FatLand, Love Your Body Day and Poetry

I am not sure if this is really the space for news about FatLand, but here goes, anyway.

FatLand: The Early Days (aka FatLand 2) will be available free on Amazon Kindle from October 16-October 21 in honor of Love Your Body Day.

In 2006, at a hotel in Natick, I taught my first (although I am sure that it was not the first) workshop on writing poetry that embodied ourselves as fat people/fat women. I think the name was "Writing Our Fat Selves" or something like that. I see now, however, that what I was really teaching was for us to love our bodies in poetry.

Something that I learned late and hope that others won't have to take 59 years to learn:  If you are at war with your body, the poetry you write will never embody yourself.

One doesn't have to learn to love one's body instantly; sometimes a first step of simply respecting it and not hating it helps a lot. Appreciating it comes later, as does being content with it. Loving comes even later.

A little more advice: Don't ever, ever become involved seriously with anyone who does not appreciate your body just as it is.

A little more advice: Ask yourself constantly what you can do for your body, and ask your body constantly what it can do for you.

And if it is having fun.