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Thank you for sharing your experience in such an honest and straightforward way. It is a real relief to get a dose of reality when everyone else out there seems to be either advocating it or demonizing it.
— Kellsie
There is something special about you and your ability to communicate "our" fears, situations, realities, etc. I feel like youve tapped into my brain and pulled my thoughts out. It's kinda funny, for never having met you in person, I feel like I've known you all my life!
— Leilani N.
You help more than you could possibly know.
— Dorothy
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Through Thick and Thin #10 (November 28, 2002)
My Gratitude Attitude at Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, since it gives me an annual opportunity to count all of my blessings and to re-cultivate the gratitude attitude that I strive to carry throughout my daily life. Here's what I'm most grateful for this Thanksgiving, just about exactly one month after my WLS:
- I'm grateful that I survived my surgery, that I'm healing well and that I'm well on my way to healthful fitness. The scale tells me I've lost more than 40 pounds in this first month. The tape documents that I've lost more than 2 feet worth of inches around my neck, chest, waist, thighs and ankles. I can feel my body reshaping and transforming. I'm enjoying a vigorous 1.5 mile walk every day. I don't think much about food, and sometimes I even forget to eat. I'm grateful for all these things – and for the medical folks who worked so skillfully to help me harvest these miracles.
- I'm grateful that I have a partner, Kari, who has nursed me – in every sense of that word – through a very difficult first month of recovery. In some ways I'm a model patient: doing my daily exercise; sticking to the prescribed liquid food plan; etc. In most other ways, however, I'm a stubborn, negative, pessimistic, depressive, helpless and hopeless, impatient patient. And Kari has been the one who has comforted and cared, nurtured and nourished, listened and laughed, cheered and cajoled, and otherwise done whatever was required to get me to listen to my body when it's been telling me that it's not yet ready to return to work. I have fought her, every day for one month, wanting to work and perform responsibilities that my body has not yet been ready to undertake. I'm so grateful that Kari understands me better than I understand myself, and that she's somehow been able to penetrate my maze of rationalizations, denials, pretenses and ignorance so that I've taken the time I've needed to heal and restore.
- I'm grateful for the inexpressible joy I experienced, two nights ago, when we went through my entire wardrobe and donated 95% of it to our local charity thrift shop. It was not just the joy of seeing-feeling-believing that my clothes were too big for me; it was also the joy of trying on those gorgeous shirts, pants, sweaters, jackets and suits that I had prudently boxed up and stored over the years in my insane hope that maybe someday I would lose the weight. What a sublime feeling to feel the formerly unfitting clothes hug and caress my body as if they had been hand-tailored! How handsome and trim, how attractive and thin I felt as I modeled my "new" old wardrobe and hung it proudly in my closet. And I'm grateful, in advance, for the day not too distant when these clothes will hang from me like a parachute draped from a tree and I'll be needing – and ready – to buy “off the rack” some stunning new clothes.
- I'm grateful for the community of people like you, especially the posties, who have been there for me, every step of the way, to inform, encourage and support me on my WLS path. And I'm grateful for all of the newbies, who give me a reason to keep on writing and sharing my experience, strength and hope.
- I'm grateful to my God and to the Universe for giving me this second chance to transform my body and thereby my health, fitness, comfort and living experience. And for helping me to really, truly get it that using WLS to resolve my morbid obesity problem is a logical, rational and entirely appropriate strategy, utilizing an increasingly safe and effective medical procedure. And that this is most certainly not “taking the easy way out”, not a source of embarrassment or shame, not a badge of weakness or failure.
- I'm grateful for the technology that allows me to share my thoughts and feelings with you, and to develop so many mutually accepting and supporting relationships with others like myself.
- I'm grateful for my courage in choosing this path, and for my ability to listen to and trust my “still small voice within” that has moved me to and down this path.
Best wishes to you and yours for a Thanksgiving full of gratitude, peace, acceptance, love and restoration.
Glenn
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Click here if you have a “fruit and vegetable problem” to see if my solution (see Through Thick and Thin #19) will work for you.
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