The Chorus: Bodies (and Souls)
We are flooded with choices and starved for connection. Always and never alone. We change minds by sharing stories. We fight alone, together. Empathy is a victory. Seven billion solo songs, and I want to start a Chorus. - Amy Grace
The beauty of running on scraps and thin air, is that you can survive on scraps and thin air. A drop is a feast. I was born hungry.
I used to do these monster runs. Twelve miles, fifteen, eighteen, I’d lose count. Believing in the finish line as transformation. A switch that could declare me strong, survived, ready. The safest drug that wasn’t. Healthy that wasn’t. My body needed rest and wanted distraction. Ironically, what I miss about them is the middle. Being lost in time, a limbo I chose, words finding me like magic, tears that were stuck channeled into burning legs, endorphins that felt holy. I could almost fly. Learn to be my own. Bodies show us what we feel before we’re ready to name it. This was a violence to exorcise the violence I’d known. Freeing anger to make room for peace. These days I forget my body as much as I used to torture it. Inhabit it before I can celebrate it. It’s a home. A way to touch what I want and need and love. Muscle and spirit at once. A struggle, too. But hunger is as complicated as we are. And hurting is more alive than being asleep. And outrunning isn’t living.
First flowers in February die by frost. Early blooming requires resilience no elementary school kid is ready for. I hated the bra I was supposed to wear, so I made it unnecessary. Starved out adulthood, coming for me too soon. Refused to feed it into existence. Kryptonite instead of boundaries, a trick I learned for life. My only defense against nature, that has none. Practiced, like some people find yoga or meditation, sitting in the hollow burn, transcending before suburban America caught on. I thanked hunger and paid it all I had, for protection - a deal with a devil that felt like home. Some kids looked for dirty magazines in their parents’ rooms. At ten, I weighed myself in my mother’s closet. Became addicted to single digits and subtraction. Memorized the calorie counting book in her nightstand, with a sewing tape measure I’d wrap around my slip of a waist. She couldn’t have known. We heard the grown ups wanting to change themselves, fed a steady diet of diets, it was normal and cruel and hard and easy. Middle school memories a mess of first loves and cigarettes, fending off fainting when the bell rung between classes, Grateful Dead bootleg tapes and friends like family, then all night leg cramps from electrolyte crashes. Home alone at twelve, running up and down stairs, my mind an endless equation of energy in and out. Later, my hipbones bruised from boys I wouldn’t let know me. It felt powerful, which breaks my heart now more than anything. Learning to be wanted, before we learned to want. Where did we learn that orgasms had anything to do with the outline of our ribs, or the twisting of our insides? I can hear my best friend convincing me to eat pizza: “It’s only bread and cheese”. She knows nothing, I thought, shocked. Vodka didn’t count, because it made you forget. But I still remember everything. Starving told the world not to ask. A forcefield, Teflon, warning, dare. Dodging polite adult concern that held silent fears. Steel willed, mastering the art of being ok. The only lie I’ve ever really told. (For decades.)
Hunger is a stand in for everything else, when it’s your drug. Food is the flip side, just as true. Approval is a beast with an endless appetite. Known is not safe. Gifts were pressure to perform. We change ourselves to fit the space and shape the world gives us. Empty ourselves out to make room for what strikes next. Read that we can be anything, but not as we are, not now, not yet, not here, not for him. Adjust, contort, hold breath, smile hard, accept, open, read rooms, read minds. We grew sideways, like trees on the coast, to meet the male gaze. Arching our spines, searching out mirrors in eyes to check ourselves. The irony and beauty, in all that giving up, fine tuning, reflecting back, was that we learned to want ourselves, too. A side effect to fuel the healing now. We paid to exist halfway, earned theoretical tickets into worthiness. Deprivation laced into desire, only in reaction to someone else’s. We starve ourselves to bear what’s unbearable. To excuse what’s inexcusable. To fit everything we didn’t choose, or chose us. We switch out the impulse for ‘yes’ and ‘no’. We shrink to satisfy egos of people we don’t respect but are taught to need. We make ourselves pure, untouchable, unflappable. We unmake ourselves. Hunger was holy. Something to accomplish by falling away, renouncing, disappearing into existence. It was a parallel world, always there like a movie I directed, flat and in wide angle honey light, my own design, waiting for me when I couldn’t be in my own life. A ghost of myself, haunted by myself.
