Recently I heard from Pauline Campos at Girl Body Pride. Pauline's been doing amazing things out on the Interwebs for years now, and I was delighted to hear she put together an anthology that is now available at Smashwords called Strong Like Butterfly: An Anthology.

Enter coupon code CW24A on Smashwords for 25% off the cover price through Feb. 13.

I'm always interested in helping out a fellow anthologist. However, I'm even MORE excited about this anthology (for which I was not paid to promote) because it's filled with beautiful essays (some of which are written by my friends) and because it's all about learning to love the way you look, a concept quite close to my own heart. Here is Pauline's post about the book.

My favorite line from the anthology is by H.C. Palmquist: "For, in the words of one of my dear friends, yesterday's scars are today's armor."

Editor: Pauline Campos

Contributors: Lissa Rankin, Therese Walsh, Mercedes Yardley, Leslie Marinelli, JessiSanfillippo, Carol Cain, Jeanne V. Bowerman, Abigail Green, LeslieMarinelli, Sue O'Lear, Elan "Schmutzie" Morgan, Kim Tracy Prince,Heather Palmquist, Shoshana Rachel, and Alexandra Rosas.

And Pauline is doing fun stuff in conjunction with her book's launch. Here are her notes:

Follow along for updates on the Facebook Fan page, Twitter, Google +,and Pinterest for surprise contests and giveaways, including afree Strong Like Butterfly exclusive cuff braceletdesigned by Berkey Designs, similar to the Girl Body Pride bracelet, which benefits theNational Eating Disorder Association with each sale.
 
Buy the ebookand contact me via email at girlbodypride@gmail.comwith your name and site URL. As a thank you for supporting the site's goal helpwomen learn to see themselves as beautiful in their own right, and mostimportantly, love themselves as they are, your name and URL will be posted onthe Supporters of GBP tab on www.girlbodypride.com!

I am giving away a copy of Strong Like Butterfly and as well as a signed copy of contributor Mercedes Yardley's BeautifulSorrows or WinterWonders (your choice)! To register, just leave a comment. You may enter as many times as you want. I'll close the comments and select a winner at 5 pm on Friday, February 1.

I'm sitting here typing in my Grateful Dead t-shirt and glasses. I should be in the shower. I need to leave for the airport soon.

But the strangest thing happened yesterday. Two phone conversations I had in the past six months turned into something. Not by me -- I just happened to be the person listening raptly on the other end to the aspirations, to the story -- but still. It is so cool to see plans unwind as they do.

So! First, see my friend and colleague Kim Pearson's mind-boggling post about how ankylosing spondylitis has changed her worldview and then back again. I honestly did not think she would ever write this post, and it is so inspiring and so humbling. I'm so glad she did. Also, I love seeing her doing the electric slide.

Second! I've gotten to know Kamy Wicoff over at She Writes over the past few years. I'm so impressed with what she's doing and what she's done, and this latest contest for fiction writers is such an incredible opportunity.

And now, um, SHOWER.

The pool opened last weekend. I thought I was ready to go with my new halter swimdress (shut up) and my sunscreen and my baseball hat. Sure, it had been a long, cold winter accompanied by many, many seasoned wedge fries, but last summer I even bared midriff a few times and felt fine about it.

Also, I haven't had a full-length mirror in my bedroom since last summer. And I never go use my daughter's. So I actually don't know what I look like unless I catch my reflection in a store window, which only happens when I am fully clothed.

Imagine my surprise when I went to use the bathroom at the pool and caught sight of my full-frontal while pulling up my swimming suit. The florescent lights bouncing off cinder block highlighted every lump and bump that was not there last year.

My stomach seized up, and I started to feel hot and tingly.

I manage the anxiety that once caused my eating disorder through a combination of medication, previous talk therapy, exercise, sleep and maintaining a certain weight window in which I feel comfortable with myself. I seem to have tipped over the edge of that window this winter, because as I stumbled back toward my seat, I felt shaky.

And that was when I saw her, my new mom friend -- adorable and tiny and right in the path. I stopped to talk to her and knew I was coming off normal, but the entire time I was talking to her I just wanted to wrap my body in a beach blanket and starve until I felt better. I felt like she could see all the flaws and was taking stock, even though she's a delightful person and why would she do that? Of course she wasn't doing that. But I felt it: the shame.

And I haven't felt like that in years. YEARS.

I walked back to my chair and sunk in. The tears started rolling out from under my sunglasses a few minutes later. Beloved said nice things, tried to make me feel better -- but I know he didn't realize how seriously I was melting down at that moment.

I sat there telling myself I'm 37. I don't need to look like a 24-year-old. I'm a perfectly acceptable 37-year-old. And isn't that sort of shallow, anyway? And haven't I been writing a novel about a protagonist overcoming ED and haven't I been crusading about ED and taking issue with NYT ballet critics ALL YEAR? WHAT THE FUCK, BRAIN?

I took deep breaths. I told myself fat isn't a feeling. And I realized it isn't. My feeling was anxiety -- a severe hit of it -- and I was focusing it on my thighs. I was telling myself that I was a lost cause because I didn't stop working out this winter -- in fact I worked out harder than I have in years -- so it was difficult to stop catastrophizing that exercise no longer worked for weight maintenance, and I would just end up growing and growing from here with no hope. (Because that is the fear that my ED brain wants me to believe.)

My rational brain -- the one in charge 99% of the time -- knows that there is no "always" ever in anything in life, and weight management is just another one of those things. You don't always look great, you don't always look bad. Nothing is absolute, and everything about humans is in a constant state of flux, from our glucose levels to our shoe sizes to our hair length to our weight.

But revisiting that feeling, that download of self-hatred, was really upsetting. It made me hot and then cold and shaky and angry and sad. Thankfully the little angel was in the pool and didn't see her mother crying while staring at her hips.

It's since passed. I am aware that one thing that keeps the wolves at bay for me is staying in that five-pound range of normal BMI that has my clothes fitting without panty lines and me passing full-length mirrors without doing a double-take. I've been more careful this week about what I put in my mouth. But I also know that some parts of it -- the gravity parts, the cellulite parts -- may not be fixable by a sensible diet and exercise program. They may be part of 37. They may be part of my genetic code. I may actually not be able to do anything about the redistribution of what used to be higher on my frame. And I'm going to have to accept that, pronto. I am not going to spend the second half of my life being controlled by that feeling the way I spent the first half.

I AM NOT.