Holiday thoughts of you

Dear Blog readers, 

You are not alone. 

You are worthy and deserving. 

You are enough. 

You are SO enough. 

Remember to nourish your body, mind and spirit. 

Your Blog Moderator, 

Kira

Eating Disorder Recovery Over the Holidays

Holidays. Pretty lights all around. Familiar sights and smells. Family. 

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, its there. In your face. All the time. Every store. Every advertisement. You can’t escape it. For some it is a beautiful time of year. For others it is the epitome of hell. 

Whatever you celebrate throughout the year, I’m sure you can relate to family gatherings, work parties, and getting together with friends. 

It is joyous and exhausting. It is full of expectations and obligations. Warmth and love. Stress and anxiety. All wrapped up with a big bow made of good and bad memories. 

I reached out to the community and asked for some strategies to stay safe, well, and on track this season. 

Here are some of their ideas:

“I made myself a small soothing package that I keep in my purse. It has a fidget toy, a special tiny stone I can hold without being noticed, and a fragrance I can sniff when I excuse myself to go to the bathroom.” 

“I carry a self-care kit with me wherever I go. Then all my things that calm me are in one place.”

“I wear a bracelet my Gramma gave me when I was 16. When I put it on I feel safe.”

“There’s a couple of good friends who understand me. We text each other when we need support.”

“I’m a terrible liar. Like really bad. So I drink as many beverages as I possibly can. Especially with caffeine. Then I can honestly excuse myself to go to the bathroom multiple times without having to lie!”

“Using my dog as an excuse to leave early is awesome. He needs to be walked so I have a limited amount of time to give.”

“Boundaries boundaries boundaries. Set them. Keep them. Allow them to make you safe.”

“If you need to leave then leave. Who’s going to stop you? Go outside for a few minutes. Go for a walk. Offer to go on a coffee run. Your well-being matters more than anything else.”

“Bring a buffer. Bring a person who can run interference. If you have a family member you trust, tell them your triggers and ask them to prepare to change the subject if needed.”

“Offer to take the small children into another room to take care of them. Then you’re awesome and no one knows it’s your way of bailing.”

“Don’t go? Just joking. I go prepared with broken record phrases like:

• I’m not comfortable talking about that 
• Enough about me, how are things with YOU?
• Hold that thought, I’ll be right back”

“Stick to your routine. Plan ahead. But also be flexible. Participating in something you enjoy for one day, or even at each gathering, doesn’t mean you aren’t in recovery. The work is not letting guilt and shame crush you for doing what everyone else is doing. Its okay to celebrate sometimes you know.”

“If you’ve participated in more than you had planned or in more than feels comfortable, do not change your routine to overcompensate. Our brains lie to us. The rest of the world goes oh no I can’t believe I did that and minutes later move on. Tell your brain to shut up and get right back to your routine.”

“Food has no moral value.”

I think it is important to remember that the holidays are meant to be joyful. They are meant to make you feel loved, welcomed, and that you belong. Your ED will tell you that you are unworthy and unloveable. It is lying. Its a liar. Tell that thought “I  hear you but I know I’m enough”.  Surround yourself with people and experiences that bring you joy. If family obligations do not offer you that, make a point of finding that in the next few days. 

Above all else, remind yourself that:

• you are not your eating disorder 
• Recovery is not linear 
• Every moment is an opportunity to stop and reset
• You are worth recovery so reset and keep going

Take care of yourself, and remember to nourish your mind, body, and spirit. 

- Kira 

.... 

Baby its cold outside #MeToo

One of the most frustrating things about my Dad when I was a kid was when I didn’t listen and he would ask “What does no mean?” It was a simple, and simply complicated question then, and continues to be now. 

There is only one answer to “what does no mean?” and in the moment it is being asked all you want to do is yell “YES” and get your way. 

Boundaries and the ability to follow them and enforce them is learned in childhood. If a child is told no and then gets what they want, they don’t learn the meaning of the word no. If a child who is being tickled says no or stop, and the tickling continues, they don’t learn the meaning of the word no. 

Recently, the term “#MeToo era” has popped up. The troublesome part of this term is the idea that we are in a time period where consent and sexual assault are being frowned upon. As if knowledge of sexual assault is a blip in time and we will go back to harassment, abuse, and rape being the unspoken normal. #MeToo isn’t a fad. It is a global connection among women and a way of saying to each other, I know how you feel, while saying to the world NO MEANS NO. 

The song “Baby Its Cold Outside.” has been removed from the playlists of multiple radio stations. My immediate thought when I heard about it was “its about time.” Not because I was waiting for the day it disappeared from the airwaves, but because I’ve never understood why it was considered romantic. 

