Fat-ass. Thunder-thighs.

She said, 'Are you sure you want to eat that? A moment on the lips a lifetime on the hips.'

We thought it was a curse.

It turned out to be a blessing.

In the 80s when I was a teen, big butts and thick thighs were not in, not in white mainstream culture, in magazines, on runways or in movies. I tried to conform, using laxatives to shit out what I ate before it stuck to me. I tried puking up my meals before they digested. I tried not eating, but that was close to impossible, so then I'd binge. I found exercise and poured myself into my daily or twice daily Jane Fonda workouts. I spent so much emotional time worried about my flabby thighs, my round belly, who would want me? Was I desirable? Was being desirable the most important thing?

When I was desired, I didn't know what to do with it. How could you desire me when I'm so imperfect? So fat? Is there something wrong with you that you want me when so much is wrong with me? Total mind and heart fuckery.

I tried loving myself, practicing in the mirror embracing what I was, celebrating my shape, and I put on a good show on the surface. For a while. I wanted it to be true. But the programmed shame was deeper, now pushed into the basement where it still ran my life.

At 24 I met a very interesting man twice my age, a world traveler, a Greek born in Egypt and raised in LA. He taught me about consciousness, Gurdjieff, and Sufism. He fed the mystic in me. And he fed my insecurities. Right before I left him in Egypt after many years together, he stood me in front of a full-length mirror, naked, and using both his hands on one of my thighs he pulled my flesh and fat back and said, 'If you were beautiful, you would look like this.' A thin thigh, no jiggle, a gap between my legs. I looked, humiliated, and I let him because inside I agreed. Despite all the self-love I had tried to access, despite the beautiful Nubian who was trying to seduce me, including how he was going to fatten me up because I was already too thin, despite the beautiful curvy Italians who graced the movie screens as the tides of popular media culture was shifting, I still felt ashamed.

I left him and I was single and happy and I did lose some of my jiggle. And I was proud to finally feel sexy because my stomach was flat. I felt worthy and powerful because I could feel my hip bones. I enjoyed being able to fit into more clothes and to show off my skin. But there was also an uneasiness because my self-worth was being based on this superficial, changeable, material concept and I knew it could change, I would change, and then what? Back to self-loathing. Of course, it changed, I changed. I put on 25 pounds during Corona, a good 35 pounds over my 'ideal' 'target' weight. Slowly heavier, curvier, my ribs no longer showing through my chest, my breasts fuller than ever, except when I'd been nursing, and a belly, this belly, I can pinch, hip bones no longer protruding. The belly I was ashamed of at eight and nine and 10 years old. This belly that makes me feel young and vulnerable.

Only now I am wiser and kinder and stronger. I have loved enough people in their imperfectly perfect bodies, to know that beauty and sexiness and desirability truly come from the inside. And I know not to reject or push away the parts of me that are ashamed. Instead, I hold them close tenderly. I see you, I feel you, I accept you, my shame, my fear and my doubt. And this inner work of radical self-acceptance is then echoed in my outer work of showing up in my beauty, in my fullness, and attracting those who reflect back to me all that I am. I'm not everyone's cup of high octane Amrita! But nor do I want or need to be. How boring if we were all the same, if there was one standard of beauty.

And I have learned that for every body part that I have been ashamed of for being too big, there is a sister who judges herself for being too small. My fat ass, someone bought ass implants; the weight I try to lose another sister is struggling to gain. So I instead embrace the beauty that I am today. Because she too is changing, aging, evolving. I only have this moment to celebrate being 48. Only a couple more months before another solar return. Before the clock clicks again and I look at my flesh to see I am different.

But who am I from the inside? What is my consciousness? How strong is my love? What kind of frame do I choose to look through at myself and all the amazing people in my life? Because I do get to choose and so do you my friends, my sisters and brothers. We get to choose and I invite us to choose love over and over. Thank you