onceafatgirl

Peace is better than chocolate

Archive for the month “January, 2024”

28 Jan 2024

Feels like a shame but probably isn’t

I am almost a full month into my “Peaceful Purposeful Joyful Creation” journey and I am still learning and shaky. But also still plugging along. 

One of the things that I had to learn early in getting my eating under control was time assessment and management. Because shopping and chopping and cooking and packing and eating took time. And I had to actually know how much time I needed. I had to learn to be practical about practical things.

And I got pretty good at that. Certainly good enough that I figured out my priorities and how to implement them in my life.

There is a saying that I think about a lot. “You can talk about priorities all you like, but your schedule doesn’t lie.”

And my schedule clearly says self-care is a priority. I take care of myself with my eating boundaries, my workout and sleep and meditation schedules, my skin and hair care. 

But all of this scheduling and routine maintenance has made a nice tidy place for my head to go chaotic. Rush through step 1 to get to step 2 while simultaneously preparing for steps 3-8 in my mind. My brain is full. No room for anything but the rest of my planned out time.

On the outside I look calm and confident. I know this because people say it all the time. “You have such a peaceful presence. You always seem so together.” Inside I am panting and panicking and focusing on perfection.

This past few weeks of trusting that my life will work out even if I don’t run around like a crazy lady is…frankly hard. There is a level of superstitious thinking to the way I live that stems from my childhood thinking. That the “magic” is in not stopping, not looking, not hesitating. Not giving life, or bad luck, or karma, or the devil or WHATEVER, a chance to get me.

But the thing is that I already know that the real magic is in slowing down. It’s in the stillness. It’s in the trusting. It’s in the space between thoughts.

Because ultimately that is what my brain chaos is. It’s me not having to trust. It’s me not having to look too closely at my dreams and my wishes and what I really want for my life. It’s me not having to expect that things will work out for the best for me in the end. So I can use that time and space to go into survival mode and “prepare for any eventuality,” instead of being excited, interested, involved, curious.

I guess what I am coming to recognize is that all of that mental busywork is a way for me to burn off my creative energy without having to create anything. 

And that sucks. I hate that! I’m annoyed at myself. I’m frustrated that I have taken so long to get here. I am impatient to grow faster and be better now!

But I am reminded, yet again, that these big changes come a little at a time. I do not currently have the capacity to bridge the gap between what I am and what I want to be. And the only way to get there is to continue. At life’s pace. Not mine.

Which feels like a real shame but probably isn’t.

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21 Jan 2024

Fight, Flight, Tears, and a Time Out

I think a lot about change and changeability. About how I actually have tools to change my life now. And how slowly and strangely information is dispensed to me. By Life. By the Universe. By my own ability to comprehend and implement it.

The other day my husband and I got into an argument. He said a true thing about me rather angrily and it made me cry. Which upset him. It is difficult for him to see my crying. It is awful for him to feel like he “made me cry.”

I cry a lot. I always have. But I have come to understand in the past year or so that it’s the way a body, my body, reregulates after I have gone into “fight or flight mode.” Which I do. Kind of a lot. (Way less since I got my eating under control, but still a lot.)

Growing up, I cried, and everyone told me it was me being overly sensitive. And me being emotional. And me being some sort of way. So I fit myself into the narrative. I could find the emotions there in the crying. The shame. The hurt. The anger. The fear. The indignation.

Plus I had a whole world of stories and books and all manner of art depicting overly sensitive weepy girls unable to manage their emotions. Hysterical women! I didn’t have to look far to reinforce the idea that my tears were because I was too emotional and the emotions were shameful ones, if only for their inconvenience to others.

But this time I didn’t need to look for an emotion. Not because I knew what it was, but because in that moment I knew it didn’t matter. I was having a biological reaction. I could assign an emotion to it later if I wanted. (And I did. I was embarrassed that I had been called out. It sent me into a panic.) But in that moment, I just wanted to calm back down. I told him I was just in fight or flight and I just needed a minute. I excused myself and got myself together.

Having my eating under control, not eating foods that make me feel drugged, knowing what and how much I am going to eat every day, have all contributed to lifting my food obsession. And not being obsessed with food means lots of time and room and energy to think about other things, and plenty of time to work on myself. 

When I learn something like this now, I remember that I couldn’t have known it before. That some things can only be understood because they are a culmination of knowledge and experience. 

As my mentor likes to remind me: More will be revealed.

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14 Jan 2024
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Building my peace muscle

One of the things about getting my eating under control is that I don’t have a lot of room to *not* grow. And this year I just sort of decided that peaceful, purposeful, joyful creation is the “theme” of my year. And apparently now I am committed.

