If I close my eyes and imagine my physical body, a jumble of images tumble into my brain like memories of a movie I once saw. I see bits of me each morning and evening: soapy water cascades down limbs, breasts and belly, to feet. The dressing and undressing. The carefully applied make-up and tweezing of brows. And then this week I saw all of me.
I asked Mr P to take a full length photo as a visual reminder during this process of getting healthier, leaner, stronger. A walden-filtered selfie at just the right angle to highlight my cheek bones, it was not.
It was sobering. To see the size of my near-naked body. The REALNESS of it. The way my breasts sit round and upright, but my belly slightly hangs. The swell of my hips. The width of my thighs and the tops of my arms.
The 35 pounds/15 kilos of extra weight I am carrying is right there: every tired, sad, bored, lonely unconscious mouthful. The times I didn’t care enough to chop some veges and ordered in. The nights when a tub of taramasalata, a stack of toasted pitta bread and a bottle of wine constituted dinner. The bars of chocolate I ate in one sitting (in case it went off). The times I sat inside or took a cab or just did not participate in my life.
All the ways I didn’t believe I was enough, I am carrying with me every day.
The most shocking thing is that all I felt for that woman in the photograph was love. I do not recognise her as me. And yet she is the woman who can run non-stop for half an hour, who can sit in a bar till closing having laughed her way through a bottle of sparkling water, who dreams up imaginative ways to make salad, who made a large bar of Whittakers Coconut Rough chocolate last two weeks (seriously!).
My one promise to myself is to honour my body and get healthy, lean and strong. And the only way that works for me is with love and forgiveness and kindness. And the shedding of this weight is a slow old process, it will take me the rest of this year (has taken the best part of twenty five years). And it needs to take this time in part because there are lessons I still need to learn along the way.
I’ve come too far to give up now. But man, I am just so fucking ready for my outsides to match my insides.
thank you. because i can fool myself and then i look at my naked body and the litany of self-abuse begins. i so want to feel love for how this vessel has carried me all these years, allowing me to abuse it and still there for me, always hoping that i’ll begin to appreciate rather than hate.
i’ve been more mindful of what goes in and moving my body every day that i can, choosing to go to exercise class and not go out for lethal margaritas the night before.
yes – for me feeling love BECAUSE this vessel has carried me was a turning point. that, and changing the story that i couldn’t change my body or that it was somehow working against me.
being kind to myself and being my own little ‘woohoo! cheerleader’ has made all the difference.
I fucking love you.
And for the record, I think every last bit of you is gorgeous.
I’m so proud of you.
xo
Sas, once again your writing is like holding up a mirror to myself. Thanks for articulating this scene and love with brutally kind honesty. Good luck with the remaining 15 kilo, for running more 30-mins-without-stopping and the ongoing path of discover. x
thanks love! brutal kind honesty – i like that description :)
Thank you xx
This post resonates with me. It mirrors a post I made on my blog last week. Yes, to outsides matching my insides. Yes, to forgiveness. It seems daunting, and it is so easy to listen to that litany of self deprecation streaming thru my mind.
For the record, you are effing gorgeous.
forgiveness is so weirdly magically powerful, no? it doesn’t come naturally to me – I have had to learn/am still learning how to forgive.
As often happens, we’re in similar places. I heard a woman say recently that she was finally seeing her over-eating as being akin to self-harm. I can’t STOP hearing her. As a teen I came very close to self-harming. Dabbled. I thought it never came to anything but now I see that I started smoking instead. The slow-but-sure self-harm. When I stopped smoking and felt smug, I replaced it with eating badly, chaotically and too much. I’ve been doing some work with EFT (blast from my past!) and peeled back some layers to see the depth of this. To the point where simply tapping a point on my middle finger made me crumble into a sobbing heap, time and time again. Thank god the sun’s shining or I’d be bedbound :)
Anyhoo…I see my strategies for coping with stress of ANY kind are all frozen at 13 year old me. They are immature, indulgent, harsh, panicky and unfathomably sad and tired. I’ve been reiki-ing teen me and letting her know I love her and that it’s okay…I got this…she can go and dance in her bedroom and forget about having to look after the world when she doesn’t know how but she daren’t let go.
Your outsides are damn HOT but your insides…oh my goodness. Watch out world. You are brave and true and fabulous and I love you.
xxx
i love this! love that you are forgiving 13 year old self. SUCH a formative age.
you’ve reminded me how scared and sad I was at 13: bullied at school, awkward and uncertain of myself, immersed in books. I learnt how to hide from the world then, too.
i definitely needed to spend more time dancing in my bedroom!
i think this was the year i discovered The Smiths…
I read a line of Anne Lamott’s this week: “Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.”
