Build a Meal Video Instructions

Burning Boy: Opening Credits

Welcome to my screenplay for the short film: Burning Boy. This is a sample of the opening credits for the film.

Edvard Munch: Creative Commons License, “The Sick Child.”

Teaching Endurance: Edith May Grimston celebrates One-hundred and One!

Writer: Jenny Gilman

“The best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.” Andy Rooney

The world becomes a much more beautiful place when we look to those characters in life that hide wisdom in the wink of an eye and life lessons in a loving smile.

On the first of May this year, Edith May Grimston turned one hundred and one years old. Her life has tested her strength and endurance, yet she has proven herself worthy of the challenges that faced her time and time again. In her early life, she was described as fiercely independent, active, tough, but curious.

Edith grew a long-lasting love of nature through watching her mother. Atypical for women of the day, her mother was a studied nutritionist and an avid gardener. “You’ll dig your grave with your teeth!” was Edith’s way of teaching nutrition too.

When Edith was thirteen years old, nature became her home. The parents and five children found themselves evicted and homeless on the Central Coast of California. Having nowhere to go, they moved all of the furniture to a grove of eucalyptus trees, placed it around the grounds to live on, and stayed there for six months.  When it rained, they pulled out umbrellas and sheltered underneath them.  She learned about addiction because of her father’s gambling. It was deeply out of his control, and he ended up leaving the family penniless.

The family found that living outdoors was a nightmarish experience, except for Edith. Even today, Edith recalls the smell of eucalyptus when it rains, and it is one of her most pleasant memories of that time.  She would eventually learn countless species of trees, bushes, and flowers and would teach her children and grandchildren details of them as they visited her garden, or even passed by them on meandering neighborhood walks.

Edith’s mother passed away after living those six months outdoors, which left the children in the care of their oldest sister, who was working on her own in Northern California. She moved back to the area to take responsibility for the family. Edith took on the duty of meal making. At fourteen, she was shopping and cooking all of the meals for the young family.

Edith eventually married, and soon after, WWII took her new husband overseas. She worked canning peaches and created a Victory Garden, to feed people in need, as her way of supporting the war effort. Though they wrote letters to each other every day, Edith kept busy and enjoyed the independence she had while he was away. She was delighted to participate in dances for the soldiers at various military bases around the area. It could have been a lonely time, but her morale was boosted while helping to do the same for soldiers. For Edith, it was a glorious time.

After the war, her husband returned a different person than the one she once knew. The war changed him. Along with her new independence, there was an adjustment to be made, and they did their best. He went to college, and they worked together to build their family, having three children. Edith witnessed addiction for the second time after he turned to alcohol to soothe his war memories. Eventually, they parted, and Edith followed her family to Eagle, Idaho.

She loves her church and, over time, served four different missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: two teaching missions, another at a family history center in Santa Monica, California, and one as a tour guide in Chesterfield, Idaho.

Edith has experienced hardship but much more love in her long life. Even now, during Covid, she teaches her family about strength, courage, and what it means to appreciate each other through all of the joys, and the sorrows, of a full and meaningful life.

[Greenbelt Magazine] Peacocks, Turkeys, and Ducklings, Oh My! Birder Becky Dembowski Writes Their Stories.

Written by Jenny K Gilman

Somewhere, on the outskirts of town, rests a family farm that is just a little bit different from all the others. You may spot a Ducks Crossing sign first, or perhaps the antique tractors vie for your attention a little bit stronger. There is an old country stove surrounded by fragrant blooming flowers. If you turn your head a little, the aroma of freshly baked cinnamon rolls drifts from the kitchen window.

A surprising sound diverts your attention. It is a familiar sound, but you can't quite make it out until a peacock rounds the corner, and following it, two, three, five, …no, nine more come into view. Of course! You can't mistake a peacock sound! If you stay awhile, you'll see a menagerie of birds: Runner Ducks, Sebastopol Geese, turkeys, chickens, peacocks, and that is just a start.

Becky Dembowski began rescuing birds about twenty years ago. One bird, in particular, a newly hatched Runner Duck, captured her heart after it separated from her mother. Becky cared for her as if she were her mother. She named it Scarlett, and after a series of adventures, Becky was inspired to write a book about her.

Scarlett's Journey: The Adventures of a Runner Duck is a delightful story for children and adults alike. Its colorful pages come from actual photographs of Scarlett that were artfully enhanced by an illustrator, bringing the pages to life in a new, dimensional way.

Becky hadn't planned on being an author of children's books. She said:

           "Both books are based on a true story; Scarlett had such an imprint on my life. After raising her and sharing her story on Facebook, people would reach out, asking me, ‘What's happening today in the life of Scarlett?’"

After the heartbreaking loss of her little duck, she wanted to tell her story. It was a therapeutic way of focusing her attention toward the brilliant light that came out of the experience, rather than any darkness of loss. The book isn't about loss at all; in fact, it is about Scarlett's time on the farm and some of the thrilling adventures she found herself in day to day.

Soon Becky discovered that some baby turkeys were missing their mother. A predator had taken her, and the babies needed Becky's rescue skills to survive. But that isn't the end of the story. The babies' father stepped in too! He played an active role in raising the baby turkeys in place of their mother. He taught them what they needed to know daily and sheltered them every night to keep them warm under his downy feathers. Becky was inspired to write a second book, showcasing this sweet, little, unusual family.

Both of Becky's books can be found online through her website: www.beckydembowski.com or Amazon. You can find them locally at these locations: Customedica Pharmacy, St. Luke’s Hospital gift shop, Metzer Farms, The Boise Public Library, and Boise's Public Schools. They are available as a hardbound book with a sewn spine for durability, as an Audible audiobook, or a Kindle book.

Though becoming an author wasn't planned, Becky discovered that life isn't always about making plans and following them. She said:

           "I'd like people to know that anything is possible. No one is a true expert. If we waited for everyone to be an expert in their field, we wouldn't have gotten this far in life. Feel the passion inside and run with it! I have many passions; all of them bring me so much joy. There's no right way to live; just live it right for you."

[Eagle Magazine] Dancer Makella Bergeson: A Magnet for Success

Written by Jenny K Gilman

“The Dancer believes that his art has something to say which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing.”  Doris Humphrey

Thirteen-year-old Makella Bergeson devotes herself to dance. She remembers being drawn to it in her earliest memories. “I’ve loved it since day one,” Makella says. Her mother, Jennifer Bergeson, recalls:

She loved music as a baby and would rock back and forth to the beat, waving her hands and kicking her feet. When she was a toddler, she would dance around the house to music. As she got older, she would dress-up, sing, and dance to Disney songs.

