The Biggest Let Down- An Open Letter to Jillian Michaels

This post is a response to the latest buzz about a Jillian Micheals interview in Women's Health in which she stated, "I'm going to adopt. I can't handle doing that to my body .... Also, when you rescue something, it's like rescuing a part of yourself."

Dear Jillian,

A few years ago I weighed over 215 pounds. I had given birth to three children and really let myself go. As my 40th birthday loomed on the horizon I decided that I had to take action and make a change in my life or risk becoming less and less active and less and less able or willing to do anything about it. I didn't have money for a trainer or a fancy diet plan. I took a low-buck self motivated approach that included a YMCA membership, two books- your- "Master Your Metabolism" and Lou Schuler's "The New Rules of Lifting for Women" and an iPod. Over the course of a year of hard work and lots of sweat, encouragement from my husband and Advil- I totally transformed my body and was a new woman by the time I celebrated my 40th birthday last summer.

Late this fall I discovered that I was pregnant with our fourth child. This was not planned and I'll freely confess that I have been thrown for a loop. I was already struggling with depression, but I'm ashamed to admit this took me to an even darker place. For the first time in my life, I had to turn to anti-depressants- and somehow made it through this gloomy grey winter- watching the scale go back to numbers I swore I'd never see again. I grew back out of jeans in sizes I'd so recently celebrated achieving. As I struggled to find positive feelings in my heart for the sake of this sweet little baby I could not help but feel worse and worse for the lost me I worked so hard to find again. With springtime here- my mood is on the rise, and as I get rounder and rounder, approaching my late July due-date- my conviction that I will find the strength to sweat it off all over again some time down the road (I don't know if I will try for it while nursing- if my milk supply would tolerate weight loss or if I'll wait till after I wean) I know I can do this- and I will... and you know what's funny? This time around- I won't hold you up as a inspiration. Oh trust me- you WILL BE motivation... but not because of your success- I will push myself the extra mile, lift the extra set- because I am a strong woman, and a mother, because I can do it! I will smile when I cradle my beautiful new baby up with my strong arms.


I would like to make myself a role model to all the mothers out there who are working for a fitness goal. Motherhood is one of the most common reasons why a woman finds herself looking at fitness and diet to make a change in her life, health and body. If you don't think you can do it... you obviously don't believe we can do it. No matter how loud you yell like a drill instructor- your enthusiasm is just hollow Hollywood marketing.

I wouldn't care if you had stretch marks, or if you wound up with a c section scar like mine on your belly, if your thighs touch or you got some dimples on your butt and I really wouldn't have cared if you had no interest in being a mother at all- I wouldn't have thought any less of you... but the fact that you just admitted that you are too scared to tackle in your own life, with the best resources that money can buy- what your fans, without nearly the advantage, look up to you to help us overcome- makes me just turn away from you sad and dissapointed.

My son and I, exhausted, celebrate the finish of a 5K together

I think pressure on celebrities to be role models is often misplaced... but only when the public disappointment is about some aspect of the celebrities personal life that has nothing to do with their professional ability. Your skill is not just being a pretty and fit woman- your skill, your trade, is being an inspiration and a motivation- and your attitude about pregnancy hangs on you like a fat suit.

Signed- A former fan

P.S. I just read the article Fox news posted that had a quote from you I hadn't seen yet.

“I’m not going to be wearing spandex in a [workout] DVD at 40! If I am, shoot me,” she also told Women’s Health. “I want to empower people to find happiness via a healthy lifestyle, and when I say healthy, I don’t just mean diet and exercise. Those are just tools.”

Gee- I didn't realize that 40 was the cut off point. As for those tools, it takes one to know one.

Pain is the topic of today’s post. I’ll begin by saying that I do not plan to measure or quantify the lasting effects of infant trauma, or discuss the various methods of pain relief available, or the frequency or willingness of circumcisers to employ them- although I may mention these things- that is not the theme of today’s blog. Today I am going to cast off the burden of providing scientific evidence for everything I want to say, and simply discuss some of my personal thoughts on our commonly held beliefs about the pain circumcised infants endure.

A great place to find articles on pain research: The CIRP Library

The idea that infancy is the best time to circumcise a boy is one of the most common justifications we find held by today’s parents. The main reason they believe infancy is best, is because they would like to exploit infant amnesia; that pain which will be forgotten is the best kind of pain to endure if one has to endure it. This relies on so many beliefs that I do not share, I will break them down as best I can.

The first is the belief is that the pain of circumcision is a pain that a man will endure at some point in his lifetime. This is false. In non-circumcising cultures, the chances that a man will need to be circumcised at some point in his life are extremely low. Therefore, parents do not need to choose the best time for their son to endure circumcision pain. By leaving his body alone, they have made a choice with fantastic odds, and the only choice that gives their son the opportunity to possibly live his entire life without ever enduring the pain of circumcision.