My own hunger is still hard to talk about because I’m still in it. Bait and switch. Built into my autonomic nervous system like a second heartbeat. It’s a stress response, discomfort response, world on fire response, way of life. Becoming thin is a way of pleading “don’t hurt me,” like the preemptive “I’m sorry” we are collectively sick of saying and hearing. It’s some illusory version of safe that wears us out and expires in time. Hitting my forties woke me up to my own fairytales, embedded in my swallowed down sadness. Years of listening, being good, amounted to a silent prayer: ‘Don’t criticize me, don’t push back, just let me breathe here in this package I’ve made for your ease. I won’t be difficult or different from you. I won’t ask you to accept me for what fills my heart. For my appetites and opinions and feelings and wants. Don’t hurt me or you’ll break me. Don’t you see it? I’ll snap.’
All the dancing that looked so free, was really begging for scraps. My wild spirit, trapped in a rule book. I tell my kids, my friends, my students: FILL YOUR SPACE. Because it’s a right and act of self love. Because we hear ourselves speak to others what we need to hear, ourselves. We can change learned instinct like we can change our minds - with hard work and epiphanies. I’m all soul. In dieting, I was all business. A secret life when secrets are poison. An alter ego when we all just want to be whole. Growing up with the Berlin wall through my spine, duality that tied my feet and taped my lips and asked me to sprint and sing. Without muscle or water. For an audience. It’s exhausting enough to type it. Only a tiny container for all the joy I still felt. Tidal waves of it, stuffed into a double zero. Happiness will never fit into a body that only feels itself.
Pain is education; I’ve had cruel teachers and been my own. I’ve listened to it whisper and wail. It sings about what we are most hungry for. Begs to be fed so it can rest and grow into peace. Pain wants change. Changed minds in an unchanged culture creates friction that can start a fire. We learn to put it out against our own skin, when it’s time to let it spread and burn. An alarm we run from and re-channel and ignore. A recent text from a friend read: “If only women cared about the state of our souls as much as the state of our asses.” Funny and tragic and point blank true. Maybe we all do already, just feel we can’t. Wellness has taken on traits of sickness, everywhere I look. An addict knows a junkie. Acting on what we need is the ultimate act of healing, and rebellion. And the gentlest thing we’ll ever do.
The truth about bodies is that they keep our souls here on earth. I won a lottery of fate to still live in mine. They are our windows and keys and homes. Our physical interface with love, with each other, with pleasure we all deserve. “Do the things that make you never want to leave” - a mantra repeated to my kids. I’ve trashed it. And drunk last drops of it. Off and on, black and white, good and bad, never correct. Dichotomies defy our watercolor souls, our evolutions. And after near death and epiphanies and fatigue I’ll never sleep off, I live in the grey, turn it to color. After last ditch prayers when my heart was a rollercoaster. Confusing suppression with permission - tangled, showing up at once, and never belonging together. I know it now, and don’t have time to mourn when I didn’t. We find our strength in the living, not the pulling away. Slow death is still suicide, when its lies feel like protection. It’s an inside job to resist dog whistles, blown to sell things and sell us short. Today, hunger feels like a country where I used to live, with long summers and clear skies and sleepless nights. Cold dry hands while the world sweats. Right now is a messy wet spring, with mud and hay fever and sticky close air. My hollows filled out and filled in, with gritty truth and soft flesh. The cracked seed of me open, sharp shoots grown from my ravaged heart.
