ACCEPTANCE
Self Acceptance and Society/Fat Acceptance
Self acceptance is loving and appreciating yourself even if there are things you'd eventually like to change. Fat acceptance or society acceptance is getting society as a whole to accept that we have the same rights as everyone else and to reduce prejudice within the community.
Got something you want to say about acceptance? Let us know at info@ssbbw-magazine.com.
This Chair Is Not My Friend
The wooden ice cream chair at the deli, not my friend.
The itsy bitsy car my daughter drove, which we called it the purple plum, was not my friend especially when I needed to emerge and more particularly when in public.
The near-mile walk in the heat from parking to hospital room to visit a friend. Difficult. Even life-threatening for me at that time.
The too-high step to get on the romantic hay wagon ride. Not a chance without a makeshift ladder.
All fair reasons we become less and less active, less courageous in experiencing our lives.
“This chair is not my friend, I won’t even attempt to sit down.” That is what I told the bank president before we discussed his advertisement in the historical journal I published all those years ago. That was when I was just learning to be bold with my needs. The gentleman, a large person with a solid executive chair behind his desk, brought me a chair like his while chuckling over my comment. He also bought the ad contract.
Mostly it is the chairs, isn’t it?
The face-blazing embarrassment of my most intimate moments with chairs makes me quite courageous in the face of their threat. Comparable to a bad-for-me relationship, I know when to ignite my boundary like a flaming wall. If only younger plus-size women could learn from our chair mishaps, hmmm.
Chair memories… only a few… the night at a fireside circle when my little red chair collapsed to send me sprawling into the dark beyond. Then there was the antique wooden chair at our extended family’s Thanksgiving meal – it was my own chair in my own home – and there I was on the floor at the head of the table. “That broken chair wasn’t to leave the barn,” I bluffed, not even knowing what chair it was at the moment. Talk about thinking on my seat. And there was the chair I sat on to do taxes, sat there for five hours before it crumbled and left me on my back on the floor with my legs sticking straight up like a stiff-jointed doll. Alone in my home this time, thank goodness. I weighed a good bit more then and for me scrambling from the floor was not an option, but I managed to stand before my husband returned.
Making my world more accessible has been a priority of late. Perhaps recent changes are results of turning fifty-ish. Indeed, there were enough tumbles to premise the change in me. Now antique chairs hold flower pots and my solid, indoor chairs are wide and armless. I love my wide-behind office chair.
For all of us, solidity and accessibility is a process that comes with acceptance.
I acknowledge the realm of size diversity. And I do accept the plush-size, belly-dancer shape of my body. Lately, like my wardrobe, my chairs reveal acceptance.
The old adages which make life simple are key: Acceptance is the key to all my life problems today… Live in the answer… Beauty is as beauty does…I think I made up that one, being inspired by Forrest Gump’s mother.
My husband is large, I am larger. Our answers? We bought a Suburban. We fit in our Suburban. We replaced our bathtub with a well-appointed shower stall. We built porch stairs with only a four-inch rise, gentler on the knees. Our extra-wide sofa also has extra height on the legs to make rising easier. And we definitely do not eat at restaurants where there are only booths, immovable tables, or small chairs.
I am still not completely courageous in experiencing my life. I do not dance in the regular clubs where a 350-pound middle-aged woman most likely would be ridiculed. I do not desire to rock climb – the ledges are too narrow to balance - nor do I ever ever parachute.
But that step at the hayride… this time I am taking my solidly built stepstool to get me all the way up there to that main stair on the wagon. My husband will shove me over from the backside if he has to because we are going on that romantic hay ride through the country.
Written by: Essa Adams is a writer and the publisher of ESSA Books. The first release with three BBW characters is A Breath Floats By: An Illusion for the Soul
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"I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, "Mother, what was war?"" ~Eve Merriam |
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"For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson |