It’s getting to be bathing suit season, and so there is a lot of talk about getting bathing suit ready. Presumably, in our culture, “bathing suit ready” means endless squats, lunges, push ups, ab work, spin classes, bootcamp classes, running and generally beating the sh*t out of our bodies.

Hey, exercise is great for improving your overall physical (and mental) healthy - and there is nothing wrong with any of the activities listed above. With the exception of spinning (I’ve never taken a class if you can believe it), I enjoy them all.

But I don’t think more exercise is what you need to do to get “swimsuit ready.” (The phrase swimsuit ready came from a reader when I was surveying for potential blog topics.)

Regardless of what swimsuit you wear, resist the urge to bring back acid washed joggers. Please. For me.

I believe the number one action you can work on to get prepared for a season that invites shorts and tank tops is….drum roll please……

Develop a positive relationship with your body. 

Yup. No big thing, right?*****

Most of us would find wrestling an alligator more natural than being kind towards our bodies.

If we met in person, you might describe me as fit - and with a lot of help from genetics and some weekly effort on my part - I hold my own. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still struggle with my own body.

On the outside of my right knee is a pale white scar from a teenage, neighborhood game of hide and seek. On the inside of my right leg is a small spiderweb of varicose veins that seems to puff up closer to the surface with each passing year. Sometimes you can’t really see them, and other times that’s all I see when I glance down at my legs. I have them on both legs, in several different places, and at times I am reminded of my grandmother, who rarely wore shorts, but I caught glimpses of her varicose veins when she wore dresses to church. 

These veins bother me in a way that I’d like to deny. But if I’m going to preach a positive relationship with our bodies, then you should know that I struggle in my efforts too. Those varicose veins makes me feel my age in a way that’s uncomfortable.

And so I’ve been joking that I won’t wear shorts at all this summer - because I’ve become embarrassed of my legs.

I’m not proud of that, but hey interwebz - I’m telling you anyway. So I’m working on that positive body image.

The thing is, my legs have taken me many places. They’ve hiked over 200 miles of Rocky Mountain National Park. They’ve run thousands of miles in all parts of the country, from New Mexico to Colorado to Oklahoma and more. They’ve worked 12 hour days on cement floors doing retail, walked through the farm fields of Western Pennsylvania to interview farmers, and stood in the dugout wells of minor league baseball teams, shifting from side to side to stay warm. They barked and complained when I did last year’s Tough Mudder, and they still don’t take very kindly to deep squats or lunges. 

But my legs, like the rest of my body, carry my story. 

And this summer, maybe more than any summer in the past, I find myself having to work very hard to be kind to my body. To be appreciative of my body. To be gentle with my body. To trust and appreciate that I am the best version of me that I know how to be right now, and that is all I can ask of myself.  

For the record, no I don’t think varicose veins are the end of the world, and yes, I know you can have them removed when they start causing pain. For right now, I’m just being vain about my veins. 

Yes, I did that. 

It’s not easy to avoid self-deprecating comments about your appearance and your body. We punch holes in all kinds of compliments that people pay us. 

You look great!

You’re lying!

I love your glasses!

They hide my fat face!

Those responses are reflexive - much like our apologies - and those are the comments that we need to corral.

As we get ready to head into summer on this Memorial Day weekend, and even those of us in Maine will experience warm weather, I want you to take this reminder and put it on your refrigerator and your bathroom mirror and your phone and maybe even a post-it note on your co-worker’s forehead:

You are bathing suit ready, just as you are.

***** Soooooo much sarcasm there. So much.

“When I write, I have to drag the pen across those scars, to write.”

— Maya Angelou

Over the weekend, as I try to recover from a nasty cold that's been hanging on since Adam was a pup, I watched the American Experience Documentary about Maya Angelou.

Eventually those scars turn into callouses. 

I've been enthralled with Angelou ever since Miss Pauley, my high school English teacher, read one of her essays to the class my sophomore year of high school.

I was so moved by her words that our senior t-shirts from high school carried a stanza from the poem “I Rise” on the back. 

I was fortunate enough to hear Angelou speak in college, and aside from Desmond Tutu, I can’t remember being so mesmerized by the presence of one person.  

In a clip from the American Experience movie, she says “ When I write, I have to drag the pen across those scars.”

The statement struck me, as I envisioned dragging the sharp tip of a pen across a puffy, inflamed scar - over and over again. I think about my own writing here on this site, and the posts that have been most often read and shared. They are the posts of my depression, of my personal battle with my body image, of my personal stories. 

We know for Maya Angelou those scars were being raped at the age of seven, not speaking for five years, and spending a lifetime as part of the civil rights movement.

Many of us, when we decide to make a lifestyle change, are also touching over our own scars. We thumb over the scar of being picked last for teams on the playground. Over the scar of changing in front of others for the first time in gym class, comparing our pale white skin, our undeveloped and overdeveloped bodies to the teenagers across from us as we scurried to put on those awful gym uniforms. 

