Letter from Fat Me to Skinny me

I have been wanting to write this letter for a long time - and now just seemed the right time to do it......

Dear Skinny Carolyn –

Ya You – What the…&*#@! You can be just so impatient – so back up – I have some things to get off my chest!

You know what I have already lost 50 pounds! I was over 316 and now I am at 260. I know I still have a long way to go. But let’s stop a moment and appreciate the work it took to get this far. And I only put on 10 pounds when I had cancer and I took it off again. I have not regained the weight that too is an achievement.  So let’s celebrate that!

Now, skinny you know all the changes I have made, exercising, changing my eating habits, eating healthier, walking more, tracking my food. But you know it is still hard. I still like my sweets and sugar. I don’t always eat as I should, but the good habits are out weighing the bad. I don’t track all the time. I do have a whole box cheese crackers and Rockefeller mud cake. I occasionally make pancakes. I have peanut butter and jelly for lunch. I still bake and sometimes get frozen dinners when I am just too tired to cook. Occasionally I still get a pint of Ben and Jerry’s though I can’t eat the whole pint. There are times when it feels like I am doing really good eating what I should and exercising and then there are times when I do sometimes do the emotional eating – I am always getting better at seeing the pattern and addressing what is bothering me in healthier ways and not using food to comfort the pain like a drug, but I also still fall of the wagon. I still have days – occasionally – when sweet and buttery things rule the day. 

For a long time I accepted my weight - I loved my soft roundness. I celebrated being Rubenesque or like the Venus of Willendorf. I learned how to look really good in the body I had. When my father once fussed to me about my weight - I responded in an annoyed voice that "Diet is Die with T" - that was the end of the diet discussion. I ate what I loved and lived the best as I could. Cancer and other health scares led me to reevaluate my eating patterns, my emotional eating patterns, my issues of hiding and silence and my relationships with food and people, I didn't want to be dead before 65 of something I had a chance to prevent.

I eat more veggies and whole grains. I have yogurt for breakfast. Most days I bring a big salad to work for lunch. I am always finding new ways to keep protein and carbs in good balance. For the summer I have been having Real Fruit popsicles for my sweet after dinner treat. I also don’t go to the bodega for chips on my way home from dinner. So I am slowly changing the physical patterns.

But you know it is more than just eating and exercise – it is psychological – it is the pain and hurt for all those years, the neglect from my mother, the hiding, the silence. The fat and emotional eating were protection from me getting hurt again – and protection for me that I didn’t put myself out there to be hurt – it was a fat wall of protection. This is the truth and I am now finally forgiving myself, my mother and also changing the patterns on so many different levels. It is not just feeling unheard and uncared for as a little girl, but also all of the pressure the culture and society inundates me and you with. How we should look, think, feel, act to get the good job, the right man, to have a happy life. I hid as a way of protection, of saving myself in a world where it felt like people didn’t want to listen or support or love me. I was silent too, I just went about doing my thing in silence. I learned silence in my family – we rarely talked about things and it wasn’t safe for me to share really deep hurts – no one helped me solve the problem or they didn’t support me with encouragement when I did try to fix things – and when I did I got either the fix-it solution for dad or no emotional support from mom.

So along with changing every day eating patterns I am also changing the emotional patterns. I am only learning now how to be happy for me, how to take gentle loving care of me, how to overcome the lack of self-confidence and pattern of silence, and to instead go after my dreams. I know I have hid behind my weight and my silence, and I still do. I can’t do that any more – I want to share, communicate, build community, put my words and wisdom out there at truth but also for hope for others who have been in similar situations to mine – with the message they too can be happy, they too can heal, with hard work.

Changing both these physical and emotional patterns takes work and practice from me every day –

Changing both these physical and emotional patterns takes work and practice from me every day. It takes being aware and careful all the time. It takes practice every day. Maybe it will get easier as time goes on, maybe it won’t.

I know I am scared to be seen and heard. I am scared to put myself out there in both deed and voice. But I can’t stay here either – I can’t stay in the silence and hiding – I don’t like it – I have to get out of this old cocoon and break out in to the light and live as my spirits asks me to live.