Jessica Goddard, a self proclaimed “opinionated millennial” wrote a piece for CBC news in which she argues how ridiculous it is to pull an historical song when we could be using it to start conversations about consent and furthermore that consent is complicated and the song is not reminiscent of sexual pressure. 

“Critics cite the song as inappropriate in the "#MeToo era," where we have come to understand what it means to be a woman in a subordinate position, sexually harassed by a man in a position of power. Yet lyrics in the song such as "Been hoping that you'd drop in" and "How lucky that you dropped in" make it sound a lot like the female character in the song has come over unannounced, surprising the man in his home. She flirtatiously threatens to leave, while accepting excuses to stay. How this is an example of #MeToo, I can't quite connect.“ - Jessica Goddard, CBC

The suggestion that sexual harassment or the pressure put on another person to have sex is not merely “inappropriate”, it is illegal, immoral, and the biggest violation one can commit. 

Ms. Gorddard claims that “[...] the track is being pulled, sending the message that the intention of the song doesn't matter, nor does the context in which it was written. After all, nothing says "happy holidays" like the death of nuance and frantic institutional overreaction.” To which I reply, nothing says “we don’t believe you” like being upset that stations have banned a song about a woman being pressured into sex. 

In a time when girls and woman around the world are being sold into sexual slavery, raped, forced to be child brides ... and here in my own city elementary students are learning that to be liked is to be sexually available. More and more documentaries are being made about how sex is used to control women and how sex is a commodity that both satisfies men and fills their pockets with money - Documentaries that explore global sex trafficking, amateur porn, and wild parties like during spring break where forced sex is the only purpose. 

Consent IS complicated in that it is an ongoing negotiation. One cannot give consent once and be expected to leave that consent open forever. I might be willing to pick up your mail and water your plants while you’re away for a few weeks but not while you’re away for a few months. Or maybe I am available this year but say no next year. Consent is the permission to engage in a mutually negotiated and understood transaction, so to speak. 

In the song “Baby its Cold Outside”, one voice expresses the desire not to spend the night with the other voice. Ms. Goddard argues that voice one showed up unexpectedly and flirts with voice 2, giving voice 2 the message than no means yes. Is this not the epitome of #MeToo? Is this not the common experience being shared by this movement? Perhaps Ms Goddard herself never learned the meaning of the word no. Perhaps she has never been pressured to do something she really didn’t want to do. Or perhaps she is living in the “era” where we allow children to consume unfiltered internet content, sexualized girls in the media, and online conversations with strangers; a world where you can instantly access sex in media format or in real life through online sex apps. 

There is nothing wrong about sex.

Consensual sex between two adults, regardless of the type of sex being had, is always okay and is also a biological imperative. One person convincing another to have sex when they are expressing doubt is not flirtatious as suggested by Ms Goddard. It is in fact exactly the purpose of the #MeToo era, and the We Give Consent movement which is to bring awareness to the fact that no means no. 

Period. 

....

An open Letter to the woman who stole my words

An Open Letter to the Woman who Stole my Words

Dear Fellow Human,

In 2016, I had my first adult piece of writing published on a public forum. I was thrilled. I’ve wanted to be a writer since before I knew how to form letters. My earliest stories were scribbles on lined paper because I didn’t know how to write any words. Writing has always felt like breathing. I can’t go more than a day or two without writing something. Anything. 

Seeing my words on a real website with my name attached, was a moment of magic for me. Someone read my story and thought it was worth sharing. And then thousands of people read it. 

It was magical and beautiful and validating. People were reading my story about what it feels like to be me. And people were clicking “share” and “like” and taking the time to comment on it. So I began submitting more writing to a variety of websites and finding a wider audience. I could call myself a “writer” and mean it. I had been validated. 

And then I was faced with the question: does my story belong to me? We live in a world where it is so easy to claim things as your own. Throughout history we have lived with a finders-keepers mentality whether it is over land, borders, property, possessions, or people. If I want it, I can take it, and now it is mine. We write national anthems and stand proudly under flags on land that used to have different flags and different anthems and we accept that now is the true way. 1000 years from now there will be new borders, new flags, new anthems, and new stories. And those will be truth as well. 

Two years after that magical publication moment, I awoke to multiple comments on that first story. 46 comments to be exact. I scrolled through the comments and came across yours ... 

You wrote: “I already wrote this! The majority is my writing with a few changes.” 

I was so taken aback that I actually reread my story to make sure every single word was mine. My initial reaction to you was shock and anger. 

Over the course of the day I had so many thoughts about what I could write to you. The things I came up with were not very kind. Kindness and compassion are my guiding principles so I couldn’t even speak the words that went through my head. 