At only three years old, Makella was enrolled in dance. It started a trajectory that would lead her to today. She is a student at Idaho Fine Arts Academy in the dance program. She already has much dance history behind her, studying every style from ballet to contemporary, tap, jazz, hip-hop, and beyond. She has danced for arts’ sake and danced for competition.

Makella’s teacher at Idaho Fine Arts Academy, Rachel Swenson, encourages her students to create and do something tangible with dance. She said, “Theatrical Dance is ephemeral; here for one night of performing and then gone.” So she found a solution to hold on to the performance.

Rachel introduced her students to dance filmmaking in school. As part of their curriculum, she teaches students the art of the camera, editing, choreography, and building a project into something special. The students have a class film they make together, and they also do a solo project of their own making. Makella chose a dance that was close to her heart. 

Makella’s sister, Jordan, studied dance throughout her life too. She is older than Makella, and she took on the project, along with Makella, to choreograph a dance to the song by Disclosure and Lorde, called “Magnets.”

The film, Magnets, is set in Downtown Boise. Some shots are on a leafy street in the fall. You may recognize the capitol building downtown. Even an empty parking garage becomes art when Makella expresses herself in dance freely on the pavement of a utilitarian canvas without onlookers interrupting the moody flow. She takes to the middle of a street where the sun glows behind her, making a magnificent frame of light to wrap itself around Makella’s movements.

Rachel Swenson encouraged Makella to submit the finished product to film festivals. Makella submitted her film to two festivals, and both of them selected her film, Magnets, to be screened. One local festival, Idaho Screendance, was co-founded by Rachel in order (in part) to give students a platform to showcase their talents to more than just a reoccurring audience of family and friends. The second film festival was Utah Dance Film Festival. 

Makella said this about seeing her film on the big screen, “I enjoyed my experience watching my film. It was fun and interesting to see my film with all of the other wonderful films.”

Makella plans to continue dancing lessons, and making dance film. When asked if she would do anything different next time, she said she would do more planning for the film ahead of time. She wants to encourage others to make dance film, and to experience the creative processes that are involved in filmmaking. She said:

 I love dance; it gives me a way of expression and helps me experiment with my creativity. If you follow your dreams and spend your life doing what brings you joy, you are more likely to find success.

Nostalgic Eagle: Three Families Give Thanks to Their Sleepy Hometown

“Over the river, and through the wood,

 to Grandfather’s house away!

 We would not stop for doll or top,

 for ‘tis Thanksgiving Day.”

 Lydia Maria Child penned the poem, Over the River and Through the Wood. Her trek across woodland and farmland rings familiar to the families of Eagle’s past. Though change has come and built Eagle into a city of nearly thirty thousand, the old town feel remains. 

The bright oranges, reds, and yellows in Merrill Park reflect the sunrise and sunsets that come so quickly this time of year. The leaves are crisp, crunching underfoot, as passers-by stroll with their warm jackets and scarves tied neatly to keep them warm. It’s Thanksgiving! It’s the season to sit comfortably and reflect upon those things that make each of our lives have meaning. 

Nancy and Alei Merrill cherished the once sleepy little town of Eagle. Nancy worked on the Merrill farm when she met Galan Merrill. They married and moved into a little home next door and began raising their family. 

As the town began to grow into a city, Nancy knew that it was essential to maintain the feel of the country. The open spaces, the setbacks, the rerouted highway, are all there by design. They were included so that new residents are welcomed, and long-timers comforted, with that same sleepy feeling of home. Nancy was involved in much of the open-space preservation due to her time spent serving the Eagle community as a planner, a city councilwoman, and mayor. Eagle residents are able to enjoy her legacy of parks to play in and pathways to stroll on, especially during the display of color in early November.

Alei speaks thankfully about the open space she had as a child in Eagle. Riding her horse around town was therapeutic:

“I used to ride my horse through Eagle, I would go to Orville's and say hi, get a snack, pick up a few things for my dad at Evans Lumberyard, and circle back along the riverbank to the farm. I would pass neighbors and friends along the way. There didn't seem to be a sense of urgency or time.” 

She tells of riding her horse along the riverbank and through cornfields that stood where the connector is now. The freedom she had to escape was priceless. She is appreciative that the downtown area is still so familiar. Orville Jackson’s, the old hotel, the Church that is now Rembrandt’s, the old museum, these places of history still ring true today, even with their changes.

Forty years ago, the Benedetto family lived and played along the banks of Dry Creek. The children built dams and discovered snakes. They rode their trikes down a dirt lane without any worry of traffic. Stephanie, their mom, said, “We were our own Little House on the Prairie back then.” 

Stephanie is thankful for her family and that her two daughters stayed close. Every year they gather for their traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Though the festivities have grown with marriages and grandchildren, they still feel the same sense of tradition. She said, “It doesn’t feel like the holidays unless we spend it together.”

Lacy (Benedetto) Hahn described a family tradition of great food and family coming together. Thanksgiving is the kick-off for her family’s Christmas. Shortly after Thanksgiving, they head up to the mountains to find their special tree.

Lacy is grateful for growing up in a community where open spaces are maintained to reflect the Eagle of earlier days. She said, 

“I am thankful every day that I am able to raise my children in the same environment, same small town feeling that I was raised with. [I remember] the annual fall carnival that [Eagle Hills Elementary] would hold where families and teachers gather to celebrate the new school year playing games, winning prizes, and sharing donated sweet treats. It felt like you knew everyone, and despite our differences, we were all part of a big community family, just happy to be in each other’s presence.”

Mike, Pat, and Joe Palmer’s parents moved to Eagle over forty years ago. All three of them speak of the same thing: community. They remember a small-town feel with good people all around them. Their father, Chuck Palmer, was the Sherriff of Ada County for twelve years. Mike recalls his father flying his airplane and landing it in their field. He said, “At the time, most of the neighbors didn’t care. I know that today if you tried to land in your pasture, there would be serious objections.” 

Pat Palmer remembers the streets of Eagle before there were traffic lights. He said, “State Street was two lanes through town. We raised hay and hauled it to Evans lumber to use their scale. It was so close to Eagle road you almost ran it over when you came to the stop sign.”

Pat is thankful that through all of Eagle’s growth, the city has maintained the beautiful landscaping.

