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Saturday, April 24, 2021
Thursday, October 15, 2020
Theresa is at Billy’s … well, by then she was outside Billy’s.
Theresa is at Billy’s … well, by then she was outside Billy’s. She said, through hysteria and sobbing, that the chemo had made her constipated, horribly constipated. And the toilet had clogged. It was the middle of the night, and she had to ask Billy to help her. He had hidden the plunger. Plunging the toilet was on the seemingly endless list of things Theresa was not allowed to do. Her world was growing smaller by the day, married to Billy. He had convinced her that she was incapable of even the simplest tasks. She was not allowed to mow the lawn (he was afraid she would break the lawn mower). She was not allowed to light the oven. (He explained that it was very old, and perhaps, dangerous.) She was not allowed to drive most places, he took her and then brought her home again. He cooked the meals, well, she would say, I don’t really like to cook, anyway. He bought the groceries. Since she had stopped working, he had forced her to drop her health insurance – I mean, why pay for two health insurance policies, right? And he had her cash out her life insurance when the company offered. For a crazy man, he was quite sly. And slowly, very slowly, he was isolating her from those who loved her. He was failing, of course, but only because brain cancer demands an audience. Does that make sense? It is simply to loud to be ignored or denied or isolated. And so, in the end, Billy failed, even at his worst efforts.
Anyway, she woke him that night and asked him to help her in the bathroom with the overflowing, backed-up toilet. I imagine she had soaked up what she could with paper towels and tissues, heavy with exhaustion, trying in vain to fix it herself. She said he followed her into the small bathroom and flew into a rage. A horrible, brutal rage. He stood there, shaking, and then threw the plunger at her screaming at her that she was an animal. “Why don’t you dig a hole in the yard and shit in it like a DOG???” She said the argument, if you could call it that, never seemed to end. Finally, he had thrown her out the heavy metal screen door and shoved her down the winding steep cement steps, then he threw her chemotherapy medications out after her, pausing to open the bottles first, so that the pills flew all over the lawn, and finally, with her crawling around the lawn in her nightgown, trying to pluck the various colored pills out of the dirt and grass, he threw out her wig.
I can see her there, in my minds eye, sobbing silently, trying to gather as much of her medicine as she could. Maybe putting it into the shell of her wig, since her nightgown would have no pockets. I know that she has no underwear on, because she called me from her car when she left there, weeping, and after narrating it all, she said, “I don’t even have underwear on.”
Theresa was a person of enormous dignity. More than that, really. She was graceful. She was almost holy, if any of us can really approach holiness. She had a sweetness that was otherworldly, and a humanity that was breathtaking. To imagine her, doggy-style on their front lawn, stripped of her hair and her safety, of her health and her strength… to hear her explain that he then stood inside the house, and through the open old-fashioned slatted windows on the porch, started screaming in acrimonious insanity, “Yew don’t live here. This is myyyyyy house. Get out. Yew are NOTHING. Yew are disgusting. Get out. This is my house.” Over and over and over. Well, I guess words can’t really say how I felt about what that did to her.
She came to us that day. To Tommy and I. I suppose she was too ashamed to tell her family what was happening with Billy. Theresa, I would say on the phone, …Theresa, Billy is a spousal abuser. Do you understand that? He simply isn’t hitting you yet. But make no mistake, this is escalating. If you choose to stay with Billy, you need to have an escape plan, now. And you need to leave BEFORE things reach this pitch. You need to get out way before the rage begins. The minute you sense it happening. Do you understand? She didn’t answer at first, except to say that she knew he had a problem before they were married. That she shouldn’t have married him, knowing he had a drinking problem. Terry, knowing intellectually that someone has a drinking problem and LIVING with that insanity are such different things. You simply could not KNOW this until you lived with him. Where ARE you? Tell me where you are, and we will come and get you. But she drove to us. I suppose she needed to have her car, to have some sense of control.
Billy. It’s funny, all this time later. I only miss Billy. We have no anger toward him; we never really did. We simply understood that he was insane. We also sensed his true love for Theresa. How did we reconcile that to what he did? I don’t know. Somehow, both Tommy and I just didn’t judge him.
What does it matter, anyway. She is gone. She is probably as gone to Billy as she is to us. I wonder if he sits, in his empty, empty house, and rails at the loneliness. I wonder if he has ever, in a drunken stupor, sat in that porch room, on her furniture, and looked at her artwork, and opened the heavy screen door of the small foyer and thrown himself down those cement steps, clutching at the grass and dirt, remembering that scene, vomiting in drunken despair into the grass, perhaps looking at it and seeing the faded, empty casings of one or two pills that she didn’t collect that day.
