Freckles were the Tipping Point (A poem inspired by my quest for beauty)

Freckles were the Tipping Point
a poem by Mary Cherry

What started out as a light dusting across the nose, became a liberal smattering.
Some light, some dark, one kissing the top of my lip.
A few splotchy, some miniscule pinpricks.
During the summer they become bold and fearless, blazing brighter than the sun that gave them birth.
Winter makes them cold and shy, they prefer to hide out for a while.
Some say they are angel kisses. I say, they were the tipping point.
The tipping point that turned me from just me to beautiful.

(It's spring right now but come June those little suckers will be dark and out in full force. They'll invite their cousins and distant relatives to visit and I'll have angel kisses galore!!!)

My Quest for Beauty

Welp... I don't know if any of you have noticed lately but I have been posting numerous pictures of myself up close and personal on facebook. It's all part of my QUEST FOR BEAUTY beauty beauty beauty.... (that was said loudly and then the subsequent echo...)Anyway! It's my current project. I don't know if any of you guys have ever had a problem with the way you look? What am I kidding, in today's world I'm sure everyone has had that problem. My problem went much deeper than I initially thought. Actually it took me a while to even acknowledge there was a problem. Basically I haven't thought that I was pretty since my wedding day. The pictures of me at my wedding are beautiful. I don't have any of them anymore... actually there's one of my mom and me at my house in TN. But the problem is that was six years ago.... So I have not felt that I was really beautiful since then. Until now. There was a period of time for a while that I would not look in the mirror. And when I had to look (you know to make sure my hair wasn't too crazy and nothing was stuck in my teeth) I didn't really allow myself to look for long. I would avoid looking at my reflection in doors, in spoons, in water, anywhere. I still have some trouble with it but it's getting better. I would not look at pictures of myself or really want to get my picture taken...(see list of goals). I wouldn't wear makeup or do my hair or wear nice clothes. And I admit I still don't really do those things but I'm getting better. The good thing about me and makeup is I don't need much. I'm not really good at doing my hair but I'm trying to make an effort more and more. The clothes thing... well, I need to go shopping. But the coolest thing is that I've been praying and fasting to love myself more and to go on a quest for finding my own beauty. I've been giving myself assignments. Here are a few of them...
1.)Get some new makeup and wear it... check!
2.)Get a hair cut... gotta make an appt.
3.)Get a new outfit or two... this may take a while...
4.)Take pictures of yourself and post them to facebook! (check)
5.)Tell yourself you're beautiful and believe it... works sometimes.
6.)Allow the Lord to heal me from any self hatred and doubt about my own beauty...working on it!!!

The interesting thing about my quest for beauty is that I haven't been honest with myself about how I felt about myself for a while because it was easier to ignore it. But now that I've healed a lot of other things in myself and grown and gotten better in other areas it was just time to open up and admit my problems and the best way to solve them. I'm ready!!! I'm working on loving myself because nothing is more beautiful than confidence. I'm also trying to be a better person and become closer to the Lord (the light of Christ is beautiful too!) And I feel like this is the last big step for me to be happy enough with myself to be ready to date again. Which leads to getting married again. But that is another story in and of itself. I'm looking forward to it! I'm happy that I'm progressing enough to get to that point in my life again someday.

Loving Myself

So basically I've been praying and praying that the Lord could help me find a way to be healthier and to be able to lose weight. But again and again nothing really worked. I felt such compulsion to eat bad things and overate again and again. But lately as I've been praying more sincerly about trying to love myself more the Lord has helped me to realize that it is only through loving myself that I will ever be able to be healthy. I will have to love myself the way I am now and not just after I look the way I want to. I was grateful for this insight from the Lord and it was a new concept to me. Then I came across this article and it is so true for me! People are like, "dude, just don't eat all that crap and exercise, duh!" And I'm like people this feels like I'm a drug addict except the drug is food. I can't function or think about anything else until I get my fix! I am addicted to food and any addictions are unhealthy because they take away your agency. (Well you give up your agency if you have an addiction.) Anyway, I wanted to post this article so maybe friends would understand more why I am the way I am. And why I couldn't just eat normally.
Every overeater has heard them a million times: the admonishments of weight loss. You’ve got to stick to your diet, commit to the process, stay with it no matter what, discipline yourself to "just do it," and so forth. Yet such admonishments only add to your anxiety; if you were able to consistently be there for yourself, you wouldn’t be an overeater to begin with!



