women’s – Arkansas Women Bloggers

Written by Jasmine Brown of The Brokins

As a part of Jasmine’s experiment dubbed “Project Totus”, Jasmine was invited to Green Mountain at Fox Run. To follow Jasmine’s journey with food, emotional wellness, and body acceptance check out TheBrokins.com

Women can become so body obssessed! We adopt what media and social constraints tell us about our body. Though the average woman is anywhere between size 12-16, we still glorify the size 2. There is nothing inherently wrong with size 2! She is beautiful! So is a size 26, though! I was one of those women chasing the perfect jean size, ever distracted from fulfilling my potential as a woman because I was lost in the tyranny of dieting and punishing my body with workouts I did not enjoy.

I was invited to come to Green Mountain at Fox Run as a blogger. I left Green Mountain at Fox Run changed from the inside out. Even as I write this, I feel the emotions I unearthed bubble up. I cringe, inhale, and think quietly to myself, “you are okay, you are safe.” Green Mountain at Fox Run is a facility that was founded to address the broken mentality that exists about women’s body, food habits, and fitness. It is a woman only center that helps address nutrition, emotional health concerning food, and body fitness. The staff at GMAFR stand by the belief that your size DOES NOT equate to your quality of life. This is a hard belief to hold in our body obsessed society. I used to be, and still frequently am, obsessed about “skinny”. Chasing the next diet, diet tip, “life style change”, and ideal weight became distractions and compulsions for me. I am a recovered Bulimic turned Binge Eater.

While at Green Mountain at Fox Run, I experienced professionals for the first time in my life applaud my body. They focused on what it had accomplished instead of what it had not. Robyn, their gentle-spirited nutritionist, encourages each woman to heal their relationship with food. “Feed your body well,” she said in a class I attended. Her beautiful long hair tossed from side to side as she passionately encouraged us to eat foods we love.

One of my most formative experiences was with Kate Nolte, Green Mountain’s fitness specialist. Kate is an energetic and approachable woman. Her level of fitness shows in her sculpted body. I felt very intimidated by her. By the end of the week, though, I was being challenged to believe in my body and my abilities the way Kate believed in me. She shows woman after woman that your body is an amazing tool, irregardless of its size.

Combine Robyn and Kate with Darla Breckinridge, the Clinical Psychologist whose “Darlaisms” will make you both cry and laugh, and you get what I call the Green Mountain at Fox Run Trifecta. I came home deeply broken. I was in mourning. I realized how ugly I had been to my body, to myself. I realized how I had adopted a lot of what society and the media tells me to believe. I am still mourning… but today I am inching closer to hope and joy. I am embracing this body of mine with stretch marks and all. I am celebrating that I am beautiful and a scale cannot tell me that. I am finding ways to appreciate my womanhood, curves, rolls, stretch marks and all!

Jasmine Brown of The Brokins is the kind of girl you either love or really love. She is smart, wet-your-pants funny, and sometimes brutally honest. She has a unique and even snarky outlook on life. You will learn a lot of things you’ve always wanted to know and even some things you didn’t on her blog The Brokins.

Our Story {Women’s History}
Written by ARWB March 2012 Bloggger of the Month, Jennifer Janes, of Jennifer A. Janes

As I considered the topic “Women’s History,” I thought about some of the women I have studied and considered researching one who inspires me as fodder for this post. All I could think about, though, was our history.

I have regrets. I am not a genealogist, and I really don’t have a desire to spend lots of time tracing our family roots back to debtors’ prison in Europe. (I have family members who have already done that for me.) What saddens me is that I’ve lost stories that are part of who I am, part of who my daughters are. Our family is full of amazing women, yet their stories are lost because the storytellers have died, relationships have eroded, or I neglected to write down the stories I was told while they were fresh on my mind.

I have some mementoes to pass on to my daughters: a wedding band from my great-grandmother, jewelry from my grandmother, the quilt with flour sacking on the back that my great-great-grandmother made. I have a few stories too, but not as many as I wish I had. One woman in our family survived abuse at the hands of a man struggling with mental illness. After her escape, she got her college degree while raising two boys and had a successful career as an English teacher and school counselor.

Another woman in my family has been strong through circumstances that would have destroyed a weaker person. At the end of her ordeal, her husband’s health was wrecked, and she had relocated and left behind all of her friends and most of what she owned. When my girls are older, I will share her story with them, and they will look at her with new respect and will appreciate even more the time she has invested in their lives.

I remember snippets of other stories too: a crippled cousin who had to live with other family members because her own family couldn’t care for her medical needs, a maiden aunt who had a very long and successful nursing career, the woman who watched her brother walk away to buy a pair of shoes and never saw him again. No one ever knew what happened to him.

As you think about Women’s History this month, please take time to consider your story. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Talk to the history-keepers this month. Record or write down their stories. Your children will thank you.

Jennifer is a history buff who lives with her husband and two daughters in Southwest Arkansas. She enjoys reading, writing, Bible study, and spending time with friends and family. To follow her story, visit: