A letter from a former anorexic to the CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch

Dear Mr. Mike Jeffries,

You've gotten a lot of flack lately. And it's been well-deserved.

But I feel sorry for you.

I feel sorry because at the end of the day, you don't know the hurt you've inflicted, because you've never been so wounded that you starved yourself for four years. You've never been so picked on that you planned your outfits out, weeks in advance, so the kids would think you fit in--or at least, so they wouldn't notice you. You've never felt so ugly that you spent hours squeezing your fingers around your wrists wondering when you'd be the perfect size. Wondering when you would matter, to someone.

What is your story, Mike Jeffries? Because all of us have one. And you've got this curl to your lip that makes me think that you're hiding something. Something deep and cutting, and maybe I'm wrong. Maybe something hurt you so badly that you created a multi-billion dollar company catering to the cool kids because it was the only way you knew to salvation. It was the only road you could take to find a name.

We all do it. We all try to find that road. And we all want to be cool. We all want to matter. I see this in the blogging world too. I see the cool blogs and the way we try to fit in.

So many of us just don't say it. We don't say that, deep down, we believe that fat is bad, that the cool crowd is where we belong, and that being picked on is deserved. 

You had the guts to say what you believed. Unfortunately, what you believe is wrong.

Me, when I was anorexic

Because beauty is not a number. I know, because I got down to size zero. And it wasn't enough. I still cried myself to sleep every night.

I've gotten rid of my weigh scale. I shop at thrift stores because I don't want to support men like you. I am striving to make my blog nerdy again because for too long I tried to be cool. I had forgotten that Jesus said, the last shall be first. 

Jesus pissed a lot of people off too, Mike. But not because he didn't like fat people. It's because he saw people's hearts and he called them for what they were. He saw the truth. 

And I'm looking at you, Mike, and I'm seeing a hurting boy, who hides behind fancy suits and a multi-billion-dollar career and secretly wonders when he'll feel like he matters.

And I hope you find him, Mike.

The God you've been desperately searching for, in all of your cocktail parties and high-priced collars. Because in spite of everything you've said and done, you're still dearly loved by him.

And because of that, I choose to love you too.

In Him Whose Name is the Only Brand Worth Wearing,

Emily.


*My friend, Alise Wright, is giving away Mom in the Mirror today... join us HERE?*

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On how to blog, and live, in a holy kind of way

I am sitting across from my blogger friend and her husband, in Tennessee. The walls are cumin yellow and there is a basket of limes and lemons in the center of the dining room table.

It's lush here. It's been raining and the leaves are the kind of green that sing, and her husband is asking me why I started blogging.

And I tell him about Mum.

I tell him about moving home from Korea six years ago to take care of her, while Trent finished up our contract and how I was all alone in Mum's and Dad's basement, Mum dying upstairs and I needed community. I needed friends. And I needed to process what I was experiencing. 

"It began out of very pure motives," I say. "Out of the desperate attempt to connect. I had maybe five readers. My dad, my husband's sister, and a few other friends."

But it was enough. It was enough to tell me I wasn't alone, and then it became something more.

People started encouraging my writing, and I switched blog sites and I uploaded photos and it became more professional, and less pure. It became more about defining me and less about expressing me. 

"It's kind of like church, this blogging thing," I tell him. "You can compare yourself to those around you, or you can celebrate your differences. You can look at someone and covet them and their 100,000 readers, or you can rejoice for them."

And then, I add, there are times when you just need to take a break.

We live in a world where virtual relationships earn intimacy at an alarming rate. All you have to do is click "friend" on Facebook and suddenly that person, whom you most likely haven't met, and may not even know, is privy to your life.

Nothing is private anymore. There is no sacredness to life because it's all a status on Facebook, or a Tweet, or a Pin or an Instagram, and "sometimes you just need to take a break," I repeat. "Because if you're not being fed by the living, breathing, physical love that's around you, in your children and your husband and your co-workers and neighbors and friends; if you're running to the internet before you've done your devotions in the morning; if you're eating breakfast while scanning Facebook instead of stepping out onto the deck with your coffee and listening to the birds sing, you've stopped living."

I don't want to stop living.

I want my motives for blogging to be pure.

I want to use my blog to express myself, not to define myself.

So I'm taking a week-long break. There will be no Imperfect Prose this week. And I invite YOU to take a break too. To unplug, and re-charge.

I will still have friends hosting giveaways of Mom in the Mirror and will share about those giveaways; but for now, my own personal words will be audible ones, directed towards my husband and my children. Towards the very physical, very present, all too taken for granted humans that share my home for this short life.

Let's be different than the rest of the world, friends. Let's remember the sacredness of the human touch. 

And let's take time to be silent so that when it comes time to blog again, the words we write will be ones we've heard whispered by the Spirit of God.



(I will resume blogging next Monday; thanks for grace, friends.)

**Over at Amber Haine's today, giving away another hard-cover copy of Mom in the Mirror! 

What true beauty looks like (learning to see backwards)

Perhaps we’ve got it backwards. 

Maybe it’s not about size at all, but about strength. Maybe it’s not about smooth skin, but about wrinkles.

