Ep #142: Your Home

This is Weight Loss Success with Natalie Brown, episode 142.

Welcome to Weight Loss Success with Natalie Brown. If you’re a successful woman who is ready to stop struggling with your weight, you’re in the right place. You’ll learn everything you need to know to lose weight for the last time in bitesize pieces. Here’s your host, Master Certified Coach Natalie Brown.

Hey, everybody. We have the most amazing September and October that I can remember around here. The combination of a pretty wet, mild summer and warm sunny fall days has just made the fall colors so brilliant and last so long. There are still trees that are yet to change that are so green. And we have bright red, and orange, and yellows, we’ve had that for weeks already, it’s just lasting on, and on, and on. And fall is my favorite, so this is just heaven for me.

I’m just so amazed every year at how nature transforms and presents so much beauty in every single season but especially fall. And the fall colors, the fall weather, I just think it can’t be beat. Because it has been so nice and warm and mild I’ve been enjoying sunny morning walks in short sleeves. And I haven’t even broken out my boots, and coats, and jackets yet, well, until this week. Chilly fall temps have officially arrived all at once and with them, the deep gratitude I feel for a warm, cozy house. I think about it every time I take my dog outside to go potty and come back in.

And every time I go outside in any way and come back in it’s just such a gift to have a house with heat when it is cold outside. I don’t feel the same way in the summer necessarily, I’m not brimming with gratitude, even though I appreciate me some AC as well. But I can go sit in the shade on my grass, drink a cold beverage, take off some extra clothing and cool down just fine. But there’s really no way to make myself as warm outside as I am inside my house with my heat on in the winter. Certainly hats, and coats, and boots, and gloves help, yes.

I mean I ski for hours in the winter and I’m able to stave off hypothermia but I wouldn’t say I am warm necessarily when I’m doing these things. I’m warm enough to not die, and to be able to get up and down the mountain but I’m not the same warm I feel as I sit in my house heater going, fireplace on, all the coziness. So, I’ve been thinking about my warm home and how grateful I am for it.

And I came across this poem kind of coincidentally. It’s called Your Home and it’s by Erin Hanson. If there’s one thing that I may tell you, let it be, you are your home. Your body is the only house that you will truly ever own. Maybe it’s got some broken windows and there are tear stains on the floors, maybe you lock the things you wish weren’t, behind its many doors. But there’s wisdom on its bookshelves and a laugh to light the rooms.

There is a vase upon its table where the love you’ve grown all blooms. Dreams sit on the mantelpiece next to kindness and your trust, where you use them all so often they have no time to collect dust. So please don’t look at mansions with that envy in your eyes, there’s more that makes a home than its appearance or its size. Your body is your shelter, so you deserve to love it all. Don’t let the world stand around outside and tell you how to paint your walls. How lucky that you have somewhere to protect you from the night. And if there are cracks left from the past, well then they just let in more light.

First of all, rhyming poems are so nostalgic to me. I love all kinds of poetry but there is something just so sweet to me about the rhythm and simplicity of rhyme. Maybe it’s because I love music so much and lyrics are often rhyming poems. Anyway, your body is your home. What comes up when I say that? To me, home is different from a house. A house is a structure, a home is a place you live and belong. And I think we often regard our body as a house, just a structure we have to deal with, and dislike, and are uncomfortable in, not a place we belong.

Have you ever lived in a house that you hate or dislike? Why did you dislike it? What was it about that structure, or location, or whatever that didn’t work for you? How did you feel in that house? Imagine giving that house over to someone who didn’t have one, what would they have thought about that house? Imagine that house was located in Tornado Alley in the US, and a tornado tore through your neighborhood and destroyed all the houses around you but yours was left untouched. What might you think about that house after something like that?

Have you ever lived in a house you love? Why did you or do you love it? What is it about that house that worked well for you? How did you feel when you were in that house? We feel however we do in our body homes because of how we perceive them. What we focus on, we often take for granted the things that are functioning well because of all we see as not functioning the way we would want it to.

Even though the house I live in currently and have for the past 12 years is a house we built for us. So, we designed it. My husband was the builder. We picked the floor plan, picked the materials, picked all the details. It’s different as you move in and live life in it and your family grows and changes. Things that in theory seemed perfect or that worked well in the beginning, we’ve learned over time aren’t so perfect or aren’t working as well for us and our family now. And there’s things we didn’t even think of, that we kind of wish we had.

As life is lived in a home with kids, and pets, and friends, and cousins, and family, and holidays, things wear out and they become outdated and they need care. We currently have a water valve where the culinary water enters our house, I don’t know any more details than that. I’m not the handyperson around here, but it’s wearing out and it’s making it so that every time anyone flushes, or showers, or turns on the water in any way it sings so loud that you can hear it throughout the whole house. It’s just yelling at us most of the time. It really needs some care so it can keep taking care of us.

Because clean running water is another thing I’m continually grateful for. The water valve in my house is something that can’t easily be ignored but there are plenty of things in a home that break, or stop working, or need fixing that aren’t necessarily creating an urgent problem that we just kind of end up ignoring. Think about things in your home that fit into this category, that broken cabinet door that you just kind of work around, the chipped paint that you no longer even see. The squeaky door that has just become part of the music of life.

Even with all the imperfections of a well-worn home, the things that aren’t quite working like we want them to, the parts we wish we could change, the things we ignore. Home is a place where life is lived, where love and heartache are felt, where memories are made. There’s beauty and grief all mixed together. There are stories on every shelf and behind every door, so it is with our bodies.

Your body home like your home, home needs care. There are things that once worked that maybe aren’t working so well anymore. There are things that need attention that we choose to ignore. There are parts that we wish we could change, parts that we can’t even look at because of the pain associated. As we’ve grown, and changed, and lived in our body home, we have often allowed outside voices to tell us what color to paint our walls as Erin so beautifully puts it. We feel we’re walking around in a house we hate rather than a home where we belong.

What would it take for you to make your body feel like a home where you belong today right now, not when the scale goes down or when you can fit into those jeans, but this minute? Look down at your body, whisper, there’s no home like you. Thank you. Those are the words of Rupi Kaur that I love so much and I love you so much. I’ll see you soon.

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Weight Loss Success with Natalie Brown. If you want to learn more about how to lose weight for the last time, come on over to itbeginswithathought.com. We’ll see you here next week.