FatGirl vs World

Dear Roberta, aged 7 or so (as you won't be called Robby for many years to come):

First of all, I want to assuage your fears -- there will be some bumps in the road ahead, but no matter what life throws at you, you will always find a reservoir of strength in some way or another to get you through.  So don't find this letter as cause for alarm--you will be okay. 

The thing is this:  your parents aren't perfect and aren't necessarily going to know everything about how to raise you correctly.   This is because they, themselves, had parents that didn't know everything about how to raise them correctly.  They are also too afraid to admit this to themselves and to you.  As a kid, you really have no choice but to follow their lead.   Don't worry about this--their reign over you is a finite span of time.  After this, you will be able to make your own choices and determine the paths you take in life.

It's not all rainbows and butterflies, though.  You will experience the loss of people very close to you and deal with it in unhealthy ways.  Again, don't worry--you do not become a drug addict, a college drop-out, or give in to the despair.  You find a way through it.  It might be messy and imperfect, but the chutzpah and resourcefulness you have will get you through it. 

I wish I could go back in time and guide you through what's going to happen to you over the next couple of years, but the only reason I am who I am right now is because of all that happens -- good and bad.  So for now, I can just hold you in my heart a little while and feel compassion that you will have to go it alone for the most part.

I'm still cleaning up the aftermath of all that, but I'm doing this for you and me.  I'm doing this for us.  I'm doing this because you deserved to be taken care of better.  You deserved to have someone notice how much pain you were in and how much grief you were hiding.  You deserved to have proper meals, and more family activities that didn't involve the warmth of a television.  You deserved to have parents who loved you and the body they created.   You deserved to have parents who could place your needs over their insecurities.  It might be a little late, but you know this now.

It's 10:30 and past your bedtime, and approaching mine.  But if you could reach out into the future and send me some of your dreams, I'll try my best to live them.

-Robby

I have a bumper sticker hanging from a magnet on my front door:


When I first got it (at a Green Festival booth) it so simply spoke to me that I was not living a life I loved -- I was half-living a life I took for granted.  I'm working on improving my status, but I just wanted to share this little tidbit.  I think the sooner you
live a live you love and love the life you live,
 the sooner you can actually savor all that is going on
-- experiences, friendships, and even food.

Our bodies are pretty impressive machines -- full of bells, whistles, and alarms.  Sadly this machine doesn't come with an instruction manual.  We just have to get a feel for it while making some mistakes along the way. 

I once read in a book (I believe it was Real Food by Nina Planck) that kids are born intuitive eaters.  Left to their own devices they pick the foods their bodies need (such as when they're deficient in a mineral), and they don't overeat/undereat (kids are naturally slow eaters).  Somewhere along the way we're told to eat this or that, that we eat too much or don't eat enough.  "Society's played us a terrible trick, und sociologically we're sick."  Okay, so maybe not sociologically, but we're definitely sick when it comes to our own nutrition.

And yes, we allow society to dictate too much when it comes to how we feel about our own bodies (I've talked about this before)  -- leading to body dysmorphic disorders, eating disorders, depression, as well as a multi-billion dollar industry that either compounds those issues or helps to solve them.  Basically we let the outside world be a louder voice than our own -- what we want for ourselves, for our own bodies, for our health, for our futures.  Our own voice has been silenced.

I am just thinking about this today because my body sends me some very clear signals when I'm about to get my period (and even some subliminal ones) -- mainly that I don't drink much water or eat the day before/the first day of my period (and subliminally I tend to wear red more...).  My period came a week early and I was caught off guard because I didn't listen to what my body was trying to tell me.  Ever since I first got my period, it has been abnormal.  However, my mom was so ill-informed about menstruation that all she could do was tell me "it's normal, drink some tea."  It took going to college for me to finally ask a doctor, and no, my symptoms (hot flashes, chills, nausea, vomiting, severe cramping) were not normal (especially because they occurred on a frequent basis). 

I should have listened to what my body was trying to tell me about my back -- that the pain I was feeling wasn't because I was weak, it was because I was injured.

So I'm going to make a promise to myself, and I hope you'll do the same:  I'm going to trust my instincts when it comes to my body.  I will be my body's caretaker and advocate.  I will learn to trust and honor my body and listen to what it tries to tell me.

For many years I've advised friends who asked that it's never fair in a fight to throw the kitchen sink at someone.  In other words, deal with the fight at hand, not issues and events long past.  Nothing can be done about those things.  Instead of a constructive environment where you're dealing with the present moment, you open the door to destruction, chaos, and mayhem where you dredge up everything and anything someone has done to you. 

Last night I let the kitchen sink fly.

