Sober Truths: The Making of an Honest Woman

Fatigue and sugar cravings

2012-02-08T17:33:00.000-08:00

Today is my last full day in Naples, Florida. I arrived last Thursday, led a workshop all day Saturday, and another all day Monday and all day Tuesday. Last night 2 hours after the end of the two-day workshop, I gave a presentation to about 70 people and signed books.

My co-presenter and friend Karen Casey had suggested I arrive a day early and stay a day late and we would put a day between the workshops. That was very smart thinking. I had a day to adjust a little to the change in time zones and the weather (from 45 degrees in Portland to 83 degrees in Florida). After Saturday's intense day with 55 women, we were both tired but we had Sunday to rest up. But then we went full tilt Monday and Tuesday and I didn't allow myself to slow down after the workshop ended at 4:30. I just took a shower, changed clothes, and had some supper, and went on to give the presentation.

By the time I got to the hotel last night about 9, I was nearly stupid with fatigue. All the adrenaline just kind of leaked out and I put on my pajamas and went to bed. I slept okay but woke early and I felt like a train had hit me. I got up and got some tea and walked down to the beach in the semi-cool of the morning but I was exhausted. I got some breakfast and read a while but all I could think about was getting something sweet to eat. A Starbucks muffin, an ice cream cone, a cookie. Didn't someplace around here serve pancakes? Something, anything to soothe how I felt. After about 20 minutes, I realized I was in the T of HALT, a 12-step acronym for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. all slippery places for those of us with addictions. I needed something to revive and my old friend sugar sure seemed appealing.

Then I remembered there was a spa here and I called and signed up for a Zen massage at 11:30. I didn't care what it cost. Turned out the spa is on my floor in the other wing. I could just walk over there and take my clothes off and get on the table. It was cool and candlelit and the most relaxing massage I've ever had. And I could roll off the table and put my outer clothes back on and go back to my room. It was perfect. I felt relaxed, less tired, and the cravings all disappeared.

I had a relaxing day and a two-hour nap and I'm feeling very all right again. Little by little, learning to do it differently.

Relaxing needs to impact my schedule?

2012-02-03T16:53:00.000-08:00

My main intention this year is to learn to relax. When I saw my therapist last week, she asked me how that was going. Okay, I said. And then she asked, "How is that impacting your schedule?"

I looked at her, more or less dumbfounded. And then I started to laugh. It had never occurred to me that I would have to change my schedule in order to learn to relax. Somehow I thought I was going to find a way to cram relaxing into my already very full schedule.

And after I stopped laughing, I began to get it. That this is at the core of much of what I want to effect in my life. A slower pace, more time for writing and art, reading and meditating. And that means I will have to give up the workaholic life that I say I don't want and can't seem to give up. And my clinging to it is for so many good reasons: I feel needed, I feel connected, I feel proud, I feel less insecure financially. So it's a push/pull and I'm not quite sure how to do this.

Groupon Valentine deals for the addict

2012-01-27T11:06:00.000-08:00

I subscribe to Groupon because about every six months, the spa I use has a deal and I treat myself or a good friend to a facial or hand/foot treatments. Most of the offers I can pass right by. They're very often not in my neighborhood and I'm not going to buy a coupon for coffee or tacos if I have to drive 20 miles to try the place out. But I read them from time to time to see what's being offered or if they're about a new restaurant or shop in my part of town.

Today in the Valentine's specials, this one appeared:

Wine-Infused Whipped Cream Party Pack with Three Flavors from Clubs of America

Vanilla, cocoa, and "plain" whipped cream with 20-proof alcohol in a product coyly called "Whipsy."

I just had to laugh. Next to ice cream, whipped cream is my favorite sweet food. I've often said I could eat dog biscuits with whipped cream. One of my earliest favorite desserts was called "Chocolate Refrigerator Cake." It was made with chocolate wafer cookies layered and slathered with fresh whipped cream. My mother taught me to make it when I was 8 or so because it was a dessert that didn't require the stove or an electrical tool, just an egg beater and a bowl and a knife.

And any cake or pudding I want to eat is doubly, triply delicious with a huge mound of whipped cream on it.

Now someone has put this together, in an aerosol can, with liquor. Liquored whipped cream doesn't sound really good to me but it got me craving there just for a second.

A provocative post from dailyom.com

2012-01-23T09:16:00.000-08:00

January 23, 2012
Shedding Light on Ourselves
Parts that Don’t Want to Heal
When we choose that which is not best for us, there can be a deep seated part of us that does not want to heal.

In almost every case, we know what is best for us in our lives, from the relationships we create to the food we eat. Still, somewhat mysteriously, it is often difficult to make the right choices for ourselves. We find ourselves hanging out with someone who leaves us feeling drained or choosing to eat fast food over a salad. We go through phases where we stop doing yoga or taking vitamins, even though we feel so much better when we do. Often we have no idea why we continue to make the less enlightened choice, but it is important that we inquire into ourselves to find out.

When we choose that which is not best for us, the truth can be that there is a deep seated part of us that does not want to heal. We may say it’s because we don’t have the time or the energy or the resources, but the real truth is that when we don’t take care of ourselves we are falling prey to self-sabotage. Self-sabotage happens unconsciously, which is why it’s so difficult to see that we are doing it. The important thing to realize is that this very part of us that resists our healing is the part that most needs our attention and love. Even as it appears to be working against us, if we can simply bring it into the light of our consciousness, it can become our greatest ally. It carries the information we need to move to the next level in our healing process.

When we recognize that we are not making healthy choices, we might even say out loud, “I am not taking care of myself.” Sometimes this is the jolt we need to wake up to what is actually happening. Next we can sit ourselves down in meditation, with a journal, or with a trusted friend to explore the matter more thoroughly. Just shining the light of our awareness on the source of our resistance is sometimes enough to dispel its power. At other times, further effort is required. Either way, we need not fear these parts that do not want to heal. We only need to take them under our wing and bring them with us into the light.

The devil is in the individual serving.

2012-01-20T11:10:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago, I was returning from a writing retreat with my friend Jan. It got to be lunch time and we stopped at a Safeway for food. Jan has a diet that precludes most restaurant food, especially the kind you can find easily on the road, so she wanted deli meat and an apple. I got a ham-and-cheese panini to go.

While I waited for Jan to get her lunch and for my panini to heat up, I looked at other things in the "Grab and Go" section. There was a big barrel of packages of chips and Cheetos and I was tempted but let that go. There was a basket of bananas and apples and I wasn't interested. There was a display of individually wrapped cookies and other pastries but I just passed them right by.

And then I wandered over to a futuristic-looking round bin with a domed glass top. Inside was ice cream. Not fudgesicles and HagenDaz bars or even frozen Snickers but little 1-cup containers of Dreyer's Twice-Churned Ice Cream, my vote for the best ice cream ever. And what was sitting right on top but Caramel Delight!

If you've been a reader of this blog for a while, you'll know that this was the last of my sugar obsessions. That the last 15 or 20 extra pounds I carry are directly related to this perfect food. And there it was, tempting me, taunting me in a Safeway in Centralia, Washington. There was even a little dispenser attached to the outside of the bin with plastic-wrapped spoons. This was liking selling crack at a booth at the county fair.

Jan bought her Braeburn apple and her organic ham and my panini came out of that weird hot press they make them in and it got wrapped into too much packaging and we it made out the door. But I was only too aware that I'd just had a brush with the devil, and he was dressed in a tiny and very cute cardboard carton.

A food coma does not constitute relaxation

2012-01-15T20:32:00.000-08:00

I've two intentions for 2012. One of them is to learn to relax. I used to think that I knew how to relax as a child and then some traumas occurred and I forgot how or my need for hypervigilance took over and pushed the knowledge aside. But now I'm not so sure. Maybe I have never really known.

There are a number of things I want out of this intention. I want to sleep better, to let go when I sleep, to trust that I will be all right. I don't have a conscious sense of holding tension but I know that I do. It was one of the big reasons alcohol was so appealing. After a couple of drunks, something in me relaxed, let go, didn't worry so much, didn't have to pay attention, didn't have to be afraid. It was also why tranquilizers, like Valium, were dangerous for me. I loved that sense of physical ease.

Since I got sober, I've been trying to to find that sense of ease through eating. But I've come to the realization that the kind of food coma I go into isn't relaxation, not in a true sense. It is an emotional coma I go into, not a physical state of well-being.

I don't seem to know how to do that on my own, find that state of well-being. For some reason, that may be related to physical hypervigilance, I have a lot of sore tissue in my arms and legs. This makes massage problematic as deep tissue work is too painful to be pleasurable. Exercise, which is relaxing to people, makes some difference but it creates more muscle tension as well.

I also want to stop giving over so much of my life energy to worry, whether conscious or habitual. I want to take it easy in all realms of my life and I am hopingthat learning to relax can help me do that.

So I'm on a quest to find some things that relax me. Maybe a different look at meditation. Maybe a look at doing nothing. Maybe an attitude adjustment. I can see how this is also related to developing a wider sense of pleasure. I'm looking forward to learning.

Aging and running out of time--when it's you

2012-01-10T14:26:00.000-08:00

I didn't think so much about my birthday as it came upon me last month. I held my annual holiday openhouse early in the month and then decided to give myself a 65th party. But other than acknowledging that it was a milestone, in the way we tend to think about those birthdays that end in 0 and 5, I didn't think about it. I had a wonderful party, then a wonderful Christmas, then headed off on my annual retreat for silence and writing and good company with women friends. An increasing lovely way to usher in the new year.

On the retreat, we spend our days in silence and I took some long walks and sat quietly in my room in the mid-afternoons as the sun set behind the alders and thought about how much I love writing fiction and being on retreat with friends and I started to wonder how many more of these trips were in my future. Joy, the wonderful visionary who owns the retreat center is in her 80s. She is an amazingly hale and hearty individual with a busy, active life but she is aging and will not be there forever. And neither will I.

On retreat, it really struck me that 65 is no joke. That it is a long time since I was born. That I've already lived a long life. It's just that it doesn't seem that way to me, for in many ways, my conscious life started in 1989, when I got sober. That's a mere 22 years ago and I find myself greedy to have another young adulthood, another middle age with a healthy body and a sharp mind and the wisdom I have now to apply to its use and development.

I won't spend any amount of my precious time yearning for that but I have found myself melancholy and thoughtful about what may remain to me. Maybe 5 years, maybe 10 or 15 or 20. My father lived to be 85 even with health issues, my mother's mother lived to be 101, so there is some longevity in the family. I have a good exercise program and pets and a lovely support circle of family and friends--all things that count for a better old age. And I have enough money, barring catastrophe. But I can no longer believe that I will live forever.

It's one thing, I find, to have theoretical conversations about the fact that we all get old (if we're lucky) and we all die. But it is another thing to be getting old yourself and running out of time.

The New Year's resolution about losing weight

2012-01-03T16:43:00.000-08:00

I spent an afternoon recently talking with a friend who is sad and angry that she can't lose the weight she wants to. Last summer, she did a very low calorie diet and lost the 15 pounds that she'd been wanting to get off. Then she had some family difficulties and other issues and within a month, she had those pounds back. Another friend reads widely in obesity research and she forwarded several articles about the brain changes that seem to happen to people who lose weight under starvation circumstances and how they almost always gain it back. And I thought about what torture that is for us--to starve ourselves to look differently and a great sadness came over me.

What if the inability to lose weight and keep it off (with normal amounts of effort) just isn't possible for some of us? What if it is a physical limitation like inflexibility or one leg shorter than the other or nearsightedness or hearing loss? What might happen if we just accepted it as that? Could we give up the sense of failure that so many of us carry around? Could we accept that we might still go on longing to be thinner and accept that too, the way I still long to drink alcohol sometimes and I just accept the fact that that longing will come and go.

What might happen if we showered ourselves with acceptance instead of more discipline, more strategies, more resolve?

So as a step in that direction, I did not put weight loss on my list of goals or wishes for 2012. I put being healthier instead.

New Year's Eve ritual

2011-12-31T11:10:00.000-08:00

For the last five years, I've come on a writing retreat to my soul place on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle. Aldermarsh is a small cluster of elegant buildings on 5 acres on a country road. It is dark here at night with only a faint glow of the city to the south. It is quiet here at night. You can hear owls and coyotes and the wind in the trees. I walked for 45 minutes on the road here yesterday and in that time only four cars and one truck passed me.

I came the first time by myself. I had friends living on the island to see every couple of days and the owner here to help me with the wood stove and the generator when the power went out in a wind storm. Now I come with several other women, people I enjoy being in silence and in conversation with. We're far enough north that the days are very short and the evenings long and slow. We stay in silence most of the day. Some of us writing, others reading, resting, reflecting. At night we play cards and chat and laugh.

Tonight we will have our New Year's Eve ritual after dinner. We will sit in circle and share our answers to several questions.

What do we want to release from our lives at this time?
What do we want to welcome in?
What are we most glad about from 2011?
What do we most want to be in 2012? To have? To do?
What is our clearest purpose (reason for being) at this time?
What is our biggest challenge?
What do we fear?
What do we long for?

Each year this produces a very rich conversation, a deep intimacy amoung friends, and a strong space for us to hold these desires for each other.

If you decide to do this ritual by yourself or with others, I'd love to hear how it goes.

