A Discussion About Rule 62

An open letter to men in recovery: stop using “Rule 62” to dismiss women, comorbidity and intersectionality.

To ring in 2020, I spent New Year’s Eve with my friends who are sober–most if not all of whom are qualifying members of Alcoholics Anonymous (I am not; however, I understand the fellowship and framework quite well).

I was discussing sobriety with a man I had just met upon walking in the door to my good friends’ house on the water on the south shore of Long Island–the designated gathering place for 50+ sober people at any given time on a holiday such as July 4th, MDW, and this year, NYE.

I mentioned the unfortunate lack of consideration for folks with eating disorders like myself in the program of AA–especially considering that so many women (approximately 50%) experience comorbid symptoms of eating disorders and substance abuse including alcoholism.

The man in question simply said, “Rule 62,” and looked at me blankly.

Rule 62. 

Don’t take yourself so damn seriously. 

Rule 62, for those unfamiliar, is a rule that has found its way into recovery circles as unspoken tradition.

The backstory, from what I understand, has to do with tradition four (“Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A./E.D.A/whateverA as a whole.”) in anonymous programs, which discusses the  idea that individual meeting groups can operate on their own volition without involving or compromising the integrity of the fellowship as a whole.

When AA was expanding, a group attempted to be “all things to all people”–they resolved to take care of meetings, residential treatment, and other facets of recovery life all under one roof–and realized that their goal was way bigger than they could manage in the context of the AA program.

This group came up with 61 rules and sent them to AA as a manifesto or proclamation for beginning their ambitious program. Then, they realized just how daunting a task it would be to take care of every single person’s needs in the realm of addiction treatment–and before scrapping the idea, they came up with rule 62. 

So, what about it? 

Last week, I read a really powerful and thought-provoking opinion piece in the New York Times about the patriarchal foundations and history of AA as an organization. We all know the names Bill W. and Dr. Bob, two men who were alive during the first world war and became alcoholics due to a perceived spiritual malady that they believed had to do with an inflated ego and sense of self, as well as a lack of presence of a higher power in their lives. They were their own higher power for the duration of their relationship with alcohol and drinking–which, as the NYT article suggests, is the essence of white male privilege. 

They sought to recover from this sense of ego, but did it also heal their harmfully separatist sense of rigid gender roles and toxic masculinity?

Alcoholics Anonymous itself has, seemingly ironically tried to be all things to all people; opening itself to women, people of color, people with doctorates, average folks, and everyone in-between, but how can it do that if it still holds itself in the principles, practices and ideas of a world that was designed by and for white men? How can a fellowship with such a marginal number of women attending compared to men even say that “anyone can do it” if they have the capacity to be honest? 

The problem is, this claim is dishonest in and of itself.

Rule 62 was meant to be an ego-check on a group of alcoholics who thought (mistakenly) that their individual group’s program could be a one-stop shop for recovery. When they failed, they wrote this rule as a way of softening the ways that their ambitious and admirable mission had not gone to plan. Well intentioned? Maybe.

In this conversation in my friend’s kitchen, Rule 62 was used to dismiss my very real concern about the harm still being done to people like me in the rooms who are not having their eating disorders addressed–a problem backed by statistics, as I shared before.

I know, I know. If AA were to take on eating disorders too, they wouldn’t really be AA anymore. But this is 2020; and we really need to start accounting for the more than half of the fellowship that needs access to a safe place to express the comorbidity of their alcoholism with other issues like disordered eating and, in the case of my region, opioid abuse. By not being sensitive to issues that clearly and empirically intersect with the problem of alcoholism, there is an imminent danger of making full recovery inaccessible to so many members and potential members.

“At least you’re not drinking” (I hear this one a lot, too!) isn’t good enough anymore. Eating disorders have an unbelievably high mortality rate, especially anorexia nervosa. And I’d venture to say that MOST eating disordered alcoholics can relate to the feeling that alcohol sets off their ED, and vice versa. This is serious.

