Golda Poretsky

Do something every day that is loving toward your body and gives you the opportunity to enjoy the sensations of your body.

I__ not saying that you should deny the difficult events of your life. But the fact that you survived is also a wonderful story to tell. And that story, the story of the way you came through a difficult situation, found resources within yourself or outside of yourself, gleaned from that experience what you wanted and what you didn__ want going forward _ that is a story that can inspire you and others to heal and grow.

Sometimes you need a reminder that negative comments about your body aren__ even really about your body, they__e about society and our society__ wrongheaded and impossibly narrow definition of a __ood_ body. Your body didn__ do anything wrong. What__ fucked up about your body is not your body at all, but that your body has to live in a society that thinks it has a right to say fucked up things about your body.

The moon changes each night but she does so in an understandable rhythm. And just as the tides ebb and flow and the moon waxes and wanes, our bodies_ hormones ebb and flow and our energies wax and wane. Our bodies are more like the rivers than like the rocks, more like the oceans than like machines. The more we can respect the cycles and changes and needs of our bodies, the more we can move with the flow of our lives.In other words, swear by the moon. Or, trust your body.

You are not broken. You are not a problem to be solved. Solving your __roblem_, whatever you perceive your problem or problems to be, is not the key to happiness.

Beauty shouldn__ be about changing yourself to achieve an ideal or be more socially acceptable. Real beauty, the interesting, truly pleasing kind, is about honoring the beauty within you and without you. It__ about knowing that someone else__ definition of pretty has no hold over you.

I think fitting in is highly overrated. I__ rather just fit out... Fitting out means being who you are, even when people insist that you have to change. Fitting out means taking up space, not apologizing for yourself, and not agreeing with those who seek to label you with stereotypes.

Weight and body oppression is oppressive to everyone. When you live in a society that says that one kind of body is bad and and other is good, those with __ood_ bodies constantly fear that their bodies will go __ad_, and those with __ad_ bodies are expected feel shame and do everything they can to have __ood_ bodies. In the process, we torture our bodies, and do everything from engage in disordered eating to invasive surgery to make ourselves okay. Nobody wins in this kind of struggle.

Health isn__ about being __erfect_ with food or exercise or herbs. Health is about balancing those things with your desires. It__ about nourishing your spirit as well as your body.