Happy New Year, Jill

A part of AA I don't often connect with

2011-12-26T18:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday afternoon, my family all left about 1:30. I began thinking seriously about all I had to do today ( I leave tomorrow for a 10-day writing retreat) and there was no way I could fit in a meeting at my home group, so I went online and looked for something close and soon. There was a Speaker Meeting at an address about 10 minutes away. I knew where it was, just didn't know what it was. It turned out to be an AA clubhouse in a storefront in a part of Portland that moves east into much cheaper, shabbier neighborhoods. (My neighborhood isn't chic by any means (it's a very old, working class neighborhood of Portland) but it's become trendy with young people and is very tolerant of gays so we have a wide range of ages and styles around here and most people are moving up.) This was definitely something different.

The storefront was weirdly arranged with a warren of small rooms and then a long narrow back room. There had obviously been a Christmas potluck going on and there were a dozen people at small tables talking and eating pie. No one spoke to me, no one even nodded at me, and all my old shyness and insecurities came rushing back at me. I realized I was still in my holiday clothes, not in jeans and old jackets like most of these folks.

Then a white-haired woman beckoned me into the long back room and introduced herself and we chatted a little. One of the first things she asked me was my sobriety date and I found that odd, but it turned out to be an Oldtimers' meeting and I wondered if you had to be an Oldtimer to go. She had 38 years in the program. I took a seat, I was a few minutes early and the few men at the table were the leather-skinned, bedraggled veterans of the alcohol wars that I used to see in my first meetings in Pennsylvania where there were mostly very low bottom drunks coming in. One of the meetings was called Sober Up of Die.

The speaker had 30 years and I looked forward to his sharing but he was a terrible speaker. He meandered around, spoke almost not at all about alcohol or alcoholism but gave us way more intimate details than any of us wanted about his 4 wives, 9 kids, and even more grandkids. There was no real lesson learned. He just seemed to need to talk about all that. And I listened and thought about my own trajectory in the program, the years I've been sober, the years I've been more sane than not. And I was glad to be there and to be reminded that I've been more than lucky in this life. Not only am I sober, but I didn't lose everything like some of these folks who not only lost the relationships and the money but the wherewithal to get it back.

That meeting wasn't what I was looking for and it was out of my comfort zone and it was perfect. God bless us, everyone!

Progress and the slippery slope

2011-12-22T21:54:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday, my family met for brunch to celebrate my birthday and that of my nephew Alex. The hilarious and very congenial waiter convinced the table to order a plate of gingerbread pancakes to share as we waited for our food orders. My sister cut the plate-size cakes into small triangles and passed them along. They looked really good and so I put butter and syrup on mine and ate them (three bites). They were great but good and the amazing thing is I didn't think about taking a second helping (there were several left) or about trying to sneak them or even wanting them. It didn't occur to me and that seemed such a major breakthrough. And when the waiter brought the birthday cake slice for me in a to-go box, I didn't even hesitate, just passed it right along to my sister.

But it's the holidays, a time fraught with peril for those of us who are alcoholic and/or food addicts. It's a time of year when normal eaters and drinkers binge and the dangerous substances are everywhere. At every party, every event (no matter how benign), there are plates full of sweets and cookies with rum and spiked drinks. And sometimes abstinence feels like penance, rather than a choice freely taken. And even resolve gets shaky.

Last night another family dinner, this one smaller. My nephew ordered gelato after. Ice cream is my weakness. And he didn't finish it and I really, really thought about it. About using the spoon the waitress had so kindly placed in front of each of us. I was craving for a minute and then I thought about the consequences. About starting up again in all of that. And I took a deep breath and let it go.

May we all find peace around food and drink in this holiday season.

Letting go of the outcome...even on my birthday

2011-12-19T18:33:00.000-08:00

Saturday was my birthday and I gave myself a party. When I was at the beach on writing retreat in early November, I asked for suggestions on how to take some small risks in my life. One suggestion, from Christa, was to celebrate my birthday in a new way. So I invited some of my closest friends to join me from 4-6 pm for a birthday circle. I knew I wanted several things. I wanted good friends to help me celebrate. I wanted them to bring poems to read. And I knew I didn't want a big food extravaganza. So I planned it for late in the afternoon, made tea, had juice, and some simple snacks.

I had invited 30 women. 18 said yes and 15 came. Most of these women were from my various circles, which tend to be very New Age. Two of them were from my family, which is not New Age at all. And I was concerned that, well, that that difference wouldn't work out very well. As a hypervigilant, I'm always watching to be sure everybody is okay. And I didn't want to have to do that on my birthday. Also I felt awkward about imposing a circle on my guests when maybe what they expected was a meet-and-greet like my annual open house.

I had suggested that those who wanted to could go out to dinner with me afterward. Then my sister wanted our family to get together in the evening and I said yes to that. And then that changed and suddenly I had no plans for afterward and that didn't feel good either so I talked to my good friend Mary and we agreed to have dinner and that seemed fine. I was practicing flexibility

I had a nice morning. I worked out, I got a facial, I got my apartment organized. I got a shower and got dressed and my first guest arrived at 2 pm. She'd gotten the time wrong. And although I wasn't ready for guests, I let go of the outcome and spent a lovely hour talking to her and another friend, who drove down from Seattle and then the party started and somehow the snacks and drinks got put out and the candles never got lit but who cared. And at a certain point, it seemed right to call circle and it was lovely. My friends told how they knew me, they read their poems, some gave me gifts. And people left when they needed to and some arrived late and it was all fine.

The poems were lovely and varied. Some were written for the occasion. Others were by favorite poets. One friend, Lily, asked each woman to say a word or phrase about me and then she danced it. So cool! And during the circle some women cried and it was all okay. And then some people stayed late and we talked about the world and our love for it and our grief over it. And then they all left and Mary and I went to dinner at one of my favorite places and had a great time.

I felt very loved and celebrated. And I felt that the new way I celebrated in was not so much the circle or the poems but that I let go of the outcome and trusted that it would work out fine. And it did.

Being in my body 1

2011-12-12T17:36:00.000-08:00

It is difficult for me to admit but but wanting in my body is close to incomprehensible to me. In the Pleasure Reboot program I took a week ago, Jenna talked about pleasure as a feeling and feelings only living in the body. They don't live in the mind. We need to be present in our bodies to perceive pleasure, happiness, contentment, satisfaction, joy, relaxation.

Most of my life I have felt separate from my body and for good reason. At a certain point in my childhood, I went from being unconscious of my body to being hyper-conscious of it. It was a time of emotional trauma and my body was full of fear. I had no way to talk about the fear, to process it, to befriend it, and all I could do was distance myself from it. Later, when I no longer lived in constant fear, I found other emotions to avoid: humiliation, nervousness, boredom, anxiety, and later jealousy and heartbreak.

Of course, my life wasn't all awful. I had laughter and happiness and pride and accomplishment and excitement. But I had already learned to distance myself from my body and so it was very difficult to register those more positive emotions and they never seemed as strong or important as the misery.

As my alcoholism progressed into chronic hangover, the physical illness was wretched and I further distanced myself from my body so that I wouldn't feel so sick, so ashamed, so lost. And because my drinking led me to a lot of casual sexual encounters, I didn't want to experience them either, though I always thought I did.

I've been sober now for more than 22 years and I have healed a lot. I have learned to understand my alcoholic tendencies, to understand my experience of attachment disorder, to understand why I couldn't pick better partners or make the ones I picked really love me. I understand a lot. But that's in my head, not in my body.

I'm coming to see that in order to let go of food as soother, I have to learn to feel pleasure in other parts of myself. And this is terrifying to me. Even thinking about writing this and posting it brought on two panic attacks today, deep experiences of fear in my body. But I do have a small degree of willingness. And maybe even just an inkling of curiosity.

Better boundaries, fewer rules

2011-12-07T21:25:00.000-08:00

A couple of posts back, I talked about an Enneagram workshop I had gone to and some learnings about being a One. Today, I was at the monthly meeting of the Soul Strippers group I belong to, and we were talking about things we might want to manifest in the New Year, not as projects or as tasks, but more ways we wanted to be in the world. After I'd done a little writing on this, I realized one of the things I wanted was better boundaries and fewer rules.

We Ones are very rule-bound. We have learned that this is a hedge against chaos, against the unpredictability of life and of other people and so we are most comfortable when we know the rules and when others follow them. I've known that for sometime. My relationship with the rules is what makes me a One. But until today I hadn't connected my need for rules with my relationship with boundaries in relationships.

In my past, I've not been very good at boundaries. I have had a tendency to take responsibility for others' behavior and others' well-being, co-dependency at its worst. This was true with my romantic partners. I tolerated a lot of hurtful behavior, putting their needs before my own for fear of losing them. And I was always trying to re-establish the rules, getting them to agree to things. Sometimes they humored me, sometimes not. But the rules never lasted. Boundaries were an issue with my mother and they have been an issue more recently with other mother figures in my life, including 12-step sponsors. Mostly in all these cases, I've given up my power in order to have rules.

And I'm seeing that intimate relationships are lived in the emotions and rules come out of the head. Talk about a disconnect.

It may be that those of us with a tendency to addiction have an increased issue with boundaries. That it takes a certain degree of emotional health to do that well. I know that in these last several years, I have had the courage to set boundaries with friends, clients, and acquaintances in ways that would never have occurred to me before. Doing this has not been easy and it has not resulted in happy endings. But it has resulted in a new kind of strength and clarity for me.

taking care of yourself vs. taking care of someone else

2011-12-03T20:15:00.000-08:00

I had an unpleasant task this week. I needed to write to a participant in one of the groups I host and ask her not to return. The particulars of the group and why she wasn't a good fit are not of importance here. Suffice it to say that when I brought up the issue at a meeting (she wasn't there), all the other members of the group, including me, felt that she wasn't a good fit. And as host, I volunteered to communicate with her.

I had been uncomfortable in this woman's presence for some months but I probably would never have said anything if two other members hadn't approached me with their intention to withdraw from the group if she continued with us. So then I had to look at the dilemma. Did I want her gone because I was uncomfortable or did I think it best for the group if she left? And what about her feelings?

Some relationships are easy to end. You spend a couple of times with an acquaintance, don't care for her, and you say no to the next invitation or two and she gets the hint and you both move on. If I don't like working with a client, I don't take the next job. If I don't like the energy or style of a teacher, I don't take another workshop. But when you open a group to the public and accept all comers as members, it's a lot trickier to disengage.

Our decision was not made lightly and I took some comfort in that. We were all also conscious that this would be difficult news for her to hear. And I appreciated that we talked about that before making our decision. And I sent the letter.

If you've read this blog for a while, you may remember I had a similar decision to make and action to take a year or so ago, when one person's energy and needs didn't fit my retreat group. And so life comes around again with another messy situation. I felt stronger this time. When I got the woman's response this week, I didn't respond with the details she wanted, and just reiterated our decision. I knew there was nothing to be gained for her or us by telling her the reasons. She either knew anyway or didn't really want to know and just wanted to argue. I was sorry for her sadness but relieved for us.

It is not easy to balance taking care of what you need and want and considering what will happen to the Other if you speak up for that. But the alternative of irritation veiled in politeness, of a kind of emotional swimming upstream, isn't acceptable. So I'm slowly learning to speak my truth with more tact and more kindness, and yet still speaking it.

Another damn insight

2011-11-29T14:46:00.000-08:00

I'm taking a one-week pleasure reboot workshop from health coach Jenna Abernathy (www.divinehunger.com) and she has some very wise things to say. I was attracted to the workshop not only because I know Jenna (she was my yoga coach for a while) but because the Enneagram workshop I attended 10 days ago made it really clear that for Ones the spiritual path lies through pleasure. We are really good at hard work and problem-solving and actually pretty lousy at having a good time. So I thought I'd take some lessons.

One of the first things Jenna said really struck me. "Eating to run away from stress is not pleasure." Wow!

It made me think about all the alcohol and food I have consumed greedily, desperately, untastingly. I wasn't looking for pleasure. I was looking to get numb. In many ways, sex was the same thing. And work. I didn't want to be feeling what I was feeling so I drank or ate or worked until the feelings went away or went further in. Yet I would have said that I enjoyed all those ice cream bars or cookies or caramels or glasses of wine or things checked off my to do list.

And maybe, in my own way, I did. But if eating or drinking or working to escape the negative is not a positive, then I think I will have to admit I may not really know what pleasure feels like. All these many years I have equated it with relief, with making that discomfort, that loneliness, that sadness, that anger or fear go away, when it may have just brought me to neutral.

One of our challenges this week is make a list of pleasures for ourselves. No wonder I'm stymied.

Being with Ones just like me

2011-11-22T18:18:00.000-08:00

Saturday I attended a workshop on the Enneagram, a very old system of understanding personalities. In the system, there are 9 types although we all have some of the characteristics of all 9. Yet in our childhood we began to fall back onto one particular "habit of attention." I'm a One, also known as the Perfectionist or the Idealist or the Reformer. We like rules, standards, order, tidiness. We don't like messy or unpredictable. Our habit of attention goes to error, to what's wrong and how we can fix it.

Saturday was an opportunity to be in the company of 13 other Ones. It was an amazing experience to be with so many people whose emotional response to life is similar to my own, where everyone nods their head in agreement when you say I have to make my bed every morning or I'm always decluttering or I don't like it when I don't know what the rules are in a conversation, a situation, a relationship, a job. While we aren't exactly control freaks, we do like to know what's expected and what's going on, even if it's bad.

I took away a lot of scary and intriguing ideas to think about. That life is inherently messy and meandering. That standards and rules are artificial constructions, that nature doesn't live by them, including human nature. That serenity lies in surrendering to the mess and accepting it as it is. That living in the Serenity Prayer can be really helpful. That joy and pleasure are a One's path to spirituality.

Wow!

