Stay

The following piece was written on November 7th, 2016 after the results of the U.S. presidential election were announced. The words remain relevant today.

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Every cell of my body is screaming “leave!” this morning. There is no where I want to be less than here.

But I stay.

When I heard the news I ran to the toilet to throw up. I sat on the floor of the bathroom rocking back and forth, trembling, breath shallow, wanting so intensely to leave this moment, this world.

But I stay.

My mind grips and grasps for me to run away to the future. To the what ifs. To the terror. To the tracing of all the steps in history that lead me and us to this moment. To the search for blame. To the desperation for salvation. My mind implores and beckons me to leave.

But I stay.

As a woman, my body has rarely felt like home. For too long I didn’t live here. Here was not a place to trust. Here was not a place that I thought I could handle with my eyes open. But I found my way back and I stay.

Today the invitation I have for you may not be easy: stay.

Stay in your body. Stay with the tremors and the shaking. Stay with the pit in your stomach. Stay even as you notice yourself bobbing in and out. These feelings. This trauma. This fear and anger and sadness and confusion and despair cannot kill us. In fact staying is our salvation.

Stay in your body. Just sidle up next to whatever sensation is coursing through your flesh. Feel the pain. Notice the quality of your breath. Are you hungry? Cold? Perhaps the best way to describe here is ‘numb’?

That’s all welcome. Stay.

The body knows and it has evolved over millennia to process trauma like many of us are experiencing. These processes require little effort on our part other than loving presence…other than staying with kindness.

Stay.

In staying we can receive our bodies wise requests. Is it aching for companionship? Asking for quiet? Nudging us to put away the screens or put on a sweater? Now is the time to heed our body’s requests. Now is the time to stay.

There may not yet be answers to the questions in our mind but we can answer the requests of the body.

There will be a time in the near future that we act boldly, consistently, together and with steadfast determination but right now the impact has just happened, the car has just rolled, the fire just ravaged through, leaving our skin raw and our being bewildered. So right now our best action is to simply stay.

Stay and tend. Stay and feel. Stay and listen.

Here is my call: let our response to this moment be deeper embodiment.

Why embodiment? What can embodiment do in the face such real-life practical threats? Embodied people are resourced. Embodied people are awake. Embodied people are rooted.

If there were ever a time for people to be resourced, awake, and rooted this is it.

Let our commitment be to stay and to feel and then to act on behalf of those whose bodies are most threatened. And it’s all a threat to bodies isn’t it?

Marriage equality and LGBTQ rights? Human bodies.

Racial justice? Bodies.

Reproductive rights? Bodies.

War? ISIS? Bodies.

Affordable and accessible healthcare? Bodies.

Responsible gun control? Bodies.

Immigration? Bodies.

The disembodied cannot support and protect the physically vulnerable nearly as effectively as an army of the deeply embodied.

Don’t move to Canada. Don’t disappear. Don’t check out. Don’t give up. Don’t turn to your escape of choice. Stay. Just here. Just now. In this hurting, reeling body.

All you need to is stay and when you leave, come back as soon as you are aware. Stay.

When all you want to do is leave. When hopelessness nips at your toes. When you don’t know where to go or what to think or how to proceed. Just stay here in your powerful, vulnerable, sacred flesh.

The way forward will be found here and together, in our bodies, we will rise.

Letting Go of What "They" Think

In the early months of anorexia the praise I received about my appearance and weight loss served as fuel for a dangerous fire.

“You look great!”
“What are you doing? You look awesome.”
“I wish I had your willpower.”
“Wow, you have a great body.”

Friends, strangers, and even my parents, in the early days, doled out praise for what appeared to be a newly discovered commitment to health and the smaller pants I could fit into. Approval was like a drug. It felt good, really good, when it started and it served as a motivation later on. When I didn’t want to go to the gym or I wanted to eat something beyond my ultra restricted diet all I did was think about what people would say if I gained weight and that was enough to keep me in line. In a lot of ways I was addicted to praise. The high I got from others celebrating my physical form (and how it conformed) was palpable. The panic I felt when (I projected that) others judged my body negatively was crushing. My colleague Tara Mohr is brilliant when it comes to the topic of unhooking from praise and criticism. Tara says that being hooked takes different forms, including:

1. Dependence on, or addiction to praise – causing us to do only those things that are likely to get us gold stars and others’ approval

2. Avoidance of praise – not wanting to stand out from the crowd – even for positive reasons, which causes us to self-sabotage, to not do our best work

3. Fear of criticism – which causes us to not innovate, share controversial ideas, pursue interests where we’ll be fumbling beginners or fail along the way, or do anything that makes us visible enough to be criticized!

She makes the astute suggestion to “always look at feedback as giving you information about the person or people giving the feedback, rather than information about yourself." Tara's writings explores this topic mostly in the context of our careers and I want to take it further and apply it to praise and criticism of our bodies and food choices.

And unhooking in this realm is not an easy thing to do because we all want to belong. We all want approval. When we are praised it feels great. When we are judged or rejected it can feel devastating. And yet, living at the mercy of the approval of others, striving to conform in our appearance or diets to what others or “society” deems good is the definition of disempowerment.

Being able to live our lives and make basic choices like what to eat, when to eat, and how much to eat without factoring in what other people will think is essential if we are to feel free and unmasked. It’s essential if we are to stay connected to the immense wisdom of our bodies.

Feeding ourselves is one of the most basic acts of autonomy. No one else should have a say in what we put into our bodies and yet for too many women, with each bite, comes a cacophony of judgemental voices—some real, some projected. This happens when we get dressed too. Our minds run off with thoughts of "Does this make me look fat?" "Does this show my belly/thighs/arms/butt, etc?" "Will so and so think I’ve gained weight?" "Will they think I’ve given up?"

Too often we sit on the side lines, skip the party, or spend more than we can afford on clothing just to mitigate the judgement we fear others will have of how we look. But, as Tara so eloquently explains

“the goal...is not to become impervious to praise and criticism. That would be impossible. It would also be inhuman, and would force us to deny an important part of ourselves….The part of us that wants others to receive us with appreciation, with enthusiasm – the part that wants to be loved by those around us? I think that’s a very tender, real, part of us, a part to honor too. The point is not to become disconnected from feedback, to have such a thick skin that we can’t feel it or hear it, but rather, to become “unhooked” by it, to not be run by it. The point is to be run by our own wisdom...The goal is to not have others’ ideas about us distract us, silence us, or take us on an emotional roller coaster.”

I agree. In the end it comes down to what we each, as individuals, decide is important in a meaningful life. Unhooking from praise and criticism when it comes to our bodies and our food choices is a life long practice. Each of us has an ego that is ready and willing to lure us back to that to the roller coaster. Getting hooked isn't a failure.

So what does it look like when we’re unhooked from body praise and criticism? It looks like this:

• Eating what we want, not more or less based on what other people are eating or who we are eating with, or what social function we have coming up on our calendar.

• Allowing photos of us to be taken and seen, knowing that a single moment captured in 2-D doesn’t define us or tell our whole story.

• Not hiding in the ways we dress or hiding what we are choosing to eat.

• Letting someone else’s comments about our appearance be about them.

• Dressing and adorning ourselves for ourselves, with pride, and the body we have today.

• Observing the hurt or fear that comes from criticism and looking inward to where we may be holding self-judgement. After all, it’s much harder to be hurt by criticism we don’t agree with.

• Doing our best to practice non-judgement when it comes to other people’s eating and appearance.

• Sometimes consciously giving up the SHORT-TERM high we know we'd get if we went on a crash diet. We unhook when we choose long-term, internally-based sustainable happiness instead of short-term, external hits of power. This happens in small moments.

• When necessary, reminding other people that our body, appearance, and food choices are entirely our own domain—no outside contributions needed or welcome.

Unhooking is a practice, but remember, what I think of you, or she thinks of you, or he thinks of you, or your inner critic thinks of you doesn't much matter. You are in charge. Your body is yours. Your reasons behind your food choices are personal and multifaceted and no one's business.

Go to the party. Take the photograph. Put on whatever size clothing fits your body today and feels comfortable. Eat what you want, in public, in front of people who are still entranced by diet culture. Have no shame for struggling, getting hooked, bumbling toward finding your way, or being a human who feels deeply—this stuff isn't easy. Ultimately though, when you can, remember that what other people think about your body and food choices only has as much power as you give it.

A World Gone Mad

Last week was National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. My colleague Carmen Cool posted this update to facebook:

“Someone asked me yesterday what the one thing was that helped me in recovering from an eating disorder. I’d love to say it was something like love, kindness, or self-compassion. It wasn’t. It was outrage.”

My response: “Amen.”

I could so relate.