Food is available at tons of AA meetings without supporting the people for whom food might be a trigger. With over 50 percent of addicts and alcoholics also having an ED–it seems a little insensitive not to address this, and to tell those who are authentically worried about it “not to take themselves so damn seriously.” 

It’s not really a coincidence or an accident that this “rule” is probably most often bestowed upon women, as it was done unto me.

Having an ego and unwarrantedly flaunting your ability to quote a book that is, dare I say, just as fallible and subjective as we all are is…confusing, and honestly, a form of gaslighting imo.

Women don’t need to be powerless, and we don’t need to be told not to take ourselves so seriously. The world outside of those church basements and sober gatherings already does that to and for us. 

Now, I know that this individual’s use and interpretation of Rule 62–like the fallible interpretations of a lot of things in AA and other anonymous groups–speak to the person, not to the fellowship as a whole, hence, the fourth tradition. Hell, Rule 62 was created so that a bunch of people who created a plan and failed, like any human might do, could laugh at themselves and not be bummed that they hadn’t succeeded. We all need a little of that in our lives, certainly.

But I wonder how many times this rule has also been used to drive women into silence about the things that bother them about the world that they live in; things happening inside and outside the rooms. Because the fact is, we absolutely need more power in the world at large and in the daily context of our lives, not less.

And that’s not going to come to us when we are told that the realities of the things we face–pay gaps, the motherhood tax, harassment, assault, violence, dismissal, diet culture, body shame, objectification, legislation made against and about our bodies, repeated interpersonal abuse and marginalization–aren’t serious, problematic or important enough for the men who claim to be united in recovery with us (while, might I add, segregating themselves OFTEN) to take seriously.

I’m a member of a recovery fellowship that isn’t AA, but since AA laid that foundation, I’m addressing it directly, I guess. Any if not all of my closest friends are members of AA. Some of them may cheer me on for saying this, and some might not. That’s okay. However, if anonymous recovery groups, and recovery as a whole, isn’t the same boys club that it says it “used” to be, I’m going to need some of the recovering men I see, know, and love, to start proving that. In fact, I demand it, because (gasp!) I take myself seriously. Out of nothing more than self-respect.

 

Demi Lovato’s Invisible Illness

So I know I just wrote a really important post like…four days ago. But churning out stuff on this blog has become my default coping mechanism lately.

I have seen and taken in a lot of information today. This past weekend, I watched a documentary on the life of Jim Morrison, lead singer of the Doors, who died of a heroin-induced heart attack at age 27. 

This morning, I was listening to his posthumously released spoken-word album An American Prayer, to the track “Curses, Invocations” — he ends the poem with the verse, “I will always be a word man…it’s better than a bird man.”

Words are healers for so many of us.

But I digress. This is all somewhat connected, I promise. I was walking through NYC this morning and afternoon, listening to people on the train, finding myself in resentments toward people I didn’t know, and frustrated at how rude people can be, especially on mass transit. Sweating, trying to get to an interview on time, and noticing people struggling and thinking about all the assumptions we make about others dawned on me a lot as I walked through Manhattan trying to find where I needed to be.

When I got home, my brother called me and told me to Google Demi Lovato’s name, and that she had been hospitalized for a heroin overdose just hours ago.

Like I said, I know it’s only hours-old news, and I was already in your feeds just days ago. But writing about this, news that shook me really hard, is the way I’m going to process it all right now. Bare with me, please. 

The first thing I did when I read the article about Demi’s overdose was text my friend Lexie to ask if she’d heard. A conversation ensued.

A while ago, we’d both shared our frustrations over a Twitter storm she was involved in about pulling a ‘prank’ on her bodyguard that involved being touched nonconsensually. 

I pretty much at that moment decided that Demi, in my eyes, was cancelled. I was really upset that a person who was such a fundamental part of my recovery would do something like that and shrug it off so thoughtlessly.

I didn’t take the time to think about the invisible struggles that people are often going through when they lack self-awareness the most. I judged a person who, in all honesty, I didn’t know and couldn’t have known was making errs in judgment like she did, probably because of shame.

