Becoming Journey

Be The Butterfly

Brooke - as one might expect - is amazing. Her energy is contagious and her ability to go right to the heart of the matter is breathtaking. She gets it. She just GETS it. I met her at noon, after a splendid morning that included coffee and a breakfast sandwich at Lake Tahoe (gorgeous) and a fairly silent but none-the-less delightful manicure and pedicure at the Spa.

I was nervous to meet everyone. I thought Brooke might have an annoying voice in person, but not at all. She's great. Beautiful and sparkling. So warm. So smart. The group is great too. Most of the women are from California it seems and many have met before. One is from Howard County MD. She flew out of BWI a couple hours before me yesterday. Too funny. Her name is H*. Stay at home mom of 3. Super smart and frankly - like many of the women here - pretty friggin thin! So many of the women are thin and beautiful IMHO that I wonder what the hell they are doing here. Definitely all very smart, engaged, and dealing with serious stuff. I'm sure I'll be annoyed at some of the eventually but for now they are great.

We sat down for an intro session. And Brooke didn't want to hear where we were from, or where we worked. She first wanted to know what we were excited about and then, what we were afraid of. I said I was excited to make some new friends and afraid of ...exercise. I've never been afraid of exercise because I have been willing to do it and hate it. But now, I want to embrace it and I guess I'm afraid I won't.

As we went around we started talking about the beliefs that lead to the thoughts that cause the feelings that we try to avoid by eating. There were a couple interesting beliefs of mine that were brought up in the group session. First she pinpointed me on my believe that "No one should feel pain." I was talking about how sad it made me that my mom was sad. She thought that was an unreasonable reason to be sad. Sounded good to me. I love my mom I don't want her to be sad. Not for my Brooke though, she wouldn't let it go. If you go around wanting no one to ever be in pain or thinking no one should ever be in pain you are setting yourself up to be in pain a lot of the time. UGH - there's a hard one to swallow.

The next challenge came when I explained my mom said she was lonely. I didn't want her to be lonely. And that's when the bomb shelled dropped. I don't think she should be lonely because I'm her daughter and therefore I should keep her company. Brooke said, "So mom's should never get lonely." And I said, "No, that's why you have kids." Oh did the crowd go while. Now there is a belief system that needs some challenging!

After that we went for a one hour hike (I think tomorrow's hike is 3 hours.) The hike was beautiful. It looks like Switzerland a bit here. Wasn't expecting that. I still hate hiking.

One other thing I wanted to mention. More than once Brooke has mentioned her weight - 150lbs, size 8 - and I have to comment on it. She is so think - I mean she looks super skinny to me. I can't believe that's what 150 lbs looks like. I am thinking of changing my goal to 180!

Oh and the title of this post, Be the Butterfly... that comes of Brooke's dramatic reading of Eric Carlise's The Hungry Caterpillar. Who, it turns out, is a caterpillar who starved himself, binged, ate healthy and then became a butterfly. Our weekend is about the metamorphosis stage in between being a caterpillar and a butterfly - the bug soup or the mire that we are in as we try to figure this out. Or as Brooke says, as we build the muscles needed to come out of our cocoon and fly!