Three nights ago I made peanut butter sandwich crackers (with marshmellow mixed in) dipped in chocolate. I made 26 "cookies". I ate all of them except 1 because Dan ate that. I ate 25 cookies. They. were. delicious. Also, I was hungry. After doing this, I have not gained any weight. I strangely never do when I eat garbage. My body just uses it, and my weight stays the same. Here's the thing though. That is not good for me! What would compel me to do that?!
It's a real question. What is painfully obvious is that my body needed something - or my brain, but there was some actual need there.
Coincidentally, on the same night, my good friend posted about a cleanse that she will be doing in the near future. It is a fast of sorts and is very extreme. My first thought was to join her in this detox for solidarity, but being an almost 35 year old that has to be on the same BP medicine as old people and not having a doctor to consult right now, I decided I'd just be her cheerleader.
"What about me, though?" my brain asked. "I also deserve to clean up this mess that is my health. I want to do SOMEthing! I don't want to die yet."
Listen folks, I've already had a mini-stroke (that everyone is probably tired of hearing about but is so weird that I'm still so shocked by it that I always bring it up), I have high blood pressure (as mentioned above), anxiety issues, and I'm 30 pounds over weight which was a souvenier of my most recent (and last) pregnancy. My dad died of a heart attack when he was 47. My grandfather died of a heart attack. My great-grandfather died of a heart attack. Think it's weird that I'm bringing it up because I'm a woman and those are all men? Well, both my brothers have clean bills of health, and I'm the one with chest pains if I have too much caffeine and a scrip for BP meds.
Her social media status about the cleanse was a wake up call for me.
Here's how my life has gone. I have even mentioned in previous posts on this blog that I grew up a very publicly teased, very, very skinny little girl. The structure of my face and my gaunt frame actually made me look like I wasn't even in the same family as my fleshier, Swedish built siblings. They're all half a foot taller than me. I'm not even kidding. Also, teasing someone about being skinny is almost worse in some ways than teasing someone for being fat because people are not only ridiculing you for being different, there is this added layer of hatred because they actually exhibit jealousy over something you can't even control.
I was always real small. Short and skinny and different. Hated it.
Then I had babies and gained weight during my pregnancies. Every single time I would gain 40 pounds and then lose 20. The other 20 would stay. So by the first birthday of the third baby, I had packed on about 45 pounds over my pre-pregnancy weight.
Whatever. Was not a health issue at that point, and it got people off my back about being too skinny.
About a year and a half after the third baby, my life changed in a major way. One of the things that changed was that I was driven into true cpoverty and had no food. I also rode my bike to work (another post) for a 12 mile ride. I actually only had to do that (or walk) a handful of times, but I lost about 10 pounds, my metabolism regulated, and I kept that 10 pounds off.
Over the year that followed that, I lost about 40 more pounds. I was actually below the weight that I was when I got pregnant with my first child. When I got pregnant with my fourth child, I was not overweight at all and looked "small" my whole pregnancy. I thought for sure my pregnancy weight would just fall off after she was born. Maybe retaining all that weight before was because my life was just so awful.
I was right. That thought was just incomplete.
So I read my friend's status and had the thought about wanting to make my body work better. I actually have zero problem with my shape. Zero. I have had just as many head turns from men or jealous looks from women being this size as when I was smaller. I do pragmatically realize, however, that the amount of fat on this frame is making my heart and my joints work too hard and that a sedentary pregnancy has made my muscles weak. So when I read her status and then asked myself the question about myself, a familiar thing happened.
I got real frustrated.
The good thing is, instead of internalizing it, I opened up to Dan. We have had many discussions about my weight (mostly because I lost too much too fast and felt like the "ugly skinny girl") and my health (because I'm his baby mama and the love of his life). We have talked about patterns that existed during different chapters of my physical journey, so we picked this discussion back up.
Before I had kids, I was a typical, micro-managing type A. Once they put my first child into my arms, my ability to regulate and control every area of my life went totally out the window. No longer could I alone take on the tasks that were included in my life, and, I have certainly earned the right to say this, I did not have help. I did everything alone, and that was part of what killed my first marriage. It's also a big part of what damaged my health.