Worried about not worrying about my weight

2011-11-16T20:25:00.000-08:00

I had a session with my wonderful therapist, Anna, yesterday and the conversation circled/spiraled back around to food and weight loss. For the past five years, we've moved in and out of that conversation. After about three years, I was able to give up most of the sugar in my diet. But since February 2010, I haven't made much of a move to shift other patterns of what, when, and why I eat.

For a while, I gave up thinking about it, as part of my letting go of chronic concerns, and I was happier until I started gaining weight. Then I lost the weight I'd gained. But with this past illness and the cough hanging on, I'm reading that weight loss can improve lung function and so I find myself falling back into "should" around it. When I mentioned this to Anna, she asked me a couple of questions but I could feel that my answers were the same old things, the same old worry and resistance. I make it a point not to lie to Anna so I couldn't say yes to the questions when yes wasn't the truth. And she'd see right through me anyway.

So she suggested that I just stop being in the food conversation, stop revisiting the spiral. Stop worrying about what I eat or if I should eat that or why can't I stop eating that. To be honest, it wasn't a relief to hear her say that. It was frightening. I've been carrying the worry about these pounds around as long as I've been carrying the pounds. What will I be without that concern? What will I obsess about?

It feels comical in a way but it isn't. I'm sort of lost without this chronic concern. Now what?

Getting a grip on your mind

2011-11-12T09:48:00.000-08:00

In a recent conversation with our creativity class, Eric Maisel talked about the mind and its relationship to our creative process. I found his ideas also really applicable to the other parts of my life: my spiritual practices, my emotional health, and my relationship with food. Here are some of his ideas (or my interpretation of them).

Recognize that you are the only one who can get a grip on your mind. No one else is in there with you.
You do not have to accept a thought as true. And even if it is true, it may not be helpful.
Learn to listen (and hear) what you say to yourself. This takes courage.
Distinguish between thoughts that serve you (support what you truly want) and thoughts that don’t serve you.
Get in the habit of self-questioning. Is this thought helpful?
Substitute helpful thoughts in language that is supportive of your desires.
Decide what you want to be saying to yourself and say it.

While I have no trouble with items 1 and 2, I am finding #3 very hard: really hearing what I’m saying to myself. I’m so used to going on impulse (eat that, eat more of that, do that), that it is hard for me to figure out what I’m saying. It requires a kind of slowing down and quieting myself that isn’t easy. But I’m giving it a try.

Being in the presence of grief and fear

2011-11-05T09:24:00.000-07:00

Two of my close friends are having cancer experiences. My friend J. is having a recurrence of her lymphoma. She had her first experience 11 years ago and has had a reasonably good remission, although her health has not been strong since then. Over the last few months, she has had all kinds of symptoms that she know recognizes. The good news is that it is a variation of the same kind, not a more deadly kind, and she has confidence in chemo and care for herself.

My friend S. is experiencing cancer with her husband, who has learned he has stage 3 esophageal cancer. Five years ago he had a second heart attack and a stroke and has some brain injury and physical disability. She is sitting with the unfairness of more suffering for him. They have made a decision not to treat this for it would gain him only a little more time and undoubtedly much increased misery.

Yesterday at Writing Friday, Carole wrote a lovely piece about her feelings about J. and the impotence of friendship and the power of love in the face of such difficulty and holding someone while she experiences what life gives her. There was a deep sense of reference as Carole read, tears, a sense of holding ourselves and others in these robust and frail bodies,the connection of hearts and souls. J. had gone outside on her cell phone to schedule the first chemo session and we breathed our love out to her.

There is an amazing power in community. I have known this since September 16, 1989, when I went to my first AA meeting. I had been in the treatment center for four hours, was drunk, and still I could feel something astounding, something magical in the room and the shared commitment to sobriety (which meant nothing really to me in that moment). I just remember that when we held hands at the end and recited the Lord's Prayer (which I did not believe in), something changed in me, something opened in me to life in a different way. I felt that something yesterday in our circle of writer friends and heart mates.

Illness, depression, and doing what you need

2011-11-02T17:15:00.000-07:00

For more than three weeks, I've had a virus in my chest. It seemed to go from cold to bronchitis to pneumonia in about 2 weeks. I did all the things I knew to do on my own: clearing my calendar, taking my herbal remedies, resting, drinking lots of water. I never had a fever or felt particularly sick but the cough got worse and worse and I got more and more tired. Although I'd occasionally feel I was on the mend, I never really was. A week ago Monday, I saw the nurse practitioner at my doctor's office, he diagnosed pneumonia and put me on an antibiotic. The change was slow but positive and I saw him again that Friday and he said my lung was clear and I'd turned the corner. He didn't however listening to the hacking cough and by Sunday, I was worse again. Now I am on the second round of antibiotics and hoping this will do it. While this second antibiotic has some unpleasant side effects, including insomnia, it does seem to be working. I am coughing less often, less violently. And I've become cautiously optimistic that I am on the mend finally.

Several things have come out of this experience. How much I take for granted that I will heal and be well. I know that many people have to give up on that belief and I have been depressed by thoughts that I might be joining them. Bronchitis can turn chronic and lead to COPD, a nasty acronym for battered, scarred lungs that don't work well. Second, that my body needs my love and tenderness, not my fear and resistance to what is.
Third, that illness is depressing and my spirits have sunk quite low in the last couple of days, especially with the antibiotic-induced insomnia.

It is a curious phenomenon, the bleak thinking that comes in the dark hour when we cannot sleep and feel alone and vulnerable. How quickly I could go to thinking I would never be well, I would be on a respirator, I would die. That my books would never sell, that my writing is terrible, that my life has been a waste. Fortunately, my thoughts became so out of control and so gloomy that I had to laugh. And last night I didn't let myself go there.

I also recognized that I desperately needed an AA meeting, that it had been over a month since I'd been, perhaps the longest time in all 22 years of sobriety. Normally I go once or twice a week but I had not felt up to driving, to leaving the house, to coughing for an hour in the presence of others. And when I don't get to my meetings, eventually the sanity starts to wobble.

I went to a meeting at noon today and talked about some of these things. Within three minutes of sitting down, I felt better. My chest wasn't any clearer, but my mind and heart were. I had forgotten that meetings are a medicine that I need. I was glad I remembered.

Laughter, donkeys, and exceptions

2011-10-30T19:56:00.000-07:00

Respecting the Body"For most of us, and for most of modern culture, the body is principally seen
as the object of our ego agendas, the donkey for the efforts of our ambitions.
The donkey is going to be thin, the donkey is going to be strong, the donkey is
going to be a great yoga practitioner, the donkey is going to look and feel young,
the donkey is going to work eighteen hours a day, the donkey is going to help me
fulfill my needs, and so on. All that is necessary is the right technique."
Reginald Ray, Tricycle

Today at the Women and Food group, we talked a lot about our donkeys. Pam's knees are going on her, Angela's had spectacular digestive problems, I've got a chest virus that refuses to go away, Lila's been wrestling with pleasure and where it lives. And that doesn't even take into consideration the weight our donkeys seem to want to hang on to or add to themselves.

Fortunately we're a group of women with excellent, active senses of humor so we were saved from all-out melancholy and obnoxious drama by much laughter, although some of it was pretty dark. So we let ourselves whine for a while and then we got down to being kinder and negotiating our individual ways back to possibility.

There's both wisdom and intelligence in this group of four and we ended our discussion by talking about what it would take to be exceptions. To be successful at overcoming our dependence on food for self-soothing, or our mono-focus on food as pleasure. None of us had solutions yet but we were willing to really speak our minds and our hearts about our donkeys, and I think something truly significant happened.

Missing drugs and alcohol

2011-10-26T17:35:00.000-07:00

For more than two weeks, I've been puny. A cold virus settled in my chest, moved from cold to bronchitis and now to walking pneumonia. I've not been lie-in-bed-and-moan sick. I've just been coughing and coughing and coughing until I'm worn out sick. Finally Monday, after two weeks, I went to the doctor and got the pneumonia diagnosis (I'd been hearing the most amazing whistling, squeaking, and clicking in my lung) and got antibiotics. They have not yet worked any miracles on my chest. I am still puny and I want to run away from my body until it is better.

When I was drinking, I didn't mind being sick. It was a great reason to stay home from work and cancel all appointments and just drink. And with cold medicine and enough bourbon, I'd get so numb I wouldn't care. But now I don't do that and I miss that deep sense of relaxation that comes from just enough booze boosted by an antihistamine. My body remembers that sense of relaxation, that sense of ease, probably more than any other part of the alcoholic experience. Right now I'm deeply missing that ease.

I'm not going to drink. The consequences of that are so horrifying to me that I don't feel at risk. But it is easier to contemplate the seduction when I don't feel good.

More on possibility

2011-10-22T13:43:00.001-07:00

Life is possible. Situations are possible. And anybody can start to gain some kind of insight and appreciation of their lives. That’s what we call “sacred.” It doesn’t mean something dramatic, but something very simple. There’s a sacredness to everyone’s life.

– Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Upgrading our personalities

2011-10-21T14:58:00.000-07:00

"You're the only one who can get a grip on your mind." --Eric Maisel

Spending today with the thinking of psychologist Eric Maisel, whose ideas appear here from time to time. In his workshop lectures on creativity, he has talked twice about the need to upgrade our personalities. We upgrade our computers, our cars, our mattresses. Just yesterday when my phone died, I had a choice between replacing it with a similar model or upgrading (actually for less money). I was tempted to stay with the familiar as I know how it works. But I chose to try something new, something that might work better.

I'm sure you can see where this analogy is going. We stay stuck in our relationships with self and others because things are comfortably familiar, even if they're awful. That was certainly true for me when I was deep into the active part of my alcoholism. My life was terrible: I felt sick all the time, I was in a very painful jealous relationship, I was going nowhere in my career, and yet I knew it all so well that it was easier for many years to stay there and just be in it and make excuses.

Part of sobriety for me has been this process of upgrading, though I didn't know to call it that. It's not just, I don't think, about the natural inclination to move towards what's healthier for mind and body and spirit. It's also about awareness of how we are in the world and how we might be. It's the language and philosophy of possibility, of experimentation, of change.

Many people deride self-help but in the case of our inner selves, the self is all the help we're ever going to have. We can read and talk to others, we can internalize events, but the conscious changes in behavior, and Maisel would say, the changes in thinking and feeling, have to come from inside. Maisel believes that's the good news. That we have much more control over all that internal work than we think we do. I like the choice this opens up.

Can it just be okay to need fixing?

2011-10-18T15:16:00.000-07:00

This weekend I was reading my friend Angela's blog, Her Greening, and got to thinking about the shame we attach to our brokenness. Much of the brokenness is itself shame, shame about being unable to care for ourselves as children when our parents couldn't. Shame about needing love and nurturing from those same parents who couldn't do that either. It became our fault that we were wounded in that lopsided way that some of us reasoned as children and that we couldn't fix ourselves or fix our parents.

Now in healing and recovery from those old wounds and the havoc they wreaked on our adolescent and adult choices of companions and soothing substances, we can feel an additional burden of shame that we are still wounded, still needing, and perhaps most shameful of all, still needing fixing.

It is not uncommon in AA to encounter people working a great program, going to meetings, not drinking, cleaning up the wreckage of their pasts, and still addicted--to sugar, to caramel macchiatos, to new shoes or half dozen new mysteries or over-exercising or working too much. Addressing these additional efforts to fix ourselves are not talked about much in AA. They're considered outside issues by many but I don't think they are outside issues. I think they are the same issue. For my use of food to take care of myself grew out of the same sense of brokenness that caused me to seek shelter with alcohol. And I know I am not alone in this.

There is considerable cultural shame around overeating. It's a different shame than that meted out to the out-of-control alcoholic but it winds up as shame nonetheless. If we can give up alcohol, why can't we give up sugar? And diets seem to me to be another shaming device: you shouldn't eat that way, you shouldn't need to fix yourself with food or work or ordering six Netflix at a time so you'll always have plenty; you shouldn't need anything to help you make it through the day or a lonely evening or a weekend with the flu. But that isn't my reality.

So I'm sitting with this question: Can we let it be okay to need fixing?

The meaninglessness of addiction

2011-10-14T12:22:00.000-07:00

In our creativity lesson this week, teacher Eric Maisel talked about meaning and the struggle that creatives have in finding life meaningful. Many people, perhaps most, in the world, do not struggle with meaning issues. They are happy or unhappy, settled or unsettled, but they don't experience the kind of existential sadness that some of us do when our activities or way of life seem meaningless. He posited that some of us are just born that way, born wanting life to be meaningful.

I was born with this yearning. I've often associated it with being a highly sensitive person, not exactly hypersensitive to others, but hypersensitive to existence and what I am doing here and what it all means. But until this morning, I had not clearly and directly associated that yearning with my experiences with addiction: sugar, alcohol, relationships with men. I had not seen that a perception that life isn't meaningful enough has a connection to self-soothing and wanting to numb out. I wrote "addiction" down in my notebook as Maisel went on lecturing and then he himself came to that idea, mentioning the creatives' propensity for addiction to substances and behaviors.

Many of us addicts and alcoholics are disappointed by life. The thrills don't last, the happiness doesn't last. Relationships end or fade into routine. We learn all we can from a job and then we're bored and tired of it. And we grow disillusioned with religion when the meaning it tries to impose on us doesn't hold up in the face of reality.

Addiction, for me anyway, has been a response to that overwhelming sense of meaninglessness and sobriety my attempts to find meaning. What a breakthrough to be able to articulate this.

