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	GenuineYou News September 2007 - Meg Barnhouse, >CI

Meg Barnhouse is a writer, a composer and musician, a minister, the mother of two wonderful teenage sons, and a second degree black belt in karate.  She is funny, smart and thoughtful.  She is also a large woman, or as I like to say, >CI (greater than the cultural ideal). 

I’ve read Meg’s books, danced to her music, listened to her essay on NPR and recently I was gifted with her time when she agreed to an interview for my newsletter.  I wanted to interview Meg because she has what so many women are looking for – not just acceptance of her body, but exulting in it!  Not just content with her lot, but passionate about her mission.

In one of her essays “My Inner Motorcycle Gang,” she talks about going to a weight-loss clinic.  In another, “Smashing Things,” she tells of the challenge of getting her black belt. 

“Yeah, I like smashing things.  I smashed my ideas about what this forty-something body could do.  I smashed my resistance to practicing.  I smashed my self-hater who kept asking how I could stand up in front of those full-length mirrors week after week surrounded by whip-thin fourteen year olds when my body was so large.  Some things I love to smash.”

I asked Meg about that journey – from weight-loss clinic to self-hater smasher.  She acknowledged that it is an ongoing process, but the impetus came when she saw a picture of herself from several years before. 

“As I look at pictures of myself, I see that I was gorgeous at the times when I thought I was fat and awful. I realize that feeling fat and ugly is connected to emotions more than reality.  I tended to feel thinner when I had plenty of money in the bank!  Giving in to the self-hater makes people crazy and mean.”

Meg says that now she is grateful for her body.  She thanks her body for its strength and power. She tells about going on a white-water tubing trip with friends and getting dunked several times. 

"I hadn’t realized how strenuous it would be to pull myself back up into the tube, but I did it and I was grateful and proud.  It felt like really living!  I go to the gym every day now, but it isn’t to lose weight.  My goal is to cooperate with my body and let it move and be strong.  If I encounter limitations, I speak to myself encouragingly.  I am very conscious to speak sweetly to myself.  I give my body food with a lot of life in it.”

I asked Meg what she thought was the thing that women need most today.  She replied,

“You can be happy with who you are.  You are a gift to the world.  There is something that is supposed to come through you to the world and it can’t come through anyone else.  If you die without making your contribution, it’s like spitting in the eye of God.”

In a world where we are surrounded with magazines, tv shows, books and movies about pencil-thin women pursuing acceptance, its wonderful to have an artist and role model like Meg Barnhouse, a woman who already knows that shes acceptable just as she is.  The next time you feel really crappy after looking at a women’s magazine, pick up one of her books and find some wisdom, some inspiration and some chuckles.  Find out more at http://www.megbarnhouse.com/