Becca 
I was stunned! The Shift Network, the largest platform for online wisdom courses with more than 3 million customers, invited me to teach a 7-week course, Harnessing the Power of Cannabis for Emotional Freedom.
Yes, let’s talk brown spots – those little patches of pigment that pop up uninvited. They go by many names: age spots, sun spots, liver spots (which is both misleading and mildly alarming), and my personal favorite –“wisdom freckles.” …because if we’re going to have them, we might as well make them sound poetic 😂
Imagine you’re standing at the edge of a stage, moments away from delivering a speech… Your palms are sweaty, your heart’s pounding, and your stomach is hosting a gymnastics competition. Are you anxious – or excited?
This body shaming thing is so insidious. Now, with my awareness in full gear, I see just how deep the self-shaming goes. The latest example was just last week when my executive assistant, Carsey, sent me a picture of myself and said, “Wow! I love this picture! Can we use it?” My response was immediate and visceral: “Old lady hand!” …shouting over our back-and-forth text messaging.
Sometimes it seems I live in a hall of mirrors where brilliant white light flashes back at me whenever someone opens their mouth and smiles. White, white, white teeth are everywhere!
And this observation is yet another one of my little (not so little?) comparing and contrasting to others. This is only my 3rd week installment to uncover the countless ways I catch myself judging my appearance – and much of it is sizing myself up to others.
I just want to take a moment and speak to my readers in the United States and say that my respect and compassion go out to everyone who’s genuinely wrestling with how best to resist what’s coming in the wake of Monday’s presidential inauguration. As you know I now live in Portugal for nearly 3 years, so I’m not in the frying pan. But, regardless of where you are in the world, we are all to some degree going to be held hostage to the man’s cruel whims and tantrums. At this point, the U.S. is a wobbling behemoth – the real question is when it topples who will be left in the wreckage?
This is the 2nd week installment of my mission over 52 weeks (all of 2025) to uncover the countless ways I catch myself judging my appearance – or how I imagine others might judge me. This week: Thigh gap phobia. In earlier years, it use to be a morning ritual. I’d get out of bed, stand up, put my legs together and look down to see if I had “space” between my thighs – that coveted thigh gap.
Even though I just started documenting my awareness of the comparing and self-body shaming I do, I’m seeing that often my attention is focused on the figures of other women. Now that, in and of itself, is benign but it’s the cascade of thoughts associated with my observations.
I’ve had a strange compulsion since Trump won the White House – I’m drawn to dystopian films and series. And, at the same time, I find myself reflecting deeply on what can be done when faced with overwhelming societal challenges.
As I shared last week on my 69th birthday, I’m embarking on an experiment this year: cataloging all the ways I engage in my own body shaming. Criticizing myself for how I look – or how I believe others perceive me – remains one of the last persistent and nagging patterns that hasn’t caught up with my emotional growth and maturity.