The 11th Anniversary of My Plastic Surgeries

Please God make me pretty.

But God is for the poor. The rich can go to sleep and wake up pretty.

Rip
Cut
Suck
Tuck
Nip
Perk
Sew
Scar

And into little jars went the woman I was meant to be. 

Twenty-six thousand dollars worth of self-esteem plastered onto me forever, and no more t-shirts at the beach. No more hiding in the bathroom during pictures. No more getting asked out as a joke.

Drip
Drop
Splash
Shh


Eleven years later, I still taste like plastic.

Tell Me I'm Beautiful

It takes a lot of strength to be the one to tell myself I am beautiful. It is one of the hardest parts of being single. When there's someone else telling me I'm gorgeous, then I don't have to, and it doesn't take any effort to boost my self-esteem. But when there's no one there saying out loud, You're beautiful, I don't get to hear it, and when I don't hear something for long enough, it becomes more difficult to maintain it as a truth. If I'm the only one telling myself I'm pretty, then is it still true? 

I do my hearts meditation, I go to my sexy feminine fitness class, I give myself goddess-like treats, I dress up and make it a point to fall in love with the reflection in the mirror. I do all that. I am skilled at observing my mind's patterns and cultivating positivity. But I can't be another person, I can't fabricate eyes that look at me and see my beauty, I can't bring to life a being that tells me what they see. Loving myself, while being of utmost importance, is not like being loved by another.

Will it ever be enough to just hear it from myself? I don't know. I sometimes wonder if I am strong enough to go on for much longer without meeting a fella who can tell me, You're the prettiest girl in the room. It sounds so silly and small, but it's so not. Not for me. I come to life when I am loved and wanted. I am strengthened by love. My inner glow multiplies when someone else sees me as truly beautiful. And I suspect I am not alone in this.

I am talking about love and inner beauty, yes, but I am also talking about plain superficial beauty too. The first look and the glimmer in the eyes that goes with it. Ah, how I miss that. The right guy will see it, my friends say. He'll know how lucky he is. I have good friends, and it's not that I doubt my looks or that I am attractive to men, but you know- I'd like to have someone around to tell me so.

I don't want people to know this about me. I rather be seen as confident and self-assured, a woman who doesn't need to be told by a man that she is good-looking. But I cannot be that strong all the time. I am human, after all, and I am seeking to be loved. For now, I am the one cheering my ego on. But when I haven't got anything left to say to myself and I am sitting in silence, I can hear it, deep inside me: the need. Tell me I'm beautiful.

The Body Stories

Alongside Jeanne Joe Perrone, a fellow Actors Studio Drama School MFA graduate and boundlessly inventive artist, I have created my upcoming theater production, The Body Stories. A year in the making, and a lifetime in my heart, we are now producing this physical theater meets live art show that lets our bodies tell their stories. After all, we believe our bodies know more than we do. We are scheduled to perform on January 22nd, 2012, in Manhattan, and we are thrilled to share this rendition of our work with you! 

I struggled from an early age with body image issues. As a teenager in Brazil, the pressure from the media, the society I lived in, and the people around me skewed my perception of myself, to the point where I had three plastic surgeries by the age of 15, battled eating disorders, and underwent countless dangerous, expensive, and painful procedures in order to attain what I perceived as real beauty. Having survived my turbulent adolescent angst and violent insecurities, I arrived at adulthood with a new task: understanding my past and finding compassion for how I treated myself over those years. The arduous road ended at the expected destination: self-love and self-acceptance.

That I lived to tell this story is not something I take for granted. I know that body image issues are present in the lives of most teenagers and adults, especially women, and I feel in my heart that I have a responsibility to tell my story. I have found an artistic expression to my innermost scars with The Body Stories, and it is the most important piece of theater I have worked on to date. It is a message I am carrying because I have to; this story lives inside me, and it always will.

