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Love You, Love, Me: Hello Motherhood! Part 5

I just finished reading my old diaries from the pubescent era of life. It was like reading a very immature Jane Austen in the midst of an existential crises…and with horrible grammar. What stands out for me in my emotional hangover of diary reading, is how much love I cultivated in my heart every day. Love for boys who didn’t even know my name. Love for dysfunctional friendships. Love for hopes and dream that where rooted in fantasy and make believe. The words kept popping up over and over “I love…” this, “I love…” him, “I love…” that!

I realize now, I was desperate to create love in my heart to protect me from the fear and loneliness I was harboring. If I could create an imaginary romance with a person who I’d never be with, it would distract me from my turmoil and self-loathing.

I’m pretty impressed with my teenage self. She was always searching for the light in the depths of the shadows. She was pretty tough and spunky, always clinging to love wherever she could find it. She was also a self-centered brat, like most privileged white girls in suburban America. I can’t blame her, I think a journey through the “ME ME ME” period is necessary for our development and the amusing story telling’s of our adult selves.

But theme remains, how desperately I’ve always wanted to feel love. As I read, my first thought was, “what was wrong with me?” And like a flash, it came to me, I sought love on the outside as it did not live within.

This post is specifically about body love, however, as you’ve learned from my previous stories, the keys usually unlock inner doors. I could/can notlove my body while detesting who I am.

I was loved. My parents adored me. My friends thought I was great. Most of my teachers where charmed by my wit in absence of my homework…I wasn’t some leper who didn’t experience true human bonds. The thing was, I was not amused by myself. I was constantly tap dancing for everyone, even though it was not required. I never thought just being me was enough, because I didn’t know who I was. So that’s it…when you don’t know yourself, how the hell you gonna love yourself? (That’s a play on a RuPaul phrase, look it up).

I didn’t have anything to identify with; I wasn’t an athlete, I wasn’t particularly good in school, I wasn’t the prettiest girl…Without any discernable, marketable skills in adolescence, how does one find themselves? Their place? I still don’t know…It’s taken me close to 38 years to finally know myself.

I learned recently that not having an identity can be quite powerful, because if you can live without the attachment what you think you are (to yourself and others), isn’t that the ultimate freedom? How, as these infinite souls/beings do we live in one little box? That’s not to say you can’t celebrate your strengths and pursue passions of a specific aptitude. But what if we just lived without being so focused on one or a few things; like “I’m a mom, I’m a writer, I’m an amazing memorizer of song lyrics…” YES, those things make up my persona, but my soul is boundless.

How I’ve learned to love myself is by recognizing that my soul’s potential reaches so much further than my abilities or the amounts of people who “approve” of or “accept” me. My path of self-discovery and self-connectedness has lead me to this really peaceful place of just being. I just am…

So back to my body, my health, and those tactical tools I use to care for my temporary vessel. When I am fully connected to my truest self, my body is my beautiful home, no matter what the scale reads. If I am nourishing my soul, I’m also doing so with my body. When I released the stress of needing to look a specific way or weigh a specific number, ironically, my body started to shift; it was no longer carrying the emotional weight of self-hate, self-criticism, self-who-the-fuck-are-you.

When I could fully grasp the miracle of motherhood, of pregnancy, of growing life inside life, how could I hate that? How could I continue to look in the mirror and feel ugly when I look at the life my body helped to create as stunning? I simply cannot!

We live in a society where woman are constantly beating themselves up. I’m not saying anything you haven’t read before…we compare ourselves to the likes of 21-year-old super models and call ourselves fat as a greeting! Our culture of woman has grown accustomed to apologizing for their appearance “Hi, ugh don’t look at my hair, I’m a mess…”

We are the most magical fucking beings! WE ARE! And we are often valued by our youth and hip-to-waste-ratios…I’m so sick of it. I’ve surrendered to my imperfections and I would love to help anyone else find a way to share in that peace.

Now more than ever, we as woman, need to start loving ourselves unconditionally. If we can step into our power without fear, we will rule this world. We will take our future to places that are uncharted and likely pretty magnificent.

Self-love/body-love it’s all rooted in the same thing, connectedness and uncontainable, unconditional love. It’s not an easy place to find, but the first step is just wanting something more than a daily ritual of dissatisfaction. I deserved that, you deserve that. I pray you all find it in some way, and I send you my love.

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You ARE What You Eat: Hello Motherhood! Part 4

 

Ah the old saying; “You are what you eat!” I would counter my dad when he’d say that to me, “Whatever! I’d be happy as a piece of fried chicken!” Well, here I am, affirming what I always knew deep down, my dad was right; AND we ARE what we choose to consume.