And worse, I wanted her to feel shame because I’d like to think, that as someone who is deeply invested in justice and love and compassion, that anyone I chose as a role model would do better. But I realize as I am shaken by what is happening in her life, that she is human. A human who is sick and suffering, just like so many of us.

Most people know somewhat about Demi’s eating disorder relapse last year after breaking up with Wilmer Valderrama, and the recent release of her song “Sober”, in which she bravely admits to relapsing in the area of substance abuse, had a lot of people in her corner encouraging her to find recovery again.

Even in the recording of this song, it sounds nothing like Demi’s voice. I gave it a first listen today and the first thing I thought to myself was, she sounds so scared, so ashamed, and so broken. 

During this conversation with my friend, a fellow person in recovery from ED and other mental health issues, we both shared the possibility that maybe Demi hasn’t been truly okay for a long time. 

And that’s more than okay.

I don’t know Demi Lovato personally, but I would be kidding myself if I failed to admit that she has been an integral part of my recovery and my own resilience. Her strangely appropriative relationship with the LGBTQ+ community hasn’t always sat well with me, but she has also done something that a lot of people can’t or won’t–shown up for herself and for millions of others in the face of the darkest struggles a person can go through.

Demi Lovato embodies vulnerability and courage.

She has successfully been the representative of “its okay not to be okay” for a really long time. Even after her relapse was reported last year, that was the message that I think we all got–that it’s okay to falter and keep working on ourselves. There is so much power in being honest, but it’s imperative to always be following up on that with the people who need it. Because these attitudes and behaviors aren’t always visible to the entire world at all hours of the day. 

Some of us may not think the person doing best needs check-ups; but I can assure you, connection is the very thing that keeps recovery alive. 

Like Demi herself has said in the past: “Recovery doesn’t get a day off.”

None of us, despite whether we are one of the 65 million people who follow her on Twitter, knows Demi’s life day in and out. Since she has shown up as the face of recovery for this generation–a person who has seemingly overcome self harm, self hate, drug abuse, childhood trauma, bipolar disorder, alcoholism and an eating disorder–so many people have looked to her for inspiration and found it; myself included.

 

 

I remember seeing her at IZOD Center in 2014 and sobbing uncontrollably as she sat at the piano and sang “Warrior”. I cry every time I do a cover of the song myself, because so much of it is my truth. 

I, too, have had to recover from depression, crippling anxiety, abuse, codependency and an eating disorder simultaneously. I know that it often doesn’t happen all at once, and that the parts of your behaviors that aren’t “as severe” can seem like an okay thing to cling to because that’s the trade off your brain makes.

Once you are in recovery from one thing, your brain tries to sort the rest out, prioritizing your vices by which one will kill you last until they’re all no longer useful.

I liken it to playing something I call “symptomatic wack-a-mole,” because it can seem like just as you’ve got one symptom of your mental illness cared for and patched up, another one rears its ugly head.

And it’s not always as easy as “I’ve got this.” In fact, most people who can confidently say “I’ve got this” all by themselves, don’t really “got this.” Macklemore is a really good example–and one of my favorite recovery advocates to produce raw, unfiltered art on the realness of recovery.

 

At that concert four years ago, I had no way of knowing whether or not, at that exact moment, Demi was okay. Even Nick Jonas, who performed right beside her, has told media sources that sometimes he glances at her wrists when they see each other just to make sure she’s “okay.” Even then, that’s only a snapshot, a relative piece of wellbeing that makes up a recovering person’s ‘okay.’ Just like most of my family or friends and especially not strangers on the internet or even sitting around me at the concert that night had no way of knowing whether or not I was truly okay.

The best way to find out if someone is okay is to ask them. When you’re finished asking, listen. 

When you are held up and expected to represent an entire community of struggling, sometimes even broken people, self-care can be so hard. And the shame of falling from that image is even more tough to cope with. And when people depend on your success, your voice, and your triumphs to make a living, the burden only gets larger. And pretending, inauthenticity, and half-truthful recovery can only propel a person so far until those old vices start to get in line and fight for first. 