Joe Palmer is thankful for the sleepy little town in which he grew up. He remembers everyone caring for each other. He recalls an unforgettable memory: 

“Every year, the volunteer fire department held an auction to fundraise for their burnout fund. Everyone in town was there. The citizens would bid on items [higher than] their actual value. The entire community was incredibly supportive of the cause, because we were ultimately supporting each other.”

Together, these families paint a picture of a small town that took care of them, and each other, as it grew into what it is today. They spoke of the city and their love of the nostalgic old buildings. Orville Jackson’s was a vital stomping ground, and though it has changed, the facade remains. They all want to see the historic downtown preserved, just like their open spaces. 

Nancy Merrill said, “We should all be thankful for where we live and how we were raised. Thankful for those you love who gather around you. We’re all people. We all have something to give. It’s time to start giving back.”

Happy Hands: A Round of Applause for Two Idaho Fine Arts Academy Students [Eagle Magazine].

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” — Pablo Picasso.

 In this unique time of Covid, when school activities are turned upside down and handwashing made a bigger priority, two students are finalists in a national competition to inspire cleanliness in schools with their art. 

 Idaho Fine Arts Academy students Isabelle Arriaga and Jamie Monson have found themselves two of the top five finalists in the SC JohnsonCompany’s “Happy Hands” art competition.

 Inspired by their art teacher, Jenny Valenzuela, who introduced them to the contest, these two girls created colorful art pieces to don the covers of hand sanitizer dispensers throughout national schools.

 Isabelle Arriaga’s bright and cheerful hummingbird design is created in memory of her grandmother, who loved hummingbirds. She said: 

 “I included a colorful hummingbird in the design as hummingbirds represent joy and happiness, with the all-around message that we all could use some more positivity in our lives during this time.”

 Isabelle’s love of art has her wanting to continue creating as a hobby throughout her life. Besides drawing, she loves making jewelry. She has given thought to someday selling art prints, jewelry, and hand-stitched dog clothes. She dreams of writing and illustrating a children’s book.

 Usually, high school students have multiple activities after school, but with Covid happening, it is difficult. With so much home time, Isabella has learned that she has a fondness for cooking and baking. Honing her skills in the kitchen is one more art she is adding to her repertoire.

 Jamie Monson created a design meant to give students a colorful adventure! She drew a spaceship that takes off into space, with stars, constellations, and vivid planets surrounding the ship. She has given her primary-colored spaceship a countdown:  “3…2…1… BLAST OFF the germs!” She said:

 “I thought that this statement would encourage kids and adults to use soap or sanitizer to blast the germs off of their hands. It is so important, especially in a pandemic, to clean your hands and protect yourself and others from germs.”

 Jamie visualizes keeping art in her life as a career. She can think of two exciting opportunities to use her artistic talents: She wants to be an interior designer, someone who designs inspirational spaces whileleaving each client a painting created especially for their home. She can also see herself as a cosmetologist. She loves the idea of using her visual talents to create beauty in hair, make-up, and nails.

 Isabelle and Jamie are grateful for their teacher, Jenny Valenzuela. Ms. Valenzuela encouraged them to enter their artwork into this contest. During a pandemic, having creativity and passion for the arts whilestaying at home is essential. 

 Both girls have credited their teacher for her encouragement and dedication to the arts. Not having the opportunity to create in the classroom could be difficult. Still, this experience shows that it worked for them. 

 Congratulations to them both! Whoever wins this contest, in the end, doesn’t matter as much as the experience that has afforded them with inspiration for creation during difficult times.

207 S 1st W

This is a sample of an unpolished, early TRUE story recounting the events that took place during the loss of their family home due to eminent domain.

Jenny wrote this for her family before her schooling and professional writing began.

When I was six years old I sat alone on the front porch of my home waiting for the police to come and arrest me. I waited at the top of the stairs, four band-aids on one leg and five on the other, with scrapes of which half were probably band-aid worthy. I waited with my pink flowery suitcase. It had stickers all over it, some half-peeled, and blonde Barbie hair was hanging out between the hinges. I packed some of the things I needed most in jail —my two Barbies, and my Humpty Dumpty doll that was normal on one side and all cracked up on the other. It had a string that pulled out and said, “…All the kings horses and all the kings men, couldn’t put Humpty together again.” I had a change of clothes, but not my itchy wool brown elephant dress, and on my first finger I wore my magical plastic ring that changed when I moved it from an eye open to an eye shut. I got it for a penny in the gumball machine in front of Valley Drug. I sat there waiting, watching that eye blink over and over. I waited because the night before, I stopped the trucks from tearing down the house, at least temporarily. At the time I didn’t understand why we couldn’t keep the house, but now I know that our misfortune has a name. The euphemism is “eminent domain,” but our family calls it outright highway robbery.

My family and I lived in what I considered then to be a castle, and even now to me that notion seems faultless. It was the main house on a turn of the century farm, and three other little houses on the block were where, in its original state, the hired help lived. It was a soaring, graceful Victorian whose brick walls were eighteen inches thick. I knew that because when cable TV first came out there, the cable man used an eighteen-inch drill bit that barely made it through. The movers couldn’t guarantee that if they moved our hundred-year-old manor, it wouldn’t just fall apart on their trucks due to the prodigious weight. Unlike a lot of other houses, the bricks couldn’t be removed. If they tried, all that would be left were the windows, and nothing left to hold them up but the heavy stone foundation. There were no studs. The entryway had a staircase of thick carved walnut that I used to imagine took me to my chambers and my secret room. As you climbed up, the stairs wrapped all the way around the open hallway below, making a full circle in railing with a crystal chandelier that hung down in the middle. My secret room was off of that railing and out the window to the rooftop over the front porch.

I went out there daily to watch the unfolding scene of rubberneckers “passing” by. I knew who had been following our case in the papers because their faces gave them away. If they agreed with the school district and the city of Logan’s felonious offering for our house, they’d gawk at the house, pointing or waving their arms with their noses high, looking self-righteous and gassy, floating far above my own personal ability to reason at my young age. I wanted to sic the dog over to bite them on the ass. I imagined the remnants of Mrs. Hooper post-popping, flying and twirling in circles farther and farther away until she deflated in front of the discount Hostess store, trampled on by pedestrian brown bags filled with month-old Twinkies and Ding-Dongs. But a mournful headshake and a hand to the chest of someone tsk-tsking and saying, “That’s just a crying shame,” or, “Those poor Gilman’s, Oh! Those poor dear Gilman’s,” and I knew we had another ally. Occasionally, I’d pick the lint off of one of my root beer barrels and chuck it down to them as a way of saying “thanks.” I was never scared to be way up there, and I never would have fallen off.