To love who we’ve always been, and despise our own flesh. Opposites that only make peace when we own them, call them out, take them apart, repair what’s left. Done endlessly fixing parts that were never broken. Learning to feed what for years wanted to grow. Blowing my own cover. Blowing yours, too. Whatever I feel now cannot be translated to the language of empty stomachs or disappearing flesh. It will be something new, and always known. It has shocked me with its simplicity - a koan, an exorcism, the new habit of letting go when I want to hold on. It has grown babies and nurtured life against gambler’s odds. It has burned its way out, thawed and flooded me, leaving green in its wake. Always hungry, for everything, all along.
by Amy Grace
eff it, I said. I'm going to class.
in that first five minutes, I felt my body melt into the floor. hips, thighs, shoulders. elbows, fingertips, eyelashes. bones, blood, everything. five years I spent pretending I no longer needed this, five years I spent yanking at this core part of myself like a weed.
in that first five minutes, I felt my head clear. for once, grief took a number, had to wait in line. just like everything else. for the next ninety minutes, I contemplated breath and weight. folded, unfolded, listened to the sound of commuter trains outside, moved through space as if underwater. reacquainted myself with that wildly specific vernacular, that modern dance language in which I used to be so fluent. your pelvis is a bowl. move in full sentences. unfurl your spine. live in the landscape of the lifted sternum.
live in the landscape of the lifted sternum.
for a little while, I was home.
When I was a kid, teenager, young woman,
I was scared to sit down without holding something in front of my belly to cover up.
Fear.
I was scared.
To sit. I was scared to run in front of people, to jog, to skip. I had no idea I could be loved. Or touched. Or adored. Or taken care of. Or worshipped. I had no idea another person could grow with me in so many ways. Truly love me fully and deeply and unconditionally. That they could grab these pork chops and shake and jiggle them and that I’d be giggling along and loving it. That they’d love my body as it physically grows and expands rapidly and without bounds (finally). This isn’t a dedication to my partner (although I do appreciate him, adore him, and love him more than anyone/thing). This is a dedication to myself. A thank you to me for allowing the flood gate to open. For allowing myself to be loved (by me and by others). For allowing myself to be touched and adored and worshipped. And not just for allowing it to happen, but for accepting it happily and without hesitation. For ENJOYING IT. For no longer saying things like “I don’t understand how he can love me and love my body”. I do understand. Fully. It’s because I am the Universe.
by Cheyenne Gil
I do not eat on airplanes. Ever. Because that would combine two of my phobias — flying and choking — and that is too much for me to bear. Food is a phobia. Even more than the ever-present problems of being a woman in todays’ world and the worry about weight, food, sugar, how I look, what jeans I fit into and yes, I know what I wore and what I weighed at any age during my life, is the danger food poses for me. Food is dangerous to me. It can kill me. I could choke. I could be poisoned. I could have an allergic reaction.
I could write a novel on the why. So many little traumas rolled up into one big phobia. Things that happened when I was young and a teen. I remember choking on a hard boiled egg when I was home alone at about age 10? younger? I remember panicking and picking up the phone but I couldn’t talk. I remember laying down on the couch so I could die. But then I went to the sink and put water in my mouth and somehow that loosened the egg and I didn’t die. I don’t know if I even told anyone. There were other choking incidents.
Then the poisoning fear. The shame in the origin of that fear is intense. Should I say? Why not. I was shooting up what I thought was speed in my bathroom at home at the age of 15? 16? And as soon as the drug went in my vein, I knew it was not speed. It was different. I was scared. The walls turned smooth. I survived but the fear of the initial rush and the unexpected drug was imprinted.
And now food. I don’t like chewy or hard food. I don’t like any food that I don’t know exactly what is in it. I don’t eat MSG. I don’t like chemicals or fried food or processed food. I like simple food. I like to eat what Im comfortable with or else I won’t eat. I lose weight when I travel because I don’t want to try new foods or eat out. I don’t like spicy or rich or gourmet or restaurant food. I love rice cakes.
I joke with my husband that we cannot get divorced because I could never go on a date and try to explain this to someone new.
by Wendy Laurel
I was at war. Pain and destruction. The mirror fought with lies. Over and over I listened and struggled to get ahead.
Truth was not my ally, no matter how hard I tried. Mistreatments on so many levels. The bullets kept coming and knocking me down.
It was complicated, so I told myself. The worst was yet to come. The best was yet to come.
