I’ve been struggling with negative self-talk lately, mostly about my body. I’ve gained some weight since my eating-disordered days of college, and I really noticed the difference in my shape in some recent pictures. I try to visit Shapely Prose as often as possible for innoculations against the self hate that bubbles up.

Here’s the good part and what I wanted to share with other folks who might be struggling with negative self-talk: I was visiting my sister in D.C. and helping her care for my nephews (4 and 2 years-old) while her husband is recovering from a motorcycle wreck.

I was having fun chasing them all over the city. At the Air and Space Museum, we decided to check out the Planetarium. When the lights went down, both nephews got scared and asked me to hold them. As I held them both on my lap, I realized…my lap is just the right size for holding my nephews.

I mindfully thought about the bodies of loved ones who held me growing up: my rail-thin farmer grandad. My tall grandma who grew thinner and thinner with illness. My other grandma who was shorter than me when I was ten. My stepdad, whose large belly caught my tears when I cried on his shoulder through teenage angst. My mom, who has a shape very similar to my own.

I love each of the people inhabiting these bodies. I would never say to them the things I say to myself on my bad days.

Which is all to say: my body is just the right body to hold the people I love.

Organic food is no healthier and provides no significant nutritional benefit compared with conventionally produced food, according to a new, independent study funded by the Food Standards Agency.

YOU DON’T SAY.

Man, it only NOW occurs to me that I should have assigned that game when I was teaching digital literature. That’s a missed opportunity right there.