I called dad for the first time in a month.  I prefaced the conversation that what I was about to say were facts and perceptions, not judgments or blame.  I was not throwing the kitchen sink at him. Rather, I was telling him there was a kitchen sink.  A gorilla in my emotional room.  I apologized that my mom wasn't around to share the weight of the sink, but that I could no longer carry it and move forward.

My big fear in doing this is that he would react as if it were blame or that he owed me explanations or penance, or that it would be a setback in his recovery from alcoholism.  I just needed understanding.  I needed him to know that I wasn't going to let those things hold me back anymore.  Lots of it had to do with my childhood and how my parents weren't in a good place themselves to be able to teach, nurture, and guide me.  I was overweight/obese as a child, and they knew when it started, why it started and didn't do anything about it except berate me and make me feel ashamed.  I needed him to know that, on behalf of my childhood self, that I was mad, disappointed, and no longer accepting that failing as my own.  I needed him to know that as a parent he failed me in ways that made me unhealthy both physically and psychologically.

I told him that I was able to go back into those memories and have compassion not only for myself as the child who was fearful, felt neglected, and needed guidance but for both him and my mom for not knowing any better.  I expressed regret that because of their own emotional issues that there were barriers that were in place (that I constructed, or just seemed to be there) that prevented us from having a healthy relationship with each other. 

I also told him that going forward that I would no longer worry about him more than I worry about myself in ways that were unhealthy.  I would recognize when his emotions were eclipsing my own.

To my surprise, he took lots of what I said on board.   I think over the years he's not just changed the lens with which he views me, but has switched cameras.  For a long time he saw me through my mother's eyes -- an angry child that wouldn't follow orders and would lash out.  When put in context of having a mother who was a psychological terrorist, he began to see that my actions and attitude as a child was just what I needed to do in order to survive.  Because no one was able to be a good example, I had to do a lot of trial and error on my own.  It made me stubborn as hell, but also tough as nails.  Despite being rather stoic, there were lots of things that were never said.  I should have said them when they came up, but I just didn't have the confidence that my parents would respond in a healthy way or a trust that I could speak my mind without repercussion. 

I asked him to think about what I said before replying (i.e., not trying to emotionally defend himself but to be able to calmly respond).

But I woke up today feeling great relief.  That I said what I needed to say in order to let the past be the past.

Ever just forget a word?  I was searching for the word "totem" the other day and just couldn't think of it.  So yeah... from a sexual totem to an exercise totem.  That's what I meant to say.

The exercise of putting together photos left me rather spent emotionally.  I got to one photo of me in the 8th grade and then the record stopped, picked up with my senior photo from HS and then because I was in the office, the only other photos I had were from my cruise with my BFF in 1Q 2006.  Things turned disastrous when I arrived at the photos from Jamaica.

I took some time today to pull out some photos to make a timeline of my body-- and I was/was not surprised to see how strongly they correlated to some traumatic events in my life.  My instant, gutteral reaction was just utter sympathy.  I wished with all my heart that I could go back to 1986 and tell my parents something was looming on the horizon and that they'd have to watch out for me.

I'm fascinated with this British tv show, SuperSize vs. SuperSkinny.  (Click here for some clips)
People's brains are wired so differently, producing such visible, dramatic results.  How much of it is nature, how much is nurture.  Is a person born anorexic or an overeater, or are they created?

(I personally love the quote from one of the obese americans they profile when she says "You have to believe that the voice telling you that you will start your diet tomorrow, that that person is out to kill you.")

Morbid obesity is anything over a BMI of 40 (between 30 and 40 is just regular obesity).

I have such great empathy for people who do this to themselves, for the people that enable this, and the great changes people have to undergo to be able to understand what they're doing.  Almost all people (from what I've seen/read) that are morbidly obese have emotional attachments to food.  To be able to break the cycle, you have to be able to almost detach your feeling towards the food (ie, feeling emotionally satiated).  I empathize with this greatly.   It's a horrible cycle of eating to make yourself feel better, feeling depressed because you just ate and then eating to relieve that distress.

What I really don't get are the parents that see their children go down this route and do nothing. I wonder how broken they are, or how much denial they are in to allow this to go on.  On a message board I belong to, we were discussing whether parents should be criminally liable for their obese children.  What are your thought?

For the record, I wear Saucony sneakers -- so this isn't about Nike sneakers.