An unexpected hero. Understanding, forgiveness, and strength all soldiers by my side. A future of acceptance and peace.
The mirror still wants to go to battle but I know better now. Never trust the reflection. The foundation is stronger and more powerful. The war is over.
When I was young I used to draw. Self-portraits mostly. They were different from other kids’ drawings, and despite the fact that they always attracted unwanted attention I loved creating them. Teachers and classmates and anyone who caught a glimpse always had similar questions.
“Why no mouth?”
“Where are your ears?”
“Where are your feet?”
I drew version after version of a warped self-reflection, silent and detached, not even human half the time. I didn’t know why, especially because I was young, but I always felt uncomfortable sitting with myself. It felt painful, and my mind was always overwhelmed. Always anticipating loss, living through perhaps self-prophesized trauma, recovering from those self-inflicted wounds as well as the unanticipated ones. It hurt my mind to feel and I’ve spent half a lifetime trying to escape a psychic pain I couldn’t shake. A skin crawling panic that felt like something I should be able to change like my clothes at the end of the day.
Consciousness, sobriety, pain, hunger. All just tools in my chest of invisibility. All work, but just briefly, until the effects fade and I am nothing but raw soul stuck inside of this body again. It leaves me feeling edgy, full and agitated. With a need to unwrap myself, like peeling the skin from a piece of fruit, to grow into something else. A constant urge to purge my cells and shrink to be as small as possible.
But through it all I’ve learned that I have somewhat of an exoskeleton. No matter how many times I try to hollow out the insides the shell remains.
And it’s lasted long enough that it was there to hold me up when I was ready to start growing from the inside again. As time passes it just grows thicker and stronger, and I start to accept that empty isn’t always safe. That it’s ok to feel the floor on my feet, to have a voice, to feel the skin on my arms. Feeling means I am breathing means I am alive means today I will be ok.
My kids may be mildly stinky, dino nugget eating, sometimes momentarily misplaced scrappers but they KNOW deep in their BONES that their worth has absolutely nothing to do with their appearance or bodies.
In a world that POUNDS the message into girls, starting from day 1, that they are bodies first and hearts second, I am constantly fighting like a mama warrior every single day to pump as much TRUTH into my baby’s spirits with the hope that I can fill them with real power enough for them to know they were made for so much more than just another pretty little princess.
Everyone else will tell them a million times that they’re beautiful. It’s my job to tell them that they’re more.
by Sam Kelly
I want you. Every fiber, every string of DNA shivering in its own skin, vibrationally reaching like a flower to its sun. I look at the sky and see space, usually so freeing. Now it takes my breath. You are so far from me, your heart unrecognizable. I stripped away all I had left and bared all, showed you my scars, exposed my every last skeleton. You created a warm space I felt I could be, then swiftly went away. Why did you go? Why is it the shadows you call home? I reach to you, I see you, I feel you. Sometimes I want to crawl away to the shadows too, my darling, but life requires the sun. I worked too hard to claim my space here on this plot of earth to abandon it, though my heart wants to. Chemicals pouring a cocktail like it's happy hour. I have to remain grounded. Meet me here, if you like. I'll be here.
Junior Year .
I was a failed bulimic.
What I mean is, I tried to vomit the food, but it didn’t work.
I was 16.
And smart.
And pretty. (I can say that now, but it still makes me wince.)
So I bought boxes and boxes of laxatives.
My junior year, I hid myself on a toilet, a lot.
I hunched my shoulders to hide my too-large breasts.
I straightened my curly hair because it was too much.
I would eat and eat, because I was so HUNGRY.
And the food gave me such PLEASURE.
But I wasn’t supposed to feel pleasure, or hunger.
Pretty isn’t eating a cheeseburger or having big legs and floppy boobs.
So I swallowed the pills, sometimes 8-12 at a time, and waited for the pain.
The doubling over cramps.
Then the release.
My senior year, I was voted “best looking.”
(I can say that now, but it still makes me wince.)
I was so embarrassed and scared of it, we (me and the other boy) wore paper bags on our heads as a joke. It was not really a joke for me, though.
It was safe under there.
