The other day I left Model Citizens, a vintage store just off Duckworth St. in downtown St. John’s, feeling the warmth of gratitude. Gratitude for people who say it like it is and don’t let others, like me, get away with blind self-pity.

I’ve been trying to negotiate body issues these days, or for the past seven years, or for most of my teenage/adult life, and so I found it hard not to comment on how “hard it is these days” to find clothes to fit my postpartum body as I tried to squeeze into a tight black number.

The girl there, I’m pretty sure she was the owner or manager, stopped immediately and assured me with a fervour I will not soon forget that I, “am not a situation.” She shut me up and in a very, very good way.

I am not a problem. I am not a mess to be fixed. I am not an eye-sore or a hindrance or a hazard. I am not an incident.

I am not a situation.

Amen. Alleluia. Let it be so.