Next is the belief that forgotten pain is the best kind of pain. This is a field that is very tricky to study in a scientific way- if you are willing to listen to experts who have a more wholistic approach to the human body and experience- you will find lots of backing- but the medical world does not feel a need- nor do they have ethical permission to perform studies that would give us concrete answers. One of the more famous studies was done by Anna Taddio and it involved the pain responses of infants when they were vaccinated at several months old. The research revealed that infants who were circumcised, even the ones who had some pain relief for the circumcision, had a heightened pain response to the shots four and six months later. So the pain of the circumcision did not inoculate their body to pain- it actually worked more like the first exposure to an allergen- making them hyper sensitive to the next exposure.

Last is the belief that adult men should never have to suffer the pain of circumcision. That they should be protected from enduring elective or necessary pain by moving the experience forward in time to the point that it is both unnecessary and non-consensual. I offer the common phrase, “Take it like a man.” Although that’s also loaded with lots of cultural baggage that makes me uncomfortable- how can we believe that there is such a thing as taking it like a man, if we feel that newborn babies are better equipped to take it than men are?

Many parents (and Doctors and maternity nurses) also repeat dismissive apologist comments about the infant’s experience. They say things like, “He slept through it.” “He was so brave.” “What a trooper.” and “He only cried because he didn’t like being strapped to that board.”

Over twenty years ago I was raped, and part of that experience included being pinned, and then tied in a spread eagle position. I have a lot of personal empathy for a person who is crying because they have been strapped down. The violation of the rape did not begin with penetration or beating, it began with the fear I felt when I no longer had the liberty to protect myself. The terror and betrayal I felt over being tied, was just as much a part of the horror of the experience as any other aspect of it. I do not think that babies who cry from the moment of being tied are not experiencing true and deep distress. The spread eagle circumstraint position (did you know that the pelvic area of the board is slightly elevated- so even the spine is flexed backward?) is the opposite of the fetal position! Imagine how alien it would feel to have your limbs extended so unnaturally, all of them at the same time, when they had never been asked to open so far!



The question of a baby sleeping through a circumcision is in my opinion, not a matter of his experience, but a matter of our desire to define his experience. In this video, you will hear two people describe the lasting effects of the trauma- but you can also witness a circumcision- at first the infant screams and fights very hard- but at a certain point he becomes silent and his tear filled stare, vacant. As Marilyn Milos says so poignantly- “He has left his body.”

Link to the video

Circumcision is quick! Babies heal fast! True- typically it does not take very long. Do you remember how long your summer vacations were as a child? – and now those summers fly by. I often think about time- relative to the infant’s life. If you are one day old, 15 minutes is 1% of your life. Proportionally, if you were 50 years old- that experience would take six months. If a circumcision wound takes a week to heal- that is the only week of their life. The first week with their penis- their penis hurts!

I think of the nerve pathway that travels between the receptors in the baby’s genitals deep into the core of their body and finally to the special zone of their brain designed to receive sexual pleasure. I think of the miracle of those delicate nerve pathways and the synapses, miniaturized in this beautiful new person for whom the world is just unfolding. I think of those nerves like virgins…clean and pure, a new leaf. I cringe to think that the very first transmission through those wires, like when Alexander Graham Bell said, “Mr. Watson come here!”… How can we rationalize the first message through those most beautiful wires of love and intimacy to be a story of the most excruciating searing pain? This was not meant to be!



I wonder how our society would take it, if I was to suggest- “Wait- before you desecrate that pathway with a story of pain- would you pause for a minute to teach your infant about sexual pleasure first? So that at least his brain would know what sweetness was possible before it learned this trauma? Of course this is unacceptable! We can not morally sexually pleasure a little infant… that’s WRONG! …and so I ask- if it’s wrong to touch them with the intension to give pleasure? How can it be right to touch them with the knowledge that it will inflict pain?

I really need to wrap this up, but I am going to touch on one last item which is a bit of crossover activism- with breastfeeding, and it concerns the use of the sucrose pacifier for circumcisions and the fact that it has been shown to actually help reduce pain responses during a circumcision. I have nursed three children so far, and with the birth of each child I am always overwhelmed by the amazing miracle of the rooting and suck reflex infants are born with. It is the key to their survival and a blessing from God. Without it, no amount of milk could help an infant who did not have the instinct to help himself- he would just waste away quietly without putting in the work he needs to ensure his survival. When I first learned about the sucrose pacifier, something deep in me felt that this was wrong- but it took me a little while to dissect and reconstruct what it was that I found so disturbing.

When a baby is hungry, he will cry in response to the pain in his belly. When he is put to the breast, the infant must calm himself and stop crying in order to nurse effectively and resolve his problem. The pain is his belly is not gone, his hunger is not satisfied- but the correct answer has been offered and he must have faith that sucking at the breast is the solution to make the pain go away. I feel that there is something sacred here, in this gift, in this order. To give a sucrose pacifier to an infant being circumcised is an abuse in his trust that sucking will resolve his pain. Yes it may work, but it works by deceit. To take that most precious maternal association- and exploit in order to silence him- is a lie and betrayal of both mother and baby in the highest order.