I was labeled a thing, but escaped needing to be visible for it.
“Please, please, please stop looking at me,” I wanted to scream.
But also, “Please, please, please look at me and say I’m pretty.”
But also, “Please God, don’t tell anyone I told you this, but sometimes when I look at myself I actually think I’m pretty.”
….
I’m 42 now.
I don’t eat laxatives.
In fact, I worry that maybe I did permanent damage to my GI tract back then.
I still spend a lot of time on the toilet and have lost weight without trying.
I went to a doctor a couple of years ago about it, but didn’t get great answers.
I showed up with self-blame, and shame.
He did not reassure me that it was not my fault.
I didn’t return.
But hey, now I weigh the same as I did my senior year now...
I resolved it, once and for all when I could finally take up nourishment in myself and allow it in. Such a simple act to allow life to be with us and give us life.
Loving myself enough to be alive. Being alive enough to love life.
Both/and.
Grace hides quietly in the shame we believed belong to us.
It’s there waiting for us when we are willing to face them.
It’s there when we surrender to our human-ness ,
to the arcane universe and the symphony it plays....
we meet it whilst sitting in a pool of contrast, when we realize we are our own mirror...
When tears begin to make their way from the bottom of the seas, grace rests within our hearts and demands we listen.
That’s when I realize perfection is the dance between chaos and serenity.
And this is where I find my resting place. This is where I rise from.
I am a perfect dance saved by grace.
by Ana Mar
Up until a few years ago, I never considered it a problem that I could tell you exactly what I weighed at any major event in my life since the age of 14. It’s just what girls and women did, we’d get together, complain about our bodies, feel shame for eating something that tasted good, and be jealous of others who were thinner and who “had it all together.”
I’m not really sure what changed in me, it was this slow shift, turned into an almost panic, that “I can’t wake up one more day hating myself.” I owe that to my kids, and everyone else that needs help in this area. I was mostly kind of forced into it, a gift I never considered as such at the time. Some stress, thyroid and hormone issues had me gaining weight fast, and I couldn’t starve myself and be the mom I wanted to be, so I kind of just gave up dieting, my body gave me this biggest “it’s not going to happen.” It found me, because I couldn’t change what was happening to my body, and I noticed I felt some relief in not weighing out my food, not obsessing about food being “good” or “bad” and not being exhausted from a lack of calories. Yet shame came knocking in different ways. Shame that I had put on weight, and “let myself go” when in reality, it was the beginning of the unraveling of a really messed up perspective.
I’d be naïve to say this started at age 14, this started when I could understand the world around me, and what women (and men) did, and how they behaved about food and themselves. The cold harsh truth is kids pick up on it, the obsessions, talking about how bad you ate, how you have no control over it, how you are pig for wanting nourishment, the overall feeling of discontentment in our own skin. It’s absorbed in us as a culture, like math and science are taught to us, so is this shame filled uneasiness to live out our genetics. And I’m not mad at anyone for doing the best they knew how, and for living out what they were taught, they/we really didn’t know the impact living a disconnected life would have on society. Heck, even up until a few years ago, I didn’t know I was disconnected.
Now we know what this has done to young kids though, we know how eating disorders have been on the rise since diets hit the scene, we know that diets cause more weight gain in the end, we know it destroys our metabolism, we know size does not dictate health, we know mental health counts as much as physical health, if diets really worked, why are people constantly having to go back on them? We know, we know, we know, so we have to accept that something has to change, and I’ll be damned if I knowingly play a damaging part in it.
So how did I get here? Why has this felt like the biggest mountain to climb for me?
I was a chubby adolescent, in tears that I couldn’t live in this body for one more day. So, I started on a calorie deficit, one that would have been fitting for a sedentary 90 year old, not an active 15 year old. remember the headaches, I remember staring at my half a sandwich with turkey and mustard and thinking “this can’t be enough, I’m soooo hungry,” but I morphed from this chubby adolescent, into a slim 15 year old, and the world praised me. I had finally “hit my potential,” “got my shit together,” because let’s face it, there was nothing worse to people than a pretty girl, who was so close to meeting society’s standards. What a shame for a pretty face to not have the matching body.
Phew, no more embarrassment for this girl. So, I starved, or stared at toilet seats, and thought “I guess this is what I need to do to be accepted.” Now, I finally fit in. I didn’t know how to balance starving myself and using food to comfort me from all my emotions. It was a vicious cycle, and I spent 20 years spinning in thoughts about what I ate, and how I looked for literally 90% of my days, and shamed myself for finding it so hard to keep off weight. It wasn’t until this past year that I realized that what was really at play was disconnecting from myself and my body, and I was going on auto pilot.
It was a confusing time, shame slapping me in the face no matter which direction I turned, shame for getting attention from guys, shame for being hungry, shame for liking food, shame for not having a handle on this, shame for liking the attention, and then absolutely hating it at the same time. I couldn’t figure out why I wanted to crawl out of my own skin. Every cat call, every man that grabbed at my body when I never asked for it, and with confusion I’d question “why do people want this?” Slimness had brought about a different kind of discomfort, comments I never asked for, attention that brought me to tears more times than I can count. Every time I went out I wanted to scream, men following me on the hwy, driving beside me in town making rude gestures, yelling at me when I went for a run, grabbing my body when I served them food, I couldn’t escape it. I didn’t know why people wanted this, but I knew that shame would come if I put on more weight (as we have been taught to feel shame if we gain weight) , and the heaviness of that would be a burden too. This is what we are taught, this is what we are suppose to be. Perfect, but not proud, tasteful, but sexy. I felt absolutely trapped no matter which way I turned.
There is this certain expectation that if you were once an attractive 20 year old, you better not change or age as the years go on. You need to look the same after having babies, your body can not change, your skin must stay plump, or you will be talked about in circles that knew you in your “beautiful” days.
I have spent many years thinking about this, knowing that I will age, knowing that I can’t look the same after children, knowing that I can’t maintain what the world expects or wants from me. I’d ask myself, so “what happens when I no longer have beauty as my backup?” People never took the time to really get to know me, I was known for how I looked, valued for something to surface, and it was never going to be something I could maintain in a way that satisfied the world around me. It probably seems pretty rich to complain about being attractive in a world that only wants that, but it also messes with your mind as things you were known for (whether you wanted to be known for that or not) start slipping away.
The last few years I have felt the shift, and it feels weird, because I have put on weight, and I’ve never been more comfortable in my own skin. I have connected with myself again, spent time slowing down and observing, asking myself why I’m reaching for food, what is the feeling I’m feeling right now, doing yoga, deep breathing, getting comfortable with stillness. It sounds so simple, but if you have been living fearing yourself, your body, and dieting (which screams, I don’t trust my body) doing the opposite feels very unnatural. Your mind doesn’t want you to do it, it will tell you it’s too scary to go there, that you are not safe, and it has been a near 2 year fight to get here (imperfectly I might add). I’m finding I’m not as “hungry” as I use to be in more than one sense, I don’t feel panicked around food, I’m training my brain to believe that I can eat when I’m hungry, and to help calm my anxiety by reminding my body that I won’t starve it again. 2 years in, I think my body is starting to believe me, and I’m trusting it to know what it needs.
There is a sense of relief to not have to maintain the unattainable, and the work of appreciating what you can offer the world besides your body has it’s own sweet rewards. But, it is a full time job to keep your mind on track. I’ve spend many days crying and accepting my new body, new face, and trying so hard to not live in my subconscious. I’m slowing down, actually learning to listen to my body. “Are you hungry, or are you just sad?” “Do you need to slow down?” “ Would yoga feel better than cardio? Can you accept that burning less calories is actually what your body needs today?” “Why are you reaching for food if you aren’t actually hungry?” “What is the underlying feeling behind the comfort food has brought you?” “You are loveable to matter how you look,” “You are so much more than any of these things.” I’m noticing, I’m observing, and slowly I can see that exercise is not a punishment anymore, it is how I deal with anxiety, how I feel strong, it is how I’ve started appreciating what my body can do, not, how can I punish it for eating something. I have slowed my thoughts down enough to wonder why I’m having them, and considering if they serve me well.