Already I feel like I have had so much purposeful and joyful creation!

But I also committed to being peaceful. And boy when I tell you I was not expecting Peace to go so hard!

I am a mentor to people who don’t eat sugar. And I have a lot of advice to give. (Solicited only! I do not believe in unsolicited advice.) And one thing I understand is that to be a good mentor, you have to be willing to take your own advice.

And ain’t that a bitch sometimes.

So when my mentees would come to me and need practical advice about how to stop thinking about food, (or eventually their ex husband, the test results for their biopsy, their kid’s relationship with the other parent that they have no control over) I would tell them to “change the channel.” To make an active and concerted effort to think a new thought. Put oneself in a new frame of mind and body.

So what I decided for myself in practical/actionable terms was to be deliberate in all things. To make choices and take actions from a calm place of Trust. To commit without fear, without second guessing, without looking back. And that means everything from writing my morning journal to showering to making food to crocheting to driving to the grocery store to putting my wallet in my purse.

For now that means slowing down to do a lot of things. But I know that purposeful and exact doesn’t have to mean slow. The internet is filled with artists and artisans who are methodical and precise with incredible speed. I am a craftsperson. I can simultaneously be quite fast and precise.

But those first few days this week of “being deliberate” were terrifying. Because I realized that my default is mind chaos. My default is waking and thinking in circles (literally, though I do sometimes dance, not in circles.) And I had to “change the channel” so many times I thought there must be something fundamentally wrong with me. (Oh, this thought is an old friend from when I hated myself for being fat and thinking it meant I was “fundamentally broken.”)

I would realize how amped up I was. I would calm down body and mind. And within seconds I would realize again. And do it again. And then again too quickly.

I thought about giving up. Which is not a thing I think very often anymore. 

But I trusted that almost everything can be built like a muscle. Or at least I acted like I trusted.

Just like when I got my fancy new mini stepper and I had to put my whole foot on each pedal, until I built the core muscle to balance on my toes. There was no way to start on my toes. And if I had given up, I still wouldn’t be able to do it. But I can.

So I just keep plugging along. Changing the channel. Going to that peaceful place over and over again. Building my Peace muscle. And already it is stronger.

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07 Jan 2024

Pretty sure my dreams are in the stillness

Over the past few years I have noticed that my New Year’s Day has set the tone for my coming year, though not intentionally. Which made me decide to be intentional about it this year. 

I chose to have an intentional day of joyful peaceful productive making, including crochet projects, comedy bits and improv jokes and snippets of singing on social media, and a delicious dinner to enjoy with my husband. 

And I noticed something in my intentionality to be peaceful; even when I am not upset, when I have plenty of time, when all is well, I am amped up to go go go. I am never really peaceful about being and doing enough. 

I want to crochet that row quickly and efficiently to get to the next step. I want to get the wording perfect but still get that quip out quickly in case someone else makes a similar joke! I want to salt and pepper the steaks quickly and efficiently to get them in the sous vide. So I can quickly and efficiently get to cooking the vegetables!

And I don’t just mean physically, though physically too. I am rushing in my mind. RUSHING ALL THE TIME!!!!

And I want to change that for myself. Because I know intuitively that the gifts of abundance, the life beyond even this life beyond my wildest dreams, are in the stillness. I know it. And I fear it. But perhaps I could notice because I am actually ready to be still anyway. Even if fear of success has always been on my list, just as much as fear of failure.

It occurs to me that that is why I spend so much time rushing. So I don’t have any space between thoughts of perfection in the now. I be careful what I think I can have. I be careful what I think I am worth. I be careful what I wish for. Or I don’t wish at all.

Because getting what I wish for means work. It means being great. It means trying and failing to be great and then being embarrassed about it. It means stretching and struggling. It means pain. 

If I ate over it instead, there would be no pain. 

But I don’t eat over things now. I don’t put sugar in my body to drug myself. And I have the benefit of 18 years of work, and trying and failing to be great and being embarrassed about it, and stretching and struggling and pain. And I know first hand that there is magic in the trying.

(Oh HEY! On January 2, I celebrated 18 years of having my eating under control! Yay!)

Now, when I notice my brain rushing, and telling me to go go go, I purposely slow down. I make every thought and movement deliberate and smooth. I trust that it will work out just fine. And so far it has. And has also brought me more peace daily.

My time on this planet has been a long slow lesson in easing into this life. 46 years in, I may be getting the hang of it.

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