Word of the Year (Happy 2018!)

Happy New Year, everyone! 

I started feeling really good about this year as it was coming–even though my eating disorder was acting up for a couple of weeks consecutively. I have felt like my recovery has been stalling, though I feel more spiritually connected than ever before. 

On January 1, I did an overhaul cleaning of my entire space, recharged my crystals in the full moon, and set new intentions and goals for the year. The really cool thing is, this year is the year of the dog in the Chinese Lunar calendar, which matches the calendar animal for the year I was born!

I’m not calling it a resolution, but more an intention; to be more spiritual, more clean (as far as my physical space goes), and more present. So far, so good! This will be the year I finish my Master’s degree, continue my journey of loving myself and learning more and more about me and the world around me and developing friendships and relationships full of unconditional love–for the first time in my life. 

I randomly selected (from a quote jar) three quotes to remember this year:

“Don’t take your experiences for granted.”

I hung up my body positive vision board, and my “totem” for the year to come. I worked on this the day after Christmas with my friend-mom Stacy, who just let me talk and create for a few hours in her garage space while I played with her dog. I am so lucky and so grateful to have so many people who support me in my healing, and will go to any lengths to give me the room and the flexibility and the encouragement to keep growing.

It is really easy to get caught up in goals and intentions and resolutions when this time of year comes around. Just like it’s really easy to put everything from “buy groceries” to “remember to breathe” on a to-do list and inundate yourself with tasks and mantras until it becomes overwhelming. So I decided to simplify my 2018 by narrowing it down to one word that I want to be ever-mindful of this year:

Freedom.

As a writer and an avid reader and a person who constantly needs knowledge in order to feel connected to herself and the world, I have a million words to choose from that resonate with me and how I’d like to feel. But based on what I know about how much anger still consumed me in 2017 over my last major breakup, about how much food rules and diet culture still take up space in my life, and how much my family’s opinions about food and body weigh me down (no pun intended), I have chosen that I want to be free from anything that isn’t loving, helpful or kind.

What is there to be free from? I thought a lot about this.

Freedom from negativity. At the close of 2017, I think I unfriended about 40 people on Facebook. I decided who I want to take with me on this journey, and that Facebook friendships are not permanent. But the people who I need in my life are the ones who support me, love me, reach out to me, encourage me and hear/see me, with as much care as I support, love, reach out to, encourage and hear/see them. Being seen and heard, I have learned, is not the same as looking at or listening to someone. Paying attention to their feelings, emotions, thoughts, language, and vibrations is all a part of being with them, and this year, I’m taking those high-vibration friendships with me because they make me better. 

Freedom to move and eat as I choose. I still get the urge sometimes to exercise out of obligation, but for this year, I am promising myself that there will be! none! of! that! and that no food is off limits. It’s still difficult to shut down my binge brain all the time, but the more I fill myself with meaning the quieter that voice becomes. One thing that helps me to remember is that I am not in a position in which I am going to starve if I go a few hours without a meal, and I don’t have to eat like there is scarcity due to this privilege.

Freedom from shame. I keep developing my theories on shame based on conversations I’ve had with peers and professionals in the past year. I am no longer accepting the invitation from others to buy into the false belief that I’m not okay how I am. The Twelve Steps teach us that we are powerless over the thing we choose to use in order to make our lives seem “manageable,” but this often runs contrary to the belief I have that I was perfect until someone pointed out to me when I was a really small kid (age 7) that I was not. I want to be with that little version of me and tell her, “you are an entire universe.”

Freedom from expectations. There are people in my life who expect me to lose weight, to miraculously wake up not preferring women, to stop going to therapy and stop experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression. There are people who expect me to say ‘yes’ when they need me to, there are expectations I have of myself that involve unrealistic ideas of beauty. There are expectations in my life that involve working a million hours at the expense of my mental health. There are expectations I have about my clothes, my hair, my makeup, my job, those around me; and I really want to live without expectations from others, or of others; because we are all just on a journey to be better, and we can’t do it if we are holding each other hostage with our own biases and privileging our needs. 