Anyway, she woke him that night and asked him to help her in the bathroom with the overflowing, backed-up toilet. I imagine she had soaked up what she could with paper towels and tissues, heavy with exhaustion, trying in vain to fix it herself. She said he followed her into the small bathroom and flew into a rage. A horrible, brutal rage. He stood there, shaking, and then threw the plunger at her screaming at her that she was an animal. “Why don’t you dig a hole in the yard and shit in it like a DOG???” She said the argument, if you could call it that, never seemed to end. Finally, he had thrown her out the heavy metal screen door and shoved her down the winding steep cement steps, then he threw her chemotherapy medications out after her, pausing to open the bottles first, so that the pills flew all over the lawn, and finally, with her crawling around the lawn in her nightgown, trying to pluck the various colored pills out of the dirt and grass, he threw out her wig.
I can see her there, in my minds eye, sobbing silently, trying to gather as much of her medicine as she could. Maybe putting it into the shell of her wig, since her nightgown would have no pockets. I know that she has no underwear on, because she called me from her car when she left there, weeping, and after narrating it all, she said, “I don’t even have underwear on.”
Theresa was a person of enormous dignity. More than that, really. She was graceful. She was almost holy, if any of us can really approach holiness. She had a sweetness that was otherworldly, and a humanity that was breathtaking. To imagine her, doggy-style on their front lawn, stripped of her hair and her safety, of her health and her strength… to hear her explain that he then stood inside the house, and through the open old-fashioned slatted windows on the porch, started screaming in acrimonious insanity, “Yew don’t live here. This is myyyyyy house. Get out. Yew are NOTHING. Yew are disgusting. Get out. This is my house.” Over and over and over. Well, I guess words can’t really say how I felt about what that did to her.
She came to us that day. To Tommy and I. I suppose she was too ashamed to tell her family what was happening with Billy. Theresa, I would say on the phone, …Theresa, Billy is a spousal abuser. Do you understand that? He simply isn’t hitting you yet. But make no mistake, this is escalating. If you choose to stay with Billy, you need to have an escape plan, now. And you need to leave BEFORE things reach this pitch. You need to get out way before the rage begins. The minute you sense it happening. Do you understand? She didn’t answer at first, except to say that she knew he had a problem before they were married. That she shouldn’t have married him, knowing he had a drinking problem. Terry, knowing intellectually that someone has a drinking problem and LIVING with that insanity are such different things. You simply could not KNOW this until you lived with him. Where ARE you? Tell me where you are, and we will come and get you. But she drove to us. I suppose she needed to have her car, to have some sense of control.
Billy. It’s funny, all this time later. I only miss Billy. We have no anger toward him; we never really did. We simply understood that he was insane. We also sensed his true love for Theresa. How did we reconcile that to what he did? I don’t know. Somehow, both Tommy and I just didn’t judge him.
What does it matter, anyway. She is gone. She is probably as gone to Billy as she is to us. I wonder if he sits, in his empty, empty house, and rails at the loneliness. I wonder if he has ever, in a drunken stupor, sat in that porch room, on her furniture, and looked at her artwork, and opened the heavy screen door of the small foyer and thrown himself down those cement steps, clutching at the grass and dirt, remembering that scene, vomiting in drunken despair into the grass, perhaps looking at it and seeing the faded, empty casings of one or two pills that she didn’t collect that day.
Friday, February 20, 2015
Clark Kent Can Kiss My Ass
A lot of wonderful things have started to happen since I left my false identity and ripped off my disguise (mild-mannered secretary). To begin with, I write every single day. I feel like that song, “If I had a hammer.” I write in the morning, I write on line at the grocery store, I write on my blackberry and email it to myself so I can write some more at home.
I have thrown away my purple fringed business suit (no kidding) and 2-inch pumps, and one-word-at-a-time, I am making a super-hero outfit with a thousand pockets for stories and an endless supply of bullet-proof ink.
This is not the only dream to come true for me since leaving behind a few nightmares and villains; if everything goes okay, I will begin the process of finishing my degree in September. (I have a 4.0 and never finished.) I’m not bragging here, if you know me at all, that’s just not my nature – but I am reminding myself that I was good at school and I loved it. Two great reasons to go back and finish.