Rat trap vs. freedom

2011-10-11T17:44:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday at a women's gathering, we talked about Martha Beck's article on rats and freedom. Curious why some Vietnam vets just stopped drinking and using drugs when they came home, researchers worked with rats and learned that rats who feel trapped in small cages will overuse morphine-laced water until addiction but rats in large cages with lots of toys and not too many other rats not only didn't get addicted but the addicted ones cut back and eventually stopped.

While the women at the gathering aren't all addicts, like most Americans, we have compulsive and repetitive behaviors. So we worked through Beck's exercise: listing people, locations, activities, and situations that made us feel trapped, and then people, locations, activities, and situations that made us feel free. Not surprisingly, spouses fit both lists as did work. But after a very interesting and lively conversation, we began to circle back to a discussion from some months ago.

The thing that struck me in the Beck article was that the rats who were happy and engaged with their toys were the freeest of addiction. And so we recommitted, each of us, to creating a couple of hours of pure pleasure every day. Things done and enjoyed for their own sakes: from painting to listening to music, to walking the neighborhood, to reading a good novel. Each of us had our own list.

For me, two things have needed to happen. I schedule in the pleasure. I'm not particularly spontaneous and I could see myself at 10 pm with no pleasure in the day. So now I'm writing on my novel for an hour first thing each morning. And I take time each afternoon to read or visit with a friend. And I am much happier for it.

The second thing is a little harder and will take some practice. I have to register the pleasure. I have to savor it and acknowledge it and maybe even report it. I have to be in the moment and in the pleasure. That's quite a change to work through.

Inspiring

2011-10-06T17:42:00.000-07:00

God is the journey we all want to be on. --Louie Schwartzberg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXDMoiEkyuQ&feature=player_embedded

Working on learning to be in my body

2011-10-03T18:58:00.000-07:00

I've known for a long time that I don't really inhabit my whole body. One of the first acupuncturists I saw, maybe 10-12 years ago, told me that all the energy in my body was running up to my head and none was running down to my feet. In fact, most of my chi was located from the waist up. This meant of course that I wasn't grounded, but rather floating. At about the same time, I started teaching a course in creativity and the chakras, Hindu energy centers. During our meditatons in the class as well as on my own, I had a great deal of difficulty envisioning the root and sacral chakras in my body. (The root chakra is located approximately where the sex organs are and the sacral chakra is located above it in the belly area. Root chakra is associated with family, community, lineage. It is our foundation in life. The sacral chakra is related to generative creativity: children, imagining, envisioning, innovating.) Since then several massage therapists have commented on the congestion in my lower torso and for years I've suffered from low back, hip pain. Hello!

Attachment disorder didn't just confuse and limit my ability to attach to my mother. It also confused and limited my ability to connect with my self and with my body. That kind of confusion and limitation, that kind of disconnect, has, I think, led in part to my ability to do self-destructive things to my body, like two decades of excessive drinking and two decades of excessive eating. In fact, I wonder if the need to drink to hangover or eat to discomfort has been a way to connect to my body, albeit in a twisted fashion. Something interesting to ponder.

Attachment disorder and overeating

2011-09-29T18:13:00.000-07:00

Over the last several months, I've become interested in disordered attachment. This happens when the primary parent/caregiver is unable to develop a healthy relationship with the very young child. While there are many reasons for this inability, in the end what matters is that the child perceives that the parent is unreliable or unsafe or unloving and that the child is on her own to take care of herself, most commonly in an emotional way, though sometimes in a physical way as well.

In the physical realm, children who are abused learn to hide while children who aren't provided with enough to eat learn to stuff themselves when food is available or they hoard food. This is not uncommon among foster children, for example, whose parents are addicts or alcoholics. These children don't trust that food will be there for them, even when the circumstances change. This is the case for one of my friends.

In the emotional realm, children with disordered attachment learn to soothe themselves in any way possible since many experiences seem unsafe and they do not have a steady adult to rely on. Life in my family seemed very unsafe to me; I perceived, quite probably mistakenly, that my parents weren't paying attention and that I had to be responsible for everyone, including myself. I also did not feel safe in the presence of my mother. I could not count on her to be loving or kind, though she often was. But there was another cold, unhappy side of her that I also felt responsible for. Her fluctuating emotions caused constant anxiety and fear in me, that I dealt with by self-soothing with food and later with alcohol. With enough sugar or drink in me, I could relax, not care that things weren't safe.

In the readings about disordered attachment, I learned that some children become afraid of their mothers. And that happened to me. It was an immense relief to read that this happens to children, for I have always felt ashamed that I feared my mother, who never hit me or physically abused me. But I was afraid of her, nonetheless. I also transferred that fear of powerful people to the men I got involved with, afraid they would hurt me, leave me, betray me. And the ones I picked did. It set up a sad pattern of relationships and a lot of difficulty with intimacy that I just kept at bay with sugar and then with booze and then with sugar again.

My abstinence from sugar is bringing all this up for healing. It's quite the ride.

12 desserts a day, ice cream 16/7, and HP

2011-09-25T20:15:00.000-07:00

Life on a cruise ship is not for the faint of resolution. I got home yesterday from our week cruise from Seattle to Juneau and Ketchikan. We had lovely accommodations, excellent service, and great food. In fact, on our ship, there were five places to eat. There were three formal dining areas and a "grill" with burgers and hot dogs, and a 16-hour buffet with non-stop entrees, snacks, desserts, and ice cream, both hard and soft. It was an extravaganza of edibles.

The food in the buffet was pretty good. The food in the dining rooms was terrific. We ate most of our meals in the Vista Dining Room with elegant table settings and formal service and a view of the water. The breakfast menu was substantial; the lunch and dinner menus each offered four courses of gourmet food, including a choice of 12, count 'em 12, different desserts at both lunch and dinner.

After an appetizer, soup, and an entree, I was never hungry for dessert but that didn't mean I didn't want one. The first couple of meals were okay. I ordered the fruit plate and watched the 5-6 other people at the table eat their warm fruit crisp with ice cream, or the chocolate mousse cake, or the special combination of creamy sauce and caramel and pound cake, or the baked alaskan, and I felt virtuous.

Then it got tougher. My commitment began to waver and I started to feel immensely sorry for myself. I'd go up to the Lido to the buffet to get hot water for tea and watch people strolling with waffle cones of chocolate or mango ice cream, licking their lips and talking about how fabulous it was. At lunch one day in the dining room, a woman went on and on about the bread pudding with whipped cream that showed up at lunch each day at the buffet and you could eat all you wanted. I wanted to push her overboard.

My commitment wavered a bit more. "Maybe tonight I'll have dessert," I said to Melanie, the friend I was travelling with. It was day 3 and I was really tired of the fruit plate.

"Well, you could," she said. "How would you feel about that afterward?"

"I don't know," I wanted to say, but it was a lie. The dessert would go down and I would want another. And so I told her about the waffle. On day 2, I ate breakfast in the buffet by myself. I ate eggs and bacon and toast and then decided I could have a waffle (hot, fresh) with fruit on it. There was hot maple syrup to go on it, and hot chocolate syrup, and hot caramel syrup but I'd have fruit. So I did. And it was delicious and that wasn't the end of it. For the next 48 hours, that waffle was in my thoughts. Or rather another one like it was in my thoughts, maybe two this time, maybe with caramel. I do love caramel. And I was right back into craving. I didn't eat another waffle.

The last indecision occured at dinner on Day 5. We'd opted to eat in the very fanciest dining room (it cost extra) and the food was fabulous. And I decided that I could have dessert. Just this once, on this special occasion. I was all set to do it. And when the dessert menu came, there were 6 choices: 5 had alcohol and the 6th was cheesecake, which I don't like. And I realized my higher power was intervening for me. And so I ordered the fruit plate.

There's a PS to the story. Other than no dessert, I ate what I wanted. And from the deliciousness of the dishes, I would guess I consumed enough butter for most of Portland. But when I got on the scale this morning, prepared to have gained some weight, I had lost 5 pounds. Go figure!

Duelling voices

2011-09-16T11:43:00.000-07:00

I leave today on vacation. My neighbor and gym buddy Melanie and I are sailing up the Inland Passage to Alaska, something that's been on both our dream lists for a long time. I talked with a friend last February about her trip, who raved about the experience, and mentioned it to Melanie,and we looked at each other and said, "Let's go." So we board the ship tomorrow and cruise for a week. I've very excited.

And the last two days there've been duelling voices in my head. One voice says, "The food is going to be fantastic. You can eat dessert this week. You've been really good, and remember you're not worrying about weight loss. You're in recovery from that chronic concern." The other says, "If you could eat dessert in moderation, if you could pick and choose when to indulge, you'd already been doing that. Abstinence works best for you. Hang in there!" So I find myself in that scene from Animal House when Tom Hulce has the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other.

What makes the decision easy is knowing myself so well. I might, maybe, perhaps could eat a dessert or three on the trip and not get hooked by sugar again. But I've done this dance of maybe so many times and I am so happy not to be living in shame and guilt around what I eat that it just isn't worth it.

If I lived in the outback of British Columbia and might never see a great dessert again, maybe I'd consider it. But I live in Portland with desserts galore and ice cream anytime I want to buy 6 gallons for my freezer. I also know there will be other wonderful food to eat and so I'm staying in alignment with my commitment.

PS I asked Melanie if she'd keep the pillow chocolates to herself and she suggested we just tell the steward not to leave us any. Nice to have a smart friend along.

Feminism didn't save me from the culture

2011-09-14T17:08:00.000-07:00

When I was in my early 20s, I read a lot of feminist literature, including Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. I became angry at the patriarchy in many ways. At home, my father had pressured my mother to give up the job she loved at the junior high library because she wasn't home when he needed her there (which was rarely). More potent was his need to provide for her in the eyes of his peers and that overrode her need to have something to do with her considerable intelligence. I stayed angry with my father over that for a long time, though of course my mother could have insisted. But the acculturated mother I had couldn't have insisted. She hadn't wanted to marry in the first place. She hadn't wanted children. She had wanted a career and to put her college education to good use. But she succumbed to social and cultural pressure and married and had 5 kids and worried about ring around the collar and waxy build-up in her kitchen corners.

I was determined to have a different life and so I have never married, I've not had kids, I've had two different careers and a slew of jobs and been well paid and respected for my mind and my abilities. I have had many lovers, traveled alone, lived alone, created my own business in a field that was long dominated by men. But in one essential thing, feminism did not save me from the culture. And that is in how I view my body.

No matter what I believe rationally and intellectually, I have bought hook, line, and sinker into thin is beautiful, fat is not. While I've been able to fully embrace the fact that alcoholism is a disease, not a matter of will power, I can't get there with my own obesity. I want to. I really do. I want to love my body no matter its size or shape. I want to feel strong and healthy and proud.

But I feel ashamed. I know that feeling comes from absorbing thousands of images of what men (and women) have been selling in advertising since the 1950s. When I was young, I had one of those lovely bodies. For the last 20 years, I have not. And I have suffered because I have not. Self-induced suffering?
Perhaps. But I think it is more culturally induced.

I find it very sad that women's liberation has not extended to freedom from cultural pressure on one of the most precious parts of our existence. And I feel quite baffled as to how I can liberate myself.

Unsolicited advice

2011-09-09T10:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I set a boundary with a friend around unsolicited advice. She had responded (privately) to a recent blog post and offered an interpretation of my dilemma that made suggestions as to how I could resolve the issue. "If you were..." I guess it never occurred to her that I might already know what she was proposing, or that I might have considered that idea and rejected it, or that the issue might be more complex than what I had revealed in the blog. I chafed at her advice and then wrote and asked her not to do that in the future.

As a chronic fixer, I know how tempting it is to see the solution for someone else and want to offer it to them, even when we can't do anything about our own stuck places. Been there, done that, over and over. In fact, over the decades of my life, I have doled out probably thousands if not more pieces of advice to friends, to students, to clients, much of it unsolicited and probably a lot of it unwelcome.

Going to thousands of AA meetings and working as a sponsor has helped cure me of most of that. At meetings, there is no crosstalk. You don't give advice, you don't even comment on what someone else says. You share your own experience, strength, and hope instead. And as a sponsor, you learn pretty quickly that your advice, especially unsolicited, will not keep you or the the sponsee sober. Only actions make a difference.

Last year, I had a very painful experience around this with someone close to me. I was going through a rough growing-up patch and needed support and understanding. I got taken to task by two women I considered friends and mentors and a lot of unsolicited advice about my behavior that didn't take my feelings into account. I really saw in those two incidences how damaging my own attempts to fix others have probably been and how killing it is to a relationship.

Now, I do my best to ask if the person is open to suggestions before I offer advice although I do even that very sparingly. Most of the time I just keep such advice to myself.

I think this is especially important as concerns blog posts. Most of us who write intimate blogs do it to share our feelings. We aren't looking for external solutions or the advice of someone else, we're looking for our own inner knowings. And we welcome the shared experiences of others.

Not wanting to be who I was

2011-09-05T18:37:00.000-07:00

This morning I received a very insightful comment on a recent post from a reader named Vicki, who said that in a discussion with her therapist about her yo-yo weight gain and loss, she came to the realization that weight loss brought up fear that she would return to the person she had been at 28, when she started to put the weight on. That resonated with something deep inside me.

In my 20s, I had a great body. I was tall, slim, had good legs, nice breasts, long hair. Men found me attractive, some found me sexy and I used my looks to get what I thought I could get: sex and attention, and to a certain extent relief from chronic fear, anxiety, and sometimes boredom. Of course, I wanted true love but that seemed impossible. The truth was that I looked pretty great on the outside, but emotionally it was another story.