I nursed my newborns and did not ask my then partner to bottle feed past my first night at home. I was also expected to do all housework alone, all cooking alone, all grocery shopping alone and all care for the children alone beyond whatever sort of recreational time my then partner wanted to have with his off spring. If I got help at all, I was given a very firm reminder about how I was deficient and that he was having to compensate for my failure. I was even given very archaic instructions from his mother about how to get myself together so I could please my husband in the right way by keeping my home to a specific standard. You guys, this is even all amidst a year during which I finished a debilitating pregnancy, had a newborn, said newborn almost died and was hospitalized 3 times over the course of a month, stayed at the hospital while said partner left me and our very sick baby there with $20 and one change of clothes for 2 days (parent food is not covered by your child's admittance to the hospital), 2 kidney surgeries 3 months after that, ripping my knee in half 3 months later and being wheel chair bound for an entire month followed by my third surgery of the year which required 6 waking hours a day of being strapped into a machine that mechanically moved my leg so I would not develop a life ending blood clot or a crippling tension in a muscle. I was still expected amidst all of that to do all of the above tasks with little to zero help beyond his mother babysitting the kids extremely occasionally.
Guess what I was never allowed to take care of...any part of me. I was allowed to join a gym so I could re-attain a very specific version of desirable. That, my friends, is where I actually ripped my knee in half.
The tone of our home was very akin to Cinderella, except, instead of a ball to attend, it was my own self care that became unspokenly forbidden. Taking time to shower daily and put on clothes was frowned upon if my daily chores were left incomplete. Planning meals for only myself or researching what nutrients my body needed or taking financial resources to seek instruction from someone with the knowledge to teach me was viewed as...selfish.
Even though my heart knew this was so wrong, I had no choice, so I did what was expected. I took my poor depleted body and flew around the house all day the best that I could scooting around messes created by other people. It all just became so impossible because, if one of my children wanted me to stop and read a book, I stopped and read a book. If they wanted to me stop and watch their trick, I stopped and watched a trick. If someone needed me to stop and rock them to sleep, I stopped and rocked them to sleep. We ate out very rarely, so I made most of our meals. If their prep used a lot of dishes, I alone cleaned up everything. I would wake up every day and pump my body full of caffeine on an empty stomach. I thought that if the caffeine would raise my heart rate and there was no fuel in my stomach to burn, the fat would be the first thing to go. I ignored the thought that it was damaging my heart. I was drinking upwards to at least 3 cups of coffee a day. Some days there would be more than that. I had a weird sense of pride if I managed to go without lunch. I didn't become anorexic, surprisingly, but that's because my weight didn't budge. I think things would have gone differently had I been successful in changing my weight that way. Even after joining the gym and hiring a personal trainer it didn't change. And that's a strange double standard, isn't it? Spending the money to hire a personal trainer to make my body "pretty" was an acceptable expense, but paying for the prescription for the antidepressant my brain needed then was not.
Well, my day came when I was forced out of my home. I will be considerate and not share those details here, but it was absolutely tragic and absolutely not my choice. It was, however, absolutely rescue - for me and for my kids.
Here's the thing about rescue that I need for you to know. Rescue does not equal repair. If a poor, malnourished, ill cared for dog is removed from his abusive owner, does animal control just release it back into a nice looking neighborhood? Nope. A change in surroundings does not put back what was stolen.
That was my hard lesson to learn. I'm just going to be honest with you like I have been in the past. I got really lucky. I happened to be blessed enough to be surrounded by really amazing people that gave me a bunch of correct information. Sometimes that correct information was the 4 words that I have previously described as "magic" - this wasn't your fault. Sometimes that correct information was someone saying to me "Um, so if you keep doing this, you're doing wrong." I had to do some minor and some very major surgeries on my soul. A lot of those are documented here.
There was one that I would only flirt with, however. That, my friends, was my relationship with self care. I still had this very distorted self talk that taking care of myself was selfish. And when I talk about self care, please remember, I am not talking about long soaks in a tub with candles. I'm talking about bathing, eating, brushing your teeth. The other thing is called pampering, and the reason it's so special is because it's supposed to be occasional. Basic hygiene, though, that should be every day.
