Saturday, March 13, 2010

Love Your Body Week 2010





We're excited to be writing our first blog post! Things have finally begun to take off for Valued...this week we hosted Love Your Body Week (LYBW) at Spring Arbor University. Lynn and I (co-founders of Valued) have conducted LYBW for three years now on campus at Spring Arbor...however, this was our first as the organization Valued!

We decided to try a new event this year, scale re-decorating! It ended up being a very fun event that was well attended, we ran out of scales before the event was over...definitely a good problem to have! You'll find some pictures below to get an idea of what we did with the scales. The main idea behind the scale decorating was to make then unusable for the sake of weighing...the dials were removed and covered with positive statements! We believe that scales are for fish and not for people :) We even had a staff member from the on campus Health Center come and decorate a scale to display in their office, for students to see while they're in the waiting room.

Wednesday morning Kathleen MacDonald (from the FREED Foundation...our parent organization) came to speak at SAU's chapel. Once the podcast is available we'll post a link so you can listen to what she shared with the student body. It was obvious that many people were moved by what she had to say. Kathleen has been a great blessing to Lynn and I both personally and as a mentor for getting Valued started.

That evening we held an Educational Night about eating disorders...Kathleen spoke about what the dangers of eating disorders are, what disordered really is, what body image is...and what to do if you know someone who needs help. It was a great night of information and we had a good audience there.

We're excited that we have our first high school appearance scheduled for April! We'll be speaking to a health class...hopefully this will be the first of many!

Lynn and I are currently preparing to start a support group in the area for those who are struggling with eating and body image disorders. It will be held on Spring Arbor's campus every other Monday evening at 7pm...if you are interested in attending or want more information please feel free to email us at valuednetwork@gmail.com . This group is about education and creating a supportive environment to those struggling...this should in no way replace individual therapy.

Thank you for reading and for your support as we get this organization running!

Lynn & Natalie



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