By my 20s, I had suffered from chronic anxiety, low self-esteem, and co-dependency for a lot of years already. I know these are buzz words that a lot of people deride, but for me they were, and still are to an extent, very real experiences. While I knew I was attractive and I knew I was smart, I also believed that no man would really ever care for me in the way I wanted. And much as I tried to make that their fault, I believed deep down that it was a failing in me. I was too sensitive, too shy, too clever, too demanding, too needy, too something.

For a while, I tried to be someone else. Someone less smart, more fragile, more independent, less clever, and always thinner, that somehow that would make the difference. But eventually I gave that up until I started to really drink. Alcohol made relationships possible for me. I didn't drink to become more social, I drank to become less afraid. If I drank enough, I could pretend to be somebody else, somebody who didn't care that men abandoned her when she got too needy. Pretend that one-night stands were my idea. Pretend that fighting and jealousy were a given in a relationship. Pretend that monogamy was passe.

I was also spiritually bereft in those thin years. I became an intellectual cynic, a perfect stance for a college professor in the 1970s and 1980s. I had a cruel wit and I used it. I was more and more clever, and more and more unhappy.

So when Vicki talked about her fear of weight loss bringing that earlier person back, I was right there with my own miserable thin self. For being thin and sexy and attractive are completely enmeshed in my body and feelings with misery. No wonder I feel ambivalent about weight loss.

A challenge to my recovery from chronic concerns

2011-09-02T16:55:00.000-07:00

If you've been following this blog, you know that I've given up, at least temporarily, my chronic concerns, including weight loss. I've felt quite happy about this. Just letting those thoughts or ideas pass through my mind when they arise, as in meditation, has been a great relief.

But then this week, I noticed that my clothes weren't fitting quite so well, my shirts were a little tighter. Not much, but just a little. So I got on the scale and I had gained 4 pounds. I don't do the scale very often and I know that weight fluctuates so I got on the next two days as well. The 4 pounds were still there. So now I'm tempted to diet, to think about what I'm eating, to worry again. I don't want more weight, I'd love less weight, and I don't know how to change that without obsession.

I thought about my friend Angela, who has been eating differently both to be good to her body, which has been unhappy with some of the foods she's been consuming, and to develop a different relationship with food. Then this week, she blogged about the fact that she had only lost 15 pounds over the course of changing her diet. Weight loss wasn't part of her quest, not ostensibly, but she was disappointed to not be thinner than that. And my heart sank for her and for me both. We can't shake off the culture by saying that our weight isn't an issue. We're conditioned to equate body size with worth. Thin is right, fat is wrong. More fat is wronger.

This is a big conundrum. And I want very much to stay in recovery from weight loss as a chronic issue. So more investigation is clearly called for.

Weight loss and men

2011-08-29T18:21:00.000-07:00

In Martha Beck's 4-Day Win, one exercise is to chart the history of your weight concerns. Starting at birth, for each year you indicate 0-10 if you were fat. My own fat history doesn't start until I'm about 34. But my dieting history, which I decided to also chart, starts much earlier. When I was 27, my partner at the time (we lived together) wanted me to be about 20 pounds thinner (I'm 5'10 and weighed 150). I got down to 132 and he thought I looked great. But I couldn't maintain it without starving and I gave it up. He never chided me as being fat but was wistful about my thinner days. For the next 15 years, I dieted off and on always with men in mind. When I wasn't seeing anybody, I'd diet to attract somebody. When I was seeing somebody, I'd diet to keep him. All this time, I weighed 155 or less.

When I met my second long-term partner in 1979, at age 33, I began to gain weight. We drank heavily together and ate out a lot. That'll do it. And gradually my weight increased to about 185 in the last years of my drinking.

After I got sober, I lost about 10 pounds of alcoholic bloat and kept it off for a year. But then I really got into sweets big time and I gained 10, lost 5, gained 10, lost 5, gained 20, lost 10, you know the drill. I never could sustain the weight loss and my therapist has suggested that weighing a lot of extra pounds keeps me safe from men. And I'm sure it does, because I'm sure no one will be interested in me with me weighing what I do. I'm so far from the culture's desirable norm of underweight women that it's not an issue.

If I'm honest with myself, now that I've given up sweets and lost the 25 pounds that would take off (my weight stabilized after 6 months) to what it's been the last year, weight loss is again about men. So it's not a coincidence that giving chronic concerns includes both weight loss and looking for a partner. They go together just the way I've been acculturated to think. That makes me sad.

Defining recovery

2011-08-23T17:27:00.000-07:00

My friend LindyFox recently sent me her book on co-occurring disorders--those who have substance abuse issues and mental illness. Lindy is an expert in this field and I met her on the Hazelden national tour last year when we were both speakers. Her book is a training manual for therapists and I was just reading through the exercises. While I don't have a mental illness beyond addiction and the obsession and compulsion that go with it, many of the ideas struck me as highly useful. Here's one:

Early in the group process, participants are asked to define "recovery" for themselves and to set goals. I don't remember doing this in my treatment center in 1989. Maybe it was part of the first few days while I was in the alcohol poisoning fog, but I don't think so. And so I began thinking about how I would define recovery from my chronic concerns.

I know that when I gave up sugar 18 months ago, I wanted three things: to lose weight (and I did but not as much as I had hoped), to be free of guilt and shame around food (and I have been), and to be free of the fear that I was ruining my health (and I've stayed reasonably free of that as well). So while this wasn't a definition or a goal (the aspects of Lindy's program that are intriguing me), I did have desires.

Recovery from my chronic concerns would mean peace with myself. It would mean freedom from resentment of myself, as my friend Beth pointed out: all that resentment that we stuff down because we aren't perfect, we can't control our appetites, we struggle to "fix" our habits, whatever they may be. It's a constant battle and it seems to do me no good. So forgiveness of all those things would come into play, not just acceptance.

Recovery might also mean a lot of freed-up energy, the energy I spend worrying about things that don't change with worry, the negativity, the boring repetitiveness of all that concern. Recovery might mean something fresh and new could come into my life. It might mean exploring other more interesting and complex issues, both personal and global. This is beginning to intrigue me.

More thoughts on Dave Ellis's ideas

2011-08-19T15:24:00.000-07:00

As I give up worrying about my chronic concerns, I have been thinking more about what I do want. Most of my concerns, I realize, focus on things I don't want: excess weight, anxiety, guilt, loneliness. Oh, I've dressed them in the guise of desire. I can rephrase it that I'd like to be thinner but I'm not sure I remember enough about what that feels like to imagine it again). Or I can say I want to be partnered but I don't have much to go on there either, never having had a really happy experience. And I think there's something off-kilter about these desires for absence, not presence. So I'm relooking at what I want from the Ellis perspective.

After you write a whole bunch of 3x5 cards with a want on each card (Dave suggests you do about 400!), you categorize them into A (want so much I'll do anything to get it), B (want enough to put in time and energy to get it), C (want it but won't commit much to get it but if it happened that would be great), and O (obligation: something I want because I should want it). So I spent time the other night, going through my Wnt cards (I've only got about 100 so far) and really thought about the categories.

This time if I let go of those wants that had to do with don't wants (weight, loneliness, guilt, etc.), I had many more Cs (great if it happened but not a project) and fewer As.

Here are the current A's:

1. Fully step into my life as a writer and painter.
2. Break the bond between watching TV and eating.
3. Come into a deeper resonance and understanding of myself as a woman (as opposed to a person).
4. Contribute to others healing from sugar addiction.
5. Get my novels out into the world.
6. Heal my back pain.
7. Be in touch each day with my passions.

The excitement and commitment I feel around these are much different from the lukewarm sense of resignation and pre-failure that I have about weight loss or finding a partner. And that feels good.

Hard to get excited about chronic concerns

2011-08-16T19:37:00.000-07:00

Last week, I shared some of the wisdom from the Dave Ellis workshop with a group of close friends and we started talking about what we want and how to get it. This is a familiar theme for our group and really only the scale of desires and the action technology is from Dave. So I didn't expect anything special to happen. But as I began explaining how I had used some of his technology to plan a project, one of the women interrupted me and said, "I picked an old concern, a chronic concern, and the thought of doing any of these actions on it makes me sick."

Of course, as readers of this blog you already know what her chronic concern was: weight loss. And guess what mine was? Weight loss! And her anger, not with me, of course, or with Dave Ellis, but just with life and her own choices so moved me that I started rethinking whether chronic concerns are really wants at all but rather shoulds.Some of us have been in this weight loss conversation for so long that we are just sick of it. And it's hard to get excited about a project to fix something you're sick of.

As I thought it about some more, I realized I was sick of all the same old projects: lose weight, get more flexible, find a partner, have more money in savings, reconcile with my deceased mother, cure myself of anxiety.

So thanks to Pam and her discomfort, I'm calling a halt to worrying about any of those things. I'm just going to practice being okay as I am. Don't get me wrong. I'm not going back on sugar. I plan to keep going to the gym and doing my PT exercises, and reading the Martha Beck book, which I think is truly revolutionary, and incorporating more meditation in my life. But I'm going to stop having problems for a while, at least the same old problems. I'm just going to focus on being happy.

A lovely version of the 12 steps for all of us

2011-08-12T13:52:00.000-07:00

My good friend Beth Easter from Nashville shared with me this version of the 12 steps that she created for work with women in difficulty. Thank you, Beth!

1. We admit to fearful and chaotic conditions in our lives.

2. We dare to hope in a Source beyond self that can provide Good Orderly Direction.

3. We make a decision to let go of fear and surrender to Love.

4. We abandon our lens of fear and courageously enter and search the interior of

our lives.

5. We hold and share, openly and honestly, the contents of that self-search with Spirit

and another human being. We experience an authentic connection. Intimacy =

Into-me-see.

6. We open our self to Love’s transformation trusting that Spirit/ Love’s power can

shape and mold our character.

7. We invite and allow healing, bowing to Love’s design in our lives.

8. We become conscious and aware of persons harmed by our weaknesses and

become willing to make amends to them.

9. Made open, face-to-face amends to those persons whenever possible, mindful that

we not bring additional harm to others.

10. We continue to keep an inward eye recognizing our emotional errors and misguided

thinking, and we disclose these mistakes promptly.

11. Seeking through a continued exchange with the God of our understanding, we

improve our awareness of our contact with Spirit. We ask for the knowledge and

power to carryout Spirit's will in OUR lives.

12. The result of working these steps is a spiritual awakening. Our new way of

being and expressions of gratitude are a message of the reality of Love.

Moving from should to want

2011-08-09T18:03:00.000-07:00

I'm still mulling over the wonderful wisdom from the Dave Ellis workshop last week. In one of the afternoon sessions, he talked about the importance of language and creating our world with the words we speak. This isn't a new idea to me. I've been in groups that have talked about this before. But it was a really good reminder and he pushed it a bit further.

It makes good sense to me that if I want to be free of burdens in my life, I could drop the following words from my vocabulary: must, have to, should, ought to, need to. These are especially deadly, Dave pointed out, when they are proceeded by "you" as no one wants to be told what to do. No one really even wants advice even when they ask for it directly. What they want is encouragement to solve their own problems.

Instead of using these words that lead to obligation and burden, Ellis suggests just using "want to" or its corollary "don't want to." Instead of feeling I should go to that high school reunion, I can want to or not want to. When I do things I want to, I have more energy, more lightness in my life. When I don't do things I don't want to do, I usually feel relief, another positive thing.

Ellis says it's okay to do some things we don't want to--like the dentist. That happens. But coating them in need or should isn't helpful. These are interesting ideas to me.

Lessons in desire and responsibility

2011-08-05T18:51:00.000-07:00

I spent Wednesday and Thursday this week in an amazing workshop with the more than amazing Dave Ellis, author of Falling Awake. Dave primarily works with coaches and leaders but people are welcome to do his workshops for their own personal goals and intentions. I was straddling both worlds. While I don't work as a life coach, I do a lot of coaching in my groups and do work as creative coach for writers and artists. But I went to the workshop to get turbo-charged in my own life.

Dave offers a lot of concrete suggestions for how to manifest what you want and the first big task is to figure what you want. He uses a 3x5 card system to keep track of things and he gave us hundreds of them and encouraged us to write each desire on a card and to have about 400 desires. He said he figures about 1/4 of what we want will come to us and so it helps to want a lot. We can want things for ourselves, for our friends and family, for our world. And wanting is not a commitment to put in the time and energy to manifest those desires. That's something separate and that was good for me to hear.

Because at one point, I had to raise my hand and say that wanting good things for the world sends me straight into responsibility to fix it, to make it happen, and that just makes me tired. He laughed and said that in his view, we are responsible to do those things that we are passionate about, not those things that we are sorry about. And I began to feel that I might just be able to put down the guilt I feel about my privileged life and acknowledge those things I am passionate about as being enough of a challenge for this life.

A reminder of my past

2011-08-01T08:32:00.000-07:00

My breakfast date didn't show up this morning and while I waited for her and decided if I was going to eat by myself or leave, I watched the other patrons. I like to do this sometimes to get ideas for characters for my fiction--the way people look, the physical mannerisms, quirks. At one point, I noticed the waitress go behind the bar and pull down a bottle of scotch. This is a breakfast and lunch place and most of those don't have a full bar but this place must serve bloody marys or drinks at lunch. She pored two shots of scotch in a tall water glass and then placed it front of a guy at the end of the bar.

