This past week, my daughter and her husband and infant son were in for a visit. It’s the holidays, and while there’s still New Year’s looming in front of us (and all of the year-in-review that entails), we celebrated simply.

One of the things we found ourselves doing, especially with a 1 year old in the house, was looking for ways to run him out of energy. We made several trips to the nearby playground and he got to swing in a swing seat designed for parents to swing with their babies, and loved going down the short slide (and back up it, rather than the steps).

Personally, I couldn’t really remember the last time I was on a playground, other than when my daughter was a child. And, of course, when I was a kid. I swear the equipment we had when I was little was designed to keep the doctor’s offices in business and it’s probably a good thing most of that stuff no longer exists, except in memory.

Except, of course, for swings. Swing sets are an ageless part of playgrounds, even if you can’t rock the legs up off the ground and darned near spin yourself around the top support. Not that I ever did that. Or jump off at the highest point. Certainly not me. 😉

Okay… maybe. On occasion.

I sat down on one of the swings during one of the trips and then decided I’d take it for a swing. (Because that’s what you do when sitting on a swing, after all!) I didn’t worry about whether the seat would support me; I just started swinging, feeling weightless, rocking back and forth through the unseasonably warm air. It was a sweet return to a childhood joy, like carnival rides and coasting on a bike on a summer’s day. One of those things you try to convince yourself you’re too old to do, rather than face the actuality that doing it is a risk when morbidly obese — if you’re even allowed at all.

These little surprises just never seem to end; I am still finding things I didn’t know I could do, and while simply swinging on a playground swing set is far from complicated, it’s more about what I allow myself to do. There’s a lot of self-punishment and denial that comes as part and parcel of the mental weight loss process; those things we tell ourselves we shouldn’t do, not because of self-discipline, but because we somehow don’t deserve those small joys. There’s nothing wrong with sitting on a swing; it’s the idea that my weight should prohibit such things. And while my body is no longer one that will break a chair or cause real harm to something like playground equipment, my brain hasn’t always accepted that my physical situation has changed. At double my weight, I had no business doing such a thing; it might have harmed the swing as well as me.

As I look forward to the next year in my newly changed body, I hope to challenge myself more in small and big ways, tackling some of the things I’ve been hesitant to do. Why not take a swing at it?