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? 

Surviving Thanksgiving: An Annual Reflection

• How I got through the most triggering holiday of the year
• Owning my power
• Finding my tribe
• Gratitude, not food

 

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Wooooooooaaaaaaah. I made it through thanksgiving.

But like, how?

I’d been really scared of the upcoming holiday, especially considering I finished relapsing about three weeks ago. It can be scary to have to engage in a food-centric holiday this close to a state of vulnerability. But I freaking DID it. I anticipated, coped ahead, came up with some really awesome strategies and things to do before my meals came up.

I’ve been following a lot of fat-positive and body-positive Instagram accounts and bloggers lately (will give y’all a list at the end of the post!), to sort of normalize, in my own context, the body I’m currently living in. Some people don’t take well to the reclamation of the word fat, especially those who need to use it as a pejorative term to safely distance themselves from ditching diet culture as an act of self love.

Since the beginning of this week, I started using two hashtags in my Instagram posts; #fatbitch and #dontstressthestretch — the second one is an original one that came to mind this week, as I was trying to find a campaign that would encompass all bodies. And considering my body has stretched and grown what seems like a lot since last year, I owe my stretch stripes a lot of love and support for being new to the landscape of my fierce and awesome body.

Tuesday night I had a conversation with a very good friend (who is one of my “recovery moms”!!!)–shout out to Denise! And she reminded me that I already own so much of my power and that I had every right and every opportunity of choice to say no, I’m not going to eat like I know how to today. She had me listening to a lot of Mary Lambert, which was good because I was still on the emotional high from last week’s show. Her words and lyrics resonated with me in ways that validated how powerful and badass I already am.

This is my #fatbitch body

I also listened to an episode of one of the coolest podcasts that I have recently discovered, Fearless Rebelle Radio with Summer Innanen. I got so much out of the two episodes I’ve heard already, and I think that a lot of what I heard was what prepared me for this week. This idea that Denise showed me–that we already have so much power inside of us, and that others in our lives who give us love and stability are just there to turn the light on–is  something that is so insanely empowering and crazy for my recovery right now. It’s everything I’ve needed to face today like a true warrior.

I put together a Thanksgiving Trigger Tribe (say it 10 times fast!) yesterday and the day before, and I prayed enough and meditated enough today that I barely had to fall back on it for most of my afternoon. Even as people in my family made small jokes about body image and weight–I stayed inside my body, with my feet on the ground, and maintained a clear head. And trust me–the problematic joking and commentary was generally minor this year–or maybe my tolerance level was just that good thanks to the universe.

 

This morning, I was a #fatbitchdoingyoga — and let me delve into the word ‘bitch’ for a second. ‘Bitch’ is another pejorative term that robs women of their power, when they are too loud or too independent or too fearless for someone else’s taste. It is a form of subjugation that says “can you just go be revolutionary over there, in a way that makes me comfortable, where I can choose to ignore your awesomeness if I want to?” It’s used against men to compare them to women and therefore dilute their existence and relegate that existence to an emotional, invalid, meaningless, ‘weaker’ state of being; and I’m not here for that. 

Yes, I’m gonna go there; I liken this attitude to someone’s comment that Colin Kaepernick’s protests, which have made national television thanks to other players’ widespread participation, have made national TV and news. People saying “it’s not the place or time” are really just saying “don’t do it in a way that is visible enough to make a difference.” 

The point of me being a #fatbitch is to be seen. Being a ‘fat bitch doing things’ is the objective. And I’m not sorry about it, ever; never will be.

B.I.T.C.H. = Babe in Total Control of Herself.

I asked friends on Snapchat to kindly avoid sending me snaps of their food throughout the day,  (yay for boundaries!) and I agreed to make this holiday less about the food and more about the attitude of gratitude. I went to an ED meeting, made a HUGE gratitude list, told at least 30 people that I was thankful for them, and spent time with my family like I haven’t in years at a holiday. It’s usually way too overwhelming and anxiety-inducing, but it was small enough and ended early enough this year that I could feel safe. I was given a purpose in helping my mom clean up in a not-that-crowded kitchen, so we got a lot done and I felt productive. And I did this all while, and after, eating adequately. 

Reflecting on my gratitude has been something super important to me both in the field of social justice and with respect to this holiday in particular. I actually only learned a few days ago that Thanksgiving was made an American tradition by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863; though we often liken it to a fictitious relationship between the “pilgrims and the Indians”, because they were notorious for celebrating with a feast every time they killed off a tribe or a village of indigenous people. 

 

I can be grateful for living in a country that allows me certain unprecedented freedoms while also being mindful of the fact that the country was stolen and that it goes out of its way to marginalize people with bodies shaped like mine. And further, to marginalize bodies that are darker, more obviously queer/nonbinary, differently abled than mine. America is not the land of the free fat bitch.

Again, I will go there with this message because it’s important to me that I think about it. During a conversation one of my family members densely said about the clothes we buy on Black Friday, “…It’s made by people in China for ten cents a day but that’s just the way it is. Hey, at least they have jobs.” 

I couldn’t help but think, what is a job if it’s not ethical, fair and just? What is a job if it doesn’t provide you not just with an income, but dignity?

What is gratitude really, if we can’t recognize who pays the price for our privilege? 

What good is gratitude if 22,000 children in the world die every day from the effects of poverty? 

What good are my ‘thanks’ if 805 million people in the world do not have enough to eat right now? 

Finishing what’s on my plate, as I was indoctrinated to do throughout my childhood, is not going to bring food security to the impoverished, the homeless, the struggling and starving. It’s not going to rectify the injustice of hunger.

Eating seconds and thirds beyond my body’s limitations of comfort is not going to change the fact that there are starving children in Haiti, or India.

What is body positivity really, if it is co-opted by the notion of only being allowed to be positive if you are thin, pass for thin, or aspire to be thin? 

What good is my body, the thing that does EVERY action to sustain my life and perpetuate my existence, if I don’t LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE it unconditionally?

Gratitude, in my life, must also be met by action. I am so infinitely thankful for soft blankets and running water and the laptop I post these posts from and the grad school education I’m getting and my Subaru and my related family and my chosen family and my entire life–but if I want to be grateful and really mean it, I have to keep working to confront the fact that so many do not have what I have–basic things that should not be privileges to anyone.

It begins, for me, with having a body that I love, that can commit acts of revolution on a day to day basis, simply by taking up space. 

 

#FatBitchRevolution   #DontStressTheStretch    

 

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Here’s the list I promised you: 

@iamjessamyn @glitterandlazers @tessholliday

@fashionnovacurve @voluptuousleah @littlelimedress @spookyfatbabe

 

 

Happy thanksgiving!!!!

Feel free to reach me via email: caitisrecovering@gmail.com

Join the conversation on Instagram and Twitter! 

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.