Mothering Monday: Self-Care

I am just starting to climb out of the hole of depression. In October, I started seeing a therapist. Through our sessions, I started to see that over the past year, I haven't been taking care of myself in the way that a woman needs so that she is fully functional in her life.

Apparently, when I don't take care of myself, I stop feeling pleasure in life. I stop enjoying food, cooking, creating, parenting, and living. It is an odd feeling really, when you can't experience simple pleasures like the delightful sweet tart bite of a blueberry in your mouth, or the soothing spray of a hot shower on your tense shoulders, or the shiver of delight from a loving touch, or your heart singing from listening to your favorite song. A world without being able to experience simple pleasures is such a bummer.

I have been slowing down lately, taking time to read silly novels without guilt. We have relied on processed food to make meal time easier. I took a week off from mom duty and visited two sisters and my parents. I bought some clothes, scrapbook supplies, and even some music. I have been going to bed early and resting as long as I can. I have delegated more and done less. Brent and I have gone out on more dates--just taking off and enjoying time together. I did a lot of soul-searching about my discontent and made some future goals that inspire and encourage me. I am also trying to consciously think and articulate gratitude.

I am starting to feel joy in things again. The fall leaves and the light this autumn have made me smile over and over again. My kids are cute and wonderful again. I am not all the way back to where I want to be, but I am not feeling dark and awful. I still don't enjoy cooking or food--which is super weird, I really don't understand why. Writing remains difficult as I am not flooded with ideas or thoughts. But I am not worried as I know this is just a dry season. It will work out.

I really want to thank all of my family, friends, and readers who took the time to reach out to me. You made me feel valuable and loved. You helped me get the courage to take the steps I needed to get better. You showed me that I am not alone--even when many of you live far away from me. I feel remarkably blessed to have so many wonderful people in my life.

Wondering Wednesday: The Mom in the Picture My Kids Remember

As my grandmother got old and was suffering with dementia, she started destroying pictures, especially ones of herself. I am not exactly sure why she would cut up the photographs or how she felt, but several photos were destroyed. Frankly, it is a loss to my family and our memories of her. The few photos that remain are precious. When I look at her pictures, I remember her sharp wit and sarcasm, her deep love for her grandchildren, her intellect and work ethic, and her nervousness and temper. These memories make me smile and feel sad at the same time because I miss her deeply.

I think the current culture that is obsessed with selfies and body image can be really brutal to the mother behind the camera. Sadly, I have also found myself carefully curating and editing any pictures I upload publicly. I also want my best and prettiest side to show. I don't think that is necessarily wrong especially if you want to maintain a certain image. But if it is preventing you from being in photos or including yourself in family scrapbooks, then it has gone too far. 

Sometimes I find myself ruthlessly purging pictures of myself as I critique flaws such my chubby cheeks and double chin, sun spots, bad hair, etc. Only the best photos are saved and printed. And even then, I don't scrap them very often. 

Over Memorial Day weekend, I was at the lake in my swimsuit playing with my kids. And I mean, really playing with them. We had water fights, jumping contests, and lots of practice swimming. I didn't wear or bring any makeup. I took photo after photo of my darling kids. 

Then it occurred to me... I needed to take photos of myself too, in all my natural glory. The perfectly coiffed mother wasn't there on that trip. The regular mom my kids know was there, hanging out and having fun with them. I don't want them to wonder why there are no pictures of me when we have these family outings. 

I will probably still carefully curate photos on FB and Instagram (I do have a little vanity after all), but I will start printing my own photos and including them in my scrapbooks. I don't think my kids are going to be looking at my wrinkles or chubby cheeks, but instead will remember me and smile. 

Do you censor and edit your photos that your family sees? Have you ever decided to change that? Did it change your perspective?

© 2007-2016 TIFFANY WACASER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Friday Favorites: General Conference Prep, The General Women's Session, and Self-Objectification

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is having their annual General Conference this weekend. I've been seeing some great ideas of activities, notebooks and things to do to bring the whole family together for this event. Here are a few of my favorite ideas.

Montserrat over at Cranial Hiccups has a simple idea for creating General Conference notebooks.

General Conference Packets for Senior Primary Children.

Coloring pages, puzzles, and activity sheets for younger children.

A collection of General Conference Activity ideas.

The General Women's Session of General Conference was held last Saturday evening. The talks, songs, and videos blew me away. The choir was made up for girls and women from 50 different countries. You can watch it here.

One of the ladies over at Beauty Redefined recently shared the transcript of a podcast interview she was featured on. In the interview, Empowerment, Body Positivity Interview she discusses the concept of Self-objectification and the way that plays out in our culture.

This quote really made sense to me, "So who determines your power? If that “empowerment” is coming from the outside, it’s probably not real. It might feel like it is, and it’s hard to dismiss that because a lot of people are seeking it, but I think real empowerment feels a little bit more like what comes from within you; what you believe you can contribute to the world when you can stop yourself from being held back by the voice in your head that says, “You’re not worthwhile, you’re not valuable, until you fit this certain ideal or until you do this certain thing.” And that empowerment is absolutely possible. And it does take getting past and through body shame, through resilience in order to accomplish it. But by sharing photos of women’s bodies and viewing them online, we’re not going to get there. Even if you end up really liking what your body looks like, you could still be obsessed with what your body looks like.

That’s the problem, here, is that so many women are fighting for more women’s bodies to be viewed as valuable no matter what they look like. But even if they end up feeling good about their bodies, they are still very often stuck in a complete rut of self-objectifying all day long; being preoccupied about what they look like as they go about their lives. And that is not empowerment. That is something that is debilitating for women and studies back that up."

© 2007-2016 TIFFANY WACASER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Wondering Wednesday: The Archetype of the Descending Woman

In the movie, Stardust, actress Michelle Pfeiffer plays the leader of three old witches, filled with a murderous lust for beauty. In order to restore their youth and beauty, Lamia (played by Pfeiffer) sets out across the land to capture, kill, and eat the heart of a fallen star. Throughout the movie, Lamia plays out all the cliches about older women obsessed over restoring her lost beauty, even to the point of deception and murder. The contrast is heightened by the innocence, sweetness, and beauty of the young fallen star.

This story has played itself out for centuries in our European fairy tales and literature. In Snow White, the beautiful, but deeply wicked stepmother feels threatened by the beauty and innocence of her young stepdaughter. Convinced Snow White's beauty and charm represent a significant threat to her power and station, she plots to take Snow White's life. I think Lamia and the Evil Stepmother from Snow White represent an archetype of the descending woman.

Some have labeled these figures as the villains, and while they are villains in the strict sense of the word, I think there is a deeper lesson or great nuance to be considered in the story of these women. Both Lamia and The Evil Stepmother (TES) are descending women. They have begun to age, or have already aged significantly). In a society which values women's beauty and fertility, their value and power have diminished. They view the ascending woman (usually a beautiful young maiden) with fear and distrust knowing they will soon be displaced.

The ironic thing about both Lamia and TES is that they both possess remarkable power and skills. Instead of utilizing their power to solidify a power base that would used for good, they focus on the petty and the artificial.Both of them utterly waste their talents, skills, and power in the quest for the artificial and superficial. I feel a certain sympathy with these women--not their evil actions, but the desperation behind their quest for beauty.

I live in a society which is extremely worldly. While women have unprecedented opportunities for education, meaningful careers, political opportunities, and major opportunities to wield great influence, much of modern day media would still place women in the box of beauty--from start to finish. The power of beauty and sex appeal (which I think has replaced the value of fertility) seduces women, young and old, into basing their identity and self-worth on these factors. One only need to take a look at supermarket magazines to see the message over and over again--women are powerful if they are sexually attractive to men.

Several months ago, I happened to look at two magazines promoting physical fitness. One was a magazine geared toward women and the other was focused on men. On the women's magazine, a celebrity posed seductively, her breasts barely contained by a bit of fabric. This celebrity was extremely talented and gifted at her profession and that in an of itself was noteworthy. But her value on the magazine cover was her body--a body that was probably photo-shopped excessively. This young woman had probably spent hours to eating a certain way and exercising obsessively for long periods of time to try and mold herself into the "ideal" woman.

The contrast of the men's magazine was startling. A male celebrity was featured on the cover of the fitness magazine. He was completely covered, with just a hint of bicep showing from his t-shirt. The cover highlighted his professional accomplishments. In our world, we celebrate the beauty of women and the accomplishments of men.

If this tendency is that pervasive in our current culture, where women have incredible options available to them, how much more so would this have been prevalent in the culture where Grimm's fairy tales sprung up? Women's options and power were limited and were dependent on their fathers, and hopefully, husbands for them to be able to progress and develop. Can we really blame TES or Lamia for panicking about the threat of the ascending young woman poised to take their place and position? Who is to say that Snow White didn't grow up and fear the beauty of next generation as she started to descend from her own position of power? Could TES be a shadow of what was to come for Snow White?

I think this relentless message of beauty=power is a trap to destroy women from developing and strengthening their own power. There is power in developing one's natural talents and utilizing them well for good. There is power in developing character traits of integrity and virtue. One of the greatest powers that is often unrecognized or misunderstood is the power of motherhood. (And I mean motherhood in the broadest sense where a woman nurtures and teaches another individual--be that a child, friend, student, etc.)

It's easy to see how destructive objectifying women's bodies is to our culture. I think the desire of young teen girls to send sexually explicit selfies stems from a false understanding of what power and strength really is--fed to them by the media. I think the way women seek to reconstruct their bodies with plastic surgery, obsessive exercise, and fanatic diets is just as poisonous and dangerous as Lammia's effort to obtain the heart of the fallen star to restore her lost beauty. I see girls and women engage in brutal competition and bullying for the sake of maintaining prominence as destructive as was TES's quest to destroy Snow White. Every little girl (and woman) identifies with Snow White, but TES probably lurks inside of all us, planted by a shallow and superficial society.

It requires tremendous effort and care to counteract the effects of this society.  It requires courage to develop self-worth that isn't based on the outward appearance. It requires constant effort to cultivate and maintain genuine power based on character and genuine accomplishment.



How do we counter-act the culture of objectifying women? How do we create a culture which values women for who they are instead of what they look like? How do we nurture strength of character in our young daughters and teach them to develop themselves instead of their bodies?

© 2007-2016 TIFFANY WACASER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED