my healing journey with food and weight

I didn’t know I was restricting how much I ate until I started to try to eat more and realized how much was blocking me from being able to.

Last spring, I did some routine energy work on my physical birth. I have done this a few times. There is so much to look at and learn from here.

In pregnancy, I saw how the umbilical chord running between my baby body and my mom’s body was set to a pattern of my body really reaching for communication with my mom, and her barely being able to give it.

My mom was really sick with a severe form of morning sickness that has its own medical name while she was pregnant with me. I’m not blaming her for this pattern that I saw. I know she did the best she could.

Seeing that pattern in the umbilical chord opened up this whole unwinding in me around how I was relating to my physical body.

And how that pattern was very much present in my relationship with my body.

My physical body was under-nourished, begging for nourishment, and I was barely able to give it. In this instance- food, but it definitely applies to other things as well.

When I first started letting go of restrictions and eating more, and I gained weight for the first time in my life, I was hit with this brick wall of self-hate and disgust for this new weight.

I would never have said before that that I consciously judged or disliked fatness. But this stuff can be relegated to the shadow realm, the subconscious. And it came up strongly once my body changed.

Suddenly, my body looked very much like my mom’s body. And all of these memories resurfaced of how my mom treated her body around me growing up.

And beliefs attached to those memories-

This body is gross. It’s fat. And fat is gross. These fat arms. This overweight tummy. I have let myself go. No one likes this. You need to hide this. Fat pig. Bodies are disgusting.

I watched my mom continually beat up and energetically whack her body as a child for not being skinny like it used to be when she was younger. And I internalized that.

That became how I related to my own body, especially when it started to gain weight and resemble hers.

When triggered on these beliefs, I would look in the mirror, and think:

“What have I done? Am I walking down a road that I can’t return from?”

And truly, the answer is Yes. I am. Because I am no longer going back to that starving, adolescent-looking body.

My tiny, under-fed body that many male lovers told me was the sexiest thing in the world. And I thought it was too.

Being under-fed is not sexy to me anymore.

I can see it for what it was now- the truth. My body was hungry. My body was asking to be listened to, but was instead being ignored.

There’s a deep practice of self-forgiveness that I’ve been engaging with as a result of my process with all of this.

Can I give myself space to be where I was when I wasn’t able to hear my body asking for nourishment?

Forgiveness does not mean ignoring or repressing any of the valid emotions that come up around seeing the reality of how I had been treating my body.

To me, true forgiveness comes from giving space to those feelings.

The grief, the rage, the blame, the wanting to avoid it, the feeling victimized by everything, all of it.

True forgiveness comes from giving myself space to be human. True forgiveness is messy.

Your mistakes can be your deepest gifts.

I’ve been learning the past year, how to let go of these old beliefs about my body. And greet my body in present time.

Enjoy my new squish. Love the way my body has the capacity to CHANGE so much.

See my weight as a sign of a body well-loved, walking its path home to the nourishment that is her birthright.

Everyone’s path with their bodies is unique.

I am simply sharing my own story. It might not be yours, and that’s okay.

I’m still working through blocks around eating to full nourishment. I’m in process.

And the process is leading me closer to deep friendship between myself as a soul and my body.

And that is why I am doing this.

Written April 2022

Sebastopol, CA