Love-What I Have Learned

Todays’s question: What have you learned about love in your life? In my 51 years of my beautiful life, i have learned many things, and as I get older, those things often evolve into something else. As a teenager and a young adult, I believed, like most, that there was a special somone for everyone…a soulmate. Now, I believe that there is not necessarily one soulmate for each person, a meant-to-be, if you will. I now believe you can have more than one great love in a lifetime. After several long-term, committed relationships failed, I thought there was something flawed within me. Now, I am certain that each person comes into our lives for a reason. I now look at each experience I have had with curiosity and grace. Each relationship and each person teaches us something valuable and contributes to the continuous journey towards englightenment.

AHA Moment-Body Image

“Everyone has a story or a struggle that will break your heart. And, if we’re really paying attention, most people have a story that will bring us to our knees.”  

~Brene’ Brown

01/20/2022

I have always loved this quote from Brene’ Brown.  I actually typed it up as a graphic to post in a private women’s Facebook group yesterday before any of the events of today occurred, but it is so 100% spot-on-right about my story and journey and where I am along that journey, that I had to use it to introduce this blog post.

I actually first heard it on her TED talk (I believe), but I have heard her say it on her podcast, as well.  At the time, I thought, “Wow!  How freaking sad and profound.”  I didn’t really look at it from MY perspective as coming from a person who had a lot of emotional trauma caused by my dad during my childhood.  Well, I get it now!  I have just had one of those AHA moments from a conversation with Liz, my life coach.

We were talking about a Facebook MEME I saw yesterday that basically said if you say “You need to eat some food” to a thin woman, it is as hurtful as saying “You need to lose weight or you’re too fat” to a larger woman.  I told Liz that I totally disagreed. Being a person who has struggled with her weight since I was a teen, I can say with almost 100% certainty that being overweight is much more of a stigma against women than being skinny. The patriarchal hierarchy has perpetuated for years that being skinny makes a woman beautiful and accepted, whereas any woman whose body fits outside of these constructed norms is ugly and devalued to the point of disgust.

Liz’s nor my opinion on this topic is not what caused me to go into meltdown mode.  What caused the instant, lightning has-struck reaction is something Liz said.  She said that her childhood trauma is what causes her to have weight issues her whole life and more specifically low self-worth and self-esteem issues.

Pow!  It honestly felt like someone had punched me in the gut.  I realized in that very moment that my weight issues and body image issues and lack of self-worth issues that I have dealt with my entire life has everything to do with my childhood trauma….the trauma of being the daughter of a covert narcissistic father.  

I have been working through this.  I wrote and burned the “forgiveness letter to my dad.” A forgiveness letter is a letter in which you write to someone in your life you need to forgive and then you burn it. I wrote the forgiveness letter to my dad and was so surprised that it was only four pages long (I thought it was going to be like a hundred pages), and I burned it.  I felt freer than I ever have. 

Liz told me prior to me writing the forgiveness letter to my dad that I might have to write the letter 3, 4, or 100 times before I started to feel forgiveness.  I had managed it in one letter!  Or so I thought.

Nope! I really should have known that was too good to be true. 

So, I guess the one and done letter was a passing hope…..a flitting dream.  Now, I have to learn to forgive my dad for fucking up my body self-image, as well as other traumas he inflicted upon me.

I had an instant reminder of what all of that felt like…..the emotionally absent father, the feeling of being “not good enough” as a teenager because I was a larger girl than  “some” or rather the “popular, more socially desirable more acceptable” girls who were thinner.

I didn’t start having self-esteem issues with anything until I went to Junior High.  All of this time, I thought that I just didn’t adjust well to leaving the comfort of Highland Park ES, my safe, nurturing elementary school, and transitioning into the change of going into Junior High…. plus puberty kicked in about this time and I had my first experience with death…..the death of my Peepaw.  That was a lot for a 12-year-old, emotionally sensitive girl to deal with.  I went from being  a happy, fun, outgoing, well-liked girl…. to a quiet, withdrawn girl who felt invisible where I had been visible before.  I still say to this day that the worst year of my life was the 6th grade.

To top it off, I realized that I blame my dad for me not being able to consistently function as an adult, professionally and for not being able to get and remain financially healthy.  Basically, I am trying to recover from not being able to handle my work situation.  I thought it was a ME problem….or better yet, that I should have been able to suck it up and handle it…..especially now as my world is slowly imploding around me.  While it is up to ME to repair myself, I know it is not my fault.  It was beyond my control.  I am not just lazy and NOT wanting to work.  I don’t have a terrible work ethic.  Nope!  It appears that I was raised by a covert narcissist who specialized in fucking up his kids….especially me, his daughter.

While this whole self-awareness process is helping me to become a better me, it absolutely is painful.  And while I know that the end result of uncovering and dealing with all of this stuff is what is going to make me happier and healthier, these AHA moments that make me feel nauseated are difficult and very exhausting.  

I guess I just have to HAVE the AHA, meltdown moments and then DEAL with them.  No, not I guess…..I MUST and WILL and CHOOSE to deal.  As a new, enlightened, self-aware woman, I realize and understand that I have the power to completely re-adjust and re-align myself to what is right for me to live a fuller and happier life.  This journey will cost me moments of intense pain, but the end result will be of my making…..the making and re-shaping of a better me.

And one last thing….I have lost 70 pounds over a period of a year and have kept it off. I attribute this to my ever growing self-esteem and self-love. The feelings of being not enough and inadequate no longer hold me hostage, so I am free to let myself change all aspects of my life, including the ability to be at a healthy, happy weight because I know that I am enough and more.