Self-Esteem – Resisting Exile

05Feb 2023 by Linda Bayley

Making Do

At the beginning of 2019 I made a public pledge not to buy any more new clothing for a year. At last count I had 43 t-shirts in my closet, and that doesn't count the shirts that I've set aside to alter or repair. I really don't need anything new. Four years into that automatically-renewing pledge, I have more or less held the line, and have only purchased new clothing that I couldn't make myself or wouldn't want to buy second hand: a bathing suit, a couple of sports bras, socks, and underwear. I have been given socks and two sweaters as gifts, and I purchased a pair of used jeans so I could learn how to hem them. I don't miss shopping for clothes. A few months ago I…

18Jan 2021 by Linda Bayley

False Dichotomies

Musings, Self-Esteem

Once upon a time, there was a girl who was a bowling champion. Actually, she was pretty awesome at just about everything she did: she was a champion, in general. But it started at the bowling alley. I remember the beginning. One Saturday morning when I was eight or so, my mother brought me to a tiny downtown bowling alley: Quilles Ste-Anne. The place was tiny, six lanes and five-pin only, and hard to find, built as it was in the basement of a building that sat in the middle of a parking lot behind a church. I don’t remember who handed me my first bowling ball. I do remember being taught to hold it between my spread legs and lob it down the lane with both hands. Which was,…

26Feb 2018 by Linda Bayley

On validation

Musings, Self-Esteem

In my last post, I wrote about how angry I used to get when my father would push my buttons, and how now I need more than anything for you to admit that I'm right, or have a very good reason why you won't. Until yesterday, I didn't understand the link between those two things; I only knew that it was there. But now I know what it was I was being denied, and what it is that I crave now. Validation. Yesterday, while roaming the internet, I came across this article on the Friends for Mental Health website. Sheryl Bruce provides an overview of a book written by Valerie Porr, and describes the ways in which children's feelings are invalidated: For example it could be that the behaviour of…

20Feb 2018 by Linda Bayley

Isaac Asinov

Musings, Self-Esteem

If, like me, you grew up in a certain time, surrounded by a certain kind of people, you knew who the ABC's of science fiction were. You knew that B stood for Ray Bradbury. You knew that C was for Arthur C. Clarke. And by God, you knew that A was for Asimov. Isaac Asimov. These weren't the only writers we idolized in our teens; Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books, for example, were big among my friends. We had Frank Herbert. We had R.A. Lafferty. These people opened our eyes to the untold riches of words and worlds, and we wanted to be writers, like them. But Mr. Isaac Asimov held a special place in my heart, because every month a magazine came out that bore his name, and contained…

19Dec 2017 by Linda Bayley

Keeping up appearances

Self-Esteem

My best friend, who we'll call JDS for now, is a photographer. He's also one of a handful of people that I can count on to tell me the truth when my thinking is skewed. One area where my thinking is often skewed is in my self-image. As my psychiatrist once put it, I am short of stature and overweight. Over the years, people that I trust have told me that I should get a bust reduction, that I should get my eyebrows waxed, that I have too much hair in the wrong spots. All of this means that I will never again pose happily in a bathing suit like I did in this picture, not even if I have water wings. Because my body is not right. JDS and…