I've been doing a lot of growing lately. It's made my life rather challenging and my relationships a little stressed.

I didn't go to work today. My son had a stomach upset & fever last night that wasn't quite gone this morning (ex-husband's girlfriend's lousy cooking, I think), so I seized on the excuse to keep him home from school and stay with him.

I've been feeling really needy, vulnerable and lonely all day. I don't like feeling this way. It makes me want to reach out and cling to people, and that usually ends up getting someone hurt. I know now (like as of about 1/2 hour ago) what feeling this way means: I'm doing some serious growing and when most of my circuits are reprogramming themselves, I get to feel shaky, off-balance, needy, vulnerable and lonely.

This is what I'm processing right now: Warrior Marks.

A friend of mine said something a couple of evenings ago about stretch marks being the warrior marks of motherhood and wanting to change our culture so that they were respected and revered, instead of seen as things to hide and conceal. That started me thinking about my own personal warrior marks. Recently I've become much more comfortable with myself as a warrior. An Amazon, a tigress. Someone who is strong enough to take whatever life dishes out and triumph over it. (And I wonder why I get so uncomfortable when I feel vulnerable and needy). One of the things I've been struggling with for several years now has been my weight. I know why I put on weight, I know what I needed it for, and this knowledge has helped me shed about 30 lbs this year (70 or so more to go). A piece that's been missing for me has been acceptance of my body as it is right now. Without that acceptance, I can't make much more progress, or at least not easily.

The conversation about warrior marks and body modification set the acceptance process in motion: I'm beginning to see my current body shape as a kind of warrior mark -- it's what I had to do to survive when I lost myself and lost my way. Now that I can see and accept it for what it was: a survival strategy that worked for a while, and which I no longer need to employ, I can change. I can look at myself naked in the mirror and see who I really am. And not flinch.

As I heal, I replace the old warrior marks with new ones: I pierced my ears some more so I could listen to what people (including myself) were saying to me. I pierced my tongue so no one except me could silence me again, and so I can remember what being silenced is like. I pierced my nipple because I am more than just "mom": I have a life and a sexuality of my own.

I'm going to get external labia piercings as a reclamation of my sexuality from the shame that has hidden it and bound it for so long -- I will be the one who holds the keys, who controls my sexuality, who controls access to my innermost self.

I'm planning to get a couple of fairly hard-core biomech tattoos. These are about owning and displaying my strength and power -- about wearing my strength openly, about being assertive and confrontational, not hiding, not giving myself away.

I've been wearing a heavy silver chain bracelet for about 2 weeks now. The first or second day I wore it I was in the shower and as I raised my arm I saw what I will look like when I've lost the 70 lbs (approx.) that I intend to lose to get back to a reasonable weight for my height. A really intense clairvoyant flashforward of myself without the weight. Not looking back to what I was like before I gained weight, but looking forward to where I'll be when I've lost it.

Hell, this stuff is intense. I don't know any other way of dealing with it effectively than going at it full throttle, damn the torpedoes. And it's so hard to do when the changes just keep coming. I've processed so much shit lately -- I've probably got a higher processing capacity than the new Deer Island plant. They should put me in charge of cleaning up Boston Harbor; it'd be done by now. I'm tired. I want someone to hold me and say, "It's alright, you can stop now, you can take a break." I want someone to massage my shoulders, pour me a drink, to take over so I can crash and cry and then sleep for about a week. And it's not going to happen. I have to do it all myself, there is no other way. That's OK, it's just really hard right now and I'm really scared that I'm going too fast and taking off bigger chunks of this than I can process..... and I'm lonely and vulnerable and I need to own that publicly.

And right now I'm going to put on some shoes and go out for a walk.

I might even take the dog with me.

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