Category: Self-Acceptance

Spheres of Influence

On By MezzoSherriIn Don't you want to be thin?, Health at Every Size, Self-Acceptance, The Pressure to Fix Myself4 Comments

As I have posted before, my fiancee and I are beginning to plan our wedding. The process — since we are now verging on creating our guest list — has me pondering my past patterns of making and losing close friends.

This was initially a function of how often we moved when I was a kid. I’d settle into the new environs, make some good friends, and then we’d move again and I would be building a brand new social network somewhere else.  At the risk of making excuses for myself, I kind of think those experiences left me without the habits and skills most useful to sustain long-term and long-distance friendships. And that patterning continued with my college friends and then with the close friendships I developed during graduate school — though now I’m the one staying geographically put while my friends moved to new homes and new lives.

So I look back on my life’s path and it seems to be littered with memories of close friends from whom I’ve drifted away. Some of use have reconnected so far as to Facebook-friend one another, but that’s about as far as it’s gone. And I’ve begun thinking about making more of an effort to reconnect with these friends at a deeper level. I’m not sure if it makes actual sense to invite them to the wedding after these years of separation, but I can’t deny that it’s a wonderful fantasy to imagine these men and women sharing my wedding day.

I even started thinking most especially about a friend of mine who’s now an ordained minister. Wouldn’t it be kinda cool, I wondered, if she were to be the officiant at our ceremony?

Until the day I saw a random Facebook status message from her. It began with a witty observation on one of the banalities of life — how jump ropes are no longer in the “toys” aisle of the store but have moved to the “exercise equipment” section. And then she added the observation:

No wonder so many of today’s kids are overweight.

And there it was, staring me right in the face: the kind of statement that completely buys into the myth of the obesity epidemic BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA.

Took the winds right out of my little fantasy-having sails.  The (terrific!) Fat Bride Survival Guide recently posted over on Axis of Fat talked about the importance of having everyone around you (bridal party, vendors, etc.) lay off diet talk, because you should not have to bear up under regular pressure to lose weight. I’d assume choosing an officiant who will stay away from diet talk would also be important. So even if the bridges of time and distance were crossable at this moment — and I have no way of knowing if those bridges are crossable at this moment — the ideological chasm between talk of “the obesity epidemic” and my choice of self-acceptance and fat acceptance is one that I cannot see crossing. Because it’s important to me to have a wedding that is based in celebrating Matt and I exactly as we are today, and that does not imply in the slightest that our commitment to one another is conditional and carries demands that either of us “change” or “improve” — including through weight loss.

And yet I feel tremendously awkward telling this story. I don’t want to paint this woman, this woman who was such a good friend to me during some very important years of my maturation, as a villain. And I don’t want to become such a vigilant FA activist that I react confrontationally to every instance that fat myths come into my sphere of awareness.

But I also don’t want to let too much of that talk into my sphere of influence. As much as I know the truth and the logic of my fat acceptance stance, it can sometimes be hard to stand in that truth against all the other messages society carries about thinness and health, and all the stereotypes about fat woman and lazy, undisciplined, ugly, etc.

So I’m not sure how best to comport myself. Either in choosing the individuals to play important roles in our wedding, or in rekindling friendships with men and women who knew me during the years I was lost in body hatred and weight cycling. How am I going to talk about these new insights into genetics and society’s messages? How will I choose to set a respectful boundary around my own choices and perspectives around body size, intuitive eating, self-acceptance and the like — all while maintaining respect for friends who see these matters differently than I do?

This last question is, of course, relevant to matters far beyond fat acceptance. It’s kind of at the heart of maintaining friendships — standing in full self-respect for one’s own perspective, and also standing to honor, love and respect your friends and their perspectives. Even when — especially when? — those perspectives don’t align.

Showing Up

On By MezzoSherriIn Don't you want to be thin?, Meta-Blogging, Self-Acceptance, Spirituality, The Subtle Body1 Comment

It was a kinesiology training weekend, so my hours have been very full and I am now exhausted. I can’t believe I’ve made it through 8 of the 10 training retreats. It seems like only yesterday I was just starting to learn the ReUnion Process. Conversely, it seems like I have undergone lifetimes since the first training session.

There’s a lot of new (and renewed) material from this weekend that I have to integrate around the deep potential this work carries for me to reach new layers of self-acceptance. But one of the big messages form the weekend was about the simply — and simply powerful — importance of continuing to do the work. In doubt, in confidence, when you’re feeling triggered, when you’re in the flow, when the work is challenging. Show up. Keep showing up. Keep doing the work.

Strikes me that it’s not a bad mantra to hang onto in the more focused project of growing into fat acceptance, or to the even more focused project of maintaining a blog. So it’s a shorter entry tonight. Nevertheless, I showed up.

==========

In other news, there’s a new MTT (“Meridian Tapping Technique,” formerly known as EFT) resource I’m thinking of tapping into.* But, like every other MTT resource package I’ve ever seen, this one has the evidently-obligatory materials about “Tapping for Weight Loss.”

So, do I get the package because I want to learn better ways to use MTT for other health and mental health issues (anxiety, insomnia, cramps, headaches, chronic pain), and just accept that the inclusion of weight loss materials is just another symptom of the deep cultural assumption about how thin=healthy? Or do I skip the resource package as a one-woman protest against the mindless perpetuation of that cultural assumption?

* Tap into. Get it? Get it? (I slay me.)

Addicted to Life

On By MezzoSherriIn Fat is Just an Adjective, Health at Every Size, Self-Acceptance, Spirituality, The Pressure to Fix Myself, The Voices in My Head8 Comments

One of the topics that often circles through FA circles is a healthy skepticism about any dieting lifestyle change rhetoric that too strongly embraces that associates heaviness with addictive eating. Such skepticism is well-founded in part because fatness looks to be a way more complicated and individualized phenomenon than can be captured in a simple “calories in > calories exercised off” equation.

The other Very Good Reason to be skeptical is the cognitive dissonance around classifying a substance that is essential for the maintenance of life as an addiction — as if food is somehow like other addictive substances (like alcohol or drugs) that can be completely excised from life.*

This in large part is noodling around my brain again because of an insightful post over at Kataphatic.** It will be very hard for me not to quote the post in its entirety, but I’ll do what I can to pull out a passage or two that really started my wheels turning.

Katie was writing about the Candidacy Guidebook that lays out the steps on her path towards ordination as a deacon in her church, and specifically about a passage that discusses the need for substance abuse counseling for many individuals “who become dependent on alcohol or other drugs or food.”

Katie’s initial response is charming enough to warrant a healthy quote:

So here I am, reading along, thinking, “yep, I’m with you here, it’s not healthy for ministers to become dependent on alcohol or other drugs or… food?

Wait what? (cocking my head to the side and raising one eyebrow)

Does that really say FOOD?

Are they really saying that as a minister I am supposed to become super human and no longer be dependent on food??” [ . . . ]

Ooohhhh, okay.

So what they really mean is “emotional dependence.” Not just “dependence” period… because suggesting that we could become “dependent” or “addicted to” something that is actually necessary for our survival is just… silly, right? No one in their right mind would suggest otherwise! Right?

haha… hah… *sigh*

Katie goes on to thoughtfully examine notions about emotional dependence on food, suggesting that comfort food could perhaps more readily be classified amongst a whole host of self-soothing behaviors that are okay in moderation but could become problematic if taken too far. She also cautions about some of the dangers she sees that can stem from placing too much of an emphasis on “emotional eating” as something to self-monitor and judge oneself for.

It’s all very wise and heart-centered and I encourage you to read it all. But, in a narcissistic it’s-all-about-me moment, I’m going to riff off of her closing words:

But just because you’re fat, or just because you “emotionally eat” from time to time, doesn’t mean you have a disordered relationship with food! God has purposefully chosen to make this thing we need—food—bring us pleasure, draw us closer in community, and give us emotional comfort in addition to satisfying physical hunger. Let us be thankful for the good gift of food, and its ability to enhance our lives in such a complex and beautiful variety of ways!

I find real comfort here.

I’ve shared earlier about some of the ways it’s a tough summer for me. In addition to these upheavals (good and grief-laden) in my personal life, I’m still in my first 6 months at a new job which is rather demanding, and I’m starting coursework to begin the long road to an MBA. So in the midst of all of this, yes, I have been taking occasional refuge in the macaroni and cheese.

I know intellectually how FA activists work against the symbolic opposition of the “good fattie” (someone with pristine nutritional and exercise habits who remains fat) vs. the “bad fattie” (someone with imperfect eating and exercise habits). But as I’m trying to find my own voice in FA circles, I can feel the weight of internal pressure about how I’m not being a “good example” of Fat Acceptance, and I’m not being any sort of example for the idea of Health at Every Size. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

As I’m trying to find my own voice in FA circles, I can feel the weight of these internal pressures. But I can also tap into a growing sense of internal resource and acceptance that helps me resist such pressure. That helps me understand how turning to comfort food is an entirely natural way to respond to all the pressures and changes going on in my life. (One might even call it a healthy response, as compared to other self-soothing behaviors that got a little bit out of control in my life a decade or two ago.)

Perhaps best of all, as I continue to find my voice in FA circles, is the way that I don’t have to stand alone against the voices of internal pressure. Instead, I can be part of a community from which I can draw wisdom and support. Like I did from Katie’s post.