Freedom from my trauma. Okay. Big one. I promised myself no relationship until I was all the way through or mostly through processing my trauma. I still have a lot of stuff related to body, worthiness, self-esteem. I still engage in automatic, habitual and unintentional negative self-talk. I still have voices inside my head that aren’t mine, about what I should do with my body or who I should be or whether or not I’m good enough. I want to heal my scars.

Freedom from perfectionism. All this talk about freedom also makes me understand that I will never be entirely 110% symptom free. I will never be able to be free from these things perfectly. I will never have a perfect body because there is no such thing. I will never have a perfect day, or a perfect way of articulating things without stumbling. As close as I can get to perfect is making sure that my life is manageable and that shame, trauma, expectation and negativity aren’t driving. 

What is your word for this year? 

The good, the bad, the beautiful

What. A. Week.

Good things, and bad things and weird things and so many things!!!!! (warning: this post is probably erratic as heck but it’s representative of my emotions so buckle up, babes!)

I hit a depression this past week and a half that kept me in a really uncertain head space. Despite my anxiety, I’ve been working really hard at body love. I feel almost like I HULK smashed!!!!! my way out of an episode. Or maybe I’m swinging back into just being really excited or maybe I’m just happy to be un-sad. Emotion is weird and human. I am weird and human (most of the time).

This weekend was the delivery back into a lot of positive behaviors, and a full week without any negative or disordered ones! It still feels really weird to say that I have a week back from consistent, persistent bingeing–but I’ve learned that it’s less about the day count and more about making the days count. 

A few months ago, I bought myself a single VIP ticket to see/meet & greet with Mary Lambert, the queen of everything/my favorite human of all time/the most beautiful fat queer babe to ever enter our plane of existence.

I was really apprehensive about going because I wasn’t sure what the food/drink situation was going to be, I was going completely alone, would have to ride the train to Manhattan alone, take the subway alone. I knew I would make friends at the show, because that’s just how Mary Lambert shows are–we cry together, we queer together, we sing together, we check each other’s lipstick that was drawn on in the reflection of a produce truck together. 

When I walked up to Mary and met her for the third time since this fandom began, I didn’t know what to say (as usual). I showed her my “Body Love” tattoo that she signed for me three years ago, and how it’s been stretched over and out and modified to include her autograph — an addition I made in 2015 after the last show I met her at.

I let her know just how much that specific poem changed my life, how much I needed it then when I lived in that body, and how much I didn’t even know I needed it now in my post-relapse, undeniably fat body. She let me talk at her, while saving her voice, I gave her a letter and a zine I made and we took pictures!!!!

The rest of the night was magic. Rachel McKibbens, one of my new favorite poets, read some pieces from her new book. I fell in love with Mal Blum, and I told them so via a really obvious Instagram post. I screamed internally at their codependency poem because I related SO HARD.

I laughed out loud. Seriously. Check them out. They are a babe (Everybody is a Babe Tour is such a fitting name for any tour Mal Blum and Mary Lambert are ever on, esp. together).

Of course I cried when Mary came on stage, and cried harder when she played “Body Love”, and when she shook her butt at me while I sat first row and she played “Secrets”. I learned about loving myself again. I learned about what my identity means to me, and what my body and my life and my health and wellness are worth. I learned that I am not done taking up space, but that I am done apologizing for it.

We have a hug picture, but both of us look awesome in this one and we look matchy so 

I also sat there in a room full of queer women and nonbinary people, fat and thin and in-between, and just felt so at home again. I have been restless in my identity for a while, viscerally, spiritually, intimately and personally. But my existence is radical and fluid and I’m so okay and safe and valid in spaces like this, so much so that I really believe that on Friday night I was brought back to life.

There was so much I needed about this concert, and I made it a point to be so present even though I was scared and alone and speed-ate a Moe’s burrito while walking three blocks to the venue off the subway.

 

And last night, I did two things that scare me–I hosted an event for International Suicide Survivor Day. I was the person who introduced all the speakers, listed statistics about mental health, and supported a space in which people could honor and memorialize lost loved ones and learn about how mental illness becomes fatal.