She rocks.
It takes huge courage to say goodbye to the past and leave it, wounded and unfixed. but unless we can do it, how do we ever really engage with now? I believe we can do it, you and me :) LYNR xxx
Jo, I love that quote. It sums it up perfectly my path of understanding how I got to where I am now but refusing to let it define where I go from here. Thanks for sharing it here!
perfect!
i love that you are ready for your outsides to match your insides. i was thinking that i want the same for myself. but something (STILL) is holding me back. i don’t know what, but it’s there and i want to meet it and tell it i don’t need holding back anymore and that it’s okay for me to start again and nothing has been a failure.
i believe you can do it.
I read this post out loud to a friend on the phone last night, we were both rather teary! So beautiful and honest and real. Onya Sas, you are testament to the power of kindness.
wow shauna – knowing you are out there reading, makes me so grateful for the interwebs xxx
Yes, I hear you, Sistah.
I am battling with the same things myself.
i have to resist the idea that this is in fact a battle. I am trying to see it as easy and fun! and thinking of ways to make it so – the air con gym has been LOVELY this week – i have looked forward to going and taking some respite from the heat.
exercise and me are getting to be better friends :)
This is the second time I’ve read this post. This latest has me in a magical cabin in Inverness, CA after ringing in my birthday. I brought a stack of old journals and books. So many entries about ‘this time…’ it would be different. ‘this time’…I had truly had it. But yet here I sit heavier than ever before, but having a true moment of acceptance. Wandering about naked due the safety of being surrounded by woods. Dips in the Japanese soaking tub on the deck. Your words are so true and well sorted. I long for where you are and am making my way. Thank you for your candor and sharing your journey. I do enjoy you!!
I have those journals too :) and right now mine are all about resisting the temptation to not believe i can do this for the last time, having gone up and down for the last 20 years depending on my emotional state.
your magical cabin sounds absolutely divine! the perfect spot to spend time with yourself. and i know that it may sound trite, but really and truly – if i can do this – you can totally do this.
much love to you.
x
Battle.
You are right.
Most of us cannot get away with eating crap, or emotional eating, or drinking too much without the spare tyre.
Most of us have to put the yards in to get the bod. For some people it is unconscious, and some people it takes a lot of conscious effort.
Rather than having the battle/hate/giving up mentality, I probably have to have the “oh well, this is what I need to do to be healthy, let me make the best of my body and be my most awesome sexy self”.
Thanks :D
You are a beautiful woman. I believe in you. xxx
Amen. This is the conversation, struggle, challenge, opportunity I am currently having as well, so sick and tired of the whole thing, losing and gaining the same 20 pounds, smashing myself to bits, wanting to love myself exactly as I am, but also wanting to finally release the heaviness that has weighted down my heart and my body for too long.
Is it weird that I think at the heart of it I am afraid to be loved, to open my whole heart completely to it, that I don’t think I can face how truly brilliant and precious I am, that I fear the full measure of my true light will be too big, destroy me, that I won’t be able to handle it, that I’ll fuck it up? It’s as if there is a deep center that knows what’s possible, understands the responsibility that comes with that power, and is unable to face it, and instead wraps a thick blanket around that light, cocoons itself. Maybe that’s it, I’m a butterfly, or at least, I will be…
hello jill! thanks for your comment – i believe with everything I am that the only thing that stops us, makes us doubt, holds us back, keeps us small/quiet/dims our light is fear. and it shows up in all kinds of ways – the way we treat ourselves, others; how we shop, eat, drink, the clothes we wear, the pins we pinterest!
understanding this intellectually is one thing though, right? ‘how do i chip away at that fear and let some light in?’ is the question i have been sitting with for years.
its knowing the action to change. and then again LIVING that change wholeheartedly, incorporating it into our new selves and owing it.
thats the golden goose!
Thank you for this realness. There is so much of what you say here that resonates with my own current journey. My body has become a stranger to me, and it’s been so hard to see the truth of it. But about a month ago, for the first time ever, I said: “Maybe I don’t want the tiny, super-skinny body I used to have. Maybe I want the body I have now, just fit and strong and healthy.” Your words about wanting healthy and lean and strong — they resonate. Thank you.
you are so wise!
its so easy to get caught up in the nostalgia of the bodies we used to have isn’t it? i love that you are thinking about fit strong and healthy! thats so much more empowering and feels more present more mindful.
your comment reminded me of Justine’s Musk’s recent post.
i don’t know which i am more moved by, the post or the comments. here’s to knowing, embodying, and tuesdays. i am so grateful for you. xx
seriously, am blessed with the most awesome blog readers in the history of the universe x