Jeanne Joe and I are driven by our love of theater and our need to tell these stories; that is our compensation. But, as you surely know, our production cannot go up on love alone. We are committed to creating this show with the lowest possible budget, with a goal of raising $1500 by November 1st, 2011. We are now requesting the contribution of our friends and families in making this project possible. Donations start at $10, and every penny helps us!

Your contribution is the lifeline of this production, and we are grateful for all donations of any monetary amount. Please visit our indigogo fundraiser website to make a donation and learn more about The Body Stories.

http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Body-Stories


Our gratitude for any and all donations is infinite. We cannot do what we do without your generous support. Please share our fundraiser campaign on your social media sites and help us promote this project.

To learn more about The Body Stories and find out ways to be involved, please feel free to contact us. If your body, too, has a story to tell, do not hesitate in reaching out to us. We are here to serve the material that already lives within us, and there are no limits to how much this project can grow.

Being Gentle With Myself

Being gentle with myself is hard work. I am much more prone to thoughts like, "Ugh, I'm so fat," or "My neck is such a mess," or "Why doesn't my hair just do one thing at a time," or "I wish I hadn't done that, I'm so stupid," or "Did I really say that, how dumb," and so forth. Switching to, "I look great, I feel great, I am talented and beautiful and smart and bound for success," takes some effort. And some suspension of disbelief.

The thing is, though, that even in my moments of self-loathing and self-pitying, I am still present to a sense that I am better than my own negative thoughts and that I am worthy of love, happiness, and success. The thoughts happen, but they don't shake my core. The Ideal Me sits comfortably in my innermost being, no matter what hurricane of self-destruction my brain and actions put me through.

Since it's easy to get caught up in daily life rubble, I try and give myself some reminders. I have my phone send me alerts that say, "Be gentle with yourself," "Notice your heart," and "Get present to who you really are." I write in my journal a couple of times a day and let my negative thoughts shift to reality, and then to positive thoughts. For example, the thought, "I'm so fat," with turn into, "I have a body that is made of bones, muscle, blood, fat, water, skin, hair, etc.," and then into, "I am beautiful." It doesn't mean I always believe it, but I do it anyway and, very often, it does shift my perception.

On my worst days, when I can't even fathom having a positive thought, I picture Little Larissa, my inner child, and I imagine myself saying these things to her. Immediately, my negativity pulls back by 100%. I may not always be able to treat my adult-self with love and gentleness, but I would kill anyone who spoke to my inner child in a destructive way. I would not stand for it, and so I am reminded that I must not stand for the treatment I give myself as an adult either. If I can protect my inner child, I can protect myself.

So, if I may inspire anyone today: Be gentle with yourself. Treat yourself with love, care, and compassion. We often seek this treatment from others, but it is of uttermost importance that we offer it to ourselves.

10 Ways to Feel Better... or, What 5 Weeks in Brazil Taught Me

1. Bake chocolate chip cookies from ultra-scratch... (as in, go out and get eggs from a real live chicken and make butter from fresh cream and all.)

2. Watch The Big Bang Theory and laugh till your ribs hurt (bazinga!)

3. Go out with all your cousins- the extended ones, the ones you haven't seen in ten years, the ones you forgot about! (this is what facebook is for!)

4. Read some Marian Keyes. I resisted it for so long, but thanks to my cousin Gugs, I finally gave in. I hardly ever read novels that are just for pure entertainment, and hers are by far the only ones that were worth my time.

5. Blast some really bad music- I'm talking Spice Girls, Britney, Backstreet Boys, Savage Garden. Dancing to bad music is a lost art.

6. Paint your nails the color of candy.

7. Wear a long skirt.

8. Watch "My Best Friend's Wedding". Cameron Diaz singing at karaoke, Julia Roberts talking into a giant mobile phone, and Rupert Everett acting straight are priceless moments. 90's rom-com at its best.

