over your head and disappear into the abyss of ignorance – the place where you can forget the shame of last night.

But your body won’t let you forget. You feel the distinctively sharp pains deep in your belly; you still feel the food sitting high and heavy. Your mind spins in circles, looping in and out of the names that last night held such beauty and power, but now elicit a feeling of disappointment. Oreo and Oscar Meyer and Special K and Hostess. Those bastards – letting you down once again.

You promised yourself this wouldn’t happen again, you wouldn’t let food leave you feeling bent and broken in the morning. But here you are – alone, frightened of the voraciousness of your hunger, and desperate to get out of this cycle.

Handling the day after a binge episode is most certainly not for the faint of heart; it is one of the most difficult challenges that we face in overcoming emotional overeating and binge eating. When all we want to do is hide under the covers is the precise moment at which what we need to do is call on all of our reserves and prepare for battle. We are no longer just fighting against the temptations of trigger foods, but also against the insidious voices that try to undermine our recovery….

Learn the tips and read more here…

{image credit :: annie varland}

“My mom should understand that I cannot be who she wants me to be. She should respect who I am,” the woman says with indignation.

Oh, should she?

It sounds rational enough. A parent should respect the person that their child has become and should love her unconditionally. Makes sense to me. What about you? But then, that’s colored by my own expectations of what parenthood means. And that’s colored by things like my own experience being parented, the cultural messages about parenting I have internalized, and even by all my tangled expectations about how relationships should function. It’s shoulds on top of shoulds on top of shoulds.

And you know what you get while you pile shoulds on top of one another?

I don’t know either, but it’s not good.

What if we considered disengaging from that thought? What if we were willing to consider that perhaps a parent shouldn’t love a child unconditionally if they do not?

Confused yet?

This radical way of approaching our thoughts, and thus the world, is part of The Work of Byron Katie. Katie, who emerged from a deep depression and reports coming out on the other side with a spiritual and mental awakening, suggests that to change our lives, we have to change our relationship with our thoughts.

Ever the model of balance, in Katie’s style of simultaneous gentleness and firmness, she challenges individuals to accept what is, rather than what they would like to be true.

Things should be the way they are, she asserts, not the way we’d like them to be.

So if we think that our friend should have paid for dinner the other night? He shouldn’t have. Why? Because he didn’t.

It’s that simple. But then again, it’s not.

Katie’s theory of inquiring into our own thoughts and accepting the reality of what is can come as a slap in the face to us – particularly those of us who have spent years – decades even – holding firmly to our beliefs of what “should” be.

For some, giving up the notion of what should be can even feel like totally abandoning ourselves. If we acknowledge that things are just because they are, that staying angry or hurt or frustrated causes us suffering and not the other person, well… that’s a hard pill to swallow.

And yet it’s the only pill, according to Katie. It’s the only way to move forward peacefully. If we want to live our lives honestly, clearly, and without suffering (and who the heck doesn’t want that, right?), we have to come to an acceptance of what is.

We don’t have to love it, or even like. But if we want peace, we have to accept it. Eeek!

I suspect, however, that with enough practice, we will learn to love it. I know that I’ve found this to be true. I hate pain as much as the next lady, but I’m also able to say thank you for it. Thank you, pain, for teaching me what I needed so desperately to be taught. Thank you for rearing your ugly, I mean lovely, head, getting up in my business, and showing me the way. Thank you for knocking me down so that I could build myself back up. Thank you for trusting that I’d be strong enough to face you. Thank you.

That’s the beauty of loving what is.

Are you raging against reality? What have you come to accept?