Daily Excerpt: The Optimistic Food Addict (Fisanick) - Lovely in My Bones
Excerpt from The Optimistic Food Addict by Dr. Christina Fisanick. Lovely in My Bones (part 1) I remember well wanting to be the woman Theodore Roethke knew. She was “lovely in her bones.” I am not sure that I knew what he meant when I first encountered those lines. In fact, I think back then, around fifth grade, I misunderstood entirely. Trained to understand beauty and worth by the media and American culture from the moment my eyes could see, I figured Roethke meant that this woman was physically stunning—slender, sleek, and, well, skeletal. I wanted to be just like her. I wanted to BE her. But even more, I wanted someone to feel that way about me, to wax poetically over my face and form, but I believed that my body—fat, frumpy, and flabby—would never give rise to such melodic praise. Whether Roethke’s focus remained solely on this woman’s physical form is debatable, but he never utters her name. We never learn what she does, if she is