It has been a long road to learn how to take good care of myself.
I used to love this picture. I thought I looked amazing. I had done one year of weight watchers and had gotten to my goal weight of 130 lbs. I had actually gone below it when this photo was taken. My size 6 jeans were baggy and my goal had been to get to an 8. When I looked at this photo and the others that were taken, I thought, I did it! I was healthy and thin. Well one of those things was true. I was thin.
I was not healthy in most ways. Weight Watchers had taught me a lot about portions, good fats, drinking enough water, etc. but I was also using sugar substitutes, starving myself if I wanted to have birthday cake that night, and obsessing over everything I put in my mouth. I was not really exercising just restricting my food. Yes I learned some things about cooking and eating healthier, I was also super annoying about where I ate and what and cried a lot because I wouldn’t allow myself to eat what I wanted.
At this time I was also living with chronic pain. I had lower back and abdominal cramping and pain daily. I sat with a heating pad on my mid section on most days and had a lot of stomach issues. Turns out I had a cyst on my ovary that was very angry and endometriosis. It took many months of me getting ultrasounds, images taken of my mid-section, etc. for this to be diagnosed. My periods were unbearable and heavy and I was miserable most of the time.
So I had surgery to remove the cyst one week before this picture was taken. SURGERY-to remove a part of my body. I remember asking the doctor if I could travel because we had planned to drive to St. Louis Missouri for thanksgiving to be with family. I remember the doctor looking at me strangely and saying “you can if you want to”. It had not occurred to me that we wouldn’t. One week was enough. I could do this. I could rally.
My restrictions were that I had to rest, not drive, not lift anything heavy, and not do stairs or do anything strenuous like sweeping, vacuuming, or carrying laundry baskets up stairs. I allowed myself two days of rest. I slept in a chair and let others care for myself and my children. After that I started testing and pushing what I was supposed to do. I started doing housework, I was going up and down the stairs, etc.
Less than a week after surgery, we were in the car headed to St. Louis. I was in a lot of pain. I couldn’t take the pain meds the doctor gave me because they made me dizzy and nauseous. So I had my heating pad, my pillows and my Advil. I was supposed to wear loose fitting clothing. Nothing like jeans that could pull at or irritate my stitches.
The first time I really broke the rules my doctor gave me was at a rest stop on the way when I lifted my two year old daughter onto the toilet. I felt immediate pain and regretted it. But I thought, what am I going to do? She cannot reach the toilet herself. It never occurred to me to ask my other child to help or to have her go with my husband.
This continued. We were potty training twin two year olds. I lifted them on and off the toilet that whole trip. And I was in pain and I was bleeding more than I should have been because of it. Also that trip, I did not rest. I went to a park, a children’s museum, out to eat, and to get family pictures taken. Just before this picture was taken, I had taken my child to the bathroom, which meant I lifted her up. I had started bleeding an alarming amount in the bathroom but just doubled up on pads and vowed to take it easy.
I lied to myself. I wore jeans, I got onto and off of the ground posing for family pictures, I lifted up and held my children for cute pictures and totally threw my body under the bus. And I can guarantee you that I did not rest after.
When I got home after that trip, I was worse off than before I went. I wasn’t healing. How could I? On top of that we found out that the ovary they removed during surgery was the only one I had. I was thrown into menopause and was told I would need to be on hormone replacement therapy for the next 20-30 years of my life.
My body did not know what to do with this new information. I was in pain, bleeding, depressed, having mood swings, hot flashes, insomnia, memory problems, foggy brain, zero sex-drive, and no idea how to live in the body and brain I just inherited.
Needless to say, that was a rough year. I’m just now starting to forgive myself for how I treated my self and my body that year. I hated it and abused it. I fought against it, didn’t listen to it and pushed it to its limits.
A few years later, I would find myself at the bottom of a pit of depression that would threaten my quality of life in a very real way. Years of neglecting to take care of myself, maybe even a lifetime of it, had caught up to me.
I got help. Doctors, medications, therapists, friends, family, and God, all had a part in helping me out of that hole. Sometimes years have to pass before we can see and know what was really going on. I used to look at these pictures and long for that body, that hair, that skin but now I look at it and am grateful not to be her anymore.
I often think that I would give anything to be a size 6 again and to have a smaller body, but would I? Would I want to go back to crying in restaurants because everyone else ordered yummy food and I was eating another salad with fat free dressing? Would I want to go back to beating my body into submission and pumping it full of artificial sweeteners and Diet Coke? To forcing it past it’s limits and ignoring its signs that I was doing damage?
No. I’ll take this.
Me. In a pants size I4-18 depending on the store. Me, smiling because I’m really happy. Me, having eaten pizza with my family and not cried in my salad. Who was that tiny little body for? Me? I’d rather have this one than the abuse and neglect that came with the old one. This one is filled up with love, laughter, sadness, and healing. It is warm and comforting to my children because at the end of the day, it has been listened to and cared for and loved-filled up so it can give out. It is aware of its limits and it is rested.
I am writing this post mostly for me. So I can come back and read the truth every time I want to look back at that first picture with envy, with longing, and with self-shame that my body doesn’t look like that anymore. I need to remember the pain that came with that body. Because I have moments when I hate this body I’m in. When I cry in Dunhams because I cannot zip the extra large ski jacket around my hips and I wish for a smaller body. That little body was a wrapping over an ugly truth. My largeness of spirit and love I have now is requiring a different package. Maybe someday I’ll have both. A fit and trim body that is covering a huge, healthy, and radically loved soul. Maybe not. But for now, I’m doing my best to live in the truth. And the truth is that I’ve never taken better care of myself. I’ve never listened to my body more. I’ve never been happier with the level of care and attention I give myself in a physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and creative way.
So I guess my last thought for those of you reading this would be, ask yourself what picture of me is more acceptable to you? If it is still the skinny me-why? Why after knowing the truth of the level of abuse you know I went through within myself is that still what you would rather me be than what I am? And finally, what do you do to yourself to make yourself acceptable to you and others?
Be kind. Love yourself. Take care.