A few other dreams? Well, probably the biggest dream is that I am fully participatory in my own life. To be honest, working in the city was killing me long before someone stuck a knife in my back. I was gone at 6am and got back at 8pm if I was lucky. I would call my eight-year-old to say, “Have a good day,” and pray to get home in time to tuck her into bed. I missed every single cupcake birthday she ever had at school. Other things suffered as well. Since I was only home on weekends, they became my religion. It was me and my daughter time, which left nothing for friends or anything else. So there was a lot of lemonade in the lemons life handed me when I left my career.
And over the course of a few months, I have definitely landed on the other side of ”there.” Now I still don’t have words to explain what “there” is, but I do know that the childlike pitch to my voice is gone. Maybe you know women like me – forty-year-olds with the ingénue of a little girl. It’s charming, but underneath, without a doubt, that woman is terrified. I know because I lived it. Most of all, I was afraid that you might not like me. I know that sounds crazy at my age, but it is the truth. I had learned to charm and cajole and be kind and smart and do anything I could to be absolutely sure you would like me. Even … if I did NOT like you.
There is no explaining the process of letting that particular disguise go. But week after week, assignment after assignment, it is definitely gone. Sometimes it takes a minute; I still make every effort to be warm and gracious. But after a while, I remember to stop and listen; to use my late-blooming discernment and stand back and decide if I want to use my energy on this particular situation. And if not, I charmingly fade into the crowd and take the nicest, funniest, sexiest, most charming woman in the room with me.
If you have any questions, you can definitely reach out to me, but you may have to come to Monroe and find my sweet gorgeous ass sliding across Mombasha Lake in that magical canoe.
Love always,
Mary Agnes Antonopoulos (Mary Vetell)
Freelance Writer and Spectacular, Uncommon Woman
I have thrown away my purple fringed business suit (no kidding) and 2-inch pumps, and one-word-at-a-time, I am making a super-hero outfit with a thousand pockets for stories and an endless supply of bullet-proof ink.
This is not the only dream to come true for me since leaving behind a few nightmares and villains; if everything goes okay, I will begin the process of finishing my degree in September. (I have a 4.0 and never finished.) I’m not bragging here, if you know me at all, that’s just not my nature – but I am reminding myself that I was good at school and I loved it. Two great reasons to go back and finish.
A few other dreams? Well, probably the biggest dream is that I am fully participatory in my own life. To be honest, working in the city was killing me long before someone stuck a knife in my back. I was gone at 6am and got back at 8pm if I was lucky. I would call my eight-year-old to say, “Have a good day,” and pray to get home in time to tuck her into bed. I missed every single cupcake birthday she ever had at school. Other things suffered as well. Since I was only home on weekends, they became my religion. It was me and my daughter time, which left nothing for friends or anything else. So there was a lot of lemonade in the lemons life handed me when I left my career.
And over the course of a few months, I have definitely landed on the other side of ”there.” Now I still don’t have words to explain what “there” is, but I do know that the childlike pitch to my voice is gone. Maybe you know women like me – forty-year-olds with the ingénue of a little girl. It’s charming, but underneath, without a doubt, that woman is terrified. I know because I lived it. Most of all, I was afraid that you might not like me. I know that sounds crazy at my age, but it is the truth. I had learned to charm and cajole and be kind and smart and do anything I could to be absolutely sure you would like me. Even … if I did NOT like you.
There is no explaining the process of letting that particular disguise go. But week after week, assignment after assignment, it is definitely gone. Sometimes it takes a minute; I still make every effort to be warm and gracious. But after a while, I remember to stop and listen; to use my late-blooming discernment and stand back and decide if I want to use my energy on this particular situation. And if not, I charmingly fade into the crowd and take the nicest, funniest, sexiest, most charming woman in the room with me.
If you have any questions, you can definitely reach out to me, but you may have to come to Monroe and find my sweet gorgeous ass sliding across Mombasha Lake in that magical canoe.
Love always,
Mary Agnes Antonopoulos (Mary Vetell)
Freelance Writer and Spectacular, Uncommon Woman
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Signposts To The Virulent Sky
The virulent sky passes over me, alive and moving much more quickly than seems possible.
I stand in the dimming evening light, the wind blows around me. I am beautiful. I am brilliant and joyous and feel much like that evening sky. Life is changing and folding into itself and reshaping much too fast.
A year ago, at 41, I remember thinking that life was halfway over and I had missed it, that my chances were gone. And as I followed that path of personal disappointment, I landed on one image, a pen.