Unfortunately, the nosy neighbor lady across the street would almost every time call up my mom and say, “Mrs. Gilman your daughter is up on the roof again!” I always knew she called because mom, who would otherwise be busy with the other kids, would yell out the window, “Jennifer Kathleen! You get back in here this instant! You’ll fall off and break your neck!” I didn’t know much else about that neighbor lady except she had a daughter younger than me who saw her grandmother in the corner of her living room at the exact moment she died half the country away. She told her mom grandma was there, but her mom didn’t believe it until the phone rang with the news.

Our neighbors immediately south of us were the Nebecker’s. The old man was a scrooge. He used to bait our collie dog, Ruffles, with food and then call the pound to come take her off his property. When my Dad and my Grandpa finally built a fence between us, he complained that it restricted his view. He said he liked to look out over the open space from his kitchen window, but behind us was the high school’s athletics field, and immediately behind us were the tennis courts. We used to climb the school’s fence to play so much that there was a permanent dip in the chain link. What Mr. Nebecker was viewing wasn’t any open space that I could see, but the girls’ tennis club every Wednesday and Friday after school. They wore little pleated skirts and bounced. The collie gave him away in the bushes. His poor wife was bats. She had hundreds of dolls on the front porch and she dressed and took tea with them all day.

To the north of us was Mrs. Sparks. She was old and frail and my parents worried about where she would go when they tore down her house, and they often brought her meals in case she wasn’t eating enough. She never had visitors. She lived there from the time she was married in 1912 and in the end, lived by herself for more than twenty years with the exception of a big beautiful white cat named Nehor that froze to death outside just before she was forced to leave. When her son finally came to visit that winter, he sold her house to the school to be torn down and pocketed the money. He sent her out of her house to finish her life in a rest home. She didn’t live there long.

The school district decided that the new weight room facility had to be where our houses were. I guess it would have been too much to ask those kids to cross the street where there was an open field screaming to be built upon. The city granted it however, and my parents were offered fourteen thousand dollars for the house, when three years before they paid twenty-five. It was appraised at fifty. Whenever we clean our houses thoroughly even now, we call it “appraisal ready” after this battle. We had that house looking so smart you could have eaten breakfast off of the bathroom floor, if you wanted to. Dad, who won awards for his amateur photography, took pictures and developed them in his darkroom down in our basement. He made an album full of the most riveting eight by ten color prints of our house imaginable.

When our case went to court, the first thing the city’s attorneys tried to do, was to discredit the word of the appraiser, Bob Hanks. But as soon as they started, Judge Lindsay told them, “I don’t need to hear about any of Mr. Hanks’s credentials, I appointed him to the State Board of Appraisers right here from this bench. I know all about his credentials.” It was neat watching all of the big attorneys sink smaller in their chairs. At one point I swear that I could see them eye-to-eye.

The appraiser sat in the witness stand looking over dad’s photos, sighing breathlessly and saying things like, “Oh yes, I couldn’t forget this lovely old house,” and then he’d turn a page, point to a spot on the photo and say, “My-- isn’t that something,” …on and on, and with each page turning the album farther and farther away from the bench until the judge leaned all the way over-- forgetting his seat and nearly falling trying to get a look. By the time the judge finally had the book in his hands he was drooling. The attorneys continued their fruitless arguments while the judge looked wide-eyed at the photos, replying occasionally with a hypnotic “uh-huh,” turning one page, then another.

The judge ruled that the city had to give us the fifty, plus we could stay in the house until my mom, who was sick with her pregnancy at the time with my little sister, delivered and fully recovered. Mom was at a high risk of losing this baby, and we were doing everything we could to help her stay with us.

After the case was settled we thought the controversy would perhaps dissolve a little for a while, but actually, the view from the roof grew more interesting after that. The division was becoming wider and more noticeable. Half of the town treated us like we were folk-heroes. I’d be up there sucking on bottle-caps, when out of the blue a gang of Harley-Davidson guys would ride up to the house shoulder to shoulder and yell out, “Give ‘em hell Gilman’s! And, “Go get the bastards!” and “Hey, you shouldn’t be up there…” or some hillbilly in an old truck would come down from the mountains, stopping with hat in hand to ask if he can be helpful to us in any way. Mom and dad would shake his hand and thank him, and he’d leave with an accomplished swagger, knowing he did something good and right that day.

We had some time bought before we had to move. It was the most wonderful time and intense time our family ever had. All of the energy of knowing we had to give up something, someplace that we loved and didn’t want to give up within a few months time, made us restless.

Mom was due in June and we didn’t know how long we had after that. Contractors were starting to show up outside, walking through our yard on their own free will. Mom was bedridden now, using her down time to make the most handsome crewel embroidery. Doc Skabelund was a local anesthesiologist, and he was our good friend. He looked like Santa and he always winked at us. He started worrying about mom and coming by the house every other day. We kids knew that if the baby made it; she would be the most special of all of us. We resolved that we would make her the smartest baby in the history of babies and so my big brother Brad dug into my mom’s university books. He found the biggest word that he thought the new baby would be able to pronounce with the prodding of its older siblings. We vowed that after she was born, her first word would be “psychological.” We practiced it over and over so we’d have it down by her birth, so as to fully expose her. We would say it in clusters to her. Psy… co… log…i…cal. We kids would make the news for sure. I remember selling Kool-Aid on the front parkway to the rubberneckers, all the while repeating psy… co… log….

That last summer I believed I could fly. I wasn’t scared of heights and I knew I was special, magical, but I just hadn’t figured out how. The laws of gravity didn’t apply to me, I didn’t think, but I hadn’t dared chance it until it was absolutely necessary. My bedroom was at the top of the stairs through the upstairs family room, and past the second kitchen. I often stood up high on the roof or on the deep window frame in my room and looked out. I thought about how it would feel to be between where I was and the ground below. I thought about the wind and about sailing through it. It wasn’t just air, it was substantive, it carried weight which would in turn, carry me. I was too little to know about physics or flight; what I saw was beyond that, it was something tangible that could only be seen through little eyes. I wanted to test it out.

