Never Forget Where You Come From

I just came back from a support group meeting and am upset about something that happened. You should never repeat what happens in support groups and I won't go into details, but one of the women who is several years out from surgery made some very unflattering comments about "fat women" and thanked God that she wasn't "one of them" anymore. The end result was that someone who is pre-op got very upset and ended up leaving and it became a very uncomfortable mess. All the way home I prayed that I never forget where I came from and never forget the pain of being the fat girl. One of the women there said it well when she said, "You can lose weight, but ugly goes all the way to the bone." Connie

Connie - Someone on another group I'm on posted a question/lament over their inexplicable anger toward fat people. They couldn't figure out where the anger came from. I saw a lot of good answers there which all sounded plausable. I remember when I was a teenager and lost over 65 lbs. I went through a phase of that....but remember, I was in school. I was immature and didn't know what I was feeling. All I know is I didn't want to be around fat people. I disliked it tremendously. Looking back and analyzing my feelings I discovered that I didn't dislike fat people. I was afraid of fat because it always caused me so much pain. So if I associated with these people it might rub off again, or that it would continue to cause me pain if I was friends with a fat person. I had prior to that had a very traumatic childhood which was partially caused by how I had been treated because I was fat. Now that I know where that came from, I'm able to put it in the right perspective. What I might surmise about this woman who made that awful comment is that she is too emotionally immature to understand that she is speaking out of fear. I would venture a guess to say that she had been traumatized somehow because she had been fat. And now because she is no longer fat, she wants to distance herself as much as possible from that. It is certainly no excuse for treating someone poorly. It's never okay to do that. But maybe by expressing this here some folks who might begin to experience that feeling will be able to know where it is coming from and be able to deal with it head on. Dina

Great insight Dina. We tend to loathe what we fear. I knew a woman who weighed well over 450 pounds, but hated to be around fat people. She told me that she didn't like being seen with fat people because people would think she couldn't get normal sized friends. It's so funny how judgemental we can be, especially when we are judging people very like ourselves. Connie

Thanks for sharing this, Connie. I think if I were at that meeting I probably would have suggested to this woman that her issue is a very personal one and perhaps should be dealt with in one-on-one therapy, rather than taking up the time of the group. I feel very badly for the woman who ended up leaving. Imagine, this woman's insensitivity may have been the difference between the pre-op woman deciding to move forward with surgery -- or not. What a shame. I will NEVER forget where I've come from. Never.

Interesting. I went to my first hospital support group about a month ago (meets the first week of every month). Within minutes, some guy arrived who launched a diatribe at everyone in the group for being "whiners." Fortunately, another member of the group absolutely let him have it, then a third person stepped in and kind of smoothed it over and asked him what he was doing. I talked to him later and he was a really nice guy, woulda thought he was a jerk. Strange. One girl there was just post op and going through such unexpected grief about food that I really felt for her when he started in. The group didn't let him get away with it BUT it was not my favorite event and makes me leery of going back. I am going back because I need the nutritional advice they have there. But I didn't like it. There is a certain percentage of people -- I think it's tiny but there -- who have a lot of rage. As the weight comes off, the rage seems to come out. I'm not talking about your random flip out, which we all have done under the strain of all of this. (Hey, I'm on the list when I was feeling very vulnerable right before surgery.) I would say the woman who did this is terribly at risk for regaining all her weight if she has to externalize like that to stay in control. (Less objectively, I say what a effing *itch). I, too, have been noticing all our sisters more. I grieve for them (and perhaps for myself) because I know what they're suffering. I can't hardly look at a "fat woman" without bursting into tears these days. There was one woman in the support group who swings the OTHER way. She constantly approaches these folks with cards from her surgeon. I found her equally toxic and she seems to have a lot of pull in the support group. Glad I can come here where the advice is good and that sort of thing is NOT prevalent. Gano