You see, I didn’t need a degree or a job or a rocket ship for my dream. All I needed was a pen and paper. That’s all that I needed, and I didn’t do it. I hadn’t done it. And I didn’t know how to fix that. Forty-one years of not writing (unless under so much sorrow, or duress so unbearable, that if you read what I wrote at those times, your toes would curl).
Somehow, armed just with the shock and despair of hating the life I had created, it started to literally unravel around me. And I just stood there, tossed like the wind, steadfast in my resolve to create a different experience for the second half.
I started writing again, and before I could even completely figure out what I would do or how I would do it, I had three clients. And the whirlwind had begun.
All I ever wanted to do was write. And so now I am writing. And having discovered that anything is possible if you want it badly enough, I started looking at a whole lot of other things that I was too afraid to begin (or finish). I had no idea how to get from here to there, but I was excited to try.
And around that time, I started reading a monthly ezine from Laura Fenamore. She talked about why we DON’T claim the bodies we deserve. She talked a lot about losing weight forever. (Like half of our population, I had lost and regained at least the size of a small family.)
And as things continued to unravel exactly as they should when we stay out of their way, Laura became my mentor. She is literally a Body Image Mastery Mentor, but I think she’s a lot more than that.
I feel like Laura has the signposts to where I’m trying to go. Sometimes she’s just got an arrow (pointing into some bad neighborhoods, like unresolved relationships and pockets of avoidance and denial that must be crossed). Other times, she will stand quietly and hold up a sign that says, “Caution.” There are a load of signs in Laura’s bag of tricks: Too Fast and Too Slow, Do Not Back Up, and Rest Area up Ahead.
Everyone needs this in their lives, an objective mentor to remind them that the road ahead may be less traveled, but it isn’t an unmarked path through chaos. There are roadblocks and there are building blocks, but every step is one step closer to accepting the phenomenal woman that I suspect I may have been all along.
If you need some help building bridges and finding your way, you can call Laura Fenamore at 415-464-1234. www.LauraFenamore.com
Mary Agnes Antonopoulos
I stand in the dimming evening light, the wind blows around me. I am beautiful. I am brilliant and joyous and feel much like that evening sky. Life is changing and folding into itself and reshaping much too fast.
A year ago, at 41, I remember thinking that life was halfway over and I had missed it, that my chances were gone. And as I followed that path of personal disappointment, I landed on one image, a pen.
You see, I didn’t need a degree or a job or a rocket ship for my dream. All I needed was a pen and paper. That’s all that I needed, and I didn’t do it. I hadn’t done it. And I didn’t know how to fix that. Forty-one years of not writing (unless under so much sorrow, or duress so unbearable, that if you read what I wrote at those times, your toes would curl).
Somehow, armed just with the shock and despair of hating the life I had created, it started to literally unravel around me. And I just stood there, tossed like the wind, steadfast in my resolve to create a different experience for the second half.
I started writing again, and before I could even completely figure out what I would do or how I would do it, I had three clients. And the whirlwind had begun.
All I ever wanted to do was write. And so now I am writing. And having discovered that anything is possible if you want it badly enough, I started looking at a whole lot of other things that I was too afraid to begin (or finish). I had no idea how to get from here to there, but I was excited to try.
And around that time, I started reading a monthly ezine from Laura Fenamore. She talked about why we DON’T claim the bodies we deserve. She talked a lot about losing weight forever. (Like half of our population, I had lost and regained at least the size of a small family.)
And as things continued to unravel exactly as they should when we stay out of their way, Laura became my mentor. She is literally a Body Image Mastery Mentor, but I think she’s a lot more than that.
I feel like Laura has the signposts to where I’m trying to go. Sometimes she’s just got an arrow (pointing into some bad neighborhoods, like unresolved relationships and pockets of avoidance and denial that must be crossed). Other times, she will stand quietly and hold up a sign that says, “Caution.” There are a load of signs in Laura’s bag of tricks: Too Fast and Too Slow, Do Not Back Up, and Rest Area up Ahead.
Everyone needs this in their lives, an objective mentor to remind them that the road ahead may be less traveled, but it isn’t an unmarked path through chaos. There are roadblocks and there are building blocks, but every step is one step closer to accepting the phenomenal woman that I suspect I may have been all along.
If you need some help building bridges and finding your way, you can call Laura Fenamore at 415-464-1234. www.LauraFenamore.com
Mary Agnes Antonopoulos
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Welcome, You’re Just in Time
When I filled out my intake questionnaire to work with Laura Fenamore, the theme that came up over and over was time. What did I value? [Time with my little family and friends.] What did I want more of? [Time to write. Lazy-in-the-grass watch-the-clouds free time.] and on and on. The question that stopped me in my tracks, however, came up during our first session. It was What are you afraid of? That question stopped me. The answer hung like a noose around my neck waiting for the floor to drop – it was the unrelenting, unavoidable passage of time.
