Ugly Cries are the Worst (And I didn’t even watch the Notebook)

Everyone is entitled to a good cry now and again. We all have them. You know the one I’m talking about, too - the ugly cry. Where your eyes are puffy the rest of the day and your face is red and blotchy. The “I just watched ‘The Notebook’ ugly cry.” When I began to document this journey on my blog, I promised you the good, bad and the ugly. Well, I had an ugly cry today. Twice in fact. All before 9:30 am. and it lived up to its descriptor (Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams not included.) It. Was. Ugly.

(Depending on how you know me and how long you have known me, this news will either confirm what you know about me or shock you as I fall into one of two categories for people that know me- I cry all the time (as in when I was in elementary school) or I never cry (as in something happened to me in adulthood and I became a person who doesn’t even cry when most people cry. It’s weird.) But it is who I am and I have no in between, really.

First, let me just say, I’m not asking for your sympathy. Everyone cries, I understand that. Everyone has bad days, and in reality, the reason I ugly cried will sound ridiculous to some of you. Heck, it would normally sound ridiculous to me. You all have been amazing to me over this journey and your support has meant so much to me, and while I appreciate even the thought of your sympathy for my crying today, spare me. Your sympathy is not what I need right now.

Today I had my six-month post-gastric sleeve checkup, and never could I have ever imagined that losing weight would make me feel like a complete and utter failure. But I do. (Hence, the ugly cry.)

First of all, I will tell you that I had some anxiety about this doctor’s visit. I didn’t sleep well last night and I’ve been dreading this visit for a couple of weeks. Why, you ask? Well, I don’t get on the scale too often, but when I did over the last couple of months, I noticed my weight wasn’t going down the way it once was. I was stalled. So I tried to push that out of my mind—sometimes I can compartmentalize like a dude (sorry fellas), and I apparently did. I just buried it on down somewhere and chose not to deal with it. I knew the reasons why the weight wasn’t coming off like it had been, but I pushed them down deep into a place in my brain I don’t visit often. And I convinced myself that everything was fine. But it wasn’t.

So here goes… the reason for the ugly cry is that in three months, I have only lost four pounds. And that, according to my doctor, is a complete failure and I have done poorly. I have “reverted back to the same bad habits that got me here in the first place.” And as much as I hate to say it, he is right. (Ugh, that tasted like vinegar just typing it.) He’s right. That’s why I was compartmentalizing it. I knew I wasn’t doing things right. I knew I had lost focus. And I knew this doctor’s appointment would be the day of reckoning.

Now, before I ugly cry again, let me say that losing four pounds in 3 months is MUCH better than gaining any weight. (Well, not according to my doctor; he said it is the same as gaining and the four pounds doesn’t really count. But I can guarantee I would have cried a heck of a lot more had I gained some weight.) 

And after nearly 12 hours of processing this and feeling sorry for myself, I know that this is all going to be okay. I know that I will be okay. And I get it. I have lost a lot of weight—70 pounds!!!! If anyone would have told me that a year ago I would not have believed them. So what’s the problem??? Statistics show that the weight you lose from months 3-9 indicate how successful you will be going forward. So what about the first 3 months? According to the doctor, “it’s easy to lose weight the first 3 months because we cut out your stomach,” so going back after 3 months and having only lost 4 pounds in 3 months is a failure. And if I stay on this track, I will have failed at this surgery. But more importantly, I will have failed myself. So, while I was considering it a huge success that for the first time EVER in my life I didn’t gain weight from Thanksgiving until New Year’s, I actually failed. Miserably. And the sad part is, deep down, I knew it. I didn’t need my doctor to tell me that.

And sure, I have excuses. Always do. Excuses are what got me here in the first place. But instead of giving you excuses, dear friends, I will give you the reasons why I have let this happen. I’ve actually known them all along—remember, I buried them deep in my brain!) Today, I was forced to confront them. And I confronted them with an ugly cry.

So, let me outline the reasons (not excuses) for this “poor performance”:

•  I got lazy with the food prep: this gets me every time. We’ve got people going all over the place in our house – sports, school, work, sometimes travel for work and I’ve been focusing on making exercise a part of my regular life and some days I feel lucky just have gotten dressed and out the door on time. So yep, I got lazy with the food prep. And I grabbed what was in the fridge. And I didn’t always grab the right thing. And chips. So… chips.