Back in 2002 when I was walking my own path of recovery I was enraged. All the hatred I had previously turned inward had found it's rightful target and it wasn't my thighs. I was furious with my college for not doing more to prevent and treat eating disorders. I was furious with irresponsible and shallow media outlets for continuing to celebrate thinness. I was furious at the dieting industry for getting away with what I honestly consider crimes against humanity. I was angry and I was going to do something about it. I spent my first year out of college working tirelessly on prevention and outreach efforts. I moved across the country to get my master’s degree knowing my life would be dedicated to righting these wrongs.

Today though, I find it hard to maintain that same fire I had all those years ago. It’s more a steady burn with occasional pyrotechnic explosions.

While I wish it wasn’t true, when injustices and ignorance are in the air we breathe it can be hard to avoid apathy sometimes.

In this moment as I write this I don’t feel apathetic. I feel like I’m living in a world gone mad.

While driving around town last week I listened to a radio interview with a non-verbal autistic woman named Sue Rubin. Sue was able to participate in the interview by typing her responses which her aide read aloud. When I tuned in the interviewer was explaining that some people believe we should not seek a cure for autism and instead embrace autistic people’s differences. Sue responded that people who feel that way tend to be verbal because if they were ‘trapped’ in their bodies, unable to speak, they would want a cure.

Then to close the interview this question was asked: “If there was a pill you could take tomorrow to get rid of your autism would you take it?”

Sue responded with “I would probably take a pill for weightloss first, but to answer your question yes.”

WHAT THE F*CK!

First of all, Sue is not fat, for what it's worth. Second, she is unable to speak and the first pill she’d want is for weightloss?!

I’m sorry but when being fat is considered so awful people would rather die years sooner or be completely blind than be considered obese something is very very wrong.

Last night I was watching an episode of (the admittedly mediocre) show The Blacklist in which a female character notices her male colleague is self-conscious about losing his hair. This is the their exchange:

Her: Guys don’t get it. Most women don’t care if you go bald. You’re sexy no matter what.

Him: I’m not going bald, I just have a high hairline.

Her: Just don’t get fat.

I do the New York Times Crossword puzzle. A recent clue was “A question best answered with ‘no’” the answer: “Do I look fat?”

When I say ignorance is in the air we breathe I mean it. This type of comment, one that perpetuates the myth that being fat means that you’re unattractive or undesirable, is so commonplace that most people hardly notice it. But I notice it. I see it. And it’s not okay.

Last year I learned of a study from a Princeton psychologist that revealed how poverty effects cognitive ability. The basic findings of the study are that poor people's brains are bogged down by thoughts of scarcity and attempts to find a way to provide for basic needs that they perform more poorly than wealthy people on intelligence tests. The researcher said, "In many instances, it's not that the poor aren't as smart or capable of planning compared as richer people, rather, being poor takes up more mental capacity."

Similarly so many of my clients have given up such enormous portions of their mental real estate to thoughts and behaviors rooted in fat phobia and shame that their capacities to simply live, think, engage, and serve are noticeably truncated.

I think this is one of the biggest misperceptions about commonplace fat shaming and fat humor: that it’s harmless.

It’s not harmless.

Every time we participate, actively or passively, in discrimination and prejudice of any kind we perpetuate the problem.

To be clear: it’s okay to be fat.

Fat people are just like smaller bodied people in every way. Some are lazy, some are not. Some are healthy, some are not. Some are more classically beautiful, some are beautiful in a different way. Some are kind, some are not. Body size does not determine a person’s worth or well being. Some of us are poodles, some of us are mastiffs:

Unfortunately in our society body size can and often does determine how you’ll be treated, perceived, and which opportunities will be available to you.

I may not be on fire or angry everyday, but today I am.

We're living in a world gone mad.

Sacred Ground

"...and your very flesh shall be a great poem..."

— Walt Whitman

Growing up just outside Washington, DC resulted in my childhood having it’s fair share of visits to historical sites, such as Civil War battlefields, like Gettysburg.

If you’ve ever been to a memorial site, especially one where great loss actually took place, you know that you can feel it. What you’re standing on at these places is sacred ground and each has a powerful energetic fingerprint. Perhaps you’ve felt it while visiting the 9/11 Memorial in New York City, Auschwitz in Poland, or The Killing Fields Museum in Cambodia.

Sadly the world is full of sites where atrocities have left an imprint, physical or energetic.

In my early twenties as I was emerging victorious from my own battle with anorexia the only way I could relate to my body was as this sacred ground. While not visible to the eye, my body felt like modern day Gettysburg battlefield.

This flesh—my flesh—was where a war had been fought and won.