Since my husband’s first heart attack, I had felt every moment, as though I were looking into some dark, spiraling vortex. I could almost hear the ticking of the clock in the back of my head. Some nights I would wake up and sit on the edge of my bed, in the twilight from the window, and wonder how long would my life be as it is now -- with my husband and daughter? Other days I would find myself terrified of simple things like driving the car. The every-day beauty and fragility of life was killing me.
For those of you who know us, this won’t be a shock – we had definitely had a rough couple of years. We had lost our dearest friend. She died, but lost was definitely the right word – it felt like someone had come in one night and simply stolen Theresa – and no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find her. A few weeks after that, during surgery to remove two broken disks in my neck, my husband had a heart attack in the waiting room of Good Samaritan Hospital. So while the blessing of being in the hospital (which literally saved his life) was too obvious to miss, the fragility of life itself started to take my breath away. And despite all of my spiritual attempts and exercise to get past it, that clock kept ticking. Every day above ground became so potent and so beautiful that I would sometimes stand in paralyzed agony as it ticked by.
And so it was that two years later I ended up working with Laura Fenamore. The coincidence that she was a Body Image Mastery Expert and had lost 100 pounds was simply a bonus. Stop the clock in my head and help me stop hurting myself with food and inactivity? That would simply be too much to ask for.
Now to be fair, Laura thought I came to her for the latter – and I suppose I did too. But it was my unspoken, deeply hidden hope that her expertise could help me stop that clock. After all, her website says that she helps you handle paralyzing emotions. (I’m sure she meant without eating them away – but with a size 20 butt, I guess I qualified any way you looked at it.) I’m embarrassed to admit to that size, but I’m already 2 sizes smaller – and hey, when you call most people a BIG ASS, it’s a bigger insult than a dress size.
My first appointment with Laura focused a lot on time and how my fear was literally eating me alive with every pound I gained. Laura knew intuitively where to guide that conversation and what questions to ask, and she quietly picked up on something I said about my friend, Theresa. Before she died Theresa told me, “It’s just for now. It’s only right now,” and I had remembered it in a dream. Laura asked me to breath and to imagine what life would need to look like to be the life I wanted – but to be centered and perfect right now. She went on to say that losing Theresa and Tommy’s heart attack and my neck injury… that all of it was an old story. That with my fists clenched around this old story, I simply could not embrace anything else. (I wondered, silently, if I wasn’t beating myself up with those fists too.) Laura added that although my fears might be very valid, my husband was here with me and our little family of three was just fine – right now.
And quietly, almost without notice, the clock stopped ticking.
There is an irony to this story, and it is right up there with me losing pound after pound without dieting at all. It’s about the clock in our living room. Fourteen years ago, my bridal party gave me a Grandfather Clock before we were married. And somehow, day after day, year after year, it never got turned on. It’s a beautiful clock, and it’s face watched us, silently from our living room, throughout our whole marriage. But it did not mark time. It didn’t chime; it didn’t tick.
Then two days ago a wonderful man named Elan Hahn came to tune our piano, and noticing the clock, he reached up onto the top, as if he somehow knew where the key was, and explaining that he had a grandfather clock store with his brother, he began to hang the weights and attach the pendulum that had sat silently at the bottom of the locked glass door all those years.
If you stand quietly in our beautiful house on Mombasha Lake and really listen, you can hear that clock in every room. Every single hour, day and night, the house fills with chimes more beautiful and gently louder than my fear ever was. Life is here. It is right now. And halfway through it, I am learning, finally, to take care of the body I live in and live the life I deserve.
I write this blog mostly for myself, but if you have struggled with body issues or tried endlessly to lose weight, somehow working with Laura Fenamore is changing my life. I told her today that the question her clients need to ask isn’t if they can afford to work with her (you can), but if they can afford not to.
Yours truly, Mary Agnes Antonopoulos
Freelance Writer and Magnificent Woman
Contact Information:
Laura Fenamore, Body Image Mastery
http://www.laurafenamore.com/
415-464-1234
Since my husband’s first heart attack, I had felt every moment, as though I were looking into some dark, spiraling vortex. I could almost hear the ticking of the clock in the back of my head. Some nights I would wake up and sit on the edge of my bed, in the twilight from the window, and wonder how long would my life be as it is now -- with my husband and daughter? Other days I would find myself terrified of simple things like driving the car. The every-day beauty and fragility of life was killing me.