He was an average-looking guy in his 30s and he wasn't alone. He and a male companion had been eating breakfast and drinking coffee and passing papers back and forth between them. But there was one glass of scotch, not a champagne toast. He downed it in two gulps, and then I noticed the suffering on his face, the unhealthy look of his skin, the slump to his shoulders, and I could feel his misery deep in my body.

I admired his willingness to ask for what he needed, a stiff drink to take the edge off, something I wouldn't have been able to do. I'd have gritted my teeth and then hurried home and canceled my day and drunk all I needed. I wondered what his companion thought, what he knew of his friend, and what he might say or not say.

I felt so glad to be sober, to be free of that misery, and I felt such empathy for that fellow.

Feeding my inner Dalmatian

2011-07-29T15:13:00.000-07:00

In Martha Beck's book, which I'm finding more and more revolutionary in its take on permanent weight loss and right relationship with food, she speaks of the Dalmatian self, where everything is black and white, all or nothing. As a person in recovery, I know the Dalmatian side of myself all too well. The all or nothing attitude has been with me probably since childhood.

It seems to originate in my Disciplinarian but I think it's just my way of simplifying things. If I don't ever eat X, then I don't have to struggle with choice. But I also know that when the Dalmatian is in charge, there's no chance for moderation--ever.

As a recovering alcoholic, I do not advocate for myself or others the idea that I can at some point drink again. I believe way too much of the published research on the addictive habits of the brain chemistry of folks like me to think that that is possible. I also don't put much faith in the idea that I can learn to be moderate with other substances of choice: ice cream, caramels, chocolate, Cheetos (wonder why they all have "c" in them?)

But I do want and need a way to be moderate with food in general. I want to eat and be satisfied by amounts and foods that promote health and well-being in my body instead of thinking first and only about satisfying a craving as if that craving is the only thing that is important.

I've decided to embark on a full embracing of Beck's Four Day Win and I'll be posting my experiences here. You might want to check the book out for yourself.

Fasting from vigilance

2011-07-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

For the last 10 days, I've been fasting from vigilance. As a chronically anxious child and adult, I've honed vigilance into a fine art: always watching to see if everyone is okay and if they aren't, what I can do to fix that. Being conscious of noises and other changes in my home and my car. Unconsciously sniffing the air for smoke or dangerous chemical smells. Constantly monitoring my body for errant symptoms of impending disaster. It's an exhausting way to live and drinking helped mitigate it a lot. So does eating.

So as I move into a different relationship with anxiety--acceptance, compassion, kindness--so too do I want a different relationship with the Watcher. (I have to admit that the more of these parts of myself that I can label, the more I begin to feel like Sybil.) And this past week, I've given myself permission to not be so vigilant.

I've not monitored every item for recycle or trash. I've napped in the afternoon with the door open and just the screen latched. I've taken time off from my work responsibilities and not apologized for it. When my housekeeper couldn't come on her appointed day, I didn't obsess about it or clean the house myself and resent her. I just wiped down the bathroom and left the carpets hairy. And, most importantly, I haven't paid all that much attention to what and how much I've been eating.

That may not be exactly true. I have consciously included fruits and vegetables in my meals. I've consciously said no to some extra helpings but it hasn't been from a punitive place or even from a place of any curiosity. It's just been a quick thought without a lot of inner conversation. That's actually what I want relief from: the low-level anxiety and the inner conversations that brings up.

What do I want? Part II

2011-07-18T16:13:00.000-07:00

This morning I had breakfast with a good friend. She is on week 3 of a 4-week deep detox: She is eating leafy greens, a couple of kinds of fruit, and lean protein: no dairy, no grains, no fat other than what's in the poached egg or poached salmon. She looked terrific and said she feels terrific except...she's hungry all the time. And plans to eat, and I quote, "the whole ass of a cow" in two weeks when the detox is up.

Last spring this same friend did three months of Medifast ($900). She lost 40 pounds. When she went back to eating regular food, she began to gain the weight back and rather quickly. So now she's trying something else. I think she believes some in the detox part of it, but maybe mostly she just wants to lose the weight again.

I know that these extreme diets work to lose weight. No one would do them if they didn't. But there's no way to keep that weight off and I've promised myself no more rollercoasting food programs. But I was tempted. I want to look thin and healthy the way she does. But I don't want to think about food all the time and be hungry. That just sets up a war between the Disciplinarian and the Wounded Child Who Eats, and instead of living moderately in the middle of the spectrum, I'm back to the all or nothing.

I'm much more inclined to look at the way my friend Angela is moving (http://www.hergreening.blogspot.com/). What foods make me feel good and , even more critically, what does feeling good entail? I think being more in my body is an important first step.

Looking for a compelling vision

2011-07-14T10:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Anna, my counselor, asked me what my vision was around losing weight. I have to admit that the question baffled me. Usually, I can come up with an answer to what she prompts but this time I was stuck. I knew she wasn't asking about the obvious, like the vision of myself thinner. Because I could so easily see, that that vision, of a thinner me, isn't sufficient to change my behavior. I don't want that enough to eat less or exercise more, the two ways to lose weight. When I'm restless and bored, and it occurs to me to eat something, nothing in me says "Don't, you won't get thin that way."

I know I'm still stuck in an old mindset. That weight loss is painful, miserable torture, the way it has been in the past. That my chances at succeeding at it are slim (irony intended). That my chances of gaining all the weight back are high. I'm still in that vision and so some part of me says "Why bother?"

For 17 months, I haven't eaten dessert. Two things keep that present and easy for me. I lost 20 pounds and I'd probably quickly gain them back if I started in on ice cream again. But more importantly, I don't feel guilt and shame anymore about what I eat, and I don't want those feelings back.

But there's a part of me that is still suffering from self-loathing. It's a feeling I can ignore most of the time. The way our bodies are set up, the position of our eyes and faces means that we look down at one part of ourselves, the front and I'm okay with that front. It's when I'm at the gym and faced with mirrors that show all sides of me that the self-loathing comes up to bite me. Somehow this self-loathing, dropping this, is part of the compelling vision I'm looking for but alone it's not enough.

Will I be happier thinner? I don't know. Many people aren't. Will all the things I want fall in my lap if I'm thinner--like an agent and publisher for my novels? Doubtful. Will I suddenly be irrestible to handsome men? Also unlikely. So what is it I want?

My work, my life

2011-07-09T17:28:00.000-07:00

I have often marvelled at how the diversity of my freelance editing work contributes to my knowledge of myself and the changes that occur in my life. A decade ago I was editing books on low self-esteem and would share my stories with the author whenever I saw myself in her theory. She asked my permission to use those stories and editing her books helped me see that even I am highly functional, maybe even overly so, I still had low self-esteem from childhood experiences in my family.

Today I was editing a chapter from a book in progress on child development and parenting and came across this sentence in a discussion of why using rewards and punishments with children is a bad idea. "Using rewards teaches the child that the most important thing is to prolong pleasure—even at the expense of betraying yourself." This sentence so resonated with me that I immediately copied it out into my journal and into this blog.

"Prolong pleasure even at the expense of betraying yourself" is an amazingly accurate description of my addictive relationships. whether they be food, alcohol, work, sex. You name it. The incomprehensible demoralization that the AA Big Book talks about is that very sense of betrayal. And yet I have been so desperate to prolong pleasure because in the either/or world of addiction that I still visit all too frequently in one form or another, there is only pleasure and punishment; nothing else is really living. Both the extreme pleasure I have sought and the deep misery I have experienced have seemed like "real life." As if ordinary, peaceful, semi-contented living isn't real life.

There wasn't a lot of punishment in my early life. My mother had a distinct way of expressing her disapproval that turned us all into pretty good kids. But there was a lot of rewarding done. I remember an afternoon in the summer I was 10 when my mother promised us a big reward (ice cream cones) if we would not make a big fuss about getting polio shots. I was very frightened of doctors for a reason I don't remember and the idea of getting a shot (they used big honking needles in those days) terrified me. But there was no getting out of it and I knew that I could have some food I wanted to soothe the anxiety and make it go away. And it worked and it went on working for decades while I learned to prolong pleasure, even though it meant betraying myself, my health, my career, my spiritual nature.

Lots to think about here.

Old memories, old cravings

2011-07-05T16:11:00.000-07:00

I've been at this retreat center more than a dozen times over the last 9 years. I come now twice a year for a week or so of writing and creative community. It's a place where my soul can rest and my imagination can find the time and space it needs to expand.

In the early years, I ate a lot of sugar here. We have a circle every afternoon and in those early times, we outdid each other with exotic chocolate bars, often with as many as 6 or 7 bars to choose them. We'd eat a lot, then eat a big dinner with a fabulous dessert. And of course, I always had my own stash of the latest obsession. Two years in a row it was Werther's soft caramels. Then it was ordering an extra pan of Chef Patti's Caramel Banana Cream Pie--all of myself. Chef Patti is a local wizard, who cooked for us until we decided to save money and cook for ourselves. Then two years ago, it was going three times to the local grocery store for half-gallons of my fix of ice cream and hiding the containers in the trash and hoping nobody would look in the spare freezer in the unused second kitchen.

Now that I'm dessert-free, we have fresh fruit with our meals. People can bring chocolate, or whatever they want for themselves, but I ask that the meals be free of refined sugar items.

But the last couple of days, I've had serious cravings for sweets. Some of it may be triggered by old memories of the heedless kind of eating I used to do. Maybe it's because I'm moving closer and closer to not using food as a soother so much any more. Whatever it is, it's been difficult. There isn't anything here to binge on--although I guess I could make some kind of sugary buttered toast or jam and yogurt, but of course that isn't what I want.

I want to be reckless and eat myself sick. And I'm not going to do that. It does, however, feel good to admit my desires to myself and to the page. There is some relief in that.

Is real relaxation possible for someone like me?

2011-07-03T18:43:00.000-07:00

For the last week, I've been practicing Martha Beck's body whisperer exercise, which is basically spending 10 minutes soothing your body through kind thoughts and words until you reach a state of relaxation. I tried moving on to the next exercise, getting in touch with your body, but I found it almost impossible to discern what was going on in my body (Beck's point exactly) and so I've gone back to the whisperer.

It is disconcerting to see how amazingly anxious I get each time I sit quietly and try to calm myself. It is more than the usual monkey mind that happens with meditation. There's a sense of deep distress that I'm sure doing something productive or eating something will fix. And it makes me realize how little I know about relaxing.

For as long as I can remember, I've been drawn to books on relaxing and resting and slowing down and simplifying, all while keeping my life going full tilt. What I know about relaxing comes from overeating: consuming so much food that I'm sluggish and unable to do much except nap or watch TV. I miss alcohol, not for the taste or the oblivion, but for the sense of relaxation I got from that first hit, the way my shoulders would go down and my gut would unclench. While sugar and fat didn't work as quickly, they worked well enough and so it's no wonder I've been reluctant to let it go.

I do believe Beck is on to something and that this will work but it's going to take a lot longer than the four days she suggests to do undo a lifetime of anxiety.

The body whisperer

2011-07-01T10:12:00.000-07:00

In her amazing book, The Four Day Win, Martha Beck devotes a chapter to the corollary between gentling horses and coming into right relationship with our bodies. She talks of watching a friend domesticate a horse by speaking its language, by setting aside the predator/prey relationship that is a function of biology between the two species, and coming into a gentle, loving place where the horse will team up with the human.

She suggests that most of us with food issues and body issues are playing out the predator/prey relationship every day, trying to whip our bodies into shape through shame and deprivation and well-meaning external and internal cruelties.

Last Sunday at my Women and Food group, we read this chapter aloud to each other. The responses of the others were just as profound as my own had been. Was there really, truly a way to be in a different relationship with our bodies and the tender part of our selves that are interwoven into those cells?

And I thought about my Wounded Child Who Eats as the wild horse trying to survive and my predator-self the Abstainer trying hard to be in control to survive and I felt such sorrow for them both.

Beck gives a simple 10-minute soothing exercise at the end of the chapter. It is a combination of self-soothing and meditation. I'm doing it each day. I'll report what happens.

confirming what I know.

2011-06-27T17:46:00.000-07:00

On Fresh Air Thursday, Terri Gross interviewed David Linden, author of The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good. He had a lot of interesting things to say about pleasure, about genetics and about addiction. What interested me was "fatty foods" at the top of his list. Those of us with a genetic propensity for brain alteration through pleasure (the way our bodies respond to dopamine production) means that anything that makes us feel good, we will want more of, even after it no longer makes us feel good.

Sugar and fat are an addictive combination for those of who focus compulsively on one pleasure at a time and we become just as addicted to them as nicotine or alcohol or sex. Unfortunately, the brain alteration that occurs is permanent. That's why we cannot go back to our naive use of a substance or behavior once we've become addicted. And it is clearly, in his opinion, physiological although our original impulse may be to relief stress (emotional/psychological), eventually the physical part of the brain is running the show.

This confirmed a lot of stuff for me. You might enjoy listening to his podcast on NPR.

Who's in charge of this show anyway?

2011-06-23T18:36:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, I had another amazing session with my therapist. I went in very petulant. I'm tired of these same old issues--my childhood, my weight. And I started talking about just declaring them done. And as I said that, I started to cry. Anna, wise woman that she is, said, "Hmmm, I see there's still a lot of emotion here. Perhaps you're not done yet."

We talked then about doing some body work, some nonverbal work, some feeling-centered work, and I know that's what's needed, and I'm so hesitant to get out of my intellect and go there. Adn we talked about that hesitation too.