First, a tangent:  A few years I bought a book on a whim, and it turned out to mean much more to me than I would have expected.  I've had three copies of the book, and none of them remain with me.  They've all gone on to friends, and hopefully beyond.  It was called The Good Girl's Guide to Bad Girl Sex, and it was written by a psychologist who used to be a sexual surrogate.  This wasn't a guide of positions and toys, rather 2/3 of the book was self-analysis.  One of the first exercises was to go back in your past and write a list of every time you wanted to express your sexual self, but some external force (a person, society, a sense of morals) told you that was wrong.  Other exercises had to do with looking at how you present yourself from an objective point of view.   One of my favorite suggestions in that book was to have in your house something that reminded you of your sexuality and connection with your sexual self.  For me it as a painting by Pierre-Auguste Cot.

So... back to Nike.  It doesn't surprise me a bit that the Greeks chose a woman to represent strength.  My mom once told me that the word female is Fe (the chemical symbol for iron) + male.  There's something innate within all of us that makes us able to endure, persevere, and triumph.  I think more and more that I need to find something to remind me of that more often.  My reminders around the house are my balance ball, balance disc, yoga mat, and Wii/Wii Fit. There's nothing really that reminds me that no matter the setback (such as my lumbar discs being inflamed), that I can overcome.

I am thinking of getting my MRI blown up into an 8x10 photo as a reminder that every day I am able to walk (even if I'm not feeling great) is a victory in and of itself.  I think Nike would approve.

After my mother died, there was almost an immediate panic that all of the "junk" my father had been putting up with would just vanish.  By junk, I mean trunks full of my grandparent's treasures.  For the most part it wasn't junk, just volume: two sets of demitasse china, three or four sets of silverware, and things they picked up while living in Austria and Japan.

By the time he moved in 1999 from a house to an apartment, my father had gotten rid of many things.  However, I had squirreled away a few things that I thought were beautiful, or had meaning to me.  Among those things were two Japanese incense burners in the shape of the Buddha.  Now, I had never met my maternal grandfather (he died in 1966), and my mom died (in 1994) before I could find out more about these two statues, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they were my grandfathers (that he bought them or was presented with them).

Siddartha sits with his eyes closed and a slight smile on his lips.  This was my first introduction to Buddhism.  It wasn't an epiphany, it wasn't a charismatic sales pitch:  it was the relationship I had with these statues.  They weren't idols and I wouldn't pray to them.  It started with the simple question of "what does he know that I don't?"  Like the Mona Lisa, I could read his face a thousand different ways -- some days contemplative, some days joyful, some mournful.  I realized that I saw in him what I was feeling myself.

This question and realization began an investigation not only into Buddhism, but into myself.  I read the writings of the Dalai Lama, Jack Kornfield, Thich Nhat Hanh and many others.  I began listening to dharma talks, eventually landing on a few people that I really enjoyed listening to, like Tara Brach.  I liked the message:  you have the ability entirely within yourself to handle whatever life throws at you.  The same word kept coming up over and over again--mindfulness.

About two years ago I got the guts to attend a Learnapalooza event--Introduction to Meditation.  And well, I wasn't prepared for what happened.  I had listened to the dharma talks and the meditations, but it wasn't the same as being in the room with someone telling you it was okay to feel whatever you were feeling.  And I couldn't help but cry.  I don't know why I was crying, but I knew at that moment that it was okay, no one was judging me, I wasn't judging myself.  I had touched a place of vulnerability within myself that I hadn't discovered before.  I was being mindful by sitting there with my self without even noticing it.  In the second sitting, they lead the beginners through a compassion meditation (metta practice).  With the suggestion that we start small and not deal with the large issues looming in our lives, we began to be kind to ourselves, kind to someone who might have hurt us, and kind to a nameless, faceless person in the future.  Again, I cried because I couldn't help but jump into the deep end.  Whether I did or did not forgive those people, I recognized the shift to wanting to forgive them rather than bearing a grudge.

So wow, this post took a tangent far from what I wanted to get on about..... which were the 14 Mindfulness Trainings.

Last night I had 4 glasses of wine.  That was enough to get me drunk, frisky, and ultimately dealt me a nice hangover.  I woke up feeling just a little groggy, a little foggy.  And all I could really think to myself was that all drinking does is lead me further from who I am.  I looked in the mirror and my face was puffy, my eyes had remnants of eyeliner gunked into the corner of my eyes, and my body was shaking from the intestines outward.

I walked to the kitchen to feed the cats and saw my white board where it says "no alcohol" and reminded myself of why I put it up there.  It undermines my goals.  I can be social and bubbly without it.  I cannot, however, be healthy with it.

from Mindfulness Training #5: Simple, Healthy Living
 I will practise mindful consuming, not using alcohol, drugs or any other products that bring toxins into my own and the collective body and consciousness.

Deep down I truly believe that my fat is a battle wound, and that under all of it is a person I will recognize as my true self, someone whose intentions and actions are the same.