While overeating would be seen by some as an indulgence of self, it is in fact a profound rejection of self. It is a moment of self-betrayal and self-punishment, and anything but a commitment to one’s own well-being. Why would you be able to commit to a diet if you’re not consistently committed to yourself?

Your relationship to food is but a reflection of your relationship to yourself, as is everything in your life. There’s no reason to think that you’ll be capable of loyalty to a diet until you address your basic disloyalty toward yourself. Until your fundamental relationship with yourself is healed, then your relationship to food is doomed to be neurotic.

As committed as you might be to the process of weight loss, there will always come those moments when your self-hatred rises up like an oceanic force from the bottom of your subconscious mind, demanding to assert itself. That’s what makes addiction and compulsion so cruel: you could be committed to your diet for 23 hours and 45 minutes during a day, then ruin all your efforts in 15 minutes. What is not self-love carries within it the seeds of self-hate, no matter how small; wherever the mind is not filled with love, it has a propensity for insanity. And just a tiny bit of insanity is enough to do it—in about as long as it takes to open up a bag of cookies, you find a way to destroy your most cherished dream.

This lesson addresses your basic lack of commitment and compassion toward yourself, your lack of self-care that leads you time and again to punish and betray yourself. Only when you learn to commit to yourself will you stop your self-sabotaging behavior. It’s not enough to just tell yourself what not to do; you must learn a new way to think before you can master a new way to be.


Well, I know it was a lot to read so if you gave up reading it that's ok. And I also know I can't just not try at all and just blame everything on an addiction. So I am trying!!! But now I am being more realistic and realizing that I have to like myself the way I am right now in this moment. And I have to change the way I see myself to how God sees me. Then I feel beautiful. And when I feel beautiful, I can say no! Even though I still think about food and what I want to eat 24/7. Literally all the time. I am able to make better choices. And I'm not cutting out bad foods entirely, I'm just not bingeing anymore! It's a step. And in my heart I know that I can do it with the Lord's help. I know a lot of people who read this will not understand but just know that I am not making it up! But I have faith that I will get past this hurdle and trial just as I have a ton of other big trials such as depression (which took four years to defeat! and it may come back sometimes). I will also probably struggle with this for the rest of my life but I know I can get to a place where I am proud of myself and where I love myself!

Newbie

So...I'm pretty new to the blog world. (I always have to start off everything I write with So... even in my journal-weird). Anyway, (then I have to say anyway after...) I'm new to actually writing in my blog and to reading other blogs. I've known for a while that everyone has blogs... like everyone! But I just never read any of them. Except to check for pics of my nephew on my sister-in-law's blog. Then I graduated and had every evening free and time during the day when the twins were napping. Suddenly I was desperate to find any distraction on the internet that I could and you can only browse facebook for so long. So, I did what anyone else in the situation would do. I read blogs. First I started out with looking at people that I actually know. Then when I needed more blog posts to fill my growing appetite I started moving on to friends of friends. Getting a little bored with most of those I discovered who the popular Mormon mommy bloggers were through my sis-in-law Meredith's blog. She had some of their buttons up. I was admitted into a whole new world. And I became entranced. Wow! These are the types of things I want to be doing! These women are living the life that I hope to have in the future. (They are married with children and are stay at home moms who do crafts all day and love interior design and baking.) I love all of that stuff too! I thought I was the only one! But as I kept reading their daily blog posts I began to get a bad taste in my mouth. I realized all of the major Mormon mom bloggers are slowly but surely getting big heads!!!!!!!!! Have you ever read any of the comments other people write in these blogs? "You're so cute! I want to be just like you. I want to copy every single thing you do! You are perfect and so is your family. I worship you." Hello!!!!!!!!!!!! If you go back and read all of the blogs from when they first started before they had tons of readers, they write about real stuff and in a wonderful entertaining meaningful way. But as they gained more followers and more people making these comments they started filling their blogs with pictures of perfect outfits, perfect outings, perfect situations. They started doing give-aways and guest blog posts and now when they do write something it's meaningless! Sorry, I've just been thinking about this for a while. I think it's great to have a blog and spread what you believe to others and to be uplifting and fun and entertaining. But keep yourself grounded and sincere. I hate fake people. And I'm starting to feel like all this pressure of thousands of people reading these blogs got to these women and changed the way they write. Obviously I don't really know these people and I can't judge them even though I really want to. I hope that I can stay true to myself no matter what. I'm still sucked into the blogging world for now. I can't stop reading!!!! But maybe I'll try to limit my intake a little to people I actually care about...
Also I should just mention that I'm talking about a few of the really big blogs with lots of followers, not anyone I know. I love all of your blogs that show your day to day life and insight.