 

Me being a very official event host

We had so many intersectional experiences surrounding the issue of suicide come together to create a narrative with undertones of hope and resilience that I was so blessed to be a part of. THEN, as if I couldn’t be anymore out of my comfort zone, I sang! in! front! of! people! and! actually! sounded! amazing! 

After the event and all the crazy goodness that was my weekend, I topped it off with a catch-up diner trip with one of my best friends and favorite people in the entire world (like definitely as important but probably more important than Mary Lambert kind of favorite). My friend Kait showed up for me at this event, spoke her heart out, and got onion rings with me all on her one year anniversary in recovery. 

 

I love you soooooo stupid much

 

Being around women like Kait, who have struggled with disordered eating and so many more burdens of self-destruction in this life, is what anchors my soul. We shared a meal together and talked about treatment, struggle, body size perception, and our process.  She is my voice of reason, the person who holds up a huge mirror to all my experiences and just an overall unbelievably beautiful friend and person. I told her then and I’ll tell her now, right here, in this post–I am so proud of her and so beyond honored to call her my friend. 

We also incidentally spent today together, at a group I run, being the only two who showed up, and we made anxiety crafts while we talked more stuff out. It was something I didn’t know I needed. I also explored my fear foods today–a sugary drink, a really thick slice of pizza. And I didn’t freak out! I have been really hanging out in this fat body and paying attention to it. I let it experience hunger without deprivation, satisfaction without discomfort, and love without shame. 

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You Can’t Move the Wall

This week’s post: 

• Boundaries 
• You can’t always get what you want 
• life is soooooooo goooooooood :’) 

 

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Sorry for the hiatus! Since the beginning of my extra grad school class and a few commitments I’ve been a little busier than usual. But life is SO good. I promise.

I had a really important conversation with a very dear friend yesterday (actually, I had a few of them!) but I started really deconstructing this idea of boundaries with her that I needed to share.

We talked about the idea that when people tell you what they do or do not want from you, listening to it and respecting it is not even optional. It’s mandatory. 

It occurred to me. You can’t move the wall. 

Sixteen months ago when recovery came for me, I was still soooooo manipulative. I knew how to get what I wanted. I knew what to say, when and how to say it. I knew how to keep people off my back until next time. I didn’t care what it meant to that other person, or whether the result of getting what I wanted would even be authentic. I just knew I had to protect what I thought I knew.

I listened a lot less than I talked. I justified a lot. I had false pride that looked so much like gratitude from the outside, and even started to believe that I was grateful for all the things being handed to me, for not being challenged, for getting to be comfortable.

I was okay with moving people’s walls around after they put them up, and I was okay with letting them move mine. Until I was met with the challenge of having no personal space left to call my own, and a complete miseducation and misunderstanding of what it means to respect other people in return.

Like Assata Shakur said, “A wall is just a wall; it can be broken down.” 

Walls aren’t just walls, sometimes, though. They exist to keep people, things, threats out. They exist to keep what I know about myself intact. I read from Buddhist scripture this week about knowledge, and there is this idea that knowledge does not and never can come from things that do not change. Being fixed does not help me. Like the tree tattoo on my back, I often find myself envisioning my roots; but when I stop growing upward from those roots, life cannot get better. And it is because of my upward growth that life is soooooo good.

And that begins with acknowledging my own walls, working to tear them down and rebuild them elsewhere if need be, but never moving them. 

As we grow more comfortable around other people and within ourselves, our walls/boundaries change. Our tolerance gets bigger. Our foundation more solid. But running into a wall with the intention of manipulating its structure and purpose is a futile effort. This goes for both people in a relationship.

When someone says no, it is a complete sentence. And despite what I believe about what I hear or the fact that I am extracting what I want to hear from what is actually being said, I need to acknowledge that that’s my problem. The wall is there and I must accept what is.

It took me all sixteen of these months to realize what gratitude actually looks, sounds, and feels like. The thought came to me on Tuesday of this week, when I said out loud to myself in the car “I’m so thankful to not be drinking/bingeing/compensating today” and I was just so overcome with the love of the people I associate with that. It is always changing and expanding and it gives me life.