 

The one thing I was really floored by is that Demi is now (at least according to the reports) using opioids/heroin. A lot of people believe that heroin use is a dark, scary, last resort, unheard of ‘point of no return’ type of drug problem. But it’s way more common than we try to convince ourselves it is. I live on a literal island where the opioid epidemic is at its worst in our entire country. And it is grueling and scary and heartbreaking all the time.

As someone who shares a lot of struggles with Demi Lovato, I said to myself when I read this that she probably feels so powerless right now. Lexie pointed out that she felt that Demi still, to this day, despite recovery, probably feels this unstoppable desire to be perfect.

Being given the assignment of poster child for mental wellbeing is emotionally exhausting a lot of the time, and sometimes–I know from experience–this work can be counterproductive to our wellness in a lot of ways. Perfection was and likely still is the first thing I was addicted to. So many of us with eating disorders live this truth to its fullest extent.

 

I hope that with this instance of relapse, despite how public it is becoming, we can have conversations with each other about the invisibility of illnesses like addiction and mental health (which undoubtedly go hand in hand). Awareness is great, but often not enough. We must move from awareness into action.

We cannot treat brokenness, addiction, or shame without compassion and vulnerability. I have seen some really, really awful things in the comments of the articles I’ve surveyed about Demi’s overdose in the past few hours (Looking at you, TMZ). 

This may be an opportunity for Demi to get real and even more raw with her art. Thus far, her sobriety has been a public event, so much a part of her label-created image as an ex-Disney starlet. Her powerlessness as a celebrity, and as a celebrity in recovery, is so much bigger than herself, and the stakes are high. I think the pedestal on which she has been placed is holding her back more than anything, and I hope that she can find peace and freedom on her own terms as soon as possible.

Until then, it’s on us to let her heal, check in with ourselves and our loved ones as we cope with the realities of things like addiction and disease of the mind. Demi Lovato’s words, her image, her humility and her courage have all taught me first and foremost that no matter what we believe in, we must first believe in our own worthiness. 

Get better soon, Demi. Cheering for you. xoxox

-inbetweenqueen ❤

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! 

Rising Strong as a Recovery Practice

This week’s post:

• Rising Strong by Brene Brown
• Standing up to shame
• Everybody is doing the best they can
• My last week of summer

ALL images and quotes come directly from Brene Brown’s 2015 book, Rising Strong. Proper citation included at the bottom. 

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On my vacation, I finally finished the book I had been reading. And let me tell you something–you NEED this book. Everyone everywhere needs this book. I liked it so much that I ordered it on Amazon after reading a library copy for three days. There is so much in here that I learned from and now try my best to live by and give other people.

Brené Brown, for those of you who aren’t familiar, is a social worker and storytelling researcher in the field of shame and vulnerability. And since I have spent a bulk of my life recovering from shame and grappling with vulnerability, I thought I would give this book a shot. And it changed the way I think, fundamentally.

I read the Goodreads reviews of this book as I went along, and I agreed with some things. First things first–the idea of a rumble and a revolution with every possible point of shame we experience might seem a little dramatic at first. It may cause us to see ourselves as perpetually in shame. But I connected with the idea that we need to get curious about what our shame points are–access and admit to the story we are making up, and which parts of it are true–be vulnerable about the truth–and use truth and vulnerability, instead of shame, to propel ourselves through life. 

The things I got the most out of from this book that apply to my recovery are:

1. Living in my true story is what restores my integrity.

My eating disorder is a filthy, sh*tty liar. It has, in cahoots with body image myths, shame, guilt, diet culture and reinforcement always told me that hiding was the most efficient way to live life.

