Love Your Body, Love Yourself

"You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees, a hundred miles in the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves." Mary Oliver

As a dietician, she helps her patients formulate wellness plans incorporating good nutrition. Over the past several years, she has seen a growing number of healthy, fit men who look in the mirror and hate what they see. Once thought to be almost the exclusive domain of women, more and more boys and men are developing eating disorders and suffering from poor body images.

Karen Carpenter's anorexia nervosa claimed her life when she was only 32. This video of a young and beautiful Karen celebrating life at Disneyland made me realize how much I miss her. The songs that she and her brother Richard sang were sort of a soundtrack of my life when I was a teenager. Many of their songs were soulful; some of them melancholy. Karen should still be with us. She would only be 60, you know. Young enough to still be singing. Young enough to still be hopping on the Dumbo ride. Young enough to still be celebrating life.

We understand more about this complicated disease and its close neighbor bulimia, than we did when Karen died in 1983, yet we still have young women growing up, and now young men, hating their bodies, hating themselves. We as parents and grandparents can and should do something, to help these young people see that everything about them is wondrous. Before it's too late.

Susan

"Please, Mr. Postman" by Georgia Dobbins, William Garrett, Freddie Gorman, Brian Holland and Robert Bateman