No pansy resolutions this new year for me. I deem 2012 my “year of awareness.” In doing so, I resolve to continue the process of awakening to my life, my purpose, and my being in 2012. Becoming aware of myself and my life in newly defined ways and from different angles is what makes me stay LIVELY, VIBRANT, and FEELING GOOD. This article is the first in a series I intend to publish around the notion of “awareness” and how it plays out in various aspects of my life. I hope you find resonance with some or all of it, and I hope you are inspired to wake up to the power of awareness in your own life.

Awareness Lesson #1: My body and my being.

I’ve always thought of myself as “the fat girl.” From the time I was 7 or 8 years old (the first time Michael P. ran by me in the school yard and yelled “Chariti is Miss Piggy” at the top of his lungs) until recently, I look in the mirror and see “the fat girl.” No matter how thin, solid, athletic, or lean I become (and I’ve been thin/athletic/lean several times in my adult life) I always see that image of myself through the eyes of my eight year old self, a little girl who felt ashamed at her weight, ugly, and not proud of her physicality. I recently told my life coach (see previous blog post about my Yoda) that I felt this way, and she laughed heartily and said:

“…are you kidding?? from the first time I met you and you walked into

the room I thought ‘this woman has presence’ and she is ‘hot!’”

Funny, that has NEVER, EVER, EVER been how I viewed myself. I just see a larger-boned, heavier-set, not-so-physically-appealing woman living in a world that prizes skin-n-bones size 0 body types. My coach (bless her little- framed, skinny body, and full-of-love-soul) continued with :

“…and anyway, I cannot imagine you as waifey or sinewy or tiny…

that’s not who YOU are…you are not tiny and you don’t live your life

small…you are a large presence in the world, and your body and physical

self has to be proportionate to hold that.”

WOW. Not only did that tease my ego and fill my heart, it gave me an awareness about myself that I never had before. It gave me a way of looking at my physical size in relation to my BEING.

How does our body size (i.e., height, weight, build) relate to our being? In other words, how does HOW WE ARE match WHO WE ARE ?

Would Queen Latifah carry the same royal moxy if she were wafer thin?

No way.

Could a young Andy Griffith, with his lean physique, have ever pulled off the role of a William Wallace or Henry VIII?

Likely not.

Can you imagine Marilyn Monroe playing anything other than an ingénue?

It just doesn’t seem right.

It’s almost as if our bodies are custom-designed to hold us, our personality, our essence, our spirit, and our being. Our bodies evolve alongside our minds, creating a vessel from which springs amazing strength, stature, and movement of all kinds. Because of all of that, it seems to me that there must come a certain acceptance with HOW WE ARE physically as a necessary part of WHO WE ARE spiritually/mentally/emotionally. Our bodies are a certain type and size because they must match us and who we are to a large degree. Don’t get me wrong–that’s not to say that this gives us a free pass to simply eat with abandon, eschew exercise, and live like sloths because “that’s just how we were meant to be.” On the contrary…this forces us to HONOR that which is authentically us, inside AND out, to accept the way in which HOW we are relates to who we ARE.

I am aware that I have some work to do on coming to terms with HOW I am, my physical self. I am aware that I’ve got some accepting and honoring to do around my body, for it works hard day-in, day-out to hold all of me. And I am aware that this kind of awakening is a gift in this life, as well as a game-changer, and I treasure it.

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