For those of you who know us, this won’t be a shock – we had definitely had a rough couple of years. We had lost our dearest friend. She died, but lost was definitely the right word – it felt like someone had come in one night and simply stolen Theresa – and no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find her. A few weeks after that, during surgery to remove two broken disks in my neck, my husband had a heart attack in the waiting room of Good Samaritan Hospital. So while the blessing of being in the hospital (which literally saved his life) was too obvious to miss, the fragility of life itself started to take my breath away. And despite all of my spiritual attempts and exercise to get past it, that clock kept ticking. Every day above ground became so potent and so beautiful that I would sometimes stand in paralyzed agony as it ticked by.
And so it was that two years later I ended up working with Laura Fenamore. The coincidence that she was a Body Image Mastery Expert and had lost 100 pounds was simply a bonus. Stop the clock in my head and help me stop hurting myself with food and inactivity? That would simply be too much to ask for.
Now to be fair, Laura thought I came to her for the latter – and I suppose I did too. But it was my unspoken, deeply hidden hope that her expertise could help me stop that clock. After all, her website says that she helps you handle paralyzing emotions. (I’m sure she meant without eating them away – but with a size 20 butt, I guess I qualified any way you looked at it.) I’m embarrassed to admit to that size, but I’m already 2 sizes smaller – and hey, when you call most people a BIG ASS, it’s a bigger insult than a dress size.
My first appointment with Laura focused a lot on time and how my fear was literally eating me alive with every pound I gained. Laura knew intuitively where to guide that conversation and what questions to ask, and she quietly picked up on something I said about my friend, Theresa. Before she died Theresa told me, “It’s just for now. It’s only right now,” and I had remembered it in a dream. Laura asked me to breath and to imagine what life would need to look like to be the life I wanted – but to be centered and perfect right now. She went on to say that losing Theresa and Tommy’s heart attack and my neck injury… that all of it was an old story. That with my fists clenched around this old story, I simply could not embrace anything else. (I wondered, silently, if I wasn’t beating myself up with those fists too.) Laura added that although my fears might be very valid, my husband was here with me and our little family of three was just fine – right now.
And quietly, almost without notice, the clock stopped ticking.
There is an irony to this story, and it is right up there with me losing pound after pound without dieting at all. It’s about the clock in our living room. Fourteen years ago, my bridal party gave me a Grandfather Clock before we were married. And somehow, day after day, year after year, it never got turned on. It’s a beautiful clock, and it’s face watched us, silently from our living room, throughout our whole marriage. But it did not mark time. It didn’t chime; it didn’t tick.
Then two days ago a wonderful man named Elan Hahn came to tune our piano, and noticing the clock, he reached up onto the top, as if he somehow knew where the key was, and explaining that he had a grandfather clock store with his brother, he began to hang the weights and attach the pendulum that had sat silently at the bottom of the locked glass door all those years.
If you stand quietly in our beautiful house on Mombasha Lake and really listen, you can hear that clock in every room. Every single hour, day and night, the house fills with chimes more beautiful and gently louder than my fear ever was. Life is here. It is right now. And halfway through it, I am learning, finally, to take care of the body I live in and live the life I deserve.
I write this blog mostly for myself, but if you have struggled with body issues or tried endlessly to lose weight, somehow working with Laura Fenamore is changing my life. I told her today that the question her clients need to ask isn’t if they can afford to work with her (you can), but if they can afford not to.
Yours truly, Mary Agnes Antonopoulos
Freelance Writer and Magnificent Woman
Contact Information:
Laura Fenamore, Body Image Mastery
http://www.laurafenamore.com/
415-464-1234
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Get your fat (gorgeous) ass in that canoe.
What will you do with your stimulus check? Will you use it to stimulate your business? Your life? Your body? A few weeks ago, in a desire to stimulate all these things, I hired a life coach. Now I need to tell you that I don’t make a six-figure income, or drive a new car. I don’t get my nails done professionally, and I don’t own a $200 purse. My point is, as I discovered after my first appointment: Life coaching is not for the rich and famous. It is for women like you and me -- everyday moms and business owners who are, quite simply, stuck.
What did stuck look like for me? Well, when I began working with my Coach, Laura Fenamore, I was at least fifty pounds overweight. Although I love a good walk, I had not taken one in weeks (maybe months). I own a beautiful canoe that I haven’t gotten into in two years. My business was good, but if I can’t get it “from here to there” by July, I’ll have to go back to a desk job. My hair needs to be dyed, my home is disorganized and I see my husband so little that I forget what he looks like some days.