My pause in responding made me think about the impulsivity of being at a keyboard. With a few key strokes and a “send” I could harm someone.  We live in a world where our amygdalae are allowed to go wild if it involves a sense of anonymity on a screen. Reactions are immediate. You don’t need to stop and think. You can click-click-click-send in mere seconds. I wondered for a moment if that’s what it was like for you. I wondered if you copied, pasted, revised, and submitted without a pause in your thought process. 

What surprised me was how people replied to your comment; they immediately jumped to your defence. How awful, they said. One person even pointed out that my article was published 13 months earlier than yours, but used that as further evidence that I plagiarized you. Which is backwards. There it goes again - that impulsive need to type and send without a pause for thought and reflection. 

I thought more about what I would say to you if we had the chance to meet. Could I be kind and compassionate? Was it okay for me to feel this anger? Was “betrayal” too strong a word? I googled your name to see if you actually had anything published under your name; not only did I find the story you referred to, I found that it was line for line mine. My story. Not only did you draw attention to your theft of my intellectual property, you did so on a site on which I am a regular contributor. Further research uncovered that your version of my story is also on another prominent website. Under your name. 

This was not an intellectual article. It wasn’t research-based. It wasn’t something that could be judged as “similar”. It was a personal narrative about a day in my life. Your version is word for word MY life experience. And yet is it published world-wide under YOUR name. 

This evening I am reflecting on my choices. Instead of addressing it in a public forum, I emailed the editors and informed them that the comments were to be deleted from my contributor page, and that your stolen version of my story be deleted. 

It has been a few days since your revelation. My anger has not subsided. However, my compassion for you has grown. In what world could a person copy and paste someone else’s personal story, submit it for publication, and then have the nerve to publicly claim ownership? What must your life be like? What might it feel like to be you? To struggle to the point where your only form of expression is to use someone else’s words as your own? 

Life must be hard for you. Life must have been hard on you. I send out warmth and love to you with the hope that you can receive support for whatever it is life has thrown your way. 

In the meanwhile, my story is still my story. I am angry that my story sits on other people’s screens with your minor changes and your name. I’m angry that human adults seem to be giant 3 year olds who take what we want with no concept of the impact it has on anyone else. 

Dear Fellow Human, I ask that the next time you are in front of a screen and you have typed out words, before you press send, ask yourself:

• will I still think this in an hour?
• will I think this in a month?
• do I want the world to judge me based on what I just wrote?
• will I feel good about my words later?
• who will be affected and how? 
• would I say this to someone I love?

If you haven’t taken the time to reflect on yourself and to answer those questions for yourself, you aren’t ready to press “send”. 

The written word lasts forever. No matter who claims ownership. 

Yours Truly, 

Kira, a Fellow Human 

TGIF ... wait what?

When you make it to Friday and then realize you still have to make it THROUGH Friday. 

Chronic pain and fatigue can drain all the energy you have available to you. And yet you still get up every day, go to work, do your job, and sometimes even smile. 

YOU, dear friend, are a warrior. 

You don’t have to be sexy to be worthy

Simply Be

Back to school

Dear Teachers: as you head back to school, remember that you are a human being with a job. You do not have to give up your life for your job. You do not have to feel like you are supposed to have passion and selflessness. Creating a safe and welcoming space where learning can take place and the curriculum can be delivered and assessed does not mean you can’t leave work at work and live your best full life. Teaching is a profession like any other. It does not have to be your calling. You do not have to devote your life to your students. You have to do the job you are being paid to do just like any other career. I LOVE teaching and I am passionate about Special Education. That doesn’t mean teaching is my everything. Work-life balance is just as important for teachers. Boundaries with students extends to boundaries with their families, with colleagues, with worklife. You, dear teacher, are not a superhero. You are a perfectly imperfect human like everyone else. Don’t forget about yourself and your needs in these next few intense weeks (or months!) #teacher #teachersofinstagram #specialeducation #speced #specialeducationteacher #backtoschool #selfcaresunday 

Not sexy. Not sensual. Just me.

Can we be okay with fat bodies simply because we can be okay with all bodies? 

Can we just accept fatness instead of explaining why fat is okay? 

Messages that fat is beautiful, fat is sexy, curves are sensual, or that “men like curves”, all tell me that my right to exist is based on my attractiveness to others. 

I am worthy because I am alive. I am fat. I don’t need that to be explained away with other descriptors. 

The body positivity messages I am receiving are that it is okay to be fat if I am either sexy or beautiful. 

What if I am neither of those? 

Does that mean I am excluded?  

I am not beautiful

I don’t have to be beautiful to be worthy. 

