When You Hear Thunder, There May Be Lightening!

As a little girl I was known as Tuffy for my cocky attitude and tomboy behavior . . . always a diva though. The cocky don't mess with me girl who wanted her hair to look good and her clothes to match. The tomboy who would climb a tree in a dress and black patent leather shoes and swing upside down from the branch without a care that her panties were showing. . . they were clean and they did match my dress. AND I was six.

I ran, biked, roller skated, swam, played every kind of ball game you can think of with the other kids in the apartment complex every day. Jump roped, played jacks, hopscotch, climbed the monkey bars and basically knew no fear or limits to what I could do.

In my adolescence my thighs, hips and 'the girls' started getting fuller earlier than most of my friends. I was the curvy girl and I really didn't feel comfortable in that body. It bounced, wiggled and giggled in ways that felt weird when I ran, skipped or hopped. I still climbed trees, swam and skated but my body felt different.

Sometime around 7th grade I started being referred to as Thunder Thighs. This was not a welcomed attention to a part of my body I was self conscious about. I didn't want to be the curvy girl. I didn't like the way guys looked at me or talked about my thighs. I just wanted to be the tomboy girl who liked to fish and wear pink at the same time. We had also moved at that time so the guys I had grown up with were not around. I felt very uncomfortable.

Yesterday, during my Boom Boom Pow workout was the first time I felt comfortable with the idea of having thunder thighs. My legs felt strong and firm. Not giggly. I felt a definite kaBoom kinda repercussion when I walked. Not a sexy sultry hip swing. I powerful solid BAM as I stepped. I smiled, not at how my legs looked, but about how I FELT about my legs. A new appreciation for the body I have. A new acceptance for who I was created to be. It felt good. Very good.

In my excitement I wanted to celebrate that moment and share that energy with my friends on Spark and on FB. I posted my Thunder Thighs workout with all of it's bravado and cockiness. Later that evening those words would be read aloud to an audience they were not intended for and framed totally out of context and presented in a forum that was not appropriate to be talking about my thighs. There was a feeling of shame like I had been caught moonlighting as a topless dancer exhibiting my 'goods' on the internet.

I was saddened to my core that a 'friend' has chosen to use my words, out of context, to make himself the center of conversation. I came home and cried the hardest tears I have cried in a long time. I felt violated and 'exposed'. Once again I feel like I am an outsider and my focus on my health and fitness makes others uncomfortable. It is not I who draws attention to that difference, it is others who point out what I am or am not doing.

Even though I am saddened, I am not down, I am not out and I am on a mission and I will not stop or be stopped. So, when you hear the Boom, Boom, Pow you can choose to celebrate with me all the glorious power of a storm or be prepared to struck out of my way. This storm is rolling through.