A few weeks later, the picture is definitely changing. I would love to tell you that I lost fifty pounds in five weeks, like some “Biggest Loser” miracle, and that I am turning clients away at the gate – hah. What I can share is that for the first time in a long time, I am eating better and feeling better about myself. That voice that used to say terrible things to me when I caught my own reflection in the mirror (fat, lazy, old), seems to have quieted down or gone out for a walk. Other words, like voluptuous, beautiful and fun fall off of my tongue like old friends. And oddly enough, I did just take on two wonderful clients. I also, quite by accident, seem to have lost seven pounds.
I’m not sure what it is that changed. You might say that I was already “ready” when I called Laura for her free consultation and fifteen-minutes of encouragement, but I know that isn’t true. A week after our first real appointment, I had to admit that I hadn’t done any of the assignments she gave me. Not one. (I didn’t even get into the canoe.) But somewhere between the second appointment and the day after the second appointment, I got mad. I got mad that I wasn’t ready and that I didn’t know how to get ready. I got mad at all the things and all the excuses that trapped me day after day after day. I got mad at my childhood and my shitty high school and my old house and my fat ass. I got mad at Laura Fenamore for stating the obvious, that no matter how valid my reasons for not getting to the assignments might be, I had still missed the opportunity to do something right for ME. I had done everything for everyone and nothing for Mary Agnes Antonopoulos. (Sound familiar?)
Life Coaching is not therapy, although it does seem to address many core issues. What it feels like, really, is a bridge. Sometimes it is a wooden bridge over a stream. (Picture chaos on one side and a Japanese Garden on the other.) Sometimes it’s one of those rope bridges over a mile-high ravine. Whatever it is, I can clearly see Laura Fenamore standing there on the other side, sharing techniques and a custom-built plan to put the next plank into place. She doesn’t lead me across, or invite me to use her bridge (solidly built decades ago as she lost 100 pounds forever). She patiently helps me and guides me to build my own, to spot where it might be flawed or unstable, and to move forward. She invites me to get from here to there.
If my life before coaching sounds eerily familiar, well, welcome home. The simple truth is that you are not stuck. The universe keeps moving forward, and every day is a new opportunity. You don’t have to know the way or have any answers. You just have to do the next right thing.
I don’t know about other Life Coaches, but Laura gives consultations and encouragement freely to all. Don’t wait standing by that ravine for one more day. To learn more about Laura Fenamore or Body Image Mastery, call her for a free consultation at (415) 464-1234 or visit her website at http://www.laurafenamore.com/.
What did stuck look like for me? Well, when I began working with my Coach, Laura Fenamore, I was at least fifty pounds overweight. Although I love a good walk, I had not taken one in weeks (maybe months). I own a beautiful canoe that I haven’t gotten into in two years. My business was good, but if I can’t get it “from here to there” by July, I’ll have to go back to a desk job. My hair needs to be dyed, my home is disorganized and I see my husband so little that I forget what he looks like some days.
A few weeks later, the picture is definitely changing. I would love to tell you that I lost fifty pounds in five weeks, like some “Biggest Loser” miracle, and that I am turning clients away at the gate – hah. What I can share is that for the first time in a long time, I am eating better and feeling better about myself. That voice that used to say terrible things to me when I caught my own reflection in the mirror (fat, lazy, old), seems to have quieted down or gone out for a walk. Other words, like voluptuous, beautiful and fun fall off of my tongue like old friends. And oddly enough, I did just take on two wonderful clients. I also, quite by accident, seem to have lost seven pounds.
I’m not sure what it is that changed. You might say that I was already “ready” when I called Laura for her free consultation and fifteen-minutes of encouragement, but I know that isn’t true. A week after our first real appointment, I had to admit that I hadn’t done any of the assignments she gave me. Not one. (I didn’t even get into the canoe.) But somewhere between the second appointment and the day after the second appointment, I got mad. I got mad that I wasn’t ready and that I didn’t know how to get ready. I got mad at all the things and all the excuses that trapped me day after day after day. I got mad at my childhood and my shitty high school and my old house and my fat ass. I got mad at Laura Fenamore for stating the obvious, that no matter how valid my reasons for not getting to the assignments might be, I had still missed the opportunity to do something right for ME. I had done everything for everyone and nothing for Mary Agnes Antonopoulos. (Sound familiar?)