My little brother Jeff was there one day, watching me stand on the window while holding his “Yurtle the Turtle,” pulling its string, making it talk. The turtle had a nice big shell that I knew would float on the wind. If it were Jason Pitcherdon George in his hands, I would never have done it. Jason was Jeff’s red-haired, freckle-faced doll that wore overalls and he was his constant companion. When the high school kids walked by our house, before and after school they would always say, “Hey Jeff, How’s Jason Pitcherdon George doing today?” Jeff would smile, turn around, and run in the house. To this day I don’t know how he came up with that name, and what exactly was a pitcherdon? It came from the enchanted lexicon that exists in kid’s brains. I know it did. The same place that my big sister Brandie got the name “props and bra” for her lumpy oatmeal.

But this day he had Yurtle the turtle… and so that solved my immediate problem. I took Yurtle and sailed him out the window. I watched him float to the ground, just like I imagined, the weight of the air carrying it. I can remember it only in slow motion at first, but then it speeds up when Yurtle hit the ground hard, with a big loud thump and a twang. Jeff was bawling, confused about why I did that and he wanted his turtle back.

I knew I was in trouble so I ran down and outside, fast. I pulled Yurtle’s string and found that I broke it. It wouldn’t talk anymore. I wrecked its guts. I ran into the utility room to hide it hoping Jeff would forget all about it. I started to bury it in the box of Ajax detergent when mom came hobbling in, asking me what’s going on. I spilled the box all over the carpet and while mom was yelling and cleaning that up, Jeff was harassing me from behind, wanting his broken turtle. I wanted him to go away so I wouldn’t be in more trouble and I grabbed the first thing I saw from the trash, which I later found out was oven cleaner, and sprayed him right in the face. He really wailed then and I knew I was dead. Mom ran in the room, saw what happened and swung him over to the kitchen sink.

It all happened so fast, I started running. I ran as fast as I could and I didn’t know where I was going. Everything was mixed and blurry and I was running on faith. I really didn’t know which way was up but I trusted my legs. They were the only part of me in control at this point. I ran through the living room, into the front hall and up the rounded stairs higher and higher before I realized I didn’t have anywhere to go. It was like a bullwhip cutting loose before the crack. I came out of the spin from the circle stairs and tore straight ahead to the family room window and I had to keep going. This was not the window with the roof, it was another one, with nothing underneath but the rock covered driveway two and a half floors below.

My big sister Brandie started screaming before I even had the window open. She saw I was a force that couldn’t be stopped. Brandie never screamed that I was aware of before that or after. She was the only level-headed one of us. It got mom running and I knew it. I had to get out. I ripped open the window and went out headfirst. It was my time to fly — not because I wanted to, but because I had to. I let go of the window frame and started to feel free, I was soaring, and there was nothing around me until I scraped my arms on the brick straight down below the window. Mom had me by the ankle. I was being pulled up to my certain death and by the time I was on my feet again I saw mom’s panicked face.

“What are you doing?” She shook as she said that, breathless, squeezing my arms tightly to my sides so I couldn’t do anything but look at her. I said, “I’m going to see God mom, I’ll be right back.” I don’t know why I said that. Maybe I tried to reassure her that I knew what I was doing, I’m not sure anymore, but I know I was confused, maybe more than her. She tied my foot to my bed until she could deal with me. I didn’t have any chance of escape so I just lay there, tied to the bed, waiting for dad to come home.

Mom went down to deal with Jeff’s burnt eyes. I was wakened up sometime later and forced to go to the eye doctor with Jeff to explain what I had done. On my way down, I walked slowly toward the stairs and when I passed Jeff’s bedroom, I saw Jason Pitcherdon George. I picked him up for Jeff. I knew it would help make him feel better. Maybe it would help make me feel better. Turns out Jeff had little holes in his eyes because of me. The doctor said that they would eventually heal and that soon, he would be able to see fine again.

When we got back home there were two ladies I had never seen before walking around our house. Brad said they just walked right in. They were writing down a list of items in our house and saying things like, “I’m going to take this chandelier and the lighting fixtures in the living room,” and “My husband already promised me we could have the staircase…we’ve already had the architect draw it in.” And then they went into the kitchen opening up our cupboards while saying things like, “charming…”. You should have seen the look on my dad’s face. I knew he was going to blow and I just started laughing, I couldn’t help it, I just cut loose. He took both of those ladies by their purse strings and pulled them out the door. They looked so astonished; they stood there staring into the door, mouths open, while my dad slammed it behind them and locked it. They yelled something through the door about getting us out of their house. My dad said he recognized one of them as Wayne Jacobs’s wife. He was the contractor in charge of tearing down our home.

At the end of that unpleasant day, we flopped exhausted in front of the TV and were astonished to catch a showing of an earlier recording of the Boise philharmonic. The amazing thing was that there was no way for us to have a recording of that concert, but somehow, we were lucky enough to see it. What was even more amazing was that my mom was playing the bassoon with that very orchestra in that very concert, shown on our TV from a different year, from a different city and a different State… and we saw it. I remember I could feel my spirits lifting and as I looked around the room, the rest of my family’s did too. We saw mom on TV. It was marvelous. We all watched entranced but Jeff, who was sleeping soundly on the floor. Mom played the bassoon beautifully. I can still close my eyes and hear it. Whenever I need soul food, this is it. To this day I weep when I hear the warm, woody, melodious cry of the bassoon. She was amazing. I tried to follow in her footsteps by playing the violin. I regret now that I quit too early. I regret that for decades we haven’t been able to walk through those hallowed walls that cocooned and cradled so many of our important memories. Several more times that summer we had parasites that slinked around, trying to claim bits and pieces of our lives, stealing our memories with their fantasies of carved newel posts and fancy cherry and pecan paneling.

My dad kept our spirits up during those last days. We were broke but when it came down to the bones and scraps, he always found a way to get us by. He’d pull out his Stratocaster and Silvertone tube amp and play Beatles’ songs, or do his Chet Atkins style finger picking while we danced with our friends in the backyard. Mike Minder, who was 6’2” and 300 pounds and one of my dad’s best friends, came over and rode his motorcycle up the stairs to the front porch. We were all squealing with delight, but mom could have killed him. He was nuts and so was the rest of his family. His wife Mary was an ironclad fiery red-head who had to throw away their two son’s chemistry set six times that summer because of all the stink bombs they made and the number of fires that were set in their shed.

Another man who had followed our case in the papers drove a big rig truck over and backed it into our driveway. We didn’t know him, but he had a drug store in the next town that burned down and he filled the truck with salvaged items that helped us to make it through. I remember looking at a spinning rack full of sunglasses and even though they were all too big, I still got a pair. To us it was Christmas in July only instead of fresh pine we had the pungent smell of burned plastic penetrating our sinuses. I can recall that smell today, and have on occasion in the neighborhood dollar store. There’s no mistaking it.