So I lied about what I ate, when I ate it, who I was with, what I was doing, how I was damaging my body, how I was treating people, and how much I actually liked myself. All these things utterly destroyed my integrity, led me further and deeper into shame spiraling and taught me that I was not okay who and how I existed. I had no integrity. My mom stopped believing me and stopped asking questions. We gave up on our honesty with each other. This is one of the things that honesty and truth-story telling has restored almost entirely in my recovery. Integrity is living in my values even when nobody is watching. 

Now, when I say what I say, I mean it. When I eat, it’s not done behind a door or a wall or shoved in my mouth before someone walks up the stairs. When I need a meeting, I say I’m going to a meeting. When I say yes, I mean yes. When I say no, I mean no. As someone who was taught to believe that they are not okay as they are (which my friend and coach Brandilyn Tebo says is the definition of shame), saying yes when you mean it and no when you mean it are hard work. But sometimes I practice it even when it’s irrelevant, just to prove to myself that I can.

From Rising Strong by Brene Brown

 

2. The death of shame arrives when you take permission back.

This is an especially significant lesson that I am applying to recovering from a chunk of my trauma. I wrote myself a permission slip the other day that read “Permission to SAY NO!!!!!” and signed it. I laughed, because it reminded me of that scene in Parks and Recreation when Ron tries to kill a pig in a public park at a barbecue.

Now, I don’t see myself ever needing to skin a pig, but the things I do need to reclaim require that I reclaim them unapologetically–including existing in my own body, being authentic, getting emotional, saying no to other people taking up my physical space, eating what I want where I want when I want, and living free of justifications and excuses. 

When I grant myself this permission and acknowledge my own right to take up space, the idea that “I am not okay how I am” becomes background noise; if not altogether silent.

3. A lot of suffering comes from the stories I have made up.

To contextualize this, I have an anxiety disorder. My grandmother probably did too. I can point to where I inherited my worry gene and my overthinking behavior. But I would rather spend my time in what Brene Brown calls “conspiracies and confabulations”. These are the stories that we tell ourselves about why another person is doing us a real or perceived injustice, why we aren’t getting our way, why we can’t accept ourselves the way we are right now. And guess what? These stories are made up.

In my life both in and out of recovery, I have had hundreds of these stories surface. The most significant one is that I am a burden, my body doesn’t look okay as it is, I can’t ever be authentically disordered and chaotic and imperfect all at once. 

Yoga taught me that in a room full of 30+ people who are all doing the same pose, it is almost guaranteed that nobody is watching you do yours wrong. Except the instructor Noelle, a good friend of mine (and a total angel), nobody really gave a sh*t whether or not my warrior was straight or hyperextended or I fell completely flat on my ass. And even then, Noelle only cared because she was trained to make sure I didn’t pull something.

Yoga also taught me that any body–ANY!!! BODY!!!!–can do it. There are days that I’m falling over my rolls or feel too heavy to sit all the way down into a pose but I can still find a stretch. I can still access, acknowledge and yield to my body’s limits. But the story I made up is that I couldn’t do it because yoga is only for skinny girls in pony tails who still smell like lavender essential oil and expensive shampoo after 32 vinyasas. This is a conspiracy theory. 

4. Everybody is doing the absolute best they can.

Yes, this means everybody. This means the father I grew up with who was angry and soul-sick and often times abusive, and my former partner who was a narcissist, and the people who assaulted me in college. All the people in the world, even those I resent most heavily, even those who commit crimes against humanity–are doing the best they can. 

Like Bryan Stevenson says in his book Just Mercy, “Each of us is more than the worst thing we have ever done.”

I sort of transformed this idea and took it and carried it a long way–because it was the most important thing to me. As someone who really invests a lot of time, energy, education and passion into social justice, I think a lot of my politics rests on the idea that everyone is doing the best that they can. 

This idea is what lead me to forgiveness of everyone on my fourth step inventory list that was ultimately authentic and real and freeing.

I presented this idea, read the passage on it from this very book, to a group of people in a rehabilitation center on Long Island where I teach a meditation class. I heard lots of people say how much they thought they weren’t doing their best because they had kids at home who needed their mom or dad to be there for them (which is addressed in Brene’s research). According to them, they weren’t doing the best they could because they were stuck in this rehab either by court mandate or by choice. But I asked them, “What are you doing to be a parent to that child that needs you, from in here?” 

