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Women Worth Knowing

Women Worth Knowing: Meet LynDee

the outside lane

LynDee is my cousin-in-law. When we first met (at my brother-in-law’s birthday party at Joe’s Pizza), she was the editor of a local newspaper, so she always seemed to know everything that was going on. That was one of the best parts of being around her–any topic, and LynDee can make it interesting. She has always been welcoming and warm, and is a true loyalist. Maybe it’s the journalist in her, but she is careful to get both sides of a story (or as much of both sides as possible) before making a decision.

Nine years ago, when we met, there were no babies and LynDee was a career woman par none. Avery came along a month after B and I were married, and changed the Walker World entirely. She shifted gears from the newspaper industry to the just-as-hard-maybe-harder-definitely-less-celebrated job of Stay At Home Mom, and the family moved from Texas to a coastal state. I can’t tell you how easy the changes were for her, but I can tell you that when Avery was three years old, she had better table manners than a lot of adults, and was already a confident, happy, obviously well loved little girl.

Because of geography, I haven’t been able to be around LynDee as much as I would choose, which means I haven’t gotten to meet Gabe or Kennedy, yet. And I haven’t gotten to pick her brain about all the interesting things in her world. A couple of years ago, LynDee decided to give Weight Watchers a try. The program worked very well for her, so well that she is a WW counselor now. I think that’s all really interesting. From journalism to thankless job of domestic engineering, to counseling women and men on how to have a healthy relationship with their food.

You’re going to like her, and you’re going to wish you got to spend more time with her, too. Meet LynDee.

Name: LynDee Walker
Age Range: 30-35
Preferred Job Title: Preferred? Goddess. But generally, it’s “Mom.” Which is pretty close.
Industry: Mostly, trying to raise good kids. But also health and fitness, and occasionally writing.

Who are you?
I am Avery and Gabe and Kennedy’s mom, and I’m Justin’s wife, but I am NOT “Mrs. Walker.” It has nothing to do with age – I’m 33 and proud of it. I’m just too laid back for all that “Mrs.” nonsense. I’m just LynDee – “Miss LynDee,” or “Auntie LynDee” to my friends’ kiddoes if their parents insist on some sign that I’m an elder. I’m a writer when I have time, and an amateur landscaper who still kills most of the things I plant. I’m the mom who springs her daughter from school early on a gorgeous February day to go to the park, and the wife who slow dances barefoot in the kitchen while the pasta overcooks because it’s the only three minutes I’ll have alone with my husband all day. And I’m still the girl who likes to roll all the windows down and sing along with Reba (or Madonna, or Janis) on a beautiful day – but now I don’t care when strangers give me the raised eyebrows at a stoplight.

You work for Weight Watchers, and have had great success following their program. What is the biggest difference the program has made in your thinking?
About food? That it’s all about balance. Flexible restraint is the key to lasting weight management – there’s nothing I “can’t have,” as long as I work it in the right way.

About myself? Most days, I am comfortable in my own skin, which is still a relatively new thing for me. I battled my weight all my life – and I was never happy with how I looked, which translated into not being happy being me. Which sucked. Do I think I have the perfect figure because I lost 100 pounds and can fit into a size 6? Pfffttt. Hardly. But I used to think I would. I also used to think all my problems would magically disappear if I was just thinner. Losing the weight taught me that no one is perfect – and it’s OK for me to love myself, whether I’m a size 6 or a 26.

Raising girls in the 21st Century…what are you doing to shore up their self-confidence against the constant barrage of media?
When I’m not worrying that there’s just no way to do enough, I tell my girls how beautiful they are. I think in this case, repetition is the greatest enemy of doubt. We shield them from the types of TV and movies that objectify women, and we don’t allow our daughters to dress like baby Britneys because other kids do. We also encourage them to excel in school and at sports – my oldest is an honor-roll student who plays baseball on an otherwise all-boy team and dives competitively – so that while they know they’re beautiful, they also know that there are more important things in life than the way they look.