•  I totally forgot I had a nutritionist at my disposal… How could I have forgotten this? That’s what she is there for. DUH!!! I was struggling with the right things to eat and a nutritionist was there for me the whole time.  As I have reflected on this, I know exactly why I forgot about the nutritionist. It’s because I associate everyone and everything in that office with the doctor- and I want to see him as little as possible. So I put the nutritionist out of my mind. Also, I thought I could do this myself. “Hahhahaha! Yet again, Dawn, you can’t do it by yourself, you silly fool!” And to answer your question, yes, I’m going to see the nutritionist. 

• I found the candy bucket: “My stomach is small, so a little small piece of candy won’t do any harm, will it?” Yes, Dawn, yes it will. (Of course, one little piece of candy every once in a while doesn’t hurt anything. But it adds up. And I’m proof.) Result? I have given up candy for lent. ☺

• I convinced myself that what I was doing was enough: “You are exercising, so you can have a couple of French fries or a cookie at night. Or a small piece of cake. The exercise will take care of it.” No, it won’t. If I eat that way, I will NOT lose weight. PERIOD.

• I convinced myself that exercising was going to take care of it: One bright note in all of this is my exercise habit. I will say that I am very proud of my exercise regime. I am exercising 4 days a week (usually 5) and I don’t hate it. But exercising isn’t enough. And I know that. It seems I was so focused on patting myself on the back for exercising that I lost focus on the other stuff- like making good food choices. And … chips.

• I didn’t make smart food choices:  see candy bucket, chip consumption and cake confession above.

• I had no goal:  for me, I think this might have been the biggest one. I need a goal to work toward. Since surgery, my doctor hasn’t given me a goal. He’s said vague things like “everyone loses at different rates, so you might lose anywhere from 70-80 percent of your excess body weight within a year.” I thought I was doing so well the first 3 months that I would just keep on going and would eventually get to a goal. But I needed a tangible GOAL in MEASURABLE terms. I don’t deal with “excess body weight percentages” or even BMI. I deal with and understand pounds!! And that’s what I have needed.

I’ve been playing with a goal in my mind for a while and now I’m committing to it the way we do it in 2017, with a hashtag… #100byJune24 – that’s 16 weeks and 2 days from today – 114 days. I picked June 24 because it is my birthday and a date I can work toward. And hashtags are the new language we all talk in and seem to keep you accountable. 114 days?? I’ve got this.

And this last reason is a tough pill to swallow, but the truth always is…

·        Hubris (simply put, I got cocky): here I am, losing so much weight, so quickly. Looking good. Got some new clothes (I just bought a large shirt y’all, a LARGE!!!) 😃 Getting so many compliments, and I got cocky. “Sure, I can have a glass of wine. Just one won’t hurt.” WRONG! (insert your favorite Donald Trump WRONG meme here.) I gave myself permission that I could, but that certainly didn’t mean that I should.

Now pride is a good thing. But hubris is a dangerous thing. Ultimately, it’s what killed Walter White on Breaking Bad. (If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know I consider that to be one of the best shows ever made.) Sure turning into a drug kingpin didn’t do him much good, but his hubris – his overwhelmingly excessive pride and self-confidence that he wouldn’t get caught -- is ultimately what killed him. He had more than enough money to ensure his family was taken care of, but his pride at making the best meth and taking control of the entire meth ring was what ultimately led to his death. Come to think of it, it was a major character flaw for Don Draper on Mad Men also. (well that, alcohol and being a sexist womanizer.)  Damn! Did I not learn anything from Walter White and Don Draper??!?!?!?!

Of course I realize these examples are a bit dramatic, but are an example of how excessive pride can impact you to the point of no return. That, and I always seem to find flawed male TV characters oddly relatable.)

So that’s it. That’s why I ugly cried. (Truthfully, I still may again one more time today.) And ’m not mad at my doctor- well, I still kind of am because he is a complete a$$hole, but I’m really mad at myself more than anything. But I guess I had to learn the hard way—seems that is always the case, huh?

But after today I will move on. I will hit the reset button. My husband reminded me in all of this blubbering ugly crying that every journey is filled with bumps, detours and sometimes even crashes along the way. And that’s what this is, just a bump and a slight detour. It’s definitely not a crash.

And as we always tell our kids when they have a bad day—the best thing about tomorrows is that you can start over. You can hit the reset button. So that’s what I’m going to do. Because I can. In the end, Walter White couldn't do that. 