I spent 9 1/2 years being pressured into behaving like my basic needs were more pampering, and that I only DESERVED for my needs to be addressed after everyone else (one person in particular) was happy....happy - not healthy, not nourished - happy. You guys, spending your life with the FOCUS of your time being to make someone "happy" is a waste even and especially if its yourself. Happiness is important to engage, but as a focus, it's toxic, my friends, and if someone requires that you make them happy before you are ALLOWED to be healthy, that is called abuse. Let me just camp here for a second. No one, under any circumstance has to stay being abused.
My soul was able to heal past a great many things, but I tell you this, after 13 years, I have addressed this in a healthy way....for 2 days...so far. It was so damaging, it took nearly 4 years of crazy, committed, unconditional love from Dan who is a rock star, hundreds and hundreds of dollars in talk therapy with a professional and 2 years of this blog after I was removed from a toxic environment for me to feel the entitlement to engage self care.
I'm doing it though, you guys. I sat down with my loving husband after reading my friend's post about her cleanse, and I grilled him about every bit of knowledge he gleaned from a weight lifting elective he took in college from a professor or instructor who also happened to be a nutritionist. Dan and I then talked about when I lost that other 40 pounds. Want to know what my life looked like then?
As I have written in past posts, very soon after I left my first marriage, I found Dan. It was like this weird thing in the back of my brain that told me he would be a safe place. We had had almost no contact in the 11 years between when we dated the first time and the time when I felt compelled to find some comfort in his person, but I just felt this weird drive. My first husband and I actually had gone through the divorce process at an earlier point, and I sought Dan during that period. My heart knew then that he still loved my heart, but my motivation was to recover in his arms from the shambles that my life had become. Like...a rebound. He made it pretty clear that life was taking him in a different direction (grad school hundreds of miles away) and he didn't feel like he could be JUST my friend. We parted ways, but when I searched for him this last time - this one last time, my dissatisfaction in the relationship being platonic was replaced by being comforted by that very same thing.
He was very careful with my heart. We started as friends. I felt comforted again by the fact that he didn't have a problem telling me if something I was doing was off, but would also handle me with kid gloves if I was hurting. We didn't stay only friends for long. Our relationship was long distance for months, and then he scraped together what he needed to hop a plane to visit me for his fall break. I had already lost the first 10 pounds at by then. During Dan's visit, he woke me up with breakfast in bed. One morning it was eggs benedict, but for a few mornings after that, it was a giant made-from-scratch brownie and a steaming cup of coffee made exactly how I liked it. He sent me with a packed lunch every day, and it was never just a sandwich. I went from having people offer me the the second half of their leftovers to my coworkers being jealous of my lunch! Then I would come home to not an empty house. Before my key hit the door, I could hear him moving around my tiny kitchen and smell delicious things. Then we would eat a meal rivaling most restaurants and then he would make me dessert. The rest of the evening would be spent watching television together or doing things that I can't mention...because that's private. Frown or smile upon that as you choose, it happened. To be honest, that whole picture made me feel more safe and more loved and more beautiful than I had since the last time I'd been in his arms.
After he left, some coworkers mentioned that I looked thinner. I stepped on a scale and realized that I'd lost another 5 or 6 pounds. For 2 months, my weight stayed the same. He came to visit me again over Christmas break. After he left, another 7 pounds. I eventually had to move in with him (yes "had to" - that's another blog post). Once that happened, I lost another few pounds until one day, after having capped out post pregnancy at 185, I was 136. That is literally my weight the year that I was 22 years old an entire year before I had my first pregnancy. I actually freaked out a little bit, but my body was going to do what it was going to do.
A few months passed. I moved with Dan back to the same town as my ex husband and our shared children (yep - also had to leave my kids for 7 months. That's also a separaate blog post). I also found out I was pregnant. As I said much earlier in this riduculously long post, I stayed small for my whole pregnancy. After I delivered, though, I found myself at the final weight being exactly the same as it was after the birth of my third child the pregnancy for whom left me 35 pounds overweight.
So here Dan and I sat for upwards to an hour talking about how my life was different when I was losing weight. Do you know what we figured out? It was really simple. It was 3 things.