As a journalist–because once a journalist, always a journalist–what do you think is the future of informative media?
The Internet. As sad as I am to see it happening, traditional newspapers are dying a slow death, and while I think TV news will live a while longer, it’s losing ground every year. More and more people, myself included, get their news via laptop or smartphone because it’s just easier. I think the most important thing for the industry is to make sure that the race to post new information first doesn’t cause fact-checking and accuracy to die with print.

Describe your family: Organized chaos. Myself, my husband, three young children, and one toy Pomeranian learn, laugh, squabble, play, and love in a suburban home complete with a picket fence. And I wouldn’t trade one molecule or millisecond of any of it.

What does the first hour of your day look like?
Fuzzy. I am not a morning person. I am blessed to live in a school zone where my daughter doesn’t have to be on the bus until 9, so my day begins at about 8:15, when I sit up and swear because I overslept again. I come downstairs and shove a cup under the coffee maker that has been “ready to brew” since 7:30, then add some splenda to my Green Mountain Colombian Fair Trade Select and take a few sips. Then I’m ready to help Avery (who has been up since 7 so she could say “bye” to daddy and usually gotten herself dressed) brush and style her hair, make her breakfast, pack her lunch, and check on the still-sleeping babies before I walk her two doors down to the bus stop. We talk about what she’s looking forward to about her day. I kiss her and nod as she forbids me to leave before the bus is out of sight. I wave as the bus heads for school, and smile because she’s busy with her friends and she doesn’t see. I creep back into the house and make another cup of coffee, then call a friend or check my email before the babies wake and my day really starts to fly.

The last hour?
Cuddly. I settle into the glider and feed Kennedy, then rock her to sleep. I often sit with her for longer than necessary, studying her perfect little nose and rosy little lips and trying to commit to memory the way she looks as she sleeps in my arms, because I know from experience that she will, indeed, grow way too fast.

What makes you feel successful?
Little things. Kennedy’s face lighting up when I come in from a meeting. Avery’s grin when she nails a dive she’s been working on or finishes an upper-grade math worksheet and gets most of the answers right. Gabriel skipping from “s” to “y” in the ABC song because “s” and “x” sound similar, and then throwing his hands up and belting out “next time won’t you SING WITH ME?!”

What brings you joy?
All those same little things. And seeing the first buds on the Bradford Pear in the front yard that mean spring is coming. My husband, looking at me from across the room, or the backyard, or the dinner table, his expression still that of the lovestruck teenager from a decade and a half ago. When he sneaks in from work and slips his arms around my waist and whispers “hello, beautiful,” as I chop tomatoes. The children piling in bed with us to watch a movie on a Saturday night. Summer days at the pool. An Icee with the kids on a random afternoon, and a glass of wine with a good friend on an impromptu moms’ night. My azaleas blooming. Dressing up for date night. New shoes. Sunny days. Joy is in the simple things – especially when you realize that the simple things are often the most miraculous.

What women do you admire?
I sort of have a thing about First Ladies: Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama. Eleanor was smart when it wasn’t chic for a woman to be smart. Jackie was style and class and beauty – but she was also strong and determined to hold her family together through heartbreak, philandering, and tragedy. Hillary is brilliant. Michelle is graciously juggling an often-harsh media spotlight and ridiculous political environment while keeping her children as “normal” as she can and advocating for everyone’s children with her war on childhood obesity.

Closer to home, I admire my friend Pat, who has survived two battles with cancer and one with a neurological disease, but has never let illness keep her from what she loves – she just returned from a month-long cruise to continue volunteering with an animal advocacy group she founded almost 20 years ago. My friend Corby is an Air Force wife counting the days until her beloved will be stationed in Korea for a whole year, while she and their three young children move to Hawaii. I can’t imagine the strength it takes, not only to be a single mom for so long (Justin goes to Texas for a week and I’m so ready for him to come home I could burst) but to withstand the stress of having her husband in harm’s way. I’m in awe.

What do you like best about your closest friend?
That I’m always proud to tell other people “that’s my friend.” She’s a good person, with a generous heart and an always-ready ear (or shoulder). She’s funny, and smart, and a great mom who loves her kids to bits – and loves mine right along with them. She loves cheesy old movies and bad pizza (because, really – there’s better pizza, but there’s no bad pizza) and we always have a great time, whether we’re painting the proverbial town or doing nothing at all.

What do you like best about yourself?
That I’m genuine. I may not always be cool, but I’m never fake.

What advice would you give boys about girls?
Pulling hair is not a sign of affection – it’s annoying. Don’t chase the ones who won’t chase you back. When you find the right one, no one will be the pursuer – she’ll run beside you. Dance with her now and then. Hold her hand whenever you can. Bring her flowers for no reason. Tell her she’s beautiful every day. Tell her you love her more often than that. And always hug her when she cries, even though you think she’s nuts for crying at the diaper commercial.

How do you overcome adversity?
First, I cry. Then, if there’s information to be had, I gather it all and organize and process it. I ask questions, and I pray, and I make a plan. Then I pray that the plan works. Then I find a way to make it work.

How do you want to be remembered?
As a good wife, and a loving mother, and a leader who helped people see that they could do something they thought they couldn’t. As an occasional writer who wrote something really profound once. As a loyal friend, and an amateur gardener who finally figured out how to grow a hydrangea. And as the great-grandma who still danced in the kitchen, and celebrated her 90th birthday by riding Space Mountain with her husband.

Family, Lancient History

Ki-Rin and Catfish

the outside lane

My father and I were estranged for several years. During that period, around 1999, my mother brought my grandparents from Georgia to Texas to live with her, and I moved back home to help her with them. My uncle, Mom’s younger brother, would come visit a couple of times a year and spent one to two weeks really getting things done around the house. He helped with repairs, or installations, spent time with my grandparents, freeing up my mom from her round the clock duties, and was just a general blessing.

The last physical gift my father gave me before he left home, and before our estrangement, was a little figurine. I got it for Christmas in 1992. That was the last gift he actually went out and bought for me, though he has always put a check in my birthday and Christmas cards. It meant something to me, though, because it was a little touchstone once he was gone. It was a goofy little thing, and I wasn’t sure why he picked it for me, but I did love it.

On one of my uncle’s trips, I asked him for and received some very good advice. It was advice I wished I could have gotten from my father, but that just wasn’t to be. I didn’t know how to thank him, and since I am a crier (and an ugly crier at that), I was afraid to say words and then melt down into howls. So, I wrote him a thank you note, and waited until he was walking out the door for his flight, and I handed him the note and I gave him the figurine. I think. I may have just stuffed it in his bag. I don’t remember that. I know he told me that he didn’t understand, but that it was obviously a treasure to me, so he would treat it that way, but I don’t remember if that was in person or on the phone. It’s kind of funny that I blocked that–I think I was traumatized by my own levels of emotion. I just couldn’t think of any other way to express my appreciation, even though it made no sense. It was just a couple of years ago that I told my aunt what the thing actually was to me.

I’m not really good at face-to-face serious emotion. At least not when I am feeling it deeply. That’s why I write. I can write anything and that’s okay. You can’t see the ugly cry when I just write it down–and I cry because I love people, and I cry because I’m happy, and I cry because I am fortunate, and I cry because Mariah Carey’s boyfriend got gunned down in Glitter before he could see that she had truly made it. I just cry.

I’ve thought about it from time to time (most of the time feeling embarrassed at how silly it must have seemed to have this grown woman passing off a uni-dragon with glass eyes), and I’ve checked the internet to see how the twee little guy is doing in the rest of the world. He’s pretty popular. That makes me happy.

It makes me very happy to know that the little guy is with my uncle, a man who truly deserves to be acknowledged and appreciated, and even if no one else ever really gets it, I know what it means.

Some things going on peripheral to my world have me thinking about what we give freely, and what we expect in return. When we give, it has to be without strings, or it isn’t a gift.

If you go down to the river with some cheese and you throw it into the water for the fish, that’s a gift. Once it hits the water, it’s gone. You won’t see it anymore, and you won’t ever really know what happened to it. You don’t need to know. It was a gift. You’re happy and the fish is happy.

If you go down to the river with some cheese attached to a hook on a line and pole, and you throw that into the water for the fish, that’s not a gift. You’re happy, but some catfish is going to end up flopping on the end of your line in great misunderstanding.

Same cheese. Same lake. Same fish. Very different outcome. One does something for you and the fish. One does something only for you.

What are our motivations? What are our intentions?

Are we giving, or are we fishing?

Health, Women Worth Knowing

Probing Thoughts

the outside lane

A couple of years ago, my mother went in for her first routine colonoscopy and was diagnosed with colo-rectal cancer. Today, with 3/4s less colon than she had in 2008, she is alive and kicking, and otherwise very healthy. I am certainly thankful. Her ordeal is one of the reasons I have my own anal probe scheduled for Monday.

I am also having an endoscopy to check out the damage of 40 years worth of reflux action. That should be really exciting. I’ll be honest that I’m a little worried about that one. I have a badly deviated septum, which causes me to be a bit of a mouthbreather sometimes, and I don’t like the idea that my secondary airway will be impacted. (Now that Thor is old enough not to fracture my nose with his head (again), I should get that septum fixed. I should also get my upper wisdom teeth out. It’s amazing how much of my own health I have put off, or straight up neglected in the past six years. From the time I got pregnant, it all went on hold. My world has been completely Thorcentric. If it didn’t have to do with him, it didn’t get looked at.)

My mom is taking the day off to schlep me around to surgery centers, and has promised she won’t let me go shopping while still under the influence of anesthesia. She was always pretty funny after her c-scopies–all five of them. I hope I’m at least amusing. I am just twisted enough that I am considering doing a video post, but then I might tell you things you don’t want to know.

I mean, I will end up telling you those things anyway. I always do. But probably best that I do it outside the influence of a medication, huh?

In other news, I have several WWK profiles in the pipeline, and hope to start posting those next week. I know some really incredible women. I have also reached out to women I don’t know, and have had great responses from those who…responded. No one has said no. Some people just haven’t answered at all. Of course, I am reaching out to women who are incredibly busy. I take that back. I’ve had one no. But that was a fashion journalist celebrity, and I got a very kind response from her PR flack, saying that the project was too small for her consideration. That sounds harsh, but it really was a kind response.

I’ll just keep plugging away.

Uncategorized

Julie Anne Rhodes’ Interview with Marianne Williamson

the outside lane

Republished from Jewels from the Roving Stove, with gracious permission from Julie Anne Rhodes. This is Julie Anne’s interview with Marianne Williamson. Julie Anne has been writing about how Marianne’s instruction has changed the way she looks at food and the relationship she has with it. I know that a lot of you have a love-hate relationship with your dinner plates, and thought you’d like to read this. Remember to visit Julie Anne’s site, and put it on your RSS feed. She offers great recipes, heaping helpings of inspiration, and shares her photo album, which is full of amazing fashion.

Thursday, December 16, 2010
An Interview with Marianne Williamson
I’ve lived in pain-tinged silence over my weight, both thin and heavy, most of my life. I know food is not the enemy, but what I didn’t understand was just how cruel and abusive all the diets, binges, and self ridicule have truly been – that until I start working on healing my soul, the turmoil will continue no matter how well versed in healthy eating and exercise I am.

Julie Anne Rhodes

When my friend Marianne Williamson told me about the book she was writing last summer – I couldn’t wait to pry an advance copy from her hands, because I knew I was ready to heal. I was ecstatic to learn many of you felt the same way. Sharing our experiences while working through the lessons has given me enormous inspiration and support, and I hope it is mutual.

As you know, I’ve found the course slow going, often uncomfortable, yet infinitely rewarding. My dysfunctional eating habits appear to have realigned to my own biological on/off switch, therefore I am convinced my healthiest weight will naturally follow. I am not one that always follows a spiritual path with ease and grace, so I had some more questions for Marianne:

Marianne Williamson

JA: I know you wrote the book for a friend (it is dedicated to Oprah), but where did these incredibly deep insights on weight problems come from, and when/how did you first make the spiritual connection?

MW: In A COURSE IN MIRACLES, it’s written that we think we have many different problems but we really only have one: our separation from God. I’ve known that’s true for a long time — not just intellectually but viscerally. No matter what my problems have been in life, the one constant there was me — my thoughts, my energy, my behavior and so forth.

I’ve had a long career in applying spiritual principles to practical day-to-day issues in our lives, and weight loss is just one more issue. When any area of your life becomes a challenge, one of the most significant places to deal with it is inside your own mind. I’ve seen over and over — not only in my own life but in the lives of those I’ve worked with — that changing your mind about something can absolutely work a miracle.

In my own life, I was a compulsive overeater from about 17 to 27, and it stopped when I started doing A Course in Miracles. Once I learned to reach my hand beyond the wall of protection I had built in front of my heart, the wall simply disappeared. I wrote this book because I wanted others who have the same problem that I had to experience the miracle that I experienced.

JA: I struggled a little with all the religious terminology in the beginning. Are you referring to a specific religion, or what is your intention when you use words like God and Divine Mind?

MW: I use the word God the way it’s used in Alcoholics Anonymous: as God as you understand Him. The words don’t matter, but the concept does. And without the concept — that there’s a Higher Power that can do for you what you cannot do for yourself, then you can’t receive the healing because your mind isn’t open to receive it.

As far as the phrase Divine Mind is concerned, this concept — in Christianity, it’s the Holy Spirit — means there is literally a force of consciousness that, if consciously and willingly invited by you to do so, has been authorized by God to help you change your mind! I mean, really. How profound is that.

JA: This has been an amazing and often surprising journey of self-realization for me. Many past experiences I thought I had processed and released reared their ugly heads again. Why does this happen, and when do you know you have truly come to terms with an emotional wound?

MW: Any kind of healing is a journey. It’s a process more than a destination. And the healing often involves sadness, because it’s a kind of detox process: things have to come up in order to be released. We’ve all experienced this kind of thing: you think you’re over some loss, and then one day it hits you again like a giant wave. That’s why community is important: so that on any given day when you feel that a burden is just too hard to bear, angels can appear to you in the form of other human beings who understand and care.

This isn’t about ever coming to the point where you know all your issues are handled once and for all. That would be total enlightenment, and I can’t say I know about that one yet. But I know that you can get to the point where self-sabotaging, dysfunctional thought and behavior in an area become the exception and not the rule, and if you’ve known enough suffering in your life then that right there is a miracle.

JA: Do we need to consciously know the source of every unconscious wound before God can heal them?

MW: Yes and no. On the one hand, you don’t have to know the specific source of your pain, and yet you do have to acknowledge the twisted thoughts that the pain produced inside you. In A Course in Miracles, it says that God cannot take from us what we won’t release to him.

For instance, let’s say that a parent abandoned you. What matters is not simply the abandonment; what matters is that because of it you became a very needy person, and now that neediness is poisoning your relationships. Having been taught it wasn’t safe to lean on the person that in the natural scheme of things you should be able to lean on, you now lean on people or things – for the overeater, on food – in an inappropriate way. So it only matters that you identify the source of the pain in order to be able to identify the real wound, and then you can apply the medicine that heals it.

JA: I made a commitment to surrender to these lessons, because it makes such logical sense to me that the spiritual aspect of weight loss is what has been missing in my life. Some of the lessons are easy for me, and extremely emancipating, but others I don’t feel as connected to. How do you recommend dealing with any resistance one encounters on the way?

MW: I think you should take it all as lightly as you can. If a lesson doesn’t speak to you, I’d just move on. The last thing I’d want you to feel is guilty. How can you heal a problem that is basically a form of self-abuse with more self-abuse?

When you eat unwisely, you’re being unkind to yourself. You might think otherwise at the time, of course; you might think that that hot fudge sundae is comforting you. But when you realize all the toxic chemicals that that sundae is dumping into your body, you realize that it’s anything but comforting.