Maybe instead of touching up our roots, it’s about showing off our silver hairs. Because it’s all about perspective. 

When a person looks at an oak tree, he sees strength—not size. When he cuts down this tree, he doesn’t airbrush the rings, but marvels at their number. Like wrinkles, they display age and long-suffering, stories untold—and why do we try to Cover Up true beauty?

Society has chosen certain qualifiers like size, smoothness of skin and color of hair, because it can profit from them. It cannot profit from natural, God-given beauty. It cannot market true value. So, using commercials and movies and sitcoms, it saturates our brains with the need to appear fake so it can produce a dollar.  

It trains us to feel inadequate, watching these commercials and these sitcoms, and we start to despise ourselves. We become like children, with toy ads, and it doesn’t matter how many toys we already have.

All we can think is, I need more. Because society tells us we do.

The cycle spirals, and we get work done on our noses, boobs, eyebrows, thighs and lips, until we’re so plastic we can no longer smile. Because we’ve lost the real. 

North American media has hit the world with Barbie bombshells. It has destroyed the lives and souls of hundreds of thousands of girls, all in the name of profit...

It’s not about one mom standing in front of the mirror.  It’s about thousands of moms. As women, we are all connected. Your life matters. Your value is worth more than you can imagine. And the lives you’re touching, more than you’ll ever know.  

(Excerpt from Mom in the Mirror, Chapter 15: Identity Crisis—Discovering True Self-Worth)

**Deidra Riggs is giving away a free hard-cover copy of Mom in the Mirror over HERE today**

**Friends, tomorrow I'm speaking to a crowd of about 350 here in Nashville on my own personal journey towards learning to love the woman in the mirror; pray for me? Thanks for being here with me this week, for the book launch. And of course, don't forget to pick up YOUR copy of Mom in the Mirror, HERE, if you haven't already! Have a great weekend.**

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Like Mother, Like Daughter--Your Personal Legacy

           Women are the heartbeat of the home.

           If we are peaceful, joyful and confident, our families will be too. And if we’re anxious, fearful and ashamed, generally our children and husbands will suffer as well.

            We cannot let our fears of who we think we are determine how we parent. Fears of passing on insecurities, of saying or doing things that will make our children doubt themselves. Our children will end up being more gracious than we ever thought possible, and not because of us, but in spite of us. Because don’t we, deep-down, believe in redemption?

            The truth is, we’ll only believe in redemption once we’ve experienced it ourselves. And we’ll only experience it ourselves if we release our pain, our brokenness, our emptiness—let it fly to heaven like a dove, and let God take that bird and tend to its wounds.  If we keep trying to hold onto our injuries, to damage ourselves further, we’ll never be able to fully love on those around us, because our arms will be too full of ourselves.

            We need to stop letting fear define us, and to boldly admit we will never be good enough. Only God is good. And then, we need to do our best by our children, anyway. To hug them, listen to them, and watch movies with them. To cry with them when their hearts get broken.

“Remember, your example will last a long time,” writes Lerner. “As family therapist Peggy Papp reminds us, the quality of a mother’s life and her courage are among her most important legacies to her daughter. ‘A woman who can believe in herself when no one else does, who will fight for herself when no one else will, who will continue to struggle even though she is unprotected, this woman demonstrates to her daughter that these possibilities exist.’ One great gift a mother can give her daughter is to live her own life as well as possible.”^[1]

Page 145

Reflection

• How do you and your mother get along?
• How do you and your daughter get along?
• What similarities do you see between the two relationships?
• How do you talk about/treat your body in front of your daughter?
• How does your view of yourself match up with what you tell your children about their worth?
• Do you apologize to your children inasmuch as you tell them you love them? Why/why not?
• What do you remember about mealtimes, growing up? 
• What messages did your mom send you about body image and esteem? 
• What messages did your dad send you?    
• What were your parents’ attitudes toward physical activity?
• How have their opinions shaped yours, and which of them do you actually agree with?

Tools

• Tell your children you’re sorry for how you’ve hurt their perception of themselves, and ask them to forgive you.
• Make a list of ways in which you can encourage/positively reinforce your children’s sense of purpose and value, and choose a different method, each week.
• Seek the therapy/counseling you need in order to be free of the past.
• Create a body image genogram (family tree): This exercise helps you become aware of messages about food, weight, size which have passed down through generations. 
• Timeline: Develop a timeline of when your issues with food, weight, and/or body images issues started. 
• List: Create a positive and negative list of the attributes, behaviors, or attitudes toward food and body image which have passed down from generation to generation that you want to continue or discontinue in your family.
• What self-care behaviors do you use?  What are you going to use this week (for example, walk three times this week, go to yoga class, say nice comments when you look in the mirror, listen to uplifting music when driving home from work)? 
• Change: What are some behaviors of yours related to eating, physical activity, and weight control behaviors that you want to change?
• Choose one negative behavior that you’re going to stop this week (i.e. pinching your fat, skipping breakfast, talking about needing to go on a diet).  

(Excerpt from Mom in the Mirror, Chapter 9: Like Mother, Like Daughter--Your Personal Legacy; pick up your own copy today, HERE.)

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