It’s forced me to get to the core of who I am. I am so much more than what I ate, so much more than how I look, I am soft and finally not starving, and my kids adore every inch of me. And truthfully, I’m not a large person, and I’m not ugly, so life for me is easier in general, because the world accepts me more gently. A sad truth that is still implied daily in our culture.
I am not promoting not taking care of yourself, but caring for ourselves can look very different from what the world tells us it is. It can look like nourishing your body instead of starving it, and moving your body because it feels good, instead of punishment. It can look like gaining weight, or losing it, but health does not mean being slim. I would hardly say I was healthy at my slimmest.
This process is slow, and I do not do it perfectly. I still catch myself lifting up my shirt to look at my stomach when I pass by a mirror, missing my old clothes, feeling shame around eating a cookie, or looking at my under eye wrinkles in horror, BUT, there are far more gracious moments with myself than there has ever been before, there are far less times I think about food. That has been one of the greatest gifts, a life not consumed by thoughts of my body and what I ate. I am graciously loving the girl and woman who dieted and lived a starved disconnected life. She did what she had too, what she knew how, and she had to do it to cope. I love her, and I’m proud of her. The truth is, the less shame we have (even about our past), the less consumed our mind becomes by it.
Every time I think about dieting again, I consider my mental health, and I look at my kids, especially my daughter, and think, “nah, it’s not worth the cost.” My goal is to teach myself, and my kids to connect to their body, to trust it, to take care of it, and to love it for all that it is and can do.
Even as I write this, my heart is literally racing, probably from past experiences around this, and I’m telling her “It’s ok, it did impact you, your racing heart is showing you that it felt scary, and you don’t want to live that out anymore, feel that.” And as I stop resisting and slow down to feel it, my heart rate drops. “We’ve got this.”
by Kyla Ewert
We must stop looking outside of ourselves and instead, look deep within.
It's the place we'll find magic, gifts...all that we need.
Don't rush the full circle. This year's seed is next year's fruit.
To her I say, “I’m sorry.” I’m sorry for the moments when I spoke down to you. Called you fat and ugly and hid your imperfections thinking they made you unworthy of feeling beautiful or loved. I am not ashamed of you.
To her I say, “thank you.” Thank you for standing tall with courage and resilience whenever I feel brave enough to face the things that scare me the most. You are so strong.
And to her I say, “I love you.” I love you for being my home to a fiery, unrelenting, loving, tender but sometimes lost, soul. You deserve to be loved.
by Becky Earl
Six Inches
Self. Body. Distortion. Food. Eating. Not Eating. Eating More. Wishing I’d stop / it’d stop. Pleading. Praying. Seeking. Hoping. Praying more. Darkness. Lightness. Greyness.
My story with me is one of skewed perception.
(( and a distorted way of seeing which adds 6 inches – three per side))
It’s led to a lifetime of connected disconnections. And a desperation for another shell Looking for a way through- reaching for a way out.Finding food as a way to dissolve and disappear. And in chaos, a means of self-control.
Food offered a disguised comfort so…I ate. I ate more. Then I stopped. Then started. Latching onto substitutions. Up. Down. In. Out. Learning to mix my own blend to stop eating. Cigarettes Amphetamines Green bud Blotter Mushrooms Hash Cocaine White wine More cocaine And more cocaine. Until I damn near died and came back. And was forced into new and dangerous tricks that cycled through many years and moves.
The shame that comes along for the ride became louder – I could no longer trust myself with food. It didn’t last. If I had a little, I’d eat it all, and toss it all for a fleeting moment of freedom. Until the blackwash. And then a therapist explained the metaphor for the madness and while it didn’t radically shift my behavior, it did provide insights.
While the cycles between the ups and downs grew longer, time passed. And I aged. I cared, then I didn’t. Then I did. So I modified again. Carbs, no carbs, no sugar, only white foods, only green foods, fasting, Atkins, small meals, no meals, Tae Bo, walking, exercise, yoga, meditation.