And what this meant to me was that anything less than sacred awe was not good enough.

In the years since then I have encountered in my life and in the lives of those I work with serious trauma. Childhood abuse. Sexual assault. Mental illness. Loss of parents and children. Battles with cancer. Amputation.

And it doesn’t take catastrophic incidents like these to leave trauma. Life is traumatic.

Life is traumatic and our bodies bare the brunt of it. They are our sensory input tool and they are where we experience (or repress) emotion. Our bodies are the tools or fight or flight...or freeze. Our bodies are the recipient of heinous cultural norms. Our bodies, depending on where we live in the world, aren’t even always considered our own.

Life is also miraculous. The ways in which our body heals, allows for connection, creates new life, and enables our lives is marvelous.

All this is to say: feel the sacred ground you are living in.

Feel that you are sacred in every cell of your body.

Stand in awe of not just what has happened on your ‘land’ but on what you have survived and created.

Stand tall.

Consider reverence as a new template for how you inhabit this flesh of yours.

Like Whitman says, your "flesh shall be a great poem".

A Weightless Year

Fact: my coaching clients send the nicest cards.

Fact: this card moved me to tears.

Dear Sweet Rachel,

It was exactly one year ago that you and I had a one-on-one. You may or may not remember that you presented me with a challenge. The challenge was to not weigh myself for one year. I remember at the time being overwhelmed with the challenge, especially given that I had purchased a scale several weeks before our chat. But after our call I made the decision to trust the process and stay away from weighing myself. So here we are, a year later, and to date I haven’t stepped on the scale. I just wanted to thank you – this past year has been quite the journey and I’ve just barely begun. I am grateful for you, your dedication to the work that God has designed you for!

xoxo

It’s updates like this that reinvigorate me and rekindle my fire for calling us forth into Well-Fed living.

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: what we weigh is useless information. It tells us nothing of value. Just about everything worth knowing comes from inside of us. Knowing our weight is rarely ever about well-being. We step on the scale to measure our worth, to gauge how out of control we are (or feel) in our lives, and to help us make decisions we’re afraid to let our bodies make.

If you didn’t know what you weighed, what would happen? How would you know when to eat and when to stop eating? How would you know when to move your body and when to rest? How would you know if you were enough or too much?

You would listen. Ear to yourself and you’d hear “Feast. Rest. Trust.”

You would listen. Ear to your heart and you’d hear “You are enough, never more, never less.”

The scale takes you away from yourself. Giving it up brings you home.

The Five Languages of Body Love

Have you heard of The Five Love Languages?

I’m guessing yes given the best-seller status of the book, but if not, here’s the rundown.

Gary Chapman, the author, posits that there are five ways that we can show love to each other, and especially toward a romantic partner: through gifts, quality time, words of affirmation, act of service, and physical touch.

The idea is that each of us has a dominant love language, or way we are best able to receive love. If our partner shows their love in a language we don’t ‘speak’ well then we might end up feeling uncared for or unloved. The trick, Chapman argues, is to understand each others love language and do our best to communicate accordingly. Some people feel loved when they are given quality time while others interpret physical touch or gifts as an affirmative signs.

I think this theory has a lot of value AND I think we need to take it with a big grain of salt. I’m not sure that love can be simplified so easily, but it’s valuable to note that we all experience it uniquely.

Switching subjects for a minute, let's talk about our bodies and how we feel about them. It's a pretty body-unfriendly swamp that we're swimming in. Everywhere you look are shame-inducing messages, overt and subliminal, targeted at our natural and diverse forms.

As a life coach and woman who seeks to practice self-acceptance and respect, I know just how much our relationship with our body determines how fulfilling our life is overall. Seriously, what's possible for a woman who is body-respectful is two-fold to what's possible to those ensnared in body-loathing.

So what does body love and The Five Languages of Love have to do with each other?

A lot. I’ve noticed that there are periods when we either communicate with our body through only one language or not through the language our body is asking us to love it through. To explore this further, here are the questions I began to ask myself and that you might find useful.

Gifts

Do I give my body gifts? Do I find yourself making kind purchases with my body’s care in mind? What’s the last gift I gave my body?

Quality Time

Do I give my body my time? Do I leave space in my life for my body to be heard and cared for? When is the last time I spent quality time with my body?

Words of Affirmation

Do I speak kindly towards my body? Are the messages I surround my body with respectful and/or loving? What’s the last generous and sweet thing I said to my body?

Acts of Service

Do I consider myself my body’s advocate and caregiver? When was the last time I went out of my way to do something for my body?