I am learning other ways to be in the world, wise but not naively all open. I am learning to put myself out there slowly in small steps. I am learning to be there for friends as much as I can in love and support, even when it is a little uncomfortable for me. I making new patterns that are different from the patterns I learned growing up. 

So Skinny, I know you are there and I am getting closer to you every day. I love that you keep me on track. I keep dedicating my healthy efforts to you again and again. I keep losing more weight and feeling healthier. Together we will get to my goal of 150 pounds. Every day with small acts I get closer to the goal.

Fat me.

Liberation

Really taking the time to befriend my fears leaves me feeling lighter and filled with hope. In the past I would try to conquer them or fight against them.

I've been thinking about how I listened to my anxiety but I never took it a step further. Back when I was in grad school I learned to befriend my anxiety to listen and talk to it, but I never went to the fear that caused the anxiety, well, maybe I did, as with needing to write papers and such. Now that I have taken it a step further and am now talking to the fear directly it feels like I have come to some deeper understanding and lends new meaning to the phrase: Know thy self

Befriending Fears

Today has been a day with buzz in it - from a little bit of coffee - to fun meditations - to working through befriending my fears. So - as much as I am bubbling over with good things, I really want to first tackle something, that is at least for me, hard. Dealing with shame and guilt about fear - Boy! is this a can of worms! I got thinking about shame and guilt's connection to fear from a friends Facebook post.

This really got the old juices flowing. It got me thinking about all the shame we have around what we are afraid of. Well, maybe by just naming my fears and being honest, if only with myself, that I have them, this brings the fear out into the light, away from hiding in dark places in shame. Naming my fears, both big and small, for me doesn't give them more power, by bring them out and saying them and bring honesty's light to them takes their power away. Is looks to me as shame is the enabler of fear - if we are ashamed of things then we are afraid of them. If we admit these things opening as things that are, that simple act takes a lot of fear's power away. Now lately I have gotten some of this guilt in my mind - here is the question that has run through my mind - what of my fears are my own making and what are fears that have been handed down to me, by family, friends or society? There is part of me that thinks I am responsible for all my fears - and yes I am responsible for deciding what to do with them. And then - Wow - more work at taking apart fears! So, I work on not just breaking the patterns of behavior and action associated with fear - but I must reframe the story about that fear so that the fear as my internal story is no longer a fear. Taking a look at fear in this way helps me to feel empowered and gives me great hope.

All of these thoughts about fear, actions and stories brings me back to the days right after 9/11/2001. I made a very conscious decision not to be afraid working my way back to my apartment in Brooklyn on 9/12/2001. I can remember talking on the phone with my boss, letting her know that my primary goal for the day was to make my way home. I was not going to let this attack stop me from moving around this city I love. They may bomb the train I travel on or catch in some other attack, but I was not going to let that stop me from trying to get to my home. So, knowing that the trains I needed were up and running, I left my brothers apartment on West 100th Street in Manhattan and headed home to 345 Westminster Road, Brooklyn. Was I a little scared - sure I was - but my determination kept me calm, and my trust that this was my small act of courage in the midst of so much horror and devastation.

Subway stories

I have been bursting to tell this story all morning. This is my good deed for the day. Waiting for the G train to leave the station at Court Square in Queens the subway doors closed leaving a mom on the platform and her daughter, probably about 9 or 10, separated from her mom on the train. The train started to pull out of the station. I was shocked they couldn't stop to open the doors, but they didn't. The Train crew sent the girl a message over the PA system to meet her mom at the next station. I saw her start to cry so I went over and it was okay, everything was going to be okay. The little girl blopped sad in the seat next to me. I told her I would get off the train with her and wait so she wouldn't be alone. So we got off the train to wait at the next station. Then a Court Square bound train pulled up on the opposite track and that train's MTA conductor came to us and talked to the girl and took her back to the other station to meet her mom. I waited for the next train. I got on the next train and a couple of stops later the girl and her mom found me and thanked me. As I traveled on toward work I couldn't help feeling little Carolyn come to me and those images I have when I was little and alone and I was filled with tears. I kept saying to little Carolyn that I loved her so much, that I was so proud of her for protecting her special spirit, she was not alone. I hugged her and whispered to her everything would be okay. Even as I write this I go back and do and say these things, and cry a little....