Good Enough

So……In case you didn’t know… Life in D.C. is very different. There are rules to be followed here and if you don’t follow them you can’t prosper very well. Rule #1 Fit the standards of looking and dressing the D.C. way. You have to look good. Looks are worth a lot more here than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. Rule#2 You have to be political and interested in politics. Or working at an internship involving politics. If you don’t follow these rules… what are you here for then? I’m here because I was guided here by Heavenly Father. I knew it might be a little tough but I just KNEW I would make tons of friends in the single’s ward. I didn’t realize or count on the ways in which it would be hard. I am not going to a single’s ward. I have made one new friend here and I know one other friend. Going from having tons of friends and being respected and loved to having two friends and being looked down on is really hard. People don’t respect you and you can feel it. Maybe they think if they’re nice to you, you won’t be able to tell how they really feel about you. But for someone as observant and sensitive as me, I can most certainly feel it. I feel that they feel that I am inconsequential and worthless. I was never picked on in high school really. People respected me there as well. I was well liked, voted Most Friendly and class Secretary and on the Yearbook staff etc. However, this is not a new thing for me as my ex-husband set about making me feel worthless and telling me so. But I always thought, it was just a bad situation, no one will make you feel that way again. Wrong. I thought, mmmm well I’ll just be so nice and kind that everyone will love me because I’m a good person on the inside. That might have worked at good ole BYU but it doesn’t work here so well. People don’t care about that kind of thing here. I’m in a very worldly city my friends. Well, however hard it is, that’s how my life is right now. And I’m learning to deal with it. And the only way that I really can deal with it is to change how I view myself. I can’t really change how others view me right away but I can gain more self-esteem and self-love towards myself. I find myself starting to believe others around me; I am worthless. But I promised myself I would never give anyone else the power to make me feel that way about myself again. (Not after all the damage you did Tyler. You big jerk! Haha). I also realized that I was waiting until I fit a certain picture before I would let myself feel good enough. (aka until I lost weight) But the problem with that is I can't lose weight until I feel like I'm worth something. Otherwise I'm just going to keep abusing my body by being unhealthy because I don't think I'm worth it. I don’t want to base my feelings off of how someone else feels about me. I want to be in control of how I view myself. So I took it to the Lord and I’m going to have faith, A LOT of faith that He can help me. Because even though it may be foolish I feel like I’m a pretty awesome person. And I want to be sure of it. So sure that everyone else won’t be able to change my mind when they look at me in that way or whisper about me or tell me to my face that I’m not good enough. Because I am good enough. So there.

Happy 6 Months!

Jackson and Addison are 6 months old as of yesterday. So I thought it was high time I shared some pictures of them. As I said before, at first I was a little overwhelmed taking care of them because I didn't really know what I was doing. But now after two months we're getting into a flow. We like to go on a walk everyday in their awesome city stroller. People think I'm the mom all the time. Which is fine with me. We always see other nannies out and about walking their charges too but you can always tell they're nannies because they are usually a different race and the baby is white. This is true, I'm not being racist or anything. These two are really full of personality and super cute in their own way. Addison has the biggest bluest eyes and a really cute open mouth smile. Jackson likes to shriek and roar like a dinosaur or bear, stick out his tongue, and he has the cutest chubbiest cheeks! I hope we continue to grow together!

My favorite memory with you.

