After being in excruciating pain Wednesday after work and taking my final, I decided that the way to go yesterday would be to stay home and rest. Catch up on sleep and stay off my foot. I kept it elevated, relaxed and knit the day away. I also decided it would be in my best interest to call my mom and get her to come over and give me some acupuncture.
Being brought up by the East and the West results in some really weird things, sometimes. Like for instance, I work for a doctor who practices Western medicine. I think he does great work. However, I prefer alternative or Eastern medicine for myself most of the time. I am more likely to visit my chiropractor if I’m having allergy problems than go to my “primary” care doctor or a specialist. Most of my reasoning to preferring alternative or Eastern medicine to Western is that in alternative medicine and Eastern medicine, the body is treated as a whole. So, if you have a headache, you are not treated for the symptoms of the headache, but rather what is considered to be the underlying cause for the headache. Does this make sense?
My degree from college is in Exercise Science/Kinesiology/Health Promotion. (Whatever you want to call it. They are constantly changing the name of the field.)?What we learned over and over again is that you cannot isolate one part of the body to lose weight or build muscle. Everything works together. Everything that makes up the human body works together to make you go, live, etc. There is no part of your body that works independently from the rest of the body. So, it makes sense to me to treat my body as a whole when a part seems to break down because when one part stops functioning properly, it’s going to affect the rest of the parts.
So, asking my mom to come and treat me instead of going to a doctor who will proscribe me a medication that will give me horrible side effects to treat the symptoms makes more sense to me. My mom is a trained professional in her field.
However, she is still my mother.
With my mom, my weight has always been in issue for as long as I can remember. I am either too fat and need to lose weight or I’ll end up like my American cousins and be miserable or I am too skinny and I should eat more because I look anorexic and unhealthy. This does wonders for a teenager’s self-esteem. Let me tell you. I remember conversations about this as far back as 4th grade.
So, after the acupuncture treatment, she gave me some silver rings to wear on my middle fingers to help with the healing process. As she’s slipping them on my fingers and adjusting them to fit, she’s telling me what they’re good for: “These will help with healing your foot quicker and they’re also good for curbing your appetite and weight loss.”
Did you catch that? Fatty needs to quit eating.
It pissed me off, but sometimes the good outweighs the bad, so I just sucked it up and let her carry on. If I didn’t argue with her, she would leave faster. Amen.
I think my mom has it in her head that if I am not the same size as her, I am fat. Nevermind the fact that I am built completely different from her (as in, I inherited my American side of the family’s ass and abundant chest) and being her size (size 6) make me out to be anorexic in her eyes. Contradiction, much?
I am not tall (5’2″ on a good day) but I do not have a petite frame, either. Athletic and curvy is the best way to describe me, I think. Or I would like to think. My little sister, on the other hand, has long, lithe?limbs and a petite frame. She is built like a ballerina. I am not. My mom tends to be less concerned about her weight, because I think my mom thinks that only I inherited the fat genes, so she needs to pay extra attention to everything I put in my mouth.
Yippee.
Oh, and when I do seem acceptable weight-wise to my mother, is she happy about it? Not really. Her attitude is usually, “Well, we’ll see how long this lasts.” Thanks for the pep talk, mom. Now excuse me while I go eat an entire chocolate cake and pass out from the sugar high.
I?just can’t win.
No, you can’t win, and you were right to refuse to even play the game. People who think that women should hate their bodies (and too many of us have been trained that way) can’t be argued with, and will always insist they have your best interests at heart. It’s not worth getting in a fight with your mom over, for sure. But don’t let her make you hate your body.
ROTFL! When I go home to visit, there are always several articles from magazines (from stellar magazines like Vogue) sitting on on my bed. It’s my mom’s way of subtly saying “you need to do this.” There are 3 themes 1) how to find a man, 2) weight loss, and 3) how to dress for success (though “success” is never clearly defined). I keep telling myself these are signs of love, even though I want to shove them down her throat.
OH!!! And how much do I LOVE LOVE LOVE that you are a holistic person?! ! YAY YOU!!! I knew I loved you for a good reason.
Ah, let me know if those silver rings work! At this point, I can’t even get my rings on my fingers. ANYWAY. My mom tells me she took me to a doctor when I was little because I refused to eat and she was afraid I’d waste away to nothing. She no longer has that worry. ;o)
My grandfather wrote a song in the 1930′s. It went like this:
You never can tell
The depth of a well
By the handle on the pump
You never can see the height of a tree
By the bark upon the stump
So tell your mom she’s full of crap. You aren’t your weight. You are not defined by how big your tits are, or how round your ass is, or whether your belly is as flat as your desk. You are you, not details of your appearance.
You know, there are excellent treatment centers for crack addiction. Perhaps your faithful blog readers should take up a collection and send your mom to one.
Mom’s, they certainly have a way with words that can bring you down – so very low, and half the time they are not even trying.
Hope your feeling better
First of all: Glad you were ab le to take a day and rest!!! And I K.N.O.W. you feel lot’s better now that your finals are behind you!!
Second: Ahhh Moms……(they can’t help what they do)……I have finally come to the realization that as mother’s they will always feel as though they have the right to share their opinions of you WITH you, no matter your age (not to mention all the other “motherisms” they share….like being careful (duh), it’s going to be cold this weekend so be sure and wear a coat when you leave the house (did I mention I am pushing 50??) LOL!!…..I guess it’s that whole “I went through giving birth to you so that means you are MINE forever”..
How wonderful….even though annoying at times to know that you are someones child and that they care (albeit annoyingly at times) about you like only a mother can!!!!
Curvey, athletic girls unite!
And pass some of that cake.
Let’s make that short, curvy, athletic girls of the world unite. I’m 5’3″ on a good day.
It always gets me how hard it is to be happy about how one looks in general, that the LAST thing we need is our loved ones breaking us down. -_- I’m glad that you have the confidence and self-worth to fight it off! You look great, I promise!