Blessed be.

* I do not mean to minimize how hard it can be for an addict to cut alcohol or drugs out of one’s life. I merely wish to make an obvious contrast between the theoretical possibility of letting go of a substance like alcohol — which has no inherent physical necessity for human life — versus the notion of giving up food — which is necessary for life.

** Allow me to pause for a brief squee over how terrifically inspired I am to know that there’s a blog out there writing about Fat Liberation Theology. Squeeeee!

The Selfishness of Body Dysmorphia

On By MezzoSherriIn Fat is Just an Adjective, Self-Acceptance, The Voices in My Head7 Comments

So we fly north tomorrow for the family/funereal weekend. My suitcase is mostly packed: I’m sure I have way too many clothes for the length of trip, but there’s a lot of different elements to plan for.

One major element is simply the way I inevitably begin to have an internal freak out whenever I’m about to see my family.

However much of a grownup I am in my day-to-day life, however much progress I’ve made in bringing fat acceptance into my life and growing my sense of self-acceptance, I still revert back to all sorts of self-judging habits when I go back into the family environment in which I spent all those awful awkward school years.

So instead of finishing my packing, instead of journaling, or showering, or doing any other thing that might better prepare me to take care of myself and support my family and honor my father — instead of any of that, I am feeling down on myself because when I am up in New England, I am “going to look like  whale” next to my older sister who got the athletic/skinny genes.

I was speaking to one of my spiritual teachers last night, looking ahead to this trip, and discussing the ways I fear it will be a more sorrowful experience for me than even the original funeral was. (His death was so sudden, I really truly think I was in shock for the funeral and a couple weeks after.) We also talked about this slide into the old “unhappy adolescent” headspace I could feel coming in, and the way that my current 40-year-old fatness has just been completely co-opted into the narrative of nasty self-talk this voice in my head spews out.

Not one to mince words, my teacher encouraged me to fight this voice. “You’ve got so many great things going on, and this is the voice that keeps you from enjoying any of it. This is the voice that shits on your life.”

And I am really angry about this internal pattern of mine tonight. So many things it’s keeping me from. I’ve listed some of those thing above, and I could sit and type and list more things for quite a while. Like the fact that I haven’t seen my niece and nephew since Christmas, and I could treasure another chance to see them, and also open my heart to be ready to support them as they face the first significant loss of their young lives. Like the fact that Matt has been so supportive of me in my grief, and how grateful I am to have him to lean on during the next few days. Like…. Like…..   Like…..

Or, to boil this down to its most essential feature: when I let myself fall into this space of dysmorphia and self-hatred, it keeps me from my life.

The Comparison Trap: When Blogging meets Life

On By MezzoSherriIn Meta-Blogging, Self-Acceptance, Spirituality, The Voices in My Head5 Comments

It’s interesting to me how my patterns of inadequacy and “not enoughness” can seep into so many corners of my life so subtly and so intractably.

Like here.

I started a blog because I wanted place to explore my own thoughts about self-acceptance. And yet I’ve found myself with a case of writer’s block these several days. Call it the Ecclesiastian block, a.k.a. the “nothing new under the sun” syndrome. Everywhere I look, it seems, there’s writers out in the blogosphere who are examining any topic I might, and they’re doing it with wit and thoughtfulness and profundity. In other words, they’re all doing it “better than I could” — at least, that’s what the voice in my head is telling me.

In other other words, I have fallen right into the comparison trap.

Comparison is just about the most effective self-esteem killer I know. After all, if self-esteem is intertwined with self-acceptance, what is the effect on self-acceptance when I look outside myself for the standards of how to be? Basically, it’s me stacking the deck against myself. Instead of honoring what is authentically Sherri, I judge my existence against someone else, which gets me into this loop where I beat up on myself for my inability to be someone else.

The absurdity of that logic should be evident in that last phrase I typed: beat up on myself because I can’t be someone else. Asking, expecting myself to be someone I’m not. And how fucked up is that expectation to put on myself?

After all, like Dave Matthews asked years ago, “Could I have been anyone other than me?”

Nope. And yet I so often fall into that trap of trying to be someone else, expecting to act like someone else, and then being bitterly disappointed and self-blaming when I (inevitably) fail in that project.

The road away from that habit has been a long one, and it’s not been an uninterrupted journey. But more and more I’m able to tap into an awareness of my authentic self, and the faith that I am authentically, uniquely perfect in my existence.

