This week was much harder for me than last week. The idea of not comparing myself to others is so firmly ingrained in my psyche and I spend a lot of my time comparing myself and falling short.

I don’t usually talk about this and I certainly don’t blog about it, but my mother is an abusive, angry, bitter woman, who was very mean to me.  Finally about a year ago, I had to cut her out of my life for good.  Not only was she still being mean to me, but worse she was starting to do it to my daughter.  I had tried to foster a relationship with her for most of my adult life, willing to overloook all the bad that had gone on, in the hopes that we could build some sort of family.  She just couldn’t stop herself from saying the most hurtful things – and I’m not just talking about little things… I’m talking about the big ones… things like: “Yeah, I just never felt maternal towards you”, and “You want to be a hula girl for halloween?  All you care about is showing skin, what are you, a whore?” (I was 10), and the always popular, 20 minutes after I gave birth to my son, “Let’s just hope you don’t get sick of being a mother like I did”.  Yeah, she was nasty, but I thought I could handle it.  I won’t even get into the danger she put me in on a regular basis, but let’s just say she shouldn’t have been allowed to raise children.  When she started to mess with my child, it all came to a head and I had to say goodbye for good.  I finally realized that she was going to try to destroy my daughter, the way she tried to destroy me.  I couldn’t let that happen and it was finally the catalyst that I needed to cut her off.  I was mourning something that never existed and I tried for years to make something out of nothing.  Obviously my Inner Mean Girl was fed by all of that vitriol and she has thrived for many years telling me just how lacking I am.

Now, I really don’t dwell on the past and I’m not one to publicly air my stuff like this, but I was moved by all the things I’ve read, written by other people doing the cleanse, and just people in general that I seem to be coming across lately, going through very similar situations and I decided to really explore why I still allow these mean things to be said to me, why I still listen to it and worse, why I’m saying them to myself.  Do I really believe that I don’t have anything to offer?  No, I know I have a lot to offer this world.  I have come quite far in this journey, but there’s one area where I’m just stuck.

Body Image is the nice way of saying it these days.  But Cruella (my inner mean girl) doesn’t say, “Christine, your body image isn’t what it should be”, she says, “look at how thin and gorgeous so and so is, you blob”, or “really?  Are you going to eat that? That’s why you’re so fat”, or the ever popular, “You think 20 minutes of exercise is going to help? Yeah, right – you’re hopeless”.  And she says these things all day long, every day.  How could I allow that?

Truth be told, I don’t know how to stop it.  As I sit here and write this, I wonder whose voice these things are being said in, and I’m horrified to realize that it’s my own. It’s not someone from a million years ago; it’s Christine. Right here, right now.

And it’s funny- it’s never about the other person, the person I’m comparing myself to.  I don’t begrudge anyone their success, or their good fortune, I truly believe that there’s enough in the universe for every single one of us.  I don’t feel any malice towards the other person, I guess because I realize that it’s so totally not about them. It’s about me.  Me and Cruella.

As for gratitude, I have plenty to be grateful for, I’ve had more than my fair share of good fortune and accomplishments.  I’m living almost the exact life that I want.  I could use a couple of extra dollars and and more than a couple of less pounds, but other than that, things are pretty good.  It’s really just this one area – funny, it is the area that my mother focused on most when denigrating me, but I’m 45 years old, it’s not her fault anymore and she’s not even in my life to be making these comments.  It’s me. Me and Cruella.

Now I just have to figure out how to distract her for the next 45 years… And ideas?

I am participating in the Inner Mean Girl 40-day Cleanse as a Self-Love Ambassador. To thank me for my participation, I will receive a self-love gift from the founders of the Inner Mean Girl Reform School

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