Food, nutrition and subjects alike have been over-waxed on woman’s websites. Ideas about what to eat are deeply analyzed in their consumption and while educating us about “what to do,” we also feel defeated by not knowing how.

My goal here is to simply reveal my experiences as a way to help, spark relatability and maybe in the end help you feel less alone.

Here goes: I am a survivor of an eating disorder. I am a woman who hated my body until about 14 months ago. I have agonized over food my entire life. Today, I am in recovery.

The intention behind disclosing this particular part of my story is to give you a background as to how I became 80 lbs overweight in my pregnancy, and how my nutrition today keeps me healthy and happy. But, it wouldn’t be fair for me to share my successes without giving you some history regarding my relationship with food.

When I started doing self-development work, I realized that my issues with food where not rooted in wanting to be skinny, they were tools of control in a life I felt I had none over. In moments where I needed to feel grounded or desperate to rule my own outcomes, I would eat and then… I would throw it up. Additionally, restricting the types of food I was eating felt empowering. That was my life for many years, white-knuckle’ing my food intake and output in the vain of power and asylum.

And then I discovered that I had life inside of me. A human being was actually growing inside of me! As I knew that I was definitely having a baby and it was probably going to be healthy and vital, the perception of my body shifted. Little glimmers of gratitude I had never known started becoming visible. Intuitive eating started to develop in my soul. And as if sent from heaven, messages of how and why I should love my body began to appear everywhere.

Every morning I had this visceral sense that I must eat eggs. I did! That was after my first breakfast and just before my turkey club-lunch. I was hungry, and for the first time in my life, I agreed to feed my body whatever it desired (aside from anything harmful to the baby). And my body was happy, I sensed my baby was happy, I was happy, ELATED actually.

But there I was, the day I gave birth, weighing in at 207lbs. When I came home I was 189lbs. For the first time, I thought “Wow, had I only gained the 25lbs the doctors recommended, I’d be like a celebrity in a bathing suit by Thanksgiving!”

As I’ve shared, the early months of motherhood where complicated and painful at times. I couldn’t wait to start a diet, start restricting again for peace of mind. As soon as I stopped breast feeding, I set out on the diet rollercoaster. My meal plans where ridiculous; I was eating low-fat, vanilla yogurts and string cheese and bacon, no fruit, barely any veggies. Did I mention that I have a dairy allergy? Restriction was such an anchor in my state of spinning. I quickly realized that my body doesn’t like vanilla yogurt and no matter how fast Kate Middleton lost her baby weight on this “diet,” I could not continue to eat like that.

I couldn’t un-know what intuitive eating felt like. I had activated intuitive eating in my pregnancy and I could never again completely ignore what my body needed. And to be clear, I have no regrets about my weight gain in my pregnancy. I truly believe intuitive eating gave me my vitality and my baby life.

Today, nearly four years from the day I gave birth I am the strongest and healthiest I’ve ever been. I am also 20lbs heavier than the days before we conceived. I had a friend ask me yesterday if my goal was to get myself back to where I was ‘before’? My answer was, ‘no.’ I mean this in a motivating way, but I believe our bodies never ‘go back,’ and that they are constantly evolving and moving forward.

How am I the strongest and healthiest I’ve ever been? I’ve contemplated thoughtfully by how to articulate my “how,” so that it is intelligible but also so that you my grasp my process (without taking up two and half years of your life, like it did mine). I’ve referred to my “self-development” previously and it’s vital to reveal that without going inside, I would not be healthy on the outside.

I went deep within to get to the root of my issues with security and control. I began to live with them. I made friends with the fabric of my inner workings. Slowly, with a lot of grace, surrender and love, I largely healed my soul’s wounds. The triggers started to subside and I no longer felt pulled to my old go-to eating behavior. I was genuinely building a loving relationship with my being, especially my body. I no longer wanted to cause myself harm.

Science and loads of research will tell you, that calories in versus calories out, is the simple way to lose weight. For me, it was far more complicated. I had to find out why restricting, purging and over-eating felt so good and necessary. Food was my comfort, a band aid for my inner-bleeding ‘wounds.’

When I connected deeply to my truest self, I shifted my experience with everything, especially with food. It may sound confusing, no, I didn’t meditate the pounds away. In fairness, I eat a plant-based diet. I take my GOOP vitamins every day. I add healing Reishi to my matcha morning. I do not do these things to be skinny, I do them for my wellness. I revere my body as temple and It’s my goal to preserve its health vitality for as long as it’s meant to live.

If you listen to your body very closely, it will tell you what it really needs and it will also give you a good old-fashioned tummy ache if you don’t.