Bea frequently had to fight off her bad memories and she had a lot of them. All her wee life she'd struggled with feeling that she needed to work very hard to be wee. It all stemmed from when she was very little and the little mean bears who lived in the forest by her and her mom's cave would bully her about her size.

She knows in her deepest part that she is and has always been a good wee bear. Her mom had told her that over and over many, many times; but still it was hard not to remember the voices stuck like honey, of those mean little bears yelling and yelling. She said she thought if she did enough rigorous exercises often enough, it would make the voices go away.

Her friends accepted her just the way she was. After doing her exercises for so many summers, Bea began to notice that she didn't do her vigorous exercises for the same reasons anymore. She somehow knew her exercises were helping her in other ways to solve her problems.

When I asked how she got the name Bea, which seemed an unusual name for a wee bear, she explained that was the name she had carried since the day she learned how to write. She had, during many of her strolling exercises with her mom, seen names of things written on signs and had wondered what her name would look like.

She asked her mom to write her name on a piece of paper so she could learn how to write it. Well, she was having a little honey -- later to be known as her "be good to myself" treat and dropped a drip of it right on the "R" at the end of her name. So, licking her yummy right paw and gripping with all of her might, a purple crayon in her left, she copied the letters one after another, B-E-A. You see, her mom hadn't ever quite decided what to name her so she had always called her Bear. Her mom was so pleased to see that Bea had chosen her own name. She was already beginning her exercises of solving problems.

She told me that when her mom called outside for her, there was sometimes a bit of confusion because the wrong bee would come. Bea's eyes glimmered as she told me that she really, really didn't mind. She liked bees because they were the ones who made her "be good to myself" treat. Bea told me that sometimes, even though she knew that her mom loved her, Bea had felt like giving up when the little bears yelled "No Fat Bears" every time she came around to play. She was sure if she were wee, maybe they would have invited her to play. She decided that she just wouldn't eat anymore.

Every time her mom asked her if she wanted any honey, she said that she wasn't hungry, no matter how much her stomach rumbled, grumbled or growled. Why should she have a "be good to myself" treat when she did not feel good about herself? After so many mean bears had said bad things to her and about her, for so many times, for so long, Bea had begun to believe them.

She had stopped drawing on paper and wrote all over her fur with different colored crayons. She believed those little bears must be right because how could that many of them be wrong. It must be true. She never counted how many there were but it felt like a lot. It had always been a very painful blur in her memory.

She always had hoped that she could become invisible so the mean bears wouldn't know she was around. But then there were times when she didn't want to be invisible, but she was. Maybe she'd wished too hard and things got out of balance. Being invisible turned out to be as painful as being visible. When she was invisible no one seemed to see how sad she was or how she was being treated. She would go somewhere else in her head. Maybe her thoughts could do some kind of magic and make her a good wee bear instead of a bad fat bear.

She wanted to tell her mom how horrible she felt inside but didn't know how to start. Her mom saw how very sad and hurt Bea was and told Bea she did not have to be mean to herself because others were cruel to her. Bea was so surprised that her mom knew some of what was going on without having to say a word. It made it easier. She still didn't say anything.

Reassuring her with a great big bear hug, that she was a good wee bear, her mom told her it was time for her to learn to talk to the maker who passes onto us all the wisdom we need. She taught her how to both talk and listen to the maker of wee bears. When Bea told the maker of wee bears how hard she was wishing to be wee, she heard an idea of how to be wee and still enjoy her "be good to myself" treat -- a rigorous exercise program. This was the first of Bea's many wonderful BRAIN exercises. A very satisfied wee bear, she decided to call it "Be Wee With Bea".

The "Be Wee With Bea" rigorous exercise program will cost you nothing. She uses things found right in her home. You can too. She didn't need to go out and buy an expensive exercise machine. She gets the same kind of exercise going up and down her stepstool to get her pots of honey that are up high on shelves, which requires stretching the ribs. This might even prevent Bea from shrinking as they say people do. The part that makes this a rigorous exercise is she doesn't do this just a few times or for just a few minutes; she carries on this activity many, many times all day long and sometimes into the wee hours of the night.

She is so dedicated that often she wakes up and realizes that she hasn't done her stoolstepping for a while. She gets right up without hesitation or reluctance. This exercise also has an added bonus that the store- bought exercise machine doesn't. She is also doing fairly heavy weightlifting as the pots are brimming full as she lifts and carries them slowly down her steps.

The weights being lifted as she does the going down part, are of course heavier than they are for the going up part on the stoolstepper. This graduated weight program may be a bit backward. Usually, the weights are increased rather than decreased as the program progresses; but Bea knows it will have good effects on her confidence and self-esteem anyway. She realizes that her tummy has a bit of a full feeling so it probably is just as well that the honeypots are empty and don't weigh very much. Her strength might decrease as her tummy gets fuller.

Once, she got so excited about this exercise program that while she was rushing her fine motor weight lifting -- which simply means having a big pawful of her "be good to myself" treat, she dropped a drip on her toes. That was when she discovered another exercise which she calls toe touching, which of course balances out the full tummy and a bending exercise. Another similar exercise, but one which calls for a wee more stretching, is floor touching.

Sometimes floor touching can develop into running in place if the weights get too tippy and fall on the floor and her feet get all stuck up in this exercise. She may try to use her paw to clean off the honey covering her feet, but if this does not work right off she will use it an opportunity for her to do some of her dance exercises.