Bellissima
We all have interesting life stories that brought us to the place we are today, and here's mine:
I'm a 40-year-old divorced Mom of three incredible kids who are the joy of my life - that's the good part. The bad part is that like so many women out there, I spent the first 30 years of my life just "surviving," and food was a major part of coping with the difficulties and challenges in my life.
Being the child of two teen-age parents, things were pretty crazy growing up. There was always a shortage of love, affection, and the basic necessities of life (especially food)...My siblings and I learned many creative ways to turn a piece of bread into a full-fledged meal, and how to eat cold cereal with water instead of milk. Thus, early on I did the math and figured out I was on my own - literally - and that I had no one to depend on but myself in order to survive. This realization led me to develop some major coping devices to survive all of the trauma and deprivation. I became masterful at numbing myself emotionally, and over the years, "FOOD" became a very important source of comfort and my numbing agent. It was the one thing I could turn to no matter what was going on...the one thing that I had some "control" over...and it was the one thing that always "delivered." In a sense, food became my best friend.
Fortunately, along with being an emotional eater all those years, I was also an "uber-athlete" doing three seasons of sports a year since 4th grade. Athletics were my outlet, my way of escaping my violent home, and a safe place to vent my rage and powerlessness. Years of gymnastics, volleyball, basketball, and track also managed to offset the results of the compulsive eating I was doing so that I wasn't obese. Yes, I suffered the occasional ridicule of being called "Bertha" in grade school due to my pudgy stomach, but I also had the respect of my peers because I was the fastest and strongest kid around - period. And in highschool, while I always carried an extra 10-30 lbs, my muscular body and athletic accomplishments seemed to compensate enough to spare me some of the difficulties of my overweight counterparts. I was able to "pass."
Thankfully, I wasn't truly obese until early-adulthood when my highschool sports came to an end, and I got engaged and married at age 18 to escape my childhood home. My immature and naive thinking was that I'd just get married to my new prince charming and create the wonderful home-life that I never had growing up, and we'd live happily ever after. Translation: I desperately wanted to be rescued. But, you guessed it- -Prince Charming turned out to to be neither a Prince nor very charming. In fact, he turned out to have a very dark side, and in getting married, I managed to recreate my abusive childhood and trigger my food issues all over again. To add to the fun, I became pregnant within four months, and I ended up on total bed-rest for three months due to pre-eclampsia. The combination of being on bed-rest and going through the stress of such abrupt life changes (marriage & pregnancy) spelled "DISASTER" for me. I quickly gained 80 lbs with the pregnancy, shot up to over 200 lbs for the first time in my life, and I became an object of derision for my naturally thin husband.
Unfortunately, having the baby didn't take away all of the "baby weight." In fact, the pregnancy and bedrest shifted my metabolism so completely that I seemed designed to pack on weight at record speed in the months to come. For the first time in my life, I was wearing "plus sizes" and I felt like a hostage in my own body. When I looked in the mirror, I literally didn't recognize the swollen, obese person looking back at me. To make matters worse, just nine months after the birth of my daughter, I became pregnant again and I was put back on bedrest for four months due to pre-term labor complications. It was during this time that we relocated across the country for my husband's job, and that I was the loneliest and most depressed I'd ever been. It was also at this time that what began as attempts to control me by my husband escalated to verbal and emotional abuse.
The next 8 years of my life were spent surviving an abusive marriage and doing every desperate diet and exercise regimen known to man to try to lose the 90+ pounds my once athletic body was now sporting. I would lose 10-30 lbs, then plateau, and then eventually get discouraged and give up. I ate low-fat, I counted calories, I did Weight Watchers, Nutri-System, Sugar Busters, Pritikin, the Cabbage Soup diet, the Thin for Life diet, Diet Center, Atkin's - you name it, I tried it. Over the years, the marriage became more emotionally abusive and then escalated to physical abuse - and all the while, I used the ingrained coping mechanisms of my childhood - numbing out and using food. But unlike my childhood, I was no longer an athlete, so I just continued to get fatter and fatter. I spent every minute of every day literally being at "WAR" within myself - desperate to lose weight, desperate to be "worthy" of love, and hating food with all my heart...and yet, also needing food to cope with the emotional holocaust that was my life.