1. I was freely accepting love that was being offered to me and limiting contact with toxicity.
2. I was eating.
3. I was eating often.
As far as number 1 goes, I'm just going to tell you that I've done so much research on how to deal with toxic people and have implemented so much of that research into my life that I feel like I could test out of a grad school course. The gripe about that is, I am forced to have exposure to toxicity for the rest of my life because there are children involved. God and I have had many, many conversations about this, and I have cried enough tears, that I have been able to reach a level of acceptance that my own mother doesn't even understand. Hey dude, I don't hate you. There's part of my heart that will have a version of love for you forever. Please take every part of every investment I made in you, and do better. Just know this, my friend. Your ability to hurt me is very, very limited. - Thats what you say to toxicity. You address it. You acknowledge it for what it is. You acknowledge that it exists and you respect it like you respect fire, and you make peace. You also keep enough distance between you and the fire to not be burned....ever...again.
As far as number 2 and 3, because of number 1's deep, deep effect on my life, after I had this baby, I reverted to what I had lived when I had babies before. I acted as if the same expectations existed. The same stress filled my soul and the same defensiveness that, honestly, kept me from going insane before, reappeared much to the confusion of husband. Unfortunately, I cannot count the times my husband has passionately yelled at me in his own defense "I am NOT ****!!!" I felt inadequacies every time a task wasn't completed and was paralyzed by absolute grief over my failures...only to have someone with whom my heart is safe communicate to me that my worth as His passion and His love for me was not based on my ability to complete a task. And then Dan would offer me the same sentiment.
I'm sorry, but when your spouse offers you love that reflects that of the God of the universe, you know you struck gold.
So 2 nights ago, after almost 4 years of reinforcement, I felt permission to get a pen and paper and sit and ask my husband about how we can get me healthy. He spent so much time answering the weirdest questions. Then, despite the fact that we were under a flood warning because it was raining so hard, he got in the car with me and rode to the store and helped me choose each thing to be on my menu. Then he came home and COOKED everything I would need for the next few days and portioned it out for me after I explained to him that I literally don't have time (actually at this point, I'm still trying to establish in my brain the permission) to portion everything out. Last night he came home after working for 10 hours outside of our home and made my dinner for me.
Here's my instructions. I eat food of much superior quality to Doritos, and I eat less of it 8 times a day. The whole idea is that I'm supplying my body with actual good quality fuel as often as I need it. Also, I leave the towels in the washer or the dishes on the "dirty" side of the counter. I take care of myself before tasks. I go for a walk to pump blood through the heart that's not doing so great so I can make it strong again and use it for longer.
Do you know what has happened as a result of this? First and foremost, I'm developing a cap for how many snap peas I can eat. Also, I feel more awake. My body does, but so does my soul. I feel so much comfort in knowing that I MUST put food into my body, so I don't have to worry about feeling so sleepy. I feel sore in muscles that I didn't realize had been forced to sleep. Here's the other funny thing - and this is some physical but mostly psychological - I'm enjoying my family. I'm spending more time SEEING Audrey. I no longer feel like I'm failing her by not making her surroundings perfect. I'm just playing with her and enjoying that. I'm gaining the presence of mind to tell her how pretty she is and that she is my treasure and that God loves her. I'm excited all over again for my husband to walk back through the door because his actions now have me sold that I matter because he loves me. I am not an appliance. I never have been to him.
I'm going to be honest, the original title of this was "On Mothering" because I wanted to write about how some women seem to feel like they're not allowed to compliment or enjoy their children and how having kids can distract you big time from self care (again - hygiene not pampering). The rest of this I have been suppressing. Every time I wrote about it in the past, my anger would take over. Well, I'm not angry anymore, and if you have traveled this journey with me as you carried some of my burden, know that we reached our destination, okay? Because remember, a change in circumstances or surroundings good or bad means way less than health and how you care for yourself. A great measure of care is forgiveness, and I can now offer that to every person who has robbed my heart. I'm not afraid anymore to tell you about my dirty little secret because you know what? Everyone has one. And if I tell you about mine and how I healed after it tore my soul to shreds, maybe you'll look at yours and realize that God can do a whole lot with just really...no more than a mustard seed of material.
I love you. If you're reading this, I do not care who you are. You are precious because God made you for a beautiful reason, so I will extend to you no less. Because dirty little secrets are not bigger than the gleaming, shiny light of Love and Hope, and those two are a person one and the same.