Physical Touch

Do I lay my hands on my own flesh? Do I do so with love? Do I provide my body with opportunities for caring and loving touch from another? When was the last time my body felt that it had been touched “enough” or to the point of “fullness”?

This line of inquiry was powerful for me and it opened me up to all the ways I could expand my body-love practice. So interesting to see where we easily give love and where we have blind spots. If you want to communicate your body through a broader range of love languages, here are a few ideas:

Gifts

Purchase a foam roller and use it to loosen up with myofacial release.

Treat your body to a coveted care product, be it lotion, massage oil, or scented soap.

Offer your body clothing that makes you feel good, comfortable, and stylish.

Quality Time

Dedicate 10 minutes in the morning to scanning your body with presence and curiosity.

Allow your body to write you a letter in your journal.

Take a nap, regularly.

Words of Affirmation

Commit to one day of body-respectful talk towards yourself.

Put up affirming words on your walls, bathroom mirror, or refrigerator door.

Come up with a mantra to recite every time you are feeling anything less than loving towards your body.

Acts of Service

Advocate for your body to another. Make a request. Make your body’s desires known.

Cook for your body. Prepare food that delights all your senses and your belly.

Take your body to see the doctor or dentist for a routine check-up.

Physical Touch

Massage yourself with sesame oil after a shower.

Try out a new type of bodywork, such as craniosacral or Thai massage.

Make love to yourself or with a partner.

The trick here, if this inquiry interests you, is to explore what makes your body feel loved?

Change How You See Weight Change

Here are just some of the factors related to weight fluctuations:

Metabolic changes , hormonal changes, side effects from medication , pregnancy, socio-economic class shifts, restricted & binge eating, grief & trauma, stress, returning to or away from intuitive eating, injury, changes in activity, depression, happiness, hydration, puberty, menopause, genetics…

Of these, only pregnancy in a thinner body can be seen with our eyes. I had a client who, over the past few years, had gained weight. I can tell you that at least five of the above factors were present in her life.

She came to our session stressed about running into an ex-boyfriend and wondering how she’d explain her weight gain to him. She doesn’t have to. She doesn’t have to justify the change in weight at all. And while people will assume to know why someone weighs what they weigh, you know what they say about that.

What really matters, for my client and for all of us is this: sovereignty. What matters is having a body and life that is our own. What matters is having the freedom to experience life’s inevitable shifts.

Weight changes. It changes daily, weekly, annually, and throughout our entire life. It’s normal. It’s human. Our society shames bodies for sure, but we shame bodies who change weight even more. Unless of course we idolize and worship the change (almost always a weight loss).

I want to make crystal clear: Weight changes. You don’t have to explain it. You don’t have to justify your weight or anything else about your body. Let your body finds it’s way. Oh, and try not to assume why someone else’s weight has changed. We really never know.

What I Know About Weight

I've spent the past 10 years immersed in the study of how people relate to our hungers, food, bodies, and yes, weight. I've looked at these topics academically, professionally, personally, spiritually, and just about every which way you can...here is what I know:

1. I know it’s entirely useless to know what you weigh. I know that most people will disagree with me on that point. I know that I'm okay with that.

2. I know that giving up knowing your weight is one the most liberating and radical acts of self-care we can do. (Imagine living the rest of your life not knowing your weight, could you do it?)

3. I know weight fluctuates our whole lives and throughout each day.

4. I know you can find a healthy person at nearly every weight. I know you can find an unhealthy person at nearly every size. I know size is not a predictor of health.

5. I know beauty really does have nothing to do with size. If one doesn’t see beauty when looking at a human body the only thing that needs changing is the eyes of the beholder.

6. I know that too many use weight to measure their enoughness.

7. I know that too many try to control their weight because they can’t control the world around them.

8. I know that the happiest I’ve ever been did not coincide with the thinnest I’ve ever been. Not even close. In fact, my happiness doesn’t depend on my size. Fancy that.

9. I know each of us has a set-point happy-place weight, determined by an unknowable mix of genetics and lifestyle. No amount of exercise and starvation will necessarily change this. Nor do we need it to. I know that for many their body's happy place weight is well-above what our society deems okay.

10. I know sizeism is one of the last forms of socially acceptable prejudice. I know we must change this. I know weight prejudice and stigma are killing people.

11. I know we are living in a world that is crying out for people to shift their energy and attention from weight-loss and weight shame to engaged, compassionate, embodied, and awake living.