A horrible event with my husband culminated into a "911" phone call and the end of my marriage. This was finally enough to make me leave and to begin a new chapter as a scared but determined single Mom. The absence of an abusive partner led me to feel new-found hope and freedom, which translated into lots of weight loss doing the Atkin's diet and exercising hours a day. I even managed to get myself down below 200 lbs and into a size 12-14 for the first time in 10 years. I felt great, I looked better than I had in years, and I eventually began dating and trying to rebuild my life. Unfortunately, the inner destruction from the first 25 years of my life left its mark in the form of phenomenally low self-worth. Thus, I managed to attract seemingly "great men" on the surface, but who had a penchant for being very critical, demanding, and letting me know how inadequate and "fat" I still was, even after losing 80 lbs. Worse were the guys who told me how beautiful I could be "if I just lost 40-50 more pounds" (I learned a size 10/12 is considered gargantuan in the singles world)...or how they "could see themselves being in love me if I would just get the weight off." This lack of love and acceptance served to only trigger and worsen my food issues, not relieve them.
Well, I finally learned the life lesson that those who would hurt or harm you are never your friend...and I learned that "when someone shows you they are, believe them, the first time." (thanks Maya Angelou!) The net result of all of this introspection and growth was that I became what I call "Supremely Self-Preserving." I cut out of my life all those so-called friends who didn't have my best interest at heart, as well as anyone who was mean, critical, belittling, or who sought to gratify their own needs at my expense (goodbye narcissists!). I went to therapy to address all of my issues with men, with Mom, with food, and with myself. And it all helped - a great deal. I learned to deal with the scared, hurt little girl doing a very fatal equation in my soul: being "small"(vulnerable) + "pretty" (noticeable) = "UNSAFE"
This led to what I call the "Birth of Tawanda!" on my 40th birthday. If you've ever seen the movie "Fried Green Tomatoes" with Kathy Bates, you know exactly what I'm talking about. On that momentous day, I awakened with a very simple yet powerful epiphany: I'm DONE. At 250 pounds, I'm DONE. I'm DONE with the denial that I can just "diet" and get the weight off...I'm DONE using food as a crutch...I faced the little girl inside, and I let her know I'm DONE feeling unsafe and being controlled by the false belief that being "small" is dangerous. I'm done living a life of FEAR. DONE, DONE, DONE. And with these realizations "Tawanda' was born.
For me, "Tawanda" is the summoning of all of the inner strength and confidence that I never knew I had before (but was really there all the time)...Tawanda is the sense of my own self-worth and value as a creation of God and knowing that no one can touch that or take it away...Tawanda is the knowledge that I will never, ever, ever, ever let someone demean, devalue, or abuse me ever again...Tawanda is the "kick butt and take names later" part of my spirit that has been reborn and helps me know that I am safe, I am safe, I am safe...Not because there aren't bad people in the world, but because I am wise, I am self-preserving, and I will trust my intuition and act to preserve my own well-being every time, in every circumstance. I am incapable of ever going back to what I once was, or living how I once lived. Tawanda is the bell which once rung, can never be "un-rung."
Thus, like a caterpillar who has finally made its way to the crysallis, I'm changing and healing those parts that were the caterpillar...and I'm tranforming into the beautiful, elegant butterfly God created me to be...I am no longer bound by other people's gravity...I am no longer afraid to fly...or to soar...And like a beautiful butterfly leaves the last vestiges of its caterpillar-self behind without ever looking back, I am ready to leave this shell of a former self. I'm ready to release this "outer covering" that once served me well and allowed me to survive...I'm ready to emerge, to spread my wings in all their glory, and to let the wind carry me to my new life...And just as a butterfly captures the attention of all those who see it, I'm ready to be noticed, to be seen, to come out of the darkness into the light...I'm ready to be all that God created and intended me to be without fear, and without apology...
I spent the first 40 years of my life "surviving," and now I'll spend the next 40 years of my life "THRIVING." TAWANDA!!!
