On this day, 23 years ago, my father disowned me for coming out as a lesbian. This occurrence along with a myriad of confusing, disconnecting and heartbreaking events cemented my already fierce, passionate and desperate union with food. If my father, mother or whomever I loved and wanted to be close to was unavailable, I could always turn to my other beloved which was always there, food. I defended my relationship with food vehemently, lest anyone get in the way of what kept me from having it. I was fat-rights advocate because anyone who wanted to minimize my portions was confused, under the influence of sexist thought, fallen pry to the patriarchy of keeping women small and weak. Whom ever uttered a word about food choices, weight loss or health was immediately sent to the “enemy” camp, labeled as one who had only conditional love for me, and therefore undesirable, not trustworthy. My thinking, that one could actually have a relationship with food and my treatment of food as a powerful, demanding entity led to a straight and direct path to tipping the scale at 273lbs. That was four years ago.
My road had been strewn with strife. When I started this program, I was at war with my mother. Our volatile relationship had erupted into a no-contact battle zone. My former partner and mother of my child had left me in a very dramatic, heart wrenching tornado, my heart pieces blown all over my personal map. My blood pressure was stealthily climbing towards an alarming wake-up call. My constant, steady and rapid emotion was rage, which visited me often and with a vengeance. It was my frequent visitor, often holding hands with my food. This triangulated alliance of food, rage and what was left of my inner spirit, was getting tighter and, like invasive ivy, suffocated any avenues towards closeness with people. I was getting progressively more isolated, desperate and bigger. That’s what my disease looked like. This disease is wily. Our bottom doesn’t necessarily look like other addictions. I may have been fat, but my skin was ruddy and wrinkle-free and my hair, overflowing with vitamins and minerals, looked healthy. I had a partner and kids and a home. Although my career path was too overwhelming to look at, I wasn’t homeless in a gutter. No. I was heading towards a heart attack or diabetes, both silent creepers. I wanted to be a good parent, but I was raging and out-of-control: the complete opposite of the kind of parent that I wanted to be, and my kids cowered. Mostly I lived in fear that I would lose everything I had.
And then, for reasons that I still don’t understand, but for which I am humbly grateful, grace reached out and placed me smack in the middle of a fork, one way leading to abstinence, the other, to the same hard hitting reality which I’d been knocking my head on for decades. And then grace nudged me towards the path of right living. And this is what has happened since: By admitting that I couldn’t do this alone, I have a newfound relationship with the universe, myself and nature. All I had to do was ask. This triangulation now lets me have a really good life. My father is not only in my life, he is in this program. Thank God. My relationship with my mother did a 180. It’s amazing how profoundly she’d changed now that I stopped blaming her and decided to look at my own shortcoming. Once I was able to really take a look at my part in all of my broken, fragile unions, I was able to get some seriously compressing weight off my shoulders and abdomen and butt. With this program, I have a warrior’s code by which I try and live. If it gets messy, I must clean it up. I know if I don’t, my disease will be right there, happily jumping in to the muck and miring my life. My life is anything but static. One of the most divine aspects of my life is that I get to notice: I notice the profusion of magnolias that wink to the cherry and pear trees as I hike up physical and spiritual mountains; I notice on dark and gloomy days, when I forget there’s hope, hummingbirds, the bringers of joy, surround my home and open my heart. I notice how connected I feel to a range of emotions, how less dramatic life is, but how Technicolor it has become. I notice how lucky I am to be surrounded by folks, kin really, who are holding me as I hold them, as we walk this path together, as we witness each others valleys and zeniths. And I am so grateful that we get to share the weighed and measured abundance this earth has to offer with an incredible presence of mind and heart.
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