9. Go to the beach. Preferably a semi-deserted beach, and go in for a swim. You might not feel it right away, but the ocean will cleanse your soul. Do it at sunrise for extra mood boosting.

10. Make funny faces. If possible, photograph them and share it with others; it'll make them feel better too.

See?

Wow, One Day You Really Do Wake Up and Everything is Okay

Like most people, I don't really read self-help books/essays/blogs for the sole purpose of wanting to generally improve an already nice life experience. I read them because I'm usually searching for one magical sentence that will make me feel better on a day when I feel like crap. If I'm reading them on days when I feel really great, I'm still collecting knowledge for a bad-to-miserable day. Catching falling stars, putting them in my pocket, saving them for a rainy day, you know.

It's the same deal with most things that make me feel good- yoga, cooking, working out, keeping a happiness book, making gratitude lists, taking baths, getting massages, collecting beautiful images, staying in touch with nature, going for long walks, etc. These activities and hobbies make me feel good as I'm doing them, of course, and they generally boost my quality of life, but I am aware that I am simultaneously building a foundation for when I fall; a soft cushioning of "Feeling Betterness" to keep me from breaking. I know that breaking is part of the human experience though, and rather inevitable- in fact, I found that if you try to avoid breaking, something is bound to happen that's completely out of your control and will do a great deal of damage- so my preparations are mostly to keep me from breaking irreparably.

The idea is that when something "bad" happens, be it not getting a part I really want in a play or losing someone I love, I am not so distraught that I can't learn the lessons that are there to be learned, pick myself up again, and go on with my life. For a while, of course, I expect to be stuck in the pain of the moment- usually caused by suffering some kind of loss- and do nothing but mourn. I do firmly believe that the days spent under the covers, eating double-chocolate ice-cream and letting the dishes pile up, are necessary. But once they've run their course, I know I need to get out of what I call, The Cave of Life-Paralysis, Self-Indulgence, and Self-Pity.

And that's when I count on all the work I've done, all the falling stars in my pockets, all the collected wisdom and reminders of the beauty of life. For a while, I do it on auto-pilot- I read over my favorite wise quotes even though they don't really make me feel any better for longer than a minute. I breathe in child's pose and cry in corpse pose, hoping to feel lighter afterward, but knowing that there's no magic yoga pose that heals the heart, no matter how many glowing yogis skip out of class with their clean, shiny auras. I go into the ocean and let the waves do their thing, even if it only makes me feel a teeny, tiny, microscopic bit better. I know how it goes- baby steps, one at a time, until one day...

I read something and it actually has an impact on me.

In this case, it was a friend's email- but not just any friend, a dear friend and pen-pal who is wise beyond his years and has a much larger collection of wisdom/beauty of life than I do. He said a lot of eye-opening things- he always does- so I'll just quote him on the one that touched and inspired me the most, "Feel better (worry about doing better after that part!) and move on so that you can live well, if for no other reason than (what I aspire to in such moments) to honor the sacrifice his being made for your being's education in this matter."

His words were what I needed to hear, yes, and they were very wise, kind, and true. But it was the fact that something finally affected me and penetrated my understanding of life/love/loss/forgiveness/learning/myself, that let me know that I was alive again. That let me know, I'm not done living, loving, and learning yet. I didn't think I was done, no, not for a second, but I was suspended in this half-life place where nothing affected me, nothing touched me, nothing moved me. His words stirred something in me, and I didn't take that for granted. I repeated a mantra of gratitude as I went to sleep that night.

After a night of dreaming of many people I've wronged as well as many people who have wronged me, I woke up and there it was- that feeling I look for in Buddhist quotes online, in tree pose, in soul-cleansing bath crystals, in Eat Pray Love, in Adele's songs, in images of waterfalls, in other people's babies- that feeling that, yes, everything is okay.

Wow.

(that's not me in the picture. just some random person with an awesome blanket)

Image from here.

Special thanks to Chris, dear wise friend and pen-pal.