So lately I've been thinking of all the friends I made in college and how they all affected me so deeply. And how I know Heavenly Father made sure we were in each other's life at that particular moment in time. I really miss all of you. I mean even if I was still in Utah, I still wouldn't be seeing you all. And people have to move on and move away and have their own families and meet new people. But you always have those friends who touched your life forever. People who made you want to be like them, who were fun to be around, who didn't judge you, who would just laugh with you or do nothing at all with you. People who thought you could never aspire to be as good as and people that you helped out. People who you thought you had nothing in common with and maybe you really didn't but you were still friends. So anyway, I thought it would be nice to list a few of these people and tell what my favorite memory of them is. So here goes... this could take a while! In no particular order...
Erica Morey aka Rica!!!- One word...Roadtrips!!! And also my favorite memory is doing nothing at all with you but just being the same room together. The knowledge that you were there gave me comfort. Also playing games (Rummikub) and watching our fave shows!!
Nicole Winegardner aka Nic Nac- We had a lot of fun at the villa but I feel like our friendship really blossomed after you got married and when you had Samantha. Which is totally weird and not many people stay connected if one is married and one is not. I loved doing crafts with you and talking and swimming!!!
Lauren Alyss Ashley- My fave memory of you is when we stayed behind that one night and layed outside looking up at the stars (even though it was freezing!) and talking about the things we understood that not many other people do. And the kindness and patience you always showed towards me.
Kamila Kasparian- Wow, you are so special to me! My favorite memory is all the times we went to the temple together. But especially when that nice temple worker thought we were sisters because we showed so much love towards each other. :)
Heather Hansen- I loved all the times we spent together. I always felt so happy when we could hang out. My favorite memory with you is when I was talking with you one night and at that moment I realized I was a good person. It was a HUGE moment for me and I think you helped me reach that realization. Plus you always made me feel like such a great person! Oh and watching and making home videos!!
Lindsey Dompier- Dompy Jo!!! I love the day you took the time to take me to the mall because it was my wedding anniversary and I was having a crappy day remembering it all. I loved singing in the car with you and running errands with you!
Candice Schlosser- You were there from the start! My first friend at Monticello who was a girl. You just accepted me from the beginning but that special summer we spent will always be in my memories.
Lindsey Watts- The most tender memory of you is when I was having such a hard time. All the other girls lost patience with me but you stayed behind and said a prayer for me. You cried while you were saying it and I knew you really cared about me and loved me.
Chelsea Dong- You put up with so much!!! I was such a wreck then but you were still my friend! I can't believe it, looking back on how messed up I was. I loved watching movies with you and singing to Gwen Stefani!!!
Melissa Chaston (Nath)- My favorite memory of you is walking around together and talking. And swinging on Y-front's porch and talking. We always had such great conversations. And painting together!
Kaitlen Schlosser- Swimming every day and watching cheesy movies together! And doing nothing together! And playing yahtzee!!!
Dara Kruman- Singing lullabies and primary songs with you. You singing lullabies to me to help me sleep. Talking about life in the late hours of the night.
Katy Stovall- Playing Nertz! Singing musicals! Swimming! Kneaders! Disny movies! All of our memories together are fun ones. :)
Rachel Caldwell- That night not so long ago when I was having a HARD NIGHT! And I texted you and we went to Spoon it Up and as I confessed my imperfections you told me we weren't so different! That night was just what I needed!!!
Ashley Wilkinson- You and me have alot in common. We are both sensitive and emotional! My favorite memory with you is when we went to the hot springs. Well we tried! And just dancing with you and having fun together! The night we danced for three hours in someone else's kitchen!
Lisa Heniger- I didn't really know you but something told me I should move in with you!!! Even though I didn't right away, we eventually became roommates and great friends. My favorite memory with you is our road trip to Disneyland and all our conversations about boys!!!! And making muddy buddies!!! Yum.
Rachel Fisher- My favorite memory with you is buzzing your head! Actually I just love how passionate you are about life and how you always make me feel so loved because you love so freely. Plus you always have a good story to tell and you are FUN!
Okay, that's not everyone so I hope no one reads this and feels super left out. But those are the people that came to mind tonight. Also these are all people that I lived with for some period of time besides Ashley (we hung out all the time) Kamila (you were already married and we were at work together alot!), and Rachel Caldwell(I just love you!).I love you all and I'll never forget you!!! Leave a comment of your favorite memory with me!!!! (Please!)

Love forever, Mary Cherry Woodall