We touch the scar of inadequacy - perhaps we were the advanced math student or the gifted English student who suddenly found that when we ran to kick that soccer ball, it flew from the side of our foot and trickled only a few feet while others laughed.

We found that we could not do a front handspring on the playground. Some of us, not even a cartwheel. Too clumsy for hopscotch, too uncoordinated for baseball. Too overweight to keep up when we tried out track in seventh grade.

Despite being a good athlete, I despised gym class. And I nearly failed my senior year in high school because I refused to swim - because I couldn't. I was terrified of the deep end, where all of my friends were, I was mortified at changing naked in front my peers and the entire experience made me miserable.

As a coach who practically lives in the gym - I sometimes forget.

I sometimes forget that there are both men and women who, just by walking through our doors, are touching old scars. Scars of hurtful comments from well-meaning parents, cruel kids in school, and worst of all, ourselves. The scars of bathing suits tried on in the glaring harsh light of department stores, of shopping for new clothes and finding none that fit right and too many minutes standing naked in front of a full-length mirror in the morning - pinching our stomachs and cursing our will power. 

But I am also reminded of the rich words and experience that can come from touching those soft and tender places. For a writer like Maya Angelou, her willingness to “drag her pen over those scars” meant that I didn’t just read her words - they touched me - sat with me - changed me. 

For the men and women who find the courage to walk through our doors, to say I am willing to thumb over my scars about my body and myself - I remind myself that holding them in that vulnerability is the greatest gift I can offer. 

The other day I got into work and dressed for my workout.

I had my Pirates hat on backward. 

I hadn’t shaved my legs in three days. 

I put on the brightest red shoes I owned.

And I worked out in a pair of five-inch Nike Pro spandex that I originally bought to wear under my gym shorts.

There's a new book out entitled "The Art of Not Giving a F***"

I'm practicing just that.

I have varicose veins on my calves that seem to spread everyday. My thighs are bright white and haven’t seen the sun since September, because, you know, Maine. I’ve got Grandma Lloyd’s wild black chin hairs that I somehow miss plucking in the morning and then see at work when I don’t have tweezers. (Moral of the story is to plant tweezers everywhere). 

I've never struggled with weight. But I've been ashamed of my body just the same. 

I’m 40 years old.

It would be a lie to say that I'm totally ok with my body - but I'm as close as I've ever been.

People who know me well are sometimes startled to see Facebook posts of me wearing those short spandex. For years I wore long gym shorts down to my knees because I was ashamed of my bright white, large thighs with cellulite on them. I refer to my legs as tree trunks. I wore spandex underneath so that no one would see those thighs.

But I can honestly say that at this point in my life, I don't care anymore. 

I want to distinguish between not caring because I'm depressed, and not caring because I've worked hard to build a strong body and finally feel comfortable enough in my own skin to wear what I want to wear. 

And that whole part about feeling comfortable in my own skin? That's taken me the last 25 years. And a lot of therapy. 

I don’t remember when I learned to be ashamed of my body, and in my case my overall identity, but ever since I can remember, I've been embarrassed.  I went to school in the 90’s when we all wore oversize clothes. Take a look at this team picture from basketball in 1994. That t-shirt I’m wearing is a men’s extra-large. 

I weighed 115 pounds.

I wore size 10 pants, sometimes size 12.

I was probably a size 4. 

Sure some of that was the style of the 90's - but I was grateful for that style. I could have never worn a basketball jersey with no t-shirt underneath. If the basketball shorts were shorter, I never would have played. 

Because I learned to be ashamed of my body before I knew what the word ashamed even meant.  

During travel softball on hot summer days my teammates would pull off their shirts and lay in the sun in their sports bras - many girls did because it the heat was brutal in downtown Philadelphia in July. 

Not me. I had an uneven tan and thought I was fat. 

I thought I was fat. 

I carried myself with the shame, and probably my depression, head down and thoughts turned in, feeling all of the woefully inadequate thoughts that teenagers feel. Shame is complicated, and I know for me, some of my shame was wrapped up in a struggle with my identity that I couldn't name at the time. 

But I was also surrounded my a mother and grandmother that talked constantly about being fat - needing to lose weight - shouldn't eat this or that. They meant no harm, but I absorbed that language from the time I was small and it translated into the obsession that I think all women have about weight and appearance. 

So today, I give gratitude that finally, at 40 years old I am comfortable with my body - my chin hairs and varicose veins and belly fat, and comfortable in my skin - I no longer spend my energy trying not to look gay. I am who I am. And that's ok. 

The poem “Warning” makes sense to me now.  

"When I am an old women I shall wear purple
With a red hat that doesn't go and doesn't suit me."

Except mine is something like this:

"When I approach middle age, I shall wear spandex
With a baseball hat on backward and socks up to my knees if I want.
And a pair of Wonder Woman Converse Chucks. 
In fact, sometimes I'll dress as Wonder Woman when I work
Because life is too short to save costumes for Halloween

I shall have crazy black chin hairs and a moustache
if I go more than three weeks without a wax