My appearance and my value are not dependent on one another. 

I don’t need to be told that I have a pretty face, or nice curves, or that I’m not fat I “have fat”, because my body does not define me. 

No one has to be beautiful. From one spectrum of the BMI to another, you are not required to be beautiful. I am not “beautiful” I am simply a perfectly imperfect human. 

Body positivity means actively accepting all people in their rawness. 

Real Life Fat People

I am my scars

I Am My Scars

I used to hate my scars. I found them embarrassing for several reasons. Mainly, because they are blemishes on my skin, because they draw attention to specific parts of my body, because they lead to questions about what happened, and because they force me to admit that I am imperfect in appearance and in action. 

Today I looked at my thigh. I saw the wrinkled skin that looks like a fat slug. I remembered all the ways I used to try to hide it. And I realized that now I embrace my scars. They are like tattoos; permanent reminders and celebrations of where I’ve been and what has made me who I am. My scars are my life story told in flesh. 

I am my scars. 

I am the cartwheels on a shard of broken class in Newfoundland. The sharp knife in the dish water. The shattering glass of the screen door. The scissors I used to cut leather. The jagged metal on the hearth when I painted my Mother’s walls. I am the small lines on my elbows and knees from playing in the woods. I am clam shell cuts and fish hook pokes. I am calluses from crocheting, knitting, whittling and woodworking, bare feet summer hikes, Birkenstocks, and flip flops. I am my finger tips on my first steel string guitar. I am sharp pebbles in red jelly-shoes. 

I am I-don’t-know-what-happened, and where-did-that-come-from. I am falling off bikes, slipping in ballet slippers, leaping before looking, tree climbing, and unprepared balancing acts. I am chickenpox but everyone else has it too so we have to go to school anyway. I am surgery and too many IVs. 

I am tears and snot and pain. I am joy and laughter til my belly hurts. I am adventures and risks. I am warning tales and funny stories. 

This body has carried me and allowed me to do, to play, to create, to try, to feel pleasure, to love. This body is marked by moments in life that shaped me. It tells the stories I’ve tried to hide, the stories of things I’ve forgotten, and the stories shared over endless cups of tea. 

This body has been tortured by me and yet it is still here. Still waiting to be loved. Still waiting to be taken care of. Still willing to let me keep trying. To keep living. 

This body is how I came to be, where I have been, who I am now, and where I am going. This body is my home. This skin is my story. These scars are me. Unapologetic, imperfect, blemished, me. 

The Black March

As Pride Toronto approaches, I am reminded of how much further there is to go. Global violence and persecution of LGBTQ+ people continues to be legal, accepted, and/or ignored. Closer to home, whether it is transphobic acts of violence, a serial killer in Toronto’s gaybourhood, a mass shooting in a Florida nightclub, or a kid in a school yard using the word “homo” as the ultimate insult, LGBTQ+ people are not free. We are not safe. We are not accepted. This Pride Parade, we are encouraged to wear black as we watch the celebration. At the end of the parade, the barriers will come down and we are invited to flood the streets in a March of solidarity to both honour those we have lost, and to visibly show that we will not disappear. We are here. For more info see:  http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/pride-safety-campaign-1.4680673

Flying or falling?

That fine line between flying and falling, 

and the struggle to notice the difference. 

Thank you

Someone contacted me about my work. It was like a hug through the ether. 

“I want to tell you how important it is to stand up and speak out loud about this shit. You’re so brave to do this, to tell these personal stories of your life [...] thank you for not hiding encouraging us with your posts.” 

It is me who needs that encouragement from you, dear soul. Here is a hug from me to you. 

Here is a hug to all the people struggling to believe that you are worthy, struggling to say to yourself that you are enough, struggling with distorted thoughts and disordered thinking. You are loved. You are worthy. You are wanted. 

Be kind to yourself, 

xoxo

Eating Disorders Are Prisons

Eating Disorders are prisons that you did NOT put yourself in. 

They ARE prisons that you can escape from. 

Getting out is hard because there is no early parole, or time served. ED jail cells have doors that actually open. And when you are given the key, it is still your choice. 

Staying behind bars or living in freedom is possible, if you decide that it is possible. 

With the doors wide open, you still have to be the one to walk through them. 

Recovery is hard. It is extremely, terribly, exhaustingly, gut-wrenchingly, terribly hard. 

And it is still better than ED prison. 

Your cell is unlocked. Take the first step and push those bars open.

BELLY LOVE!

It’s been a year since we celebrated bellies! 

No matter where you are in your Recovery, bellies deserve your love. Today, tell your belly you love it. Even if you don’t. 

