May I Be Happy by Cyndi Lee

Author:Cyndi Lee [Lee, Cyndi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101609675
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2013-01-23T16:00:00+00:00

Lola, Tia, Jules, and I gathered together around an earthy wooden table above the beach on the Nosara Peninsula of Costa Rica. We see one another for a week each year, as part of the annual Omega winter retreat. As our men gathered across the terrace, we sat down together, letting the warm winter night air thaw our cold Northeast bones.

One of the best things about our friendship is that since we don’t see one another very often, we don’t do small talk. We talk about what we’ve been learning and practicing; what we’ve discovered or created; and what we’ve been able to let go of. As part of my quest for advice from other women, I asked them how they felt about their bodies.

A silence opened up and we sat together comfortably, feeling okay with the spaciousness. Lola is a big blonde who didn’t seem to mind wearing a bikini when we went sailing last year, even though I knew from her husband that she was unhappy with her weight; Jules is a petite woman who got breast implants as a gift for her now ex-boyfriend; and Tia, the most voluptuous of us all, is a real dakini, with long hair and a zaftig body, always in red, black, or white flowing skirts and lacy tunics. These were my three annual female friends: a store owner; a massage therapist; an author. And then there’s me—the yoga teacher who hates her body, never wants to be seen in a bathing suit, and always wears baggy yoga clothes.

Lola answered my question by telling us a story about a woman who came into her shop in Rhinebeck. The woman tried on a dress and then stood right out in the middle of the store, admiring herself in the mirror. She ran her hands up and down her body and purred, saying, “Wow. I look so good in this dress.”

“And she really did look good! Everyone in the shop was looking at her and loving her attitude.”

I chimed in: “That’s cool. I mean, it’s practically illegal in our society to actually say right out loud that you think you look good.”

That’s when Lola delivered the kicker. “Yeah, and she was seventy years old!”

Oh, somehow that detail changed the whole story. I wondered out loud, “Do you think you would have had the same response to a twenty-five- or thirty-five- or forty-five-year-old woman who publicly admired herself?”

Lola thought about it for a moment and said, “I would still think ‘good for you!’”

I dared to be totally honest by saying, “Well, it’s not something I like to admit, but maybe at the same time I would be thinking, ‘I don’t like women like that.’ Right? I don’t know why women compare themselves to each other, instead of just having our own confidence.”

Perhaps I was just ranting on about my own internal drama, but everybody knew what I was talking about. Then Lola offered up another story. She told us we should make a point of going to this little dress shop in Nosara.

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