Life Coaching is not therapy, although it does seem to address many core issues. What it feels like, really, is a bridge. Sometimes it is a wooden bridge over a stream. (Picture chaos on one side and a Japanese Garden on the other.) Sometimes it’s one of those rope bridges over a mile-high ravine. Whatever it is, I can clearly see Laura Fenamore standing there on the other side, sharing techniques and a custom-built plan to put the next plank into place. She doesn’t lead me across, or invite me to use her bridge (solidly built decades ago as she lost 100 pounds forever). She patiently helps me and guides me to build my own, to spot where it might be flawed or unstable, and to move forward. She invites me to get from here to there.
If my life before coaching sounds eerily familiar, well, welcome home. The simple truth is that you are not stuck. The universe keeps moving forward, and every day is a new opportunity. You don’t have to know the way or have any answers. You just have to do the next right thing.
I don’t know about other Life Coaches, but Laura gives consultations and encouragement freely to all. Don’t wait standing by that ravine for one more day. To learn more about Laura Fenamore or Body Image Mastery, call her for a free consultation at (415) 464-1234 or visit her website at http://www.laurafenamore.com/.
Monday, December 15, 2014
The Train
I am working at some law firm, then. Some common, New York, two-named law firm. I work for a typical, smart-mouthed, New York, Jewish woman who wears flowing kaftan-type outfits to work, claiming that it keeps her from being one of “them.” Otherwise, of course, she is the epitome of “them,” whatever they are; she is heartless and insulting and critical, and her distaste for me is palpable. I am saved from her loathing, on most days however, because I have broken two disks in my neck. I do not know this through my agony yet, through my endless, ever-present physical torture. All I know is my arm hurts.
My arm huts more than I could ever put words to. My arm is the center of all worldly pain by the end. How it started is too unbearable. At that moment, in that office, I am forced to leave my desk (I am that woman’s secretary) and flea to a caucus room – forced from my desk by a combination of mind-numbing pain in my arm, and endless brutal criticism by this woman.
I am there, in the small caucus room, sitting in one of three chairs. There are no windows. It is maybe six square feet in size. My head is in my hands and I am weeping. I am weeping out loud (and yet, silently into my own hands so no one will hear) I cry so hard, for so long, that I fall from the chair to my knees. Folded up into my own knees, face pressed into my hands, I start to rock, as if a child in a crib.
“How does this serve You? How could this possibly serve You? I can’t sleep. I hurt every moment. I can’t breath. I am in so much pain, that I may kill myself – and I’m not even sad. I work in this terrible place. I am an awful wife. I can’t even be a good mom. My best friend is dead. I can’t even pray. How could this possibly serve You.” By then, I have stopped weeping, and cry quietly into my hands, beginning to calm.… “But You are not a merciless. This must serve You. How could this serve You? How? But if this serves You, I am willing. Maybe I suffer for someone else? Someone else who could not bear it? Whatever it is, if it is Your will, sign me up. I am so grateful for my beautiful , sober life. The life You have given me. So sign me up, but please, please help me to suffer with more grace. Help me to suffer with more grace. Help me, this moment, to just stop crying. Just that.”
It is later that I will write to my doctor, in perfect calmness amidst the agony, and say that I am running out of options. And somehow, as the earth spins and rotates, I will be moved through time. Days and nights will pass and I will sit in the car beside Tommy that next Wednesday, and I will notice that he is quiet. I will notice this, and then forget it until much later. I worry about being intibated awake, which is how they will begin my surgery. I will worry about that job. A million thoughts will flow by as we drive to Good Samaritan Hospital to have the broken disks in my neck removed.
And simultaneously, every single moment that passes, just as it has unfolded for days and weeks and months, every moment that blockage in Tommy’s artery, just outside his heart, will continue to grow, closing like an pursed mouth, allowing less and less blood into his heart.
It is later that he will stop what he is doing and consciously think, “I don’t feel well.” By then, I am in surgery. He will, thank God, leave where he is and go back to Good Sam. He will stop being quite so quiet, and he will say those words, “I don’t feel well,” and choose to stay with me.
Every moment – every, single moment of that agony of mine, was about Tommy. So we would be in that hospital with that doctor at that moment in time. Weeks and weeks of wanting to cut my arm off with a hacksaw, of sleeping on the couch for only a few moments at a time because of the pain, of vomiting after commuting to the city because I hurt so much. Every single second was about that freight train headed toward Tommy. So okay, You, Whoever You are, Whatever You are, sign me up. …and thanks.
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