I am on such a love overload from the people who I’ve met in recovery thus far. But until sobriety completed the puzzle, I so completely took that for granted, because I was saying “I know” a lot more often than I was saying “Okay.”–I was in a fixed position of complacency that didn’t allow for any new knowledge to come in and rearrange my spiritual existence. I so needed that.

This next week, I am performing a piece about my home group that I can’t wait to share out loud. It’s not the same on paper effectually, but I’ll post it here and share it with y’all 🙂

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This poem is for them 

the walking miracles

in breathing bodies

because if I’ve learned 

anything in recovery 

its that recovery 

is about so much more than me.

 

It’s about more than what I used to be

a perfectionist, 

addicted to the idea 

of never fucking up

and swimming straight to the bottom 

of anything

that wouldn’t burn any part of me

except for the fear of not being enough. 

 

I said this poem is for them, 

who remind me

that to be human

is to never be perfect, 

these people

are manifestations of a love

I never even knew existed. 

 

My recovery is for them, 

the ones who have 

gotten out of their own heads

just to rescue me

from the darkness in my own,

the ones who called “Please stay,” 

when I didn’t want to be sober anymore

when I couldn’t even think

about being alive anymore

 

Because now I am able 

to stop bingeing

on food

and approval

and doubt

and self

and start loving what is,

because so many have loved me. 

 

I used to think that 10,000 steps a day

would give me a life I could love

but it only took 12 

to be loved back to life and I haven’t 

even gotten all the way through them yet

 

And I couldn’t understand what serenity meant

until I heard these same people stand around me saying 

God 

grant me the serenity 

to accept the things I cannot change

the courage 

to change the things I can 

and the wisdom to know the difference. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walking Around with A Lioness on My Back

This week’s post:

• Practicing ahimsa
• So many spiritual moments
• Getting over yourself
  

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I had a really freakin’ cool moment this weekend. (Another massage therapy moment). 

After meeting with a friend this week, it was made clear to me that I don’t have a tangible image of a higher power. I’ve just been praying into a big deep space. Sort of like the big deep space that disordered eating, exercise obsession and food restriction/bingeing patterns has left me with for such a long time. 

To be completely honest, I didn’t know how today’s post was going to flow out of me. I’m still trying to string and glue words together after this past week. Sorry if this confuses some of you, but my experience is non-linear!

I was asked to create an image of my higher power by this friend, so that I would have something to actually ask for help when I was asking. I had my weekly appointment with Danielle this week and wondered what I was going to meditate on, and knew that I wanted to focus on that even before I got there. I was rushing from another friend’s house to my appointment and so I came, a little frazzled, just wanting to go through with the hour before babysitting that afternoon.

The universe had other plans for me; it intended to slow me down. 

“How was your week?” Danielle asked me.

I told her about the fights over food with my brother, my mother’s rejection of “Health at Every Size” and our subsequent argument about food policing. It feels a lot like the world is trying to shove me back into my diet culture box. 

And I’m just like:

You’re probably still wondering what the post title is all about. And its connection to the themed reaction GIFs (lions, roar!). Well, I’mma tell you. Hang on.

While I was on the massage table I started meditating on my visual of my HP like I was asked to. And what I saw was so awesome, and so new to me. But beautiful all the same.

My explanation of my higher power has been, for a while, as follows: I always identified strongly with Buddhism, as I’ve written about in posts past. But I’ve never really had a visual of this. My closest was the quote I once read by the Dalai Lama: “My religion is simple; my religion is kindness.” I decided that kindness was a power greater than myself because I didn’t decide who would be the receiver of my kindness, or who deserved my unconditional compassion.

While I was meditating, I pictured myself at my favorite place in the entire world. Sitting on a dock at my favorite beach where I often go to write, reflect, sit, look at stars and listen to water. I never really had a connection to any particular animal that felt spiritual and deep and profound to me. But then, in this same visual space, a lioness perched her two front paws on my back and stood taller than me. She didn’t weigh anything, and suddenly, I didn’t either. 