*****

The houses around us were gone. We were the only house left standing and the heavy equipment was getting ready to move into our backyard. Mom had given birth to Stephanie and we were bombarding her with psy...co...log...i...cal, knowing she couldn’t talk yet but because of our not-so-subliminal suggestions, she’d have that word locked into her brain. When she was ready, she’d say it first.

It was early August. I woke up one morning to find the big yellow trucks ripping out our great back yard. The hills, the trees, everything… it was all gone except a string of grass just big enough against the back of the house for our swing set. I was alone watching it from the kitchen’s double hung windows. Mom and dad were cooing with Stephanie in their bedroom and the others weren’t up. I felt like if I didn’t do something they’d rip out our swings too, but then would they stop at the house? I’d had it.

I went outside, walked the thin line between dirt and grass and hopped on and started swinging. Right under the nose of the trucks. At first I thought I did it to protect our swings, the only thing left in our yard. It wasn’t long before I knew I was protecting much more than that. I swung hard, harder than I ever did in my life. I closed my eyes and kicked out to the sun. I found it and then reached beyond, somewhere over the universe. I lay down on the to swing and fell forward on the fro. I caught the air at the top and fell back again, forward and back, forward and back, harder and higher, harder and higher. I was flying for my family, for our place in that time, and in that moment. The farther I flew over the dirt line, the more room the trucks gave me to fly. It was working; I knew it and so did they. It was just me and a big bumble bee that morning against the leviathans, the bee helping me to keep my strength, buzzing in time, whispering with its wings, “you’re doing it Jennifer, it’s working, don’t stop now…”

That’s when I decided I would stop them for good. I had to. They were getting too close to us now. I wouldn’t let them break us. They could knock the house down with one well-chosen swipe and the trucks were there, emphatically waiting to prove it. I ran around the house from attic to basement, searching through junk drawers that hadn’t been packed yet and moving boxes that had. I went through the upstairs kitchen and mom’s sewing machine desk gathering up all of the nails, push pins, thumbtacks that I could find, hiding them in my pink flowery suitcase along with a flashlight and a spade. I waited until it was the middle of the night and everyone but the crickets was sleeping.

I snuck out of bed, quietly picking up my tennies, and slipped down the circle stairs and past mom and dad’s bedroom, through the kitchen and out the back door and into the dirt. I sank down; every step was a chore, but a worthwhile one. I lit up the ground around the tires of the trucks with my flashlight and dug just deep enough to bury the tacks and nails underneath. I did this to every tire, first on one truck, then another. By the time I was finished, the light from the waning moon and the underground sun was casting shadows. It wasn’t night anymore, or day. I was stuck somewhere between east and west and heaven and hell and I was tired and needing to sleep, because I knew that before long, I would be off to jail.

I sat on the porch waiting, picking on one of my scabs when mom and dad finally came to see what I was hanging around for. They had been watching over me from the picture window most of the afternoon, but later they told me that they were more interested in observing than interrupting. “Whatcha waitin for Jennifer Cash?” My dad said, sitting next to me. Mom gave me a glass of water and washed the dirt from the night before off my face. “I’m waiting to be arrested.” I said. My dad held back a faint smile, knowing the seriousness of the situation. “I ruined the trucks out back,” I said, “I did it and I’m not sorry. The police will come and I’m going tell them what I did.” Mom quickly went around the house, I assumed to check on the status of the trucks. My dad looked concerned and said, “Tell me how exactly you stopped those big trucks?”

I told him everything. My dad told me that I probably wouldn’t be arrested and more than likely, they would never suspect a six-year-old girl had ruined the trucks, but if they did, he told me how to handle it. It was a secret that his father passed down to him when he was in trouble once as a boy. He told me, “Carry your lunchbox with you everywhere you go. If someone starts to give you a hard time, shove it as hard as you can into their stomach and yell—“HOLD MY LUNCHBOX!” They’ll grab it and when their hands are full, you punch them right in the nose.” It worked for him when he was little, and on one later occasion with a big fifth grade jerk, it worked for me too. I never knew until they told me many years later that it was because it was Saturday that the trucks weren’t running. I later realized too that I couldn’t have ruined the huge tires with thumbtacks, but my parents let me believe in what I had worked so hard for. I will always respect them for that.

It was the next to the last night in our house and something was up. The energy was tangible. We kids were running all over the house which had mostly been emptied of furniture, flattening the areas of shag that stayed firm from it’s sanctuary under the sofa. We had a lot of men quietly coming by all day, secretly dropping off shovels and pickaxes and crow bars and electric tools from their cars, down into the hands of helpers waiting inside the cellar door. Doc Skabelund was there, so was Mike and Mary Minder, and Jim and Peggy Reese. There were many more I didn’t recognize, all papering up the windows.

That evening, Ronnie Porter’s mom came to get Brad and Jeff, and just after that, the Fairbanks’s came to get Brandie and me. I was scared even though Debbie and Leisa Fairbanks were our closest school friends. I worried about mom and dad and what was happening, but I couldn’t talk about it with anyone. Instead I just pretended to eat my crappy cream of mushroom soup and then went to bed, which was on their living room floor surrounded by dozens of Doug Fairbanks’s wood carved birds.

While we were sleeping that night, this is what I later learned had been happening. There were somewhere between twenty and thirty men and women that parked down the street and slowly started filing into our house, one or two at a time. Dad and Doc were in charge of the tool dispersion, and Mike and Jim started taking the helpers to different rooms, handing out their assignments. Some skilled in electrics were there, and some skilled with the plumbing as well. Everybody had a job and my mom helped too, when Stephanie slept. They kept the master bedroom for last so that mom and Stephanie had a safe place to be.

One by one the rooms came down. They had managed to build up piles of the Cherry and Pecan paneling, along with wood molding and picture rail. Mike Minder and dad were in charge of loosening up the kitchen cupboards, which was some careful chore because the countertops were all tiled with a patterned mosaic. The upstairs was coming downstairs in bundles and boxes. In the dead of the night, three big rigs showed up and backed toward the house in the dirt. As quietly as possible, and with an electric cord and light tucked deep into each truck, they started filling them up. They managed the fancy woods and doors and interior stained glass windows, then the appliances, old bathtubs and sinks, and from the top down, the delicate lighting fixtures. Next came the circular staircase with each and every baluster and carved post and railing. They were finishing loading that up when someone had heard that Wayne Jacobs caught wind of what was going on and was on his way over to try to stop it.