No jazz hands

When recovery gets hard, there are so many reasons to want to be at the finish line without having even started.

Recovery isn’t a race. 

Someone important to me likes to say “there are no jazz hands waiting for you”. 

Living a life of waiting for the finish line is living a life full of disappointments. There is no finish line. Not if you are living a healthful nourished life, or if you are living dangerous eating disordered life; we are on a life long journey of change and growth and learning. 

Your recovery will take the time that it takes. You are worth that time. 

Life will still throw shit at you. That’s not going to stop. The change will be in the way you react and the coping skills you use. Choosing a different response instead of engaging in symptoms can become automated and instinctual. 

Don’t forget to live while you are recovering. The whole world is out there waiting for your contributions. 

And if there is no finish line, we might as well make our own jazz hands along the way. 

My Body is not a War Zone: Challenging the Eating Disorder Warrior Narrative. By Polly D

Welcome back guest blogger Polly D. 

Content Warning: brief mention of disordered eating and specific foods. 

My Body is not a War Zone: Challenging the Eating Disorder Warrior Narrative.

By Polly D

Over the last 4 years, I have talked about personifying Eating Disorders as a way to separate the person from the illness. I have talked about Ed as this mean, manipulative, lying jerk. I have used phrases like “kick Ed’s ass” ,  “break up with Ed” ,  “Ed is a toxic best friend or a toxic partner”. 

I have been looking at recovery through the lens of Ed being an equal; someone you can fight against and win. Recovery is a battle and you are the warrior. 

This is a narrative I have heard so often when it comes to recovery and to relapse. 

And it occurred to me, if I am questioning the narratives around who struggles with ED, what makes a person sick enough for treatment, and how weight stigma erases lived experience ... then I can question the Eating Disorder Warrior Narrative. 

What if I have it all backwards? What if fighting against the Eating Disorder only makes things worse?

I recently asked a friend what she was most afraid of as she was heading into treatment. She said:

“Finally giving up ED and not knowing what it is that replaces that. It’s ED that’s terrified.” 

My immediate instinct was to wish her well and to remind her that she could totally kick Ed’s ass. I wanted to give some encouragement about Ed not being needed. Screw Ed. Ed is an asshole. 

That’s when a light switch went on. 

My reply to her was as follows: 

“Maybe we’ve been going about it all wrong. Maybe that’s not the right approach. This whole idea that ED is mean and sneaky and lies and is manipulative makes it feel like ED is this grown up monster we can break up from. But maybe it’s not like that ... Maybe ED is the small child inside of us who didn’t get what she needed. Who didn’t know how to cope so she developed these maladaptive behaviours. Maybe ED isn’t a separate part of us. Maybe ED is our inner child who continues to perpetuate thoughts and behaviours because that child didn’t learn healthy ways to deal with or to cope with emotions or challenging situations, or thoughts.”

Mind. 

Currently. 

Blown. 

That thought changed the whole way I want to approach recovery. 

A great deal of time is spent talking about practicing self-compassion, being kind to your inner child, healing your inner child, listening to your inner child. .... well what if Ed IS that inner child. If so, then Ed needs compassion and kindness in order to heal, not a battle at all. That makes us nurturers. Not warriors. 

This idea opens up new ways to engage with the Eating Disorder. 

I wouldn’t refuse to feed a child breakfast. I wouldn’t force a child to over-exercise because she had a slice of cake on her birthday. I wouldn’t punish a child for eating until she was so full that she was sick. I wouldn’t allow a child to only live on apples and rice cakes. I wouldn’t allow a child to eat cookies as breakfast every day for a month. And if she did, I wouldn’t tell her that she ruined her entire life because of those cookies. 

When a child messes up, we call it a mistake. When it’s an adult, we call it failure. 

What if there IS no failure in recovery? What if there is only opportunities for learning and growing? What if the process of recovery is a process of raising your inner child the way you wish you had been raised? Or the way you needed to be raised? 

Ed, the child, needs to be held closely during the recovery process. Children need gentle and firm encouragement to do hard and scary things. They need high fives, genuine praise, the right to make mistakes, gentle redirection, and a lot of hugs. Ed the child can learn to have a different relationship with food and eating, because she is just a child and the things she does are just the things she learned. 

It’s time for Ed the child to be nurtured, by you, so that she can grow up and learn the healthful skills she needs to move out on her own, separate from us. Or to integrate that child-self into the adult-self. 

Maybe recovery isn’t a battle. Maybe we are not warriors at all. Maybe recovery is the process of teaching Ed the child, that she is loved, worthy, deserving, and capable of nourishment in every capacity possible. 

Art by Fox Tales Art