She mentioned my inner child and I said, " You mean, Wounded Child Who Eats" and we had a good chuckle about the Native American naming and then I said something I hadn't thought before. About how angry I was with the stupid inner child who didn't save me when I was a kid and is only complicating things for me now.

"She's just trying to help you survive," Anna said. "And eating is how she knows to do that. Just like the part of you I'll call the Abstainer, the Disciplinarian. She's also wanting you to survive by not eating. And your Wise Self needs to hold them both loosely and compassionately."

And suddenly there was just such an opening in my heart and in my mind. For I have spent these many years assuming that the Abstainer/Disciplinarian/Hardworker/Rationalizer was the Wise and Authentic Self. And if she isn't, everything about this changes.

I'm not sure how to verbalize the difference but it has seemed so either/or, so one or the other, for so long, that I have grown to hate the Abstainer and Wounded Child Who Eats and that has meant really hating the only parts of my self I could see. But to grasp the fact that the Wise Self, the Whole and Perfect Self, is neither of these, that changes everything.

Setting down our burdens

2011-06-19T18:26:00.000-07:00

On the first Wednesday of each month, I facilitate a lovely group of women in having conversations about our emotional lives. We touch on all aspects of what's happening with us, but our focus is on how this makes us feel. Last time we met, I asked us to consider the burdens that we feel and if we could lay them down.

I have a fair number of things that I worry about (the environment, homeless animals, war, the health of friends) but as true burdens, there were three things on my list: my ongoing dissatisfaction with my weight and my food relationship, my unresolved unhappiness with my mother (deceased now 14 years), and my concerns that I won't have enough money for my care as I get really old. To resolve any and all of these would, I think, help me have considerably more peace of mind.

And this brings me again to the paradoxes that mature adults deal with: finding it in my heart to forgive my mother and doing the work (meditation, writing, maybe painting) that would make that possible while not ignoring my own right to be angry and hurt at what happened. Having the courage to sit with my restlessness and anxiety around giving up food as solace while accepting that I got myself here during decades of living in survival mode. And forgiving myself for earlier poor choices around income and spending and making changes now, even though it's pretty late in the game.

Carrying these as burdens, as the UnForgiven, is so unhelpful and yet has seemed so natural. And as I mentioned to my therapist, in some ways, these aren't things I can resolve in my mind. I can't necessarily make a concrete plan, develop my own 12 steps, take some concrete action. This is deep inner work that takes quiet and solitude and inactivity on the external plane to evolve and resolve.

And these are burdens I would like to lay down.

A timely discussion from DailyOm.com

2011-06-16T10:32:00.001-07:00

Peeling Away the Layers

Trees Shedding Their Bark

Like a tree our growth depends upon our ability to soften, loosen, and shed boundaries and defenses we no longer need.

Trees grow up through their branches and down through their roots into the earth. They also grow wider with each passing year. As they do, they shed the bark that served to protect them but now is no longer big enough to contain them. In the same way, we create boundaries and develop defenses to protect ourselves and then, at a certain point, we outgrow them. If we don’t allow ourselves to shed our protective layer, we can’t expand to our full potential.

Trees need their protective bark to enable the delicate process of growth and renewal to unfold without threat. Likewise, we need our boundaries and defenses so that the more vulnerable parts of ourselves can safely heal and unfold. But our growth also depends upon our ability to soften, loosen, and shed boundaries and defenses we no longer need. It is often the case in life that structures we put in place to help us grow eventually become constricting.

Unlike a tree, we must consciously decide when it’s time to shed our bark and expand our boundaries, so we can move into our next ring of growth. Many spiritual teachers have suggested that our egos don’t disappear so much as they become large enough to hold more than just our small sense of self—the boundary of self widens to contain people and beings other than just “me.” Each time we shed a layer of defensiveness or ease up on a boundary that we no longer need, we metaphorically become bigger people. With this in mind, it is important that we take time to question our boundaries and defenses. While it is essential to set and honor the protective barriers we have put in place, it is equally important that we soften and release them when the time comes. In doing so, we create the space for our next phase of growth.

A new light on a familiar idea

2011-06-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

This idea of eating/drinking/spending to prevent the past from happening has really lingered with me. Saturday I was at an AA meeting and I was struck by two things: the Serenity Prayer and one of the most familiar AA sayings: "living life on life's terms."

I have always seen both of these (Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change) as talking about the present. We take each day as it comes, having an impact where we can, accepting what we can't impact. I don't think it ever occurred to me that they also speak to the past.

I cannot change my past. I cannot prevent it from happening no matter how much I eat or drink. It has happened. Some of that involves choices I made, some of it happened to me through other people's choices and limitations. Where I still have choice is in how I deal with the aftereffects and how long I choose to go on dealing with them.

Life's terms for me included a not very happy childhood with a specific trauma of loneliness and fear, an adolesence that was as painful as most, poor choices in partners, 20 years of drinking, 20 years of overeating. These are things I cannot change. Continuing to make poor choices or to numb out from my feelings or repeat any other old patterns, these are things I can change. And I just may be finally coming to have some wisdom to know the difference.

What are we running from?

2011-06-10T15:10:00.000-07:00

I've just finished reading Geneen Roth's book Lost and Found. It's ostensibly about her experience of losing all of her life savings through investments with Bernie Madoff but it's really about unconscious behavior, whether it's the way we eat or the way we relate to money. She says many interesting things in the book but this one has stayed with me because it resonated so deeply:

When we engage in numbing behaviors, we are trying to prevent the things that have already happened to us. We are hoping that if we drink enough or eat enough or spend enough, we won't have had that damaged childhood or dysfunctional mother or painful love affair. That if we numb out, somehow that will all go away.

The truth of that for me is astounding. Intellectually I pretend that I'm eating to deal with painful feelings that might arise in the future but what I really want is not to have experienced what I have already experienced in terms of shame and sadness and fear. I want the alcohol or ice cream or Internet shopping to keep those things from happening then. The marvelous illogic of this has stopped in me in my tracks. Because if this is really why I am eating or drinking or spending, it will never work. My behavior today cannot change that past. I can pretend that I'm dealing with the present moment, but it is a pretense.

When I add this idea to my diagnosis of free-floating anxiety, anxiety that doesn't have a cause except in my wiring or my biochemistry, then eating makes even less sense. This is feeling like a big breakthrough for me.

A great poem

2011-06-08T14:08:00.000-07:00

I love this poem. If I substitute "drank" for "roller-skated" or "eating" for "pedaling," it's a great poem about addiction.

The Rider

by Naomi Shihab Nye

A boy told me

if he roller-skated fast enough

his loneliness couldn’t catch up to him,

the best reason I ever heard

for trying to be a champion.

What I wonder tonight

pedaling hard down King William Street

is if it translates to bicycles.

A victory! To leave your loneliness

panting behind you on some street corner

while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,

pink petals that have never felt loneliness,

no matter how slowly they fell.

Dichotomies I am living with

2011-06-07T09:18:00.000-07:00

Last month, after a particularly intense session with my therapist, she asked me to spend a couple of hours writing about what I was thinking/feeling/needing. Here are some of the notes I took.

Conflict: My right to be angry that my mother couldn't give me what I needed and in some ways helped instill some unhealthy beliefs and attitudes in me VS. my need to forgive her so I can move on. The whole issue of forgiveness without condoning or approving.

Conflict: Developing a healthy detachment from anxiety VS. numbing out so I don't have to feel it. Can I learn to discern the difference?

Conflict: Accept what is VS. do something about it?

Conflict: Be a distant witness/observer VS. fully experience what is happening?

Conflict: Hypervigilant VS. mindful?

And it occurs to me while writing this here that maybe these all occur on some sort of spectrum. That it isn't either/or as I often believe things are, but rather a murkier slide in one direction or the other. One of the most difficult things for me to live with is that not only are there few simple answers but the answer changes and the question repeats itself in my life. I get something resolved and feel relief and then a few months later, there it is again.

In addition, I can see, in reading these over, that there are different tones, different attitudes, attached to each side of the dichomoty. I'm not sure this will make sense to anyone but me but it's what's on my mind today. Thanks for listening.

Incorporating nothing into your day

2011-06-03T09:35:00.000-07:00

Wednesday night I had dinner with some women friends. Several years ago we were part of a circle of trust where participants convened to ask questions of someone seeking clarity on an issue. The work was very intense and helpful at times. We hadn't seen each other all together in 3 or 4 years. After all the initial greetings, we went deeper and Anna shared her 3-year journey of recovery from food addiction.

Anna's been thin all the time I've known her and so I fell immediately into that trap of "You? You can't have food issues. You're thin." Of course, I didn't say this, I just thought it and then caught myself. Food addiction isn't about weight, it's about emotional and spiritual needs that aren't getting met in healthier ways.

Anna belongs to a 12-step group, Food Addicts Recovery Anonymous (not Overeaters Anonymous). She referred to it as a Nazi group, as the suggestions of other 12-step programs are requirements here. It's a strict program of abstinence (in Anna's case, sugar and all flour) and other activities. While the food abstinence has been challenging and helpful, the most significant change that Anna has made is another of the program's requirements: 30 minutes of quiet time a day with no activity.

She said this has changed everything for her. She is calmer, happier, more open in her relationship with her spouse, kinder to her clients and friends. Of course, the program is multi-facted (journaling practice, meetings, sponsorship, working the steps) but of all the things she does, this has made the most difference. Out of that quiet has come a meditation practice and a spiritual connection she didn't see as possible.

Something worth considering.

Rejoicing in knowing what's wrong with me

2011-05-30T18:34:00.000-07:00

I suppose most people would be dismayed to have their therapist confirm that they have a mental illness. Not me. I was really glad.

Last week at our session, my therapist told me that I had free-floating anxiety. She may have told me this before but I didn't listen or couldn't hear it. I didn't get the feeling that this was major news to her; we've been working together for about 4 years or so. But it was so helpful to me to know that that's what it is.

As a recovering alcoholic, I do believe that mental illness is part of addiction. In AA, we say that we have an allergy of the body to alcohol and an obsession of the mind with it. When I was in the throes of my addiction, I was certainly obsessed with alcohol. It's what I lived for. Everything else was peripheral. And as I've dealt with my continuing addictive behaviors (to work, to food), I've been looking for the common denominator.

With free-floating anxiety (also called Generalized Anxiety Disorder), I am not afraid of any specific thing. I am just afraid. And when the fear hits me, I look for a reason to be afraid. I look for symptoms in my body, I look for something in my circumstances, I look at the world, and I find plenty of reasons. But they aren't why I'm afraid. Some researchers think that it comes from a glitch in the neurotransmitter chemistry of the brain. Others that it is based in childhood trauma or is inherited. Whatever it is, it is inside, not outside.

And for some reason, for me, that is good news. I can stop looking for what's wrong and just be with what is. It may not be easy, but it seems a lot simpler than trying to figure out each time what's wrong and how to fix it. There probably isn't any fixing it, just a being with it.

"Invite it in for tea," says Anna.

When will I listen to my intuition?

2011-05-26T18:10:00.000-07:00

When I got back from the beach two weeks ago, I had a message from a woman looking for an editor. I had responded to an ad she put out for a book editor. I called her back and we had a long conversation. She seemed a little strange and told me a lot about her personal life, not what I usually hear from prospective clients. But her book sounded interesting and she said it was the first of several and those are great clients to have. She lived here in town and wanted to meet me before we agreed to work together. That's not a very common request--most clients are interested in a sample and a time and money estimate--although most of those clients have come to me by referral. But some clients like to put a face to the name so I agreed to meet her.

She was friendly but strange in a way I couldn't quite put my finger on. In addition, she asked a lot of very personal questions and then would back pedal, say she was probably overstepping her bounds, she was a psychic, a therapist, interested in people and how they worked--but none of the questions were about my work.. She stayed an hour and a half and I felt leery somehow but she seemed keen on working together and handed me a huge check for the work. I had prepared a simple contract and she made some minor changes, but that all seemed okay too.

Next day I had an email from her talking about unfinished personal business between us and did I want to come over. I said no, no time. Again, something didn't feel right. But her check went through and I started the work. But very quickly I could see that it was going to take me way longer to do the work than I had estimated. The sample she sent me was not representative of the whole text and I had grossly underbid. So I emailed with some options. including a refund.

I got a furious email back, saying I was in breech of contract, demanding her money back by the end of the day or she'd sue me. The response was way out of proportion to the email I had sent her and I'd offered to refund her money. And then I realized that she was crazy, that my intuition, my wiser self had been telling me all along not to take the job. And I hadn't listened. The money was good and I wanted the work, even though I knew something was off.

I haven't had many of these clients over the years. Just a handful. But each time, I knew taking them on was a bad idea. I feel very relieved to be out from under this. The messenger she sent just came for the refund. I've put in a couple of hours work I won't get paid for but it seems a small price to pay.

Fat body, fat liver--an unforeseen consequence of sugar addiction

2011-05-23T17:38:00.000-07:00

Last week I had a rather miserable set of medical tests done for abdominal discomfort. Because my symptoms are one of the many vague symptoms of ovarian cancer and because I fall into that equally vague risk category (over 55 and childless), my doc and I felt it good to be safer and do the testing. The abdominal ultrasound is tedious and was a bit painful for me as I have some version of fibromyalgia. It took 40 minutes. The pelvic ultrasound is internal and she pushed on places nobody is intended to push on! Believe me! It was grueling and took another 20 minutes. Between the two of them, I was so tired I slept most of the day. So glad I work at home and on my own schedule.