Everybody panicked and began throwing stuff into the trucks. There was an enormous four-foot wide, old heavy iron stove in our kitchen that needed at least four strong men to lift, and Mike Minder wasn’t going to wait for anyone. Dad said it was the most remarkable thing he’d ever seen. Mike rushed over to the stove, wrapped his arms around it and picked that entire damn thing up by himself and ran it into the truck.

Wayne Jacobs never did show up, nor did he know anything about it. The outside of the house was left in perfect condition. There was no way to know by looking at it what had happened inside over night. We spent the day playing outside in the front yard, and one more night in our house, together as a family, sleeping on the floor of the shallow, sad, empty living room that had in its glory sheltered us from an earthquake, echoed back our songs, and cradled our new born love when she just arrived home from the hospital. Even the radiators were gone.

*****

My dad was attending law school in Sacramento a few weeks later when the subpoena arrived. The Logan papers said that my parents were being prosecuted for a felony and for escaping the state, but they later had to retract that. Wayne Jacobs was suing us for stripping the house before we moved out. To this day I would love to have seen the look on his face, and his wife’s when they proudly walked through the front door. Because it was related to the earlier case, we had the same judge. After all of the state’s evidence was presented, Judge Lindsay ruled, “I have looked through every City, State, and Federal law in this case and after much research, the court could not find anywhere that it was illegal to steal your own property.” The case was dismissed.

For three years the truckloads from our house remained hidden less than thirty miles away from where they began. Doc Skabelund had a little house in town, but he had a farm outside of town with a Quonset hut that he rarely used except to park his tractors inside. Until the day he died, he never told one other human being where it was, or what he had done for us. He was an extraordinarily good man.

My parents and I live in Boise about fifteen miles apart now. I go over often, through their front door and to the left the stairs climb up and around higher and higher until it makes a full circle in railing and a crystal chandelier hangs down from the middle. I mostly pass under them now and I usually find mom and dad working in the backyard, but sometimes I find my dad in his elegant dark room, built from the old kitchen cupboards with the mosaic tiles.

Our castle was torn down years ago, but I visit 207 South First West often in my dreams. I dream I’m up high on the roof again and when I walk to the edge, I spread out my arms and fall over until I sail. I sail and the wind feels good. I sail over the sidewalk, past the giant oak, and around to the side of the house where I pause to see in the windows new children with their grown aunts and uncles, dancing to their grandpa’s Stratocaster and their grandma’s bassoon and the music is magnificent and the world there is beautiful, and not because of the bricks and stone, but because it is beautiful without it.

Objectification and the Mind-Body Revolution― Part Deux: A Peek Inside

Illustration by Aubrie Moyer. Created for this article. Original publication, “The Naked Truth: America’s Voice Unfiltered” magazine, 2016.

Objectification Series Part Deux: A Peek Inside

The camera pans in. A line of women who stand shoulder to shoulder, look identical. They might as well be living mannequins.  There’s no emotion on any of their faces. They’re still. The camera pans in closer. It tightens up to the first woman.

 We see an eye. It’s green with a pebble grey texture and a smoky black ring against the white. The camera keeps going. We pass through the eye and into her brain. We see churning gears and leather steampunk bands for synapses; shiny rivets and heavy bolts for connections. She’s a mathematician with a flair for artistry. It’s beautiful.

 The next woman has blue eyes and a garden of watercolor flowers growing within. She’s a depressed ex-wife with hope for a new, more colorful world ahead.

 A third with chocolate brown eyes has, inside of her, scripted words flying off weathered scrolls so quickly you can’t read the verse, but your gut tells you it’s breathtakingly poetic with metered verse and perfectly imperfect rhymes. She’s a school teacher who wants, more than anything, for her kids to grow up and find the value of verse, against the odds, because poetry will eventually be discontinued in her classroom and all the others, too.

 Does it matter that they all look the same? What if they all weighed three-hundred pounds? Or one-hundred and ten pounds? They’re each still the same person, big or small, aren’t they?

 Well, actually, they aren’t, because too often, how others judge their appearance also changes how they view the world. The interior has been damaged from wars that come from the exterior.

 The biggest cost of all: most women aren’t free. Some can break down the walls that imprison them but many women can’t. Objectification is too prevalent. It’s even in their safety zones. Their homes. I’ll explain this below.

 Most men I talk to don’t understand objectification nor how it affects women. But what I want to make clear is how it might affect them.

 Let’s say Joe has a crush on Jane. They had a few dates. They enjoyed each other’s company. Meanwhile, Jane caught wind of office gossip insulting her weight. Now she’s humiliated and even more self-conscious than usual.

 Joe asks Jane out again. Jane refuses. Not because she isn’t interested, but because she doesn’t want to be seen. Once she feels everyone is aware of her cultural imperfections, she would rather be alone than face the possibility of someone she cares about judging her too.

 They might have found an amazing love. But because others judged her based on her body alone, they’re alone.

 Objectification is dehumanizing. It turns the body into pieces and parts meant to be consumed as opposed to seeing someone as the well-rounded individual they should be.

 Unfortunately, a study[1] shows that both men and women tend to view women as their attractive parts, but they see men as people.

 How many times have we visited a gym and we’re asked, “what is your problem area?” How many times are we asked, “How much better can we make you feel as a whole person?”

 As mentioned in last month’s objectification article, women who are negatively objectified have lower self-confidence than the 5% who were born with an ideal media body.

 It has been shown that women who fight confidence issues are paid a lower salary. How does that affect men?

 If this is your partner, they’re bringing home fewer dollars. How does that make you feel? Is your partner deflated in your eyes because she’s deflated at work because they judge her by her shape and size? Honestly?

 Are you deflating her because of her shape and size on top of the judgment she’s getting everywhere else? Is this the partnership you want? What can you do to make both of your lives better without asking her to attempt to conform to unrealistic standards of beauty?

 A study by Ramsey and Hoyt [2]shows that men who are more likely to objectify their partner’s body are also liable to feel embarrassment and shame of their partner’s body. In turn, their partners tend to feel more body shame as well. This leads to more frequent sexual pressure and coercion, and in some cases, violence[3].

 The insecurity felt by women often means women are insecure in front of their partners, making their sexual experience far less enjoyable. It’s a vicious cycle.

 There have been differing standards of beauty throughout history, so fighting beauty standards, in general, is not realistic.

 The Vikings were the first to bathe regularly and coif their beards and hair. The ancient Egyptians had a refined, decorative style.

 The ancient Egyptian word snfr means beautiful or embellished.