Then, into the space came the word ‘ahimsa’, which is Sanskrit for ‘nonviolence’. This is what I decided to name that lion on my back. This is what I would wish for myself and for the people around me. This was my visual of kindness, and the protection from harm that we wish for in yoga and meditation. 

This was the higher power that I wanted to be at my side every time I faced a struggle, or heard a negative comment, or got my a** handed to me by a character defect or a situation that causes me to have to kick into distress tolerance. This is the manifestation of a higher power I’ve always needed. Strong, fierce, unrelenting; but graceful and patient and instinctive all the same. 

I went on a walk today for the first time in a while, listening to a podcast (yes, that one!) as I walked. First, I stopped at my old middle school to read under a tree and finish the book before I would drop it off at the library for a return.

On my way there, I paid really close attention to the people who were out enjoying the weather same as I was. I wanted to see them. Really, really see them. I passed by interesting people and for the first time in a long time, didn’t try to make up stories about them. Didn’t even have a shred of my intolerance peer through. And I think this was the complete embodiment of having those defects of judgment and justification finally be removed. 

I passed an elder woman walking using a walker. I smiled at her, we waved to each other without exchanging a word, and we both walked on with huge grins on our faces. Then I passed by a girl riding her bike, still having the smile on my face.

“Ahimsa,” I said to myself.

As I was walking down a main road I passed a woman wearing a black burqa carrying her small son. He must have been tired because it was over 90 degrees out. I was really exhausted and disoriented by the heat myself.

A girl in a hijab, who must have been her daughter, rode her bike up to them, offering to carry the little boy.

“You’ve been carrying him since the middle school,” she said. “Your hands must hurt. Let me.” They argued about it and went on. I smiled at them, too.

Knowing I live in a place with a lot of negative feelings toward people who look like these two women did, I said in my mind, “Ahimsa, walk with them.” 

It’s strange that this wasn’t what I had intended to write about when I thought about my Sunday post. In fact, I just finished reading yet another brilliant book by Donald Miller, titled Scary Close. One of the best books I’ve read both in recovery and in general. I am so so grateful for this man, even though I think he’s probably, to a degree, a narcissist.

He just likes to talk about himself a lot. And all the while, I’ve noticed my writing style throughout this post be so similar to the way he writes–as if you are sitting at a table with him. Imitation is the best form of flattery, I guess?

I wanted to talk about my reactions to this book and just how much I needed to hear it, how quotable it is, and how much it is necessary that I fine-tune my relationships to others now using what I know. I wanted to talk about me and my relationship to relationships and to this book and how great and wonderful my life is now that I have read it. 

But I heard somewhere in a meeting once that it’s important to check how much of your prayer and lamenting only results in one person’s life getting better: if it’s just your life, that’s not praying. That’s making demands of the boss. 

Maybe our lives are chaos. Maybe we need a little help. And it’s okay to ask.

But there’s more to life than just our problems, our opinions, our experiences. We aren’t meant to drown in our own hardships. And we have to give a little ahimsa to ourselves and, most importantly, others.

In Buddhism, it’s believed that the Buddha manifested himself in a variety of ways. My favorite story is the story of Padmaka, when the king of a village kills himself to be reincarnated as the only species of fish that will save his entire kingdom from a deadly plague. It reminds me that higher powers and purposes come in all shapes and sizes, all creatures and all things. They are our reminders that we are not the most important thing in the world.

My lioness sometimes takes the shape of the people who love me the most. They remind me that I am only a human; a living, breathing human, and that it’s okay to keep growing and that I’m not alone. Sometimes, Buddha is in the flocks of crows I see when I experience a “death” of self and learn new ways of being. (They’ve been around since last November, when I had my breakup).  Sometimes Buddha is in the water that gives me life and the energy to love others. There is not always a permanent, fixed image for my higher power, as is the nature of Buddhism; transitory and impermanent. All I know for sure is that whatever is presented to me to help me see past myself, my higher power speaks, acts, and loves through them. They all are the lions that have my back. 

Sometimes, ahimsa means protecting me from me. And that’s the miracle I stuck around for.

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How are you going to practice self-compassion, nonviolence or ‘do no harm’ this week? Comment below 🙂