Conflict 2016: The Year of Celebrity Death, the Weird Presidential Election and Transformation for Dawn Ray of Sunshine

I am conflicted. On the surface (and in the record books), 2016 has been a shitty year. The US had the worst Presidential candidates and election situation ever. (Seriously, it was a bit like watching Jerry Springer on a worldwide scale.)  We've lost some of the best and brightest at their craft in Hollywood, Sports, Music and Literature: Prince, Muhammad Ali, Craig Sager, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, George Michael, Glenn Frey, Alan Rickman, Harper Lee, Joey Feek, Nancy Reagan, Merle Haggard, Gordie Howe, Anton Yelchin, Pat Summitt, Garry Marshall, Garry Shandling, Steven Hill (Adam Schiff on Law & Order), Gene Wilder, Jose Fernandez, Arnold Palmer, Gwen Ifill, Florence Henderson, John Glenn, Alan Thicke, I know the list goes on...

By all accounts, it's been shitty. And it seems if we are able to make it through the next 2 days of 2016 without any more deaths, we will be lucky. (The dark humor side of me wishes I had been in a version of Howard Stern's "Celebrity Death Pool" because I could have made some serious coin.) Okay, I don't mean to make light of it, but if we don't laugh about it, we will cry ourselves into 2017. 

But for me, 2016 has been life-changing. And frankly, life-saving. And not just physically. Sure, I made a huge decision to have gastric sleeve surgery. I've lost about 70 pounds and I'm exercising on a regular basis. I've completely changed my outlook on food and finally come to grips with why I eat as well as what I eat. (It is still sometimes a struggle, but I am very aware of these things now, whereas I couldn't say that before.) But as much work as I've put in on the physical me, I've put in as much work on the spiritual and emotional me. It's the me you can't see upon first glance, but trust me, she's in there and she's very different now. Early in the year, I decided to rid myself of some toxic things in my life. Everything from negative self-talk to negative and toxic relationships in my personal and professional life to impostor syndrome. (I still suffer from that and that's another blog post for another time, but I'm working on that.) 

In January, I really began working on ME. Even though Tom has been telling me for years that I needed to take care of myself, it finally started to sink in. Y'all know I'm hard headed and it took a while for that to sink in!! So I started the journey of self-discovery and frankly, I didn't like what I discovered. So I set out to change it. I started the gastric sleeve journey (a LONG journey to surgery) and then I began examining every aspect of my life. I didn't go and broadcast this work to anyone, not even to Tom. But I needed to find ME again. So I began to listen to my conversations and daily interactions with people -- and not just listen to wait for my turn to talk, but really listen to understand and learn. I wanted to know how people viewed me, and that included my own family, especially Tom and my kids.  I stumbled a lot, heck, I even cried some. It wasn't always pretty, but it was enlightening. There were some things that were said to me (either blatantly or in passing) or things I read that had a profound impact on me. They have stuck with me, and probably always will. Here are a few to note: 

"WOW! What a great laugh you've got. I've never heard you laugh like that before!" This one seems innocent enough and was just an observation from one of the baseball dads from Tripp's baseball team while we were all at the beach together, but it was like taking a punch in the gut. (And I'm so grateful he said it.)  I love to laugh. I live to laugh. It's who I am. I love to make people laugh. I love to make my kids laugh. Laughter is the best part of life. People used to tell me all the time what a great (loud, obnoxious) laugh I had and how it was infectious. I hadn't heard that in years. So when he said it, it hit me in the face, hard. I realized I hadn't heard that in years. And frankly, I hadn't laughed like that in years. It caused me to ask Tom about it. And he agreed. He said I don't laugh like I used to anymore. And he was right. I didn't. I vowed then to find my laugh again. (So thanks, Collins Day. You are appreciated.) 

"You can't be a man. Be a woman. It's powerful business when done correctly." This is a quote from Mad Men. Several quotes from Mad Men appear on this list. I watched the show in it's entirety at the beginning of 2016 and it had a profound impact on me in both a personal and professional sense. (Truly, it's in my top 3 shows I consider to be the best shows ever made outside of Seinfeld: Mad Men, The Shield and Breaking Bad.) . The quote is from Bobbie Barrett, who was the wife/manager of the obnoxious comedian Jimmy Barrett, who did the VO work for the Utz Potato Chip account at Sterling Cooper. She was talking to Peggy Olson. Peggy was a young, naive sort at the agency, and one with whom I identified with greatly. She began as a secretary, answering phones, but showed a penchant for copywriting and worked her way into one of the most valuable employees at Sterling Cooper. (She also had the most bad ass scene I've pretty much ever seen in a TV show...) 