 In Elizabethan England, women of high style shaved their heads or had very short hair.

 Reuben paintings showcased beautiful, plump women as the time’s standard of beauty.

 Today, we adhere to the standards of beauty that are set by the media and the billion-dollar beauty industry. Instead, we should practice beauty mindfulness, that is, look at whom it is that you love, and admire who they are, as a whole person, right now.

 Look as deeply as you can into your partner’s eyes. What do you see inside? Steampunk gears and funky, artistic metalwork? Watercolor flowers and delightful, romantic ideas? Poetic verse that rings to the ear more beautifully than your own words can express? Choose to see those things in her that she would rather you see than her body. It will make a difference in both of your lives.

 And women, practice mindfulness, and pride in yourself. Ask for a raise. Shut down any attempts of overt objectification and stop comparing your parts to anyone else’s parts. Break down the walls that keep you inside and ashamed.

[1] Abrams, L. (n.d.). Study: Proof That We Sexually Objectify Women. Retrieved August 29, 2016, from http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/07/study-proof-that-we-sexually-objectify-women/260339/

[2] Ramsey and Hoyt. (n.d.). The Object of Desire How Being Objectified Creates Sexual Pressure for Women in Heterosexual Relationships. Retrieved August 29, 2016, from http://pwq.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/07/31/0361684314544679.abstract

[3] Connections: A Biannual Publication of Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.rainn.org/pdf-files-and-other-documents/Public-Policy/Issues/CONNECTIONS_IPSV.pdf

Illustration by Aubrie Moyer. Created for this article.

Objectification and the Mind-Body Revolution

Art by Aubrie Moyer, permission used and created for this article.

A woman in America wakes to a blue sky. In one area of the country, songbirds sing a melody that greets the day. In another area, the low buzz of the city begins below her window.  She opens her eyes feeling refreshed. For a minute or two, she focuses on the comfort of her bed, but eventually, the drive for coffee gets her going.

Everything is grand until she lights up the screen and connects to the external world.

Damn.

She’s been pummeled with images of modern-day expectations of beauty that only five percent of women on the planet are actually capable of achieving without Photoshop, and that number drops to zero once the photo manipulation begins. Most women know what happens next. She’s now in a fit trying to decide what to wear for the day and even if she feels somewhat attractive, she still notices what it is about her body that she feels isn’t perfect and then… *sigh* … she dwells on it. It kills her spirit; her beautiful, songbird, morning buzz, comfortable pillow, happy coffee, lovely-morning spirit.

This has to stop. Only four percent of women in America think they’re beautiful. Eighty percent of college women report that their parents or siblings or both told them negative things about their body. Women with low self-esteem tend to stay in abusive relationships, they’re less likely to start their own businesses, they earn less than people who are confident. And what if you’re single and want a relationship?

Kim, a woman who signed up on a popular dating site in hopes of finding a friend or possibly something more, described what she experienced there as, “absolutely the most humiliating experience of my life.” Some men thought it was OK to comment negatively on her body, and some thought it was perfectly acceptable to ask her what size pants she wore before they went any further.

What Kim saw and internalized was a trend.  Some people seemed to be ordering up the perfect date the way they would order a hamburger for lunch: hold the pickles, but extra mayo please-- and God forbid she wear a size twelve. (For the record, there is beauty at any size and those who missed out on Kim, missed a great deal. She is happily married to someone who understands her beauty better than anyone).

But people want to be attractive, and people want to feel better about themselves. So what can they do to improve their lives?

The answer is: they can choose to be happy.  For those that have traditional beliefs about happiness, I have to tell you, I’m not off my rocker. Let me explain.

Traditionally, people set goals that they think will bring happiness. Is this you?

 “Once I get promoted, I will be happy. When I find that new relationship I will be happy. I will be happy when I lose ten, twenty, thirty pounds.” 

 But the new science of Positive Psychology says otherwise. The examples above have you thinking that happiness is always over the horizon. But once you get there, there is always another goal. There is always something more that needs to be done. You meet success and when you’re there, the new goals for success are already in place. You find a loving relationship but for some reason you’re still unhappy with yourself. Once you lose ten pounds you discover the new imperfections with your body and are once again, unhappy. There is no resting point. This is called the hedonic treadmill. The happiness generated is momentary and you go back to the same default level of unhappiness.

The reality is, what happens in the external world predicts only ten percent of our happiness. We need to decide to be happy, then change our brains accordingly. I will give you the formula for synthesizing happiness further below.

What does synthesizing happiness mean?

According to Psychologist Dan Gilbert,

“Natural happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted, and synthetic happiness is what we make when we don’t get what we want. Synthesized happiness is every bit as real and as enduring as the kind of happiness we get when we get what we were aiming for.”

 It is inevitable that some will claim synthetic happiness isn’t as good as natural happiness.  For those people, here is why it’s important. Just like natural happiness, synthetic happiness floods the brain with a chemical called dopamine. According to Positive Psychologist:

“Dopamine has two functions. It makes us happier by flooding positivity into our brains and it turns on all of the learning centers in our brains, allowing us to adapt to the world in a different way.”

This is huge. What this means is that our brains perform better with happiness than it does at a neutral or stressed default. Our creativity, our intelligence, our energy levels all rise and we perform significantly better at work and at home. There is a ripple effect that takes place because when we’re happy, we bring more happiness to those around us.  We become more confident and confidence is attractive.

 So now we know that we want this, the question is, how do we get there?

 Here is your recipe:

 1)   Scan the world every day for three things to be grateful for. This creates a pattern of looking for the positive instead of the negative.

2)   Journaling. Writing one positive thing down at the end of each day allows us to relive it.

3)   Exercise. This teaches us that behavior matters. It also helps to reduce stress and anxiety.

4)   Meditation.  This helps us get over our cultural ADHD we’ve created by multi-tasking.

5)   Practice random acts of kindness. This creates positivity that’s not only meaningful to you, but to others, helping to make them happier.

6)   Write one good thing that you love about yourself down on a sticky note and put it in a place where you tend to beat yourself up the most. (Like a mirror).

 We can’t change the beauty standard that was created by an industry that’s worth over a billion dollars overnight. What we can change is our internal happiness and our confidence, making a lasting impact on our lives and the lives of those around us. If enough women, and men, decide to take the steps, think about the changes we can make for the next generation, and the generation after that. This is the happiness revolution.

“Confident Woman” by Aubrie Moyer, permission used and created for this article.

Original publication, "The Naked Truth: America’s Voice Unfiltered. 2016.