They came to all these realizations about how they had been writing letters to their babies for them to read when they’re older, calling home every chance they got, going to meeting after meeting, and staying sober another day, one day at a time. I reminded them that this was enough; they were enough.

Often, the parents we have and the people we learn from who teach us how to be in the world, often learned that lesson from another equally broken, flawed person who was doing the best they could.

We all do the best we can, until we know better. 

4. Recovering is a privilege.

The undertone of what Brene Brown addresses in her book is that many of us live in a safety net of privilege. My own recovery, I have come to acknowledge, is a privilege. The fact that I could go to the library, pick up Rising Strong, read and comprehend it without struggle, call my therapist, who is covered by my health insurance, talk about it with her, and disseminate this information to friends who also have privilege-accessible recovery is a privilege. The fact that I can receive medication, consultations, treatment and acknowledgement for my eating disorder and other encounters with mental health are privileges that not everybody has based on poverty, stigma, healthcare accessibility, literacy, knowledge of rights, and so much more. 

What’s more, I recently learned that about 90% of mental health professionals are white. This does not represent accurately those experiencing mental illness (including eating disorders) or those in recovery. Addiction and mental illness don’t discriminate, so why does access to treatment and access to treatment by someone who culturally identifies with or ethnically relates to them? 

I am often challenged by non-believers about the idea of privilege. I often hear things like “well, yeah I’m white, but my family works hard for what we have, so how is that a privilege if I earned it?” 

I understand this argument. My parents worked so I could be on their insurance plan and receive health care. I was taught to read at four years old by people who spent time with me and put in the effort to give me an education. I went through trauma and earned my right to take up space in this squishy, stretchy, miraculous body–but the thing is, my privilege lies not in the work it took to fix my problems, but the fact that I don’t have to put much thought in the resources it takes to have access to fixing them in the first place. 

Privilege is not the absence of struggle, but the luxury of being able to “shut off” the struggle at any given time. There are many ways I experience struggle by way of trauma, stigma, and other forms of oppressive measure–but other parts of my identity are allowed to exist without being questioned for their validity, worth or place.

 

The best way I can relate privilege to eating disorders besides the care that some people have access to in treating them is the idea that food is a commodity. In my father’s house, shame was bestowed upon you for not finishing your meal. The old adage “Children somewhere else are starving, finish your food!!!” as if pressuring me to eat past my body’s full signals would somehow make up for poverty in India or other places in the world. My privilege taught me to be ashamed and frustrated at the wrong thing–when really, we should be offended by poverty, insulted by the marginalized allocation of resources to certain countries (which largely contain people of color). My family of origin, probably through no real fault of their own (doing the best they could), taught me to be ashamed of my food tolerance rather than be offended by the way the world was treating people who have less than me.

So instead, I have decided to use these as opportunities to re-educate myself about what recovery, integrity, shame, privilege, body love, and the notion of my own enoughness mean to me.

This past week of summer has been great. I got a call from my job today asking me to take on another better, more consistent role and I couldn’t be more excited. It is becoming easier to read and relax and enjoy my life. It is easier to say no and just lay in bed when I want to, for however long I want to. With this upcoming school year, I’m gonna need it. I’m more direct and more expressive in my gratitude. I’m living BIG. I’m getting into Buddhist scripture again, feeling more at ease with life and I have rising strong as a recovery practice and a new way of life to thank for it. 

 

How are you going to rise strong this week?

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Brown, B. (2015). Rising Strong. Book. New York, NY. Random House LLC.

Dear Skinny Girls,…

I have a confession to make to skinny girls. 

Some of you are my friends, family, coworkers, fellows, acquaintances. And mentally, I haven’t been very nice to you lately. But let me make this clear–it’s not because of anything that you did or anything you are.