Naming fears part 3-befriending fear strategies

I was starting to get down on myself, thinking 'geez, I am messed up with all these fears - I am never going to move forward' and then I started thinking about my cancer and all he fears I face and developed strategies to over come them. So why don't I do the same with these other fears. Instead of looking at them in one huge ball and then getting overwhelmed, why not take them one at a time.

So here is a fear I developed a strategy to work around. I get the white coat syndrome when I have my blood pressure taken. In order for me to feel comfortable, care for and listened to, I now ask the nurses to do it manually, instead of using a blood pressure machine. Sometimes I get an exasperated or nasty look, but I explain to the nurses that the machine hurts and is very uncomfortable, and then I thank them many times for going out of their routine to do this. And a try to joke with them a little. I now do this in every doctors office I go to and I can report that the last time I saw a doctor my blood pressure was 120/82, prefect and I did panic about have my blood pressure measured.

Naming fears part 2

I thought of another fear: that I won't be taken seriously when I go to visit directors in other workshop oranizations

And then a bright spot came to me: making peace with my it. Very recently my 'it's activity was increasing. I started to get scared, I didn't want to go back to where I was a couple of years ago or more. So, I talked with it. I said in a friendsly calm almost loving inner voice 'yes I know you are and I truely thank you for your attention. You are trying to tell me something, let me to be aware, especially to love myself.' It was in this little conversation that I went from a place of annoyance and even fear to a place of acceptance and even gratitude. Now there was a time when I was terrified of it - to the point of almost lossing my marbles. Many people helped but one key came when I worked with a healer/shaman who helped me see that it was part of me. So for me to get to this point of thanking it for the reminder and for being gratiful for the message it gives me is a HUGE step. Again it a calmed down, but every few days sh gives me a shake. I say to her 'hello, thank you for reminding to love myself'

This little story gives me a path with my other fears, to begin to befriend them and make them my allies and early warning system for issues that need to be dealt with. I also use my anxiety in the way. My anxiety is my warning system telling me I need to deal with something and soon

Naming Fears

I have found it hard to write here recently because of dealing with doubt and fears. I don't want to talk about them, and that is one why they hide. I talk and named some of my fears in therapy yesterday. I sat down as part of my nightly devotion and letting go of worries I sat down and wrote down a whole bunch of fears and then put them in my worry box for the goddess, which is getting fun and I will burn all those worries next week at Lammas, August 1/2. As I think about these fears there are other fears behind them too. I think by sharing them in various ways, therapist, here, my worry box, I bring those fears out into the light where they can't hide and I begin to have the courage to not so much conquer them but to befriend them, as I relearned in a recent workshop. So to bring them out into the light, to befriend them, to see they are not so overwhelming and huge but scared little things. Also that fear are not be be fought, but to be befriended and then to see the I am not my fears which then I hope will allow me to work at overcoming them with courage. Here is some of the list. Fear of: being alone when I am old - especially when I die that I won't find an intimate loving caring sexy relationship Losing friends not making womanspace a reality the NYC Red Tent Temple will cease to exist Men - I am scared of them - that they won't listen, won't be respectful, won't love me, won't accept me as I am that i am not good enough - that I don't have the skills to make womanspace and other dreams a reality that i am not enough - that I have to do more to prove who I am, prove more that i am important not having resources to get old with no one loves me being a failure in life disappointing my parents - still of making mistakes never being seen or heard It is hard to write these because my fears are where I am most vulnerable and most hurt And this also makes me think of the ritual that was part of the workshop last week that walked women through naming their fears, what they were connected to and them by saying these things and by positive affirmations began to break the power of the fears.