Nov 4

It’s been an exciting time to be living here in the United States.  Of course, the election campaigns have been going on here for a long time already, but being here in the months leading up to this election has been fascinating. An exercise in understanding the differences between Canadian and American cultures.

Here is my experience as an observer: America has trust issues. Please don’t hear me say that America is wrong or bad. Only a fool would make such callous comments, being a citizen of a neighbouring country, and although I have do have a sense of Canadian pride, I am very aware that Canada doesn’t have everything right. But here in the USA people seem not to be able to trust others to use the sense God gave them. I get the strong feeling I am not trusted to be be rational and reasonable.  This is why I have to sign significantly more forms here than in Canada when I take my children to the doctor, when I enroll them in school, when I set up a bank account or driver’s license – to ensure I won’t come back and sue them over a ridiculous technicality. The television is rife with commercials, news broadcasts and tv specials full of warnings and anxious, cautious language.

This is why, when I have listened to Americans discuss today’s election, they talk about their great fear over what will happen if the candidate they don’t support is elected into office. Not to minimize the very valid concerns American citizens have about who governs their country and how they do so.  I just find it very hard to identify with this crippling sense of fear.

As an outside observer I don’t get a say in what happens in today’s election. But there are many countries in the international community with a vested interest the outcome.  I dare say there are a LOT of Canadians hoping that Obama wins. If for no other reason than he didn’t talk smack about our health care in a nationally televised debate or have a seven minute telephone conversation with a fictional French president!***

Perhaps Americans have more reasons to be afraid. A major war, an economic tailspin, and no universal healthcare are all good reason to shake in your boots a little or to feel suspicious of people who claim to be able to make changes. While I don’t claim to fully understand (or even to be correct about) the feelings or attitudes I observe as a foreigner here, I do know that today is the day that Americans get to make a choice to move forward without fear by electing a candidate who has campaigned fearlessly and without perpetuating fear in this country.  

America, this is your opportunity to move beyond fear to confidence, beyond suspicion, to trust, and to take the next step out of your country’s childhood to become self-aware, humble and to lead with conviction. When people look back on this day in history they will say that this is the day America left fear behind. This is the day they elected president Obama.

***While I wouldn’t say that Obama’s health care plan is a copy of Canada’s for a number of reasons, and while I would be the first to agree that Canada’s health care plan DOES have a number of problems, let me refer y’all to an article from a July 2008 copy of Maclean’s magazine. This article states that Canadians pay half as much as Americans per person each year for both public and private health care.  The result? We live an average of 2.5 years longer than Americans! With those numbers I’ll take the Canadian health care system, warts and all!

Oct 26

A friend recently introduced me to The Shape of a Mother, a website for women to share pictures of their bodies, the good, the bad and what many of us perceive as ugly.  Here is what the creator of the site says:

It is my dream, then, to create this website where women of all ages, shapes, sizes and nationalities can share images of their bodies so it will no longer be secret. So we can finally see what women really look like sans airbrushes and plastic surgery. I think it would be nothing short of amazing if a few of our hearts are healed, or if we begin to cherish our new bodies which have done so much for the human race. What if the next generation grows up knowing how normal our bodies are? How truly awesome would that be?

I have to say I was a bit skeptical at first. It felt a bit creepy, looking at these very intimate pictures. I didn’t know what value there would be in seeing other women’s bodies who, like me, were ravaged by childbearing. In my head I “knew” other women out there look like me. But in mere moments I was completely hooked. I spent half an hour straight just looking at pictures and reading the thoughts and feelings of the women who posted them and so closely identifying with many of them. The good and the bad. The shame and frustration of the weight gain, the stretch marks, the sagging and other side effect of childbearing. But also the joy and power in knowing the strength of my own body and seeing it work so effectively to create a new life. 

Most of all, this site is like media desensitization. Instead of coming away depressed, I felt something I rarely feel: normal.  Absolutely, totally, one hundred percent NORMAL.  I looked at my own body in the mirror and thought to myself “I have a normal body. I look like most of the bodies I saw today.  I have nothing to be ashamed of.” Though I believed those ideas in my head before visiting The Shape of a Mother, I now believe them in my heart.

I also came to appreciate more fully that almost every woman feels the same way about her postpartum body. Even the ones who I would personally deem attractive or thin or beautiful. No detail escapes our scrutiny. No change is unnoticed. None of us seem to be immune. How easy it is for each one of us to feel we are somehow different from everyone else and that we are the only one who experiences our feelings. The Shape of a Mother reminded me I am not alone and that there is a sisterhood of women who have the same struggles.

I know these issues apply to women who have not been pregnant, too, and I think it is just fabulous that someone is trying to remove the shroud of shame and embarrassment that so many of us feel about our bodies in an age when we are bombarded with images that look so different from what we see in the mirror. I hope you will check it out. Whenever I am feeling down on myself about the shape of my body, I know I’ll be going back to remind myself what normal really looks like.