Well, the good news is that no cancer showed up. But I did get a diagnosis of fibrofatty liver disease. This is caused when too much fat comes towards the liver. Unable to process it all, it stores some or a lot in its own self. This can happen so much that liver function is impaired. At risk for this not uncommon disease are alcoholics and the obese, particularly (here I come!) those who consume large quantities of processed sugar and fat and who have dieted frequently (rapid fat loss). Boy, that's me! Processed sugary foods are easily converted to fat and fat is, well, already fat.

I feel so grateful to have already taken the biggest stride towards rectifying this by giving up sugar and the fat that goes with sugary desserts, be it ice cream, candy, cake, cookies, muffins, you know the culprits. In fact, for the first time in several decades, my cholesterol levels were normal at my physical. And that's a big plus.

Fibrofatty liver disease is reversible and there are many herbal ways to strengthen the liver as well. So I'm feeling optimistic. But this was a consequence that I didn't see coming. And more changes are clearly needed. I want a well functioning liver.

So if you're thinking that sugar is a problem, maybe this is something to consider.

Giving up struggling

2011-05-20T13:20:00.000-07:00

I was thinking the other day about how long I've been struggling with food. I didn't diet or struggle in my childhood or my youth. I was thin really until I hit my 30s, even though one boyfriend convinced me to lose an additional 15 pounds at one point. I was model thin and miserable because I didn't want to not eat.

I took up running in my 30s and that really helped me maintain my weight but I dieted off and on all the time I was drinking. Then when I got sober, I just stopped controlling my food. Abstaining from alcohol in the beginning was hard enough, and sugary treats really helped me deal with the restlessness that came with early sobriety.

Looking back, of course, I can see that the sweets free-for-all of the next decade led to major weight gain, and while I had stopped being thin by 40, I was only mildly overweight until I hit 50 and then it seemed that suddenly (and of course it was incremental) I was carrying a lot of extra pounds. I would control my food off and on, dabbled in Weight Watchers, OA for a year, but they were all about food, not about why I ate, and I didn't just want to find another soother. I wanted to find a way to need less soothing, heal up the wounds and sorrows, change what I could, accept with grace what I couldn't.

Now I just don't want to be run by food. Weight loss,well, some would be nice, but I want mostly to not be run by food. And I don't want to struggle with it anymore, to feel bad about anything that I don't have to. I want some choice in all this and that's what I'm looking into now.

I love this poem

2011-05-18T18:39:00.000-07:00

Hokusai says look carefully.

He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
He says there is no end to seeing

He says look forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat
yourself as long as it is interesting.

He says keep doing what you love.

He says keep praying.

He says every one of us is a child,
every one of us is ancient
every one of us has a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
He says every one of us has to find
a way to live with fear.

He says everything is alive --
shells, buildings, people, fish,
mountains, trees, wood is alive.
Water is alive.

Everything has its own life.
Everything lives inside us.
He says live with the world inside you.

He says it doesn't matter if you draw,
or write books. It doesn't matter
if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn't matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your veranda
or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.

It matters that you care.
It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
It matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you.

Joy is life living through you.

Satisfaction and strength
is life living through you.

He says don't be afraid.

Don't be afraid.

Love, feel, let life take you by the hand.

Let life live through you.

- Roger Keyes

Inspiration and role models

2011-05-15T19:37:00.000-07:00

On vacation, I watched Harold and Maude for the second time. The first time was in the theater when it first came out in 1971. At that time I was 25 and I identified with Bud Cort. I was shy, felt stuck, unsure, just as he was. Now at 64, I identify with Ruth Gordon and still love her zest for life.

Her singing, her dancing, her celebrating. Her thumbing her nose at the rules and the law (Tom Skerritt in an uncredited role). Her tender care for the trees in the city and the very young man. And her clear knowing when it was time to go.

Gordon was herself a remarkable woman. She made this film when she was 75 and went on to make 22 more films before she died at 89. She was married to a man 16 years her junior, famous playwright Garson Kanin. She won oscars for film scripts and for acting. I wish I had known her.

There are other older women I admire. Karen Casey, author of Each Day A New Beginning is a dynamo in her early 70s, a force to be reckoned with in the recovery community. Joanna Macy, Buddhist and environmentalist, is another, whose life force and life focus give me hope.

These women set precedents that I want to emulate: focus, concern, sharing of themselves, and a clear link to the world they live in. Makes me glad.

The highest possible regard

2011-05-11T15:33:00.000-07:00

My good friend Meredith in Virginia recently got her certification in ZBG, a body energy therapy. At the graduation ceremony, the founder and foremost teacher of the program reminded both the new teachers and the long-term teachers of the most important thing to keep in mind when working with clients. It wasn’t knowledge, it wasn’t experience, it wasn’t skill. It was holding the client in the highest possible regard. That opened up something in both practitioner and client for the healing to happen.

Meredith mentioned this rather in passing but I was really struck by it. What would happen in our world if we each held each other and everyone we met in the highest possible regard? What if presidents did it and corporate executives and lawyers and schoolteachers and bank tellers? What if each driver of a vehicle held all other drivers and pedestrians in the highest possible regard? What would happen then?

In the wonderful way of coincidences, I recently edited a book for a long-time special ed teacher who wanted new teachers to know what had made her successful with so many of the kids she had worked with over several decades of teaching and tutoring. It was her belief in the abilities of these kids, not their disabilities. She was far more ambitious for them than their parents and their other teachers. She wanted to focus on all they could do, not what they might never do. And in order to do that, she held them in the highest possible regard.

In the second coincidence, I’ve been reading Roland Merullo’s novel The American Savior, in which Jesus comes to earth and runs for president. Jesus’s admonition that we should love one another is the same idea, that we love the other and wish well for the other, and do good to the other. I’m intrigued by what all this can mean for my own life.

Finding a way to slow down

2011-05-08T13:17:00.000-07:00

I'm on vacation this week at the Oregon Coast. I came down Wednesday afternoon after 3 intense days of work. I also brought an important work project with me that needed to be completed by Thursday afternoon, which I did. I took my computer to the Cannon Beach library and after a series of inexplicable computer difficulties, I finally rented one of theirs (they are a private library) and got my project sent off.

In the email messages that day were two new projects. I'd been expecting them and also knew that I wouldn't have to work on them until I got home. But it isn't that easy for me to let go of the structure and groundedness that work gives me. All the way home to the condo in the pouring rain, I thought about how I could just do those projects while I'm down here. Even the fact that a friend is staying with me down here and we are spending the week together wasn't a deterrent. We do spend time each day on our computers, ostensibly writing on our novels, and how would she know from the other side of the room that I wasn't working on mine but instead editing Bridget's book or Kaye's tenure application?

And I realize how crazy that sounds, sneaking to do my work as if I were viewing porn sights or eating candy in the bedroom. A friend and I have been talking about the addiction of work, which is so familiar to me but a new concept to her. How that sense of being needed and competent is a drug for our wounded selves, giving us purpose and meaning in a world that often feels empty of either.

So far, I have been able to not work while I'm here. I've been able to let go of my addiction to email (I'm checking it only once a day since the condo doesn't have it) and just been in the moment of our activities. It would be easy to make this a judgement about myself, and instead I'm just viewing it as a curiosity.

In the lap of temptation

2011-05-06T12:48:00.000-07:00

I'm spending a week at the Oregon coast in my friend Diane's condo. She's generously let me stay here once or twice a year for a long time. I've done some of my best writing there and I think of her as my creative angel. I've also eaten a lot of sugar in that condo: pecan praline cookies from the Waves of Grain, haystack coconut cookies from the bakery in town, homemade caramels from Bruce's candy store, the ever-present Tillamook ice cream. I've made myself sick on many of the best desserts the coast has to offer.

One thing Diane's condo doesn't have is wifi so I've come up to the Waves of Grain to check email and post to the blog. I bought some of their delicious Sleepy Monk coffee and three foccacia rolls and just drooled quietly in front of the four delicious (I know cuz I've tried them all) cookies and the key lime tarts and the florentines and the buttermilk chocolate cupcakes and went and sat down.

I'd like to feel very virtuous and say that I don't really want any of those but that would be a big, fat lie. I'd love to buy six cookies and take them home and eat two or three of them before my friend Pam comes for the weekend and then sneak the three over the next few hours. And therein, of course, lies the problem. I don't want just a bit or even one cookie. I want a handful, a bagful. I want to get sated, maybe even sick. It would take that to satisfy me...and I know I'm better not to start.

Yesterday while I was taking a shower, I noticed that the shampoo at the end of the tub was made by Dove. And of course that made me think of Dove bars and my first one and how yummy they are and how maybe, just maybe I could eat a box of them once a year and that desire and lunacy washed over me for a couple of minutes and I began to plan it out and then thought of the Saturday afternoon in my apartment when I ate 6 boxes of Dove Bars and I knew it was a fantasy, that dream of moderation and occasional eating. I've proved that to myself so many times.

So my friend Sue and I went to an AA meeting and I had a delicious tuna melt at the organic cafe in town and indulged in the corn chips that came with it and forgot about sweets until today. My resolve is strong. It's less a resolve to not eat sweets as it is a resolve to not be run by addiction and saying no is the only way I can get there.

EMDR and shifting out of the past

2011-05-03T17:56:00.000-07:00

For the last several sessions, my counselor and I have been preparing to do some EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) work on childhood beliefs, things that are stuck in my knowing of myself that no longer serve me. These beliefs are attached to emotions in my body, and we think they are related to panic and anxiety, which have resurfaced in some unpleasant ways in the recent past. To anyone looking on, the process seems pretty bogus. The therapist moves her fingers or a pen rapidly from side to side and you follow it with your eyes while staying present to thoughts or feelings or physical sensations. But something starts to shift and ease and a lot of emotion got released for me today.

One of the things that came up is that I'm interested in coming to a place of clarity and forgiveness in my relationship with my mother, in teasing out what was hers, what was mine, and what is now mine to take care of. Today during the process, I felt a real desire to love my mother in a way I haven't felt for a long, long time. I guess to love her anyway even though she was unable to take care of me the way I needed. During the session, I felt a lot of sadness about all that, but when I left, I felt angry, angry that it's me having to clean this up, angry that I'm the one doing the work. I felt 10 or 12 or 14 again and pissed off at my mother. I think that in itself is a breakthrough. I've always been afraid to be angry with my mother, afraid on a deep survival level. Maybe I'm finally coming to a place where it is safe to do that.

Traveling spaciously

2011-05-01T19:24:00.000-07:00

As most of you know, my intention for this year is to live spaciously. I've just come back from a 3-day trip to Minnesota for a speaking engagement and I had a chance to apply that principle to my travel. It made a world of difference.

First, I took up my host's offer to fly in early on Thursday (the event started on Friday afternoon). I was able to get a flight at noon and made no plans for Thursday evening so that I didn't have to worry about what time the plane got in or how long it took me to drive to the destination (about 75 minutes as it turned out). I got to the hotel, checked in. I found out the restaurant next door only served until 8 (it was 7:20) so I left my suitcase in the car, washed up, and went to dinner. My pre-spacious self would have raced to unpack before going to dinner so that dinner could be leisurely. I'm so conscious of that irony.

I had a date at 10:30 the next morning, plenty of time to do my routines of journaling and meditation and shower and breakfast. I visited with friends, got a tour, then went back to the hotel and rested. After a couple of events, I needed a break so I spent time in the lovely meditation hall on campus, just reading and thinking. Then dinner and after a few minutes of the entertainment, I excused myself and drove back to the hotel so I could have time alone.

Yesterday I got up very early so I could have spacious morning time before my presentation. I had plenty of time to write, eat, get ready, drive over. No rush, no hurry. I had an hour to speak but stopped five minutes early to give the audience a bit longer break before the next speaker. I talked to people, sat in on the next program and then after lunch, went back to the hotel, took a nap, did a little work, just enjoyed myself. I also had an early night last night. And I got back to the hotel in time to see the lovely early evening light on the countryside so I put on my walking shoes and got some fresh air.

Today I got up early so I could leave in plenty of time. Turned out I needed it as I overshot the airport by about 10 miles, had to pull off, figure out the map, and retrace my steps. But I had plenty of time to turn in the rental car, get a sandwich for the plane.

What I've learned is that travel can be stressful (new situations, lots to observe and take care of), and if I do it spaciously, I can reduce that stress so like today, there was no panic when I realized I was lost. No fear I wouldn't make it in time. I had plenty of time. I like travelling that way.

Now why did I agree to stop eating food soothers?

2011-04-29T19:25:00.000-07:00

I'm in a Holiday Inn Express in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, about 10 miles from the campus of the main Hazelden recovery center. I arrived last night after an uneventful flight and relatively uneventful drive in a rental car the 60 miles up here from the airport. For many people, this will sound like no big deal. But for me, a person with a highly developed comfort gene and an almost non-existent adventure gene, this is stressful.

Roads I don't know, a car I don't know, a place I don't know, 300 people I don't know. Yikes!

I did pretty well. I got here safely, got checked in, found that my room backed up on the elevator and asked for another (and got it)--this alone was a huge accomplishment in asking for what I need. Then at dinner a guy a couple of tables over said into his cell phone that he was speaking on Saturday and I approached him, a total stranger! Those of you who don't know me well will find this perplexing. Why is she telling us all this normal stuff? But those of you who do know me will know that for me, these are challenges. I'm introverted, shy, often solitary. So I'm really stepping out here, folks.

Today I met my friends Patricia and Ann, got a tour of the campus, had lunch. Came back and rested a while, then went to the event for the afternoon and early evening. It all seemed fine until I got back to the hotel and every candybar in the vending machine was doing a little peekaboo dance of seduction just