Time still passes, and as I’m older the struggle is quieter. And the intensity more subtle. Though I understand the shadow a little more, m head still spins And at times, I’m dissatisfied and compare without rationale. But there is a quiet understanding that I distort.
But the world is misaligned with mixed images. Eat this but look like that. No don’t eat that. In fact don’t eat. Fast. Walk. No, run. Run faster. Life’s too short – you deserve a treat. But look like this Fit into that. Love yourself. But please wear the new trend. Age with dignity. But look young. Hide those arms, and that neck. Wear spanx.
It’s endless.
Sometimes I can shut it off. There are longer moments of peace. Walking helps. Walking seaside transforms. Yoga helps. But without these entwined with a routine I’m lost.
And so… I still seek a contented vanity of peace and acceptance of the me I am.
And the you, you are.
by Pamela Joye
I don’t remember much about my childhood or when I realised, or was told, that my body was a form of currency. Maybe I soaked that in like a sponge while my much older sister & Mum would stand in front of mirrors & pick out their faults, or when they went on constant diets. Maybe it was when I would go with my Mum to the Weight Watchers meetings in the hall at the back of the old Church in Footscray. We would catch the train & wear nice clothes. I always loved walking down the side of the building, it was always cool there, with the overgrown plants in the garden. I would sit quietly while the women were weighed & applause would break out when it was announced that one of the women had lost so many kilos, & I could feel the shame when someone stepped up & hadn’t lost any weight, or gained it. I was maybe three when we went there.
Maybe I was about six when I first started hating my thighs. I was a dancer growing up & food would become a problem. In class when I was eight, each week the best student would be rewarded with a chocolate bar. By the time I was 14, we would be yelled at for being too fat. That’s why we weren’t any good, because we were too fat. Nothing I did could shake those thighs. I once saw a physio for a hip problem & he told me I was too fat to be a dancer. I’d have been lucky to be a woman’s size 8 at the time.
Then I grew up & my boobs started to grow. Then I became body parts to everyone. I was boobs & bum & lips. At parties with boys, as they kissed me & slid their hands up my thighs I would cringe & feel ashamed because there was no way they were going to get to where they wanted to go with those thighs of mine. I would only wear skirts, not pants - I would say, ‘pants presented my legs as individually wrapped, there was no hiding them, but skirts, now they covered you right up’. Does it surprise you that growing up I don’t ever remember my Mum wearing pants.
I learned that I was an emotional eater - eating to fill the big black hole that was always there. I remember berating myself that I was so useless I couldn’t even force myself to throw up after one day of having enough but not knowing how to fix it. There were days I would be starving & I thought it was for food but it was for love. I was starving for attention because I was not seen or heard. As I got older I worried about my prized pieces, my boobs, bum & lips, changing as they do along with the rest of your body. I remember thinking that no one would love me or pay attention to me now. I remember thinking that was all I had to give, that was my only value.
When my marriage ended & my anxiety would get the better of me as things would just keep crashing down upon my head, wave after wave after wave, I just couldn’t eat. I lived with my parents for a time & my Mum would quietly try to feed me. She would cook my favourite meals & leave me chocolate bars on my pillow. She did the best she could, the way she knew how to try to comfort me & help me. I would eventually take a bite or two to make her happy. I lost so much weight that my jeans were sliding down my legs. People would tell me how great I looked & asked me how I lost the weight. I would say anxiety & stress & they would laugh & say maybe they should try that. I didn’t laugh but I took some sort of strange comfort from their attention to my shrinking frame. From that & one day trying on a pair of size 6 jeans & finding that they were too big for me. Then as I found my feet, I felt fear that I would put on weight again. I would be fat, I was disgusted. All the while I would be saying to my girls that weight didn’t matter, eat healthy foods, look after your body; it’s your temple. All the while I was smashing mine apart from the inside.
I think it will always be there for me, that complicated relationship with my body. The sum of what I’ve been told I am, what I should look like, what is good, what is bad, what is attractive, what I am worth & how that is measured. Even though I’m older now & I realise that there’s no fighting my Mediterranean genes. Even though I know that what I hunger for is not food. Even though I know I am not just body parts.