“Could I have been anyone other than me?” No, and that’s a reason to celebrate and to honor. And the beauty of that notion — and the fragility with which I am currently able to hold it — is likely the reason why that particular song always makes me tear up a little bit…

So in addition to Dave, I’m going to try and take a notion from my man Stephen Sondheim:

George: I’ve nothing to say

Dot: You have many things

George: Well, nothing that’s not been said

Dot: Said by you, though, George

“Said by you, though.” Things that have been said, things that are being said elsewhere, things that will be said differently by others — those things are still worth saying by me, if they’re things I want to explore and express. Because there is an essential difference between my voice and another writer’s. When I’ve fallen into the comparison trap, I fixate on that difference as the reason why my thoughts are “worse,” and why I shouldn’t bother saying them in public.

But when I separate myself from the habit of judgement, that same awareness of difference is the road to believing my words deserve their own airing. Not ‘cos they’re “better” than anyone else’s. Just because they are unique and strangely perfect in their own way, their own moment.

So I guess I fell into the black hole real fast, but at least I’ve come out of it pretty quickly.

Wrongness and Weight

On By MezzoSherriIn Fat is Just an Adjective, Self-Acceptance, SpiritualityLeave a comment

So, I’m cautiously interested in the conversation going on in the comments to this post by Roni Noone over at We are the Real Deal. (I say “cautiously,” because the some of the comments in the thread have been taking a bit of a turn towards anger and intolerance. We’ll have to see what happens.)

There’s certainly stuff that could be said regarding the assumptive slip Roni makes between “having a healthy conscious relationship with food” and losing weight — as if one were always to lead to the other. But the piece I’m keying in on right now is this series of semi-rhetorical questions from the opening of her post:

Aren’t I suppose to be spreading a message of self love and body contentment? I mean, I definitely shouldn’t be inspiring people to lose weight? That’s just plain wrong. Isn’t it?

The anxieties expressed in Roni’s questions are also forefronted in her chosen post title: Is it Wrong to Want to Lose Weight?

Wrongness. So many times this comes back to notions of wrongness.

Wrongness about appearance — too blond, too short, too fat, too skinny, too flat-chested, too red-headed, hips too big, figure too boyish, wrong facial shape, too “ethnic,” too “white bread.” Too just plain wrong because we don’t thread the needle of what is deemed attractive in a celebrity culture. (And here’s a familiar reminder that even celebrities don’t come up to the standards of celebrity beauty.)

A couple months ago, I was asked, in an FA context, if I saw myself as beautiful. And I admitted that I’m not quite There yet. But here’s the thing, I remember saying.

I never saw myself as beautiful when I was younger and thin, either. I grew up skinny and had a really awkward adolescence, in which I had physical characteristics (flat-chested, glasses, braces) that in my white, upper-middle-class high school marked me as unattractive. As far as I can guess, there may have been a magic week or two during my transition for “too skinny” to “too fat” where I hit the mark of what I “ought” to weigh. But I wouldn’t be surprised if during those magic weeks where I weighed the supposedly-right amount, I carried some other marker that kept me from being attractive — or, more accurately, from feeling attractive.

Because there’s so much judgement out there, and so much internalized self-judgement that stems from that. And — no shocker here — the judgements, the feelings of wrongness aren’t even remotely limited to questions of weight, or appearance, or the physical realm. There’s plenty of societal messages about the ways to act, to live, to be. Which plays into all the ways we feel wrong in our behaviors, our choices, our circumstances.

I truly believe that fat is a feminist issue. But for me, fat acceptance is part of the larger challenge of self-acceptance. And for me, self-acceptance and self-esteem are very much spiritual issues. Letting go of feeling wrong. Letting go of the self-protective, defensive instinct to make someone else wrong when I’m feeling judged and threatened. Opening my heart to the possibility that each and every person I encounter is 100% perfect in this moment.

So, do I think it’s wrong to want to lose weight? No, I don’t.* We want what we want, and none of it is wrong, and going into the self-beat-up for wanting the “wrong” thing is only going to perpetuate  the patterns of self-judgement that keep me feeling bad about myself.

Where Roni’s questions get a little tricky for me is when she asks about “inspiring” folks to lose weight. Because that will all very much depend on how she wants to go about inspiring people. If it’s a process of living her own choices and speaking openly about them, and letting people choose freely whether or not to follow her path, I’m pretty much on board. (Insofar as I fully believe in the perfection of Roni’s choices for Roni while choosing myself not to aspire towards weight loss.)

But if her version of “inspiring” includes blindness to the perfection of choice for those embracing HAES — and that assumptive slip I mentioned above gives me some reason to fear that sort of blindness — then I’m a bit more troubled about the potential for this to be yet another message about how the FA/HAES community is wrong in our choices and our beliefs.

So Roni isn’t wrong. And I’m not wrong.

When we’re able to tap into compassion for self and make heart-centered authentic choices for ourselves, each of us is wonderfully right.

* Not that anyone needs my approval anyways.