I’ve been stuck inside my own dysmorphia for the past few days, maybe even the whole past week. My own hyperawareness of inner monologue toward my own body shape and size and being has made me equally hyperaware of how you exist, too. 

My self-conscious attitude toward my own body, and thinking that my body shape meant something bad about me has, on more than one occasion, made me wish I could be, look, and eat like you. I have resented you for living in your own realness, while struggling to live in mine. 

 

Shame is a bitch. That’s one thing I know for sure. When I spiraled out in shame these past few days, I could feel the insidiousness of ED thoughts inside me. The more aware I was of the physical space my body occupied, the bloating, the urgency to exercise and sweat it all out; the more aggressively I had to work to come back down to earth and recognize the origin of these thoughts. 

Since I started shopping in the plus sized section at Forever 21 a few weeks ago, I have gone through many phases of attitude–from “who cares” to “I’m angry that my existence is relegated to a corner of this store while the skinny girls get to take up the whole damn space.” 

But I have had to realize that this has nothing to do with you. In some cases, it doesn’t even have anything to do with me. 

The idea that shopping in the plus size section of any store inherently means something about me is a false belief. One that vanity sizing, diet culture, body dysmorphia and my own disordered thinking patterns have constructed for me. The way that sizes are constructed hurts not only plus-sized women, but all of us. It was discovered a few months ago that American Eagle jeans are actually mis-sized to make women feel like they are “larger” than they are in actuality. Body dysmorphia has become not only a pervasive disorder, but a business model. 

 

I don’t have to explain to anyone how dangerous this is. I don’t have to explain to you that the thin ideal hurts you as much as it hurts me–because the pressure to stay that way or be anything else but small is so real. And for 5% of women, thinness is just in their genetics. 

I feel the need to personally apologize for the fact that so much of reclaiming body positivity has become about creating a narrative that says curvy women are the ones with “real” bodies. That must make y’all feel like sh*t. You aren’t made of plastic just because you’re flat chested, bony, or thigh-gapped by nature. 

The same ideal that pushes size-4-that’s-actually-a-0 and the same mentality that constructed bulls*t songs like “All About that Bass” is what pits us against each other. It’s what makes you afraid of looking anything like me, as if the worst thing you could possibly be is chunky, thick, and a little squishy. It puts fear into you that you could “end up” like one of us.

This is the same ideal that doesn’t realize that it doesn’t take being underweight or even thin to have a full-scale eating disorder (i.e. me). The same system that allows me to feel invalidated as a person recovering from an ED even though I have restricted and exercise purged on and off for years, despite my body shape and type. It’s what keeps me resenting you every time I feel self-conscious or I’m in my disordered thinking. Because I have been conditioned to think that the only “right” way to be is thin, small, quiet, polite, and afraid.

But I am none of these things.

Summer is particularly difficult on my body image. Being eating disordered and dysmorphic means I have mixed feelings about myself on the regular. Some days, I am proud of my thickness and my stretch marks and the lack of space between my legs. Add humidity, however, and constantly peeling my thighs apart gets frustrating after a while. It ain’t my body’s fault, though, and it’s certainly not yours.

Learning to love myself doesn’t mean I have to dislike other people for how they exist in the world. It just means I personally have a lot more work to do unlearning the trash that media, capitalist consumer structure, and pretend “concern” over the state of fat girls’ “health” is doing to divide us. We are worth a lot more than the men and institutions that believe they are truly special for accepting us as if anyone’s validation is a prerequisite to our loving ourselves, “curvy” or otherwise. (Seriously…I’d offer the guy in that article a cookie if I had one to waste that I wanted to share with him).

Skinny girls are some of the raddest, baddest and most resilient people I know. Who they are, how they are, is beautiful. They undergo the same pressures to be perfect as any of us. I’m no longer in a space where I want to exist as they are, or shame them for existing as they do; because who each of us are is just fine. 

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“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”

-Marianne Williamson

 

 

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Instagram: @caitisrecovering

Twitter: @caitsrecovering

Email: caitisrecovering@gmail.com