In other words, you have self-abuse confused with self-care. That’s why the last thing you should say to yourself if you’re having trouble with the lessons is, “I’m bad! I’m not doing it right!” If the course is anything, it’s a course in learning to be kind to yourself. And once you really get there, you won’t want to abuse yourself, and you’ll be very clear that a consistent pattern of unwise eating is a form of self-abuse.

JA: Do you need to agree with and “feel” every lesson, or is action enough?

Boy, you ask good questions. The answer to that is simple: action is enough. And as it says in the Workbook of A Course in Miracles about the lessons there, “Remember this: you need not believe the ideas, you need not accept them, and you need not even welcome them. Some of them you may actively resist. None of that will matter, or decrease their efficacy.” I love that.

JA: There was a question posted on my blog to the effect of why do we torture ourselves with feelings of “not being enough”, or not “having enough? ” I answered to the best of my ability, but we would both like to know your thoughts?

MW: You’re “enough” for one reason and one reason only: because God created you and God does not create junk. No one’s personality is totally “enough;” who among us has never made a mistake? But we’re enough because we are children of God, and the essence within us is divine and eternally innocent. The point of walking a spiritual path is to unravel the thinking that you are your resume, and replace it with the absolute knowledge that your spirit, and not your physical self, is the essence of who you are.

JA: As you acknowledge, an alarming percentage of people struggling with weight have been sexually abused. Do you believe that spiritual practice alone is enough to heal that kind of fiercely deep wound?

MW: In A Course in Miracles, it says that religion and psycho-therapy are at their peak the same thing. Any fierce wound calls for a spiritual healing, but sometimes spiritual healing has a distinctly secular face. Spiritual healing, psychotherapy….sometimes there is no difference except in words.

JA: What would life look like from the perspective of a person who’s healed their inner wounds and discovered spiritual peace? How do you know when you are there?

MW: You laugh more; you are triggered less; you feel serene and act serenely; you attract more abundance and harmony and peace. We’ve all been there; the point is that we haven’t been there often enough or consistently enough. And that’s the goal.

JA: Why does spiritual practice focused in one area of our lives have so much impact on others? Is it just that we are more attuned to recognizing miracles when they manifest?

MW: You’re one person, and there’s no actual fence between your work life and your private life, or your finances and your marriage. Those categories are simply concepts. As you get more peaceful in one area, the healing can’t but seep into others. Doing this course will affect not only the weight you carry on your body but the weight you carry on your mind; and that will have an extraordinary effect on every area of your life.

JA: If you could share only one lesson in the book, which would it be?

MW: I love the last lesson, where angels come into your house and clean out your cupboards and your closets … and then what happens when they see you.

JA: I’ve bought this book as holiday gifts for many people I care about, but I’m not sure how well received it will be. Do you have any advice on making it clear it is given out of love, not judgment?

MW: Never risk hurting someone’s feelings. Maybe it’s a better gift for after the New Year!

JA: Please tell us more about the upcoming A Course in Weight Loss Retreats you are doing. Why you have joined forces with the people you have chosen to involve?

MW: Tal Ronen, the “Conscious Cook” will be there. So will yoga teacher Tracee Stanley, and therapist Grace Gedeon. It’s very, very exciting.

JA: What is the goal of the retreat?

MW: Three days of intensive work, baby! You’ll be sick of me by the time you leave!:)

JA: Do you feel the A Course in Weight Loss will be more effective in a group setting?

MW: That’s not for me to say. Everyone has their own way of doing these things. Some people will want to be alone with the book; other will want to work with others. Learning to listen to yourself and to honor your own rhythms is an important part of the process.

Julie Anne Rhodes today

JA: Thank you for writing the book, and sharing your insight with us. For me, the lessons are not merely about weight loss and a healthy relationship with food; it is about learning what makes me tick, knowing exactly who I am, forgiving myself for transgressions of the past, appreciating the woman I am today, and always treating myself with the same kindness and respect I would afford others. I feel more comfortable in my own skin, no matter what my weight happens to be, than ever before. What a gift!

Republished from Jewels from the Roving Stove, with gracious permission from Julie Anne Rhodes.