I read a really moving article today about body image. It talked about how we strive to be thin, then carve ourselves down to less than we are now, in order to feel worthy. It’s very worth the read, and I can’t do it justice trying to recap, so I strongly urge you to click on over!

I like to think of myself as a pretty liberated woman, but you know what? I’ve been known to eat off a salad plate. Have you ever done that? This little voice in your head says, “Portion control! Seriously, you are not going to get back into those jeans this way…” And so instead of taking a regular sized plate of the meal you slaved over, you grab a salad plate, because you can’t fit as much onto it, and when you’ve scraped the last of the gravy off of that tiny plate, you “know that you’re done.”

Well, I’ve decided something: I’m never eating off a salad plate again. Unless, it’s to eat salad.

I really do think I’m worth a meal. A full meal. On a regular plate. My husband thinks I’m stunning, my son tells me on a regular basis that he thinks I’m “a pretty Mommy,” and when I look in the mirror, I see curves and beauty. So for the love of Pete, why do I feel like I’m only worth half a meal?

Ladies, let’s stop carving ourselves down. Let’s stop carving each other up. The next time you come to visit, I’m going to feed you. Because you are worth a meal. You are worth a treat.

And we’re gorgeous! Just ask my five-year-old.

I’m a Canadian. I’ve heard all the jokes, so you can feel free to lay those on me and get a hearty laugh in return. We Canadians are a interesting bunch, and I’m the first to admit it.

I have discovered, however, that my Canadian culture has impacted my writing–and not in a publishable way.

We’re too polite.

Now, Canadians express themselves differently. Recently, we’ve had a senate situation (see? There I go again!) which has angered a lot of people. Canadian senators have been stealing tax money. This is a big deal, but the harshest thing you hear coming from politicians is something like this: “If they cannot respect the people’s tax dollars, they should–” Wait for it! “–leave the room.”

Now, if you aren’t Canadian, you probably wonder what’s so harsh about that, but you have to read between the lines. We don’t dump it all out there verbally. Instead, we get all stiff, our faces get a little pale and we say, our voices quivering with emotion, “I’m not happy about this.” (That’s an actual quote from our Prime Minister.)

So when you take this unique Canadian quality and pour it into romance writing, you might think I’d be better suited to writing a Victorian. (And I have written a Victorian under a different name, for the record.) However, I’ve decided to pour myself into contemporary romances, which means I need to learn how to unclench and just SAY IT ALREADY. Which is ironic, because in Canadian terms, I’m already a very vocal personality.

Don’t worry—my editors always catch those scenes and say the same thing every time: “Um, if you’re going to have a big emotional scene, they can’t have a civil conversation.”

And I think, “Civil conversation? Why, my heroine just informed my hero that he isn’t he sort of man she imagines marrying.” Dun, dun, DUN! You see, in Canada, that was a break up. Everywhere else, the hero is frowning and thinking, “What’s she getting at?”

So I rewrite it, and my editors say, “That’s more like it!” and the book is published.

Remember that the next time a Canadian apologizes to you when you trample on their toes. Most of the time, they probably are terribly sorry for having gotten under your foot, but if they say it with a pointed look and go a tiny bit pale, there might be subtext there…

This last week, my husband and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary.

Eight years ago, I was on my honeymoon about this time, still staring at my ring finger and cuddling up to my brand new husband in public, because now I was allowed to. In other words, we were busy turning everyone else’s stomachs. I was a Mrs. and we were now a family.

I still remember those blissful walks together in Georgia’s steamy heat. The time flowed by around us, and we just basked in each other.

Eight years later, and our life looks a lot different than it did then. First of all, we’re no longer broke newly weds, but have settled down with (gasp!) a couch of our own. We have a little boy, a neighborhood to call our own, and a few more gray hairs and stretch marks. But one thing hasn’t changed, and that’s the perfect way I fit under my husband’s arm.

I barely knew my husband when I married him. From “hello” to “I do” was eight months, and looking back on it I can see why our friends and family were shocked at our quick marriage, but we just knew. He was for me, and I was for him, and I have to say, he was the most exciting leap I ever took.

Eight years later, these two are my life.

And I wouldn’t change a thing.

Mother’s Day, I woke up to breakfast in bed. What a great way to wake up! Eggs, fried potatoes and veggies… Except I opted to eat it at the table with my husband and son, because eating alone in the bedroom just seems lonely, and eating with the whole family in bed just seems like a laundry tragedy waiting to happen! Regardless, I loved the gesture.

My son wrote me a Christmas/Mother’s Day card… He’s pretending lately that he doesn’t know how to read and write because the kids on TV don’t know how to read and write. So he wrote the word “Happy”, and then gave it to me with such love and such a showering of kisses that I thought it was perfect. Perfectly him at this stage.

A very happy (and kinda belated) Mother’s Day to all the moms out there—including the step-moms, foster moms, moms-in-law, grandmas and mother figures.

The love of a good woman truly does make a difference.

I often wonder if having a novelist for a mother will make for interesting stories later on. (Hopefully not told to my son’s therapist…) My son is now 5, and there is one thing I have foisted upon him–reading.

I don’t give him a lot of choice when it comes to reading time. It’s like eating vegetables or bedtime. Not a lot of negotiation room. I call him to “the big bed” and we cuddle up with a quilt and some pillows, and I read him a couple or three chapters of whatever book we happen to be reading. Once we get reading, he thoroughly enjoys it, although it’s not easy for a 5 year-old boy to sit still. But I think that is also a useful skill to learn. Sometimes when we sit still, the best stories happen!

We just finished Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House in the Big Woods, a story about a family living out in the wilds of North America. Ma, Pa, Laura, Mary and Baby Carrie moved through their daily routines, tugging us all along by our heartstrings. The book ended with Laura in bed next to her sister Mary, listening to her Pa play his fiddle by the fire. He plays “Auld Lang Syne” and when she calls sleepily from the bedroom, wondering the meaning of the words, he says that I means “a long time ago.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder and her husband Almanzo. 1885

The irony, of course, is that this story is more than a story of “When I was little.” It’s a story that happened almost 150 years ago. It is most certainly a story from long, long ago, and the Ingalls family have been preserved, frozen in time, so that the rest of us could fall in love with them, too.

Shall auld acquaintance be forgot,
And the days of Auld Lang Syne?

This week is Mother’s Day. As a mother, I hope that all those family times spent together will be sealed into my son’s memory, but we can’t all be blessed with children who write a whole series of novels about the warmest, sweetest childhood memories. (Seriously, who doesn’t feel like Ma Ingalls was part of their family after reading those books?) But we can still create memories.

So let’s just love the ones God gave us –our children, our spouses, our friends, our families– and love them so well that if they wrote novels about us years from now, remembering the good old days, that the strongest thing to shine through in those stories would be how much we loved them.