Everything about this scene is bad ass. Peggy's growth as an advertising executive AND as a woman is summed up in this 25 seconds. Her cigarette, her sunglasses, and her NSFW Japanese porn painting epitomize the swagger she carries as she walks into her new role at McCann Erickson. This scene, and the growth of the Peggy character, influenced my life this year in so many ways. Bobbie is telling Peggy that she doesn't have to be like a man to get noticed at her job. She needs to understand men and how they think and operate, but she has an immense power as a women and she should use it. WOW. Very heavy and very true. I've tapped into my inner Peggy Olson many times this year, and intend to keep doing it. 

"Etre bien dans sa peau," (French for "to be well in my skin"): I am not even sure where I saw this (likely Facebook where all wisdom can be found these days :)) but it stuck with me. I was extremely uncomfortable in my own skin and I have been for years. This little French phrase has taught me to just be comfortable with who I am, and not worry about who I'm not. I haven't perfected that yet, but I'm working on it. 

"I'm calling to let you know you've been approved for gastric sleeve surgery." That little sentence changed my life. It was a huge leap on a journey full of liquids, baby foods and purees for a few months, but a leap for which I am so very grateful. 

"I'd love to offer you this job and have you be a part of our team." Such a great phone call to receive (and it was so perfectly timed!) In November, I joined the team at EdR. It's a great chance for me to lead their communications and marketing efforts and be a part of a company that is redefining collegiate housing. 

"We need you to write us a check for $3,000": I won't get into the details that are behind this comment, but it speaks to the incompetence some people (and companies) possess. And it was a defining moment for me. Thanks to the urging of my supportive husband, I refused to just "write the check" and demand documentation for other's mistakes. He reminded me that I'm not here to clean up the mistakes due to other's incompetence. Also, it was a reminder that I am a decent, honest person. (That's always a good reminder!) #notmyproblem


"People tell you who they are, but we ignore it because we want them to be who we want them to be." Mind. Blown. Right?!??! Why did it take a fictional male chauvinist character on a TV Show to get me to understand this? People show their true colors to you all the time. We just choose whether to see them or not. And damn, some folks have really showed me their true colors this year. A few showed me how truly selfish they really are and how they were only out for themselves. They showed me their arrogance and their blatant disregard for other people's feelings (including mine.) Of course, not all people are like this, but some really showed their true colors to me this year. Or better yet, I finally began to see them. 

"If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation." Sure, it's been said before by others, but it stuck with me when Don Draper said it on Mad Men. We are in charge of our destiny and how others view us. We are ultimately in charge of that conversation and changing that conversation if we don't like it. This year, I've worked hard at both. And I think I've changed the conversation on many fronts. 

"Sometimes things just don't work out." This is one I actually said to someone, and it was a defining moment for me. Nearly two years ago, I took a leap of faith and took a new job. I stepped out of my comfort zone at Hilton and went into healthcare. And you know what? It didn't quite work out as planned. And that's okay. Not everything works out all the time, no matter how much we want it to. (Took me until I was 40 to figure that out.) 

Now I know this list looks like a lot of self-empowering quotes that make me look like I have all my shit together. HAHHAHAHAHA!! Far from the truth. I have stumbled quite a bit this year and I most certainly will in 2017 and beyond. And I'm still my worry-wart self: I worry about my youngest child and how he fits in socially; I worry about his attention span and his maturity level even though he is wicked smart; I worry about the fact that he shows no interest in riding a bike for himself and question whether we should have held him back a grade earlier on because most of the kids in his grade are nearly a year older than he is; I worry about the fact that we just put $5,000 worth of  braces in my oldest son's mouth; I worry about how we are going to get both boys to practices and get school and studying done and how we can do all of that while working and not going insane. I worry about what we are going to eat for dinner and what three bites or so I'm going to have for dinner; I worry about when I'm going to go to the gym; I worry if I'm a good wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend. I worry about the violence in Memphis and if we can overcome it; I worry about our great nation and how divided we all are and if we can survive the turbulent election and the upcoming inauguration. I worry. 

So on paper, 2016 was shitty. So much death. So much weirdness in the world. So much animosity and violence and not enough love. So in that regard, it was shitty. But it was also transformational. In 2017, I'm choosing to change the conversation. I'm choosing to channel my inner Don Draper and Peggy Olson and be who I am and make no apologies for it. I'm choosing to show my true colors and be sure to sniff out others' before I invest my precious time in them. In 2017, I'm continuing to choose ME (and Tom, Zane and Tripp and Mama Sue and others I hold dear.)  And I'm going to laugh. I'm going to laugh the real, infectious, loud and obnoxious Dawn Ray laugh. 

And if that bothers you, then too bad. Je suis bien dans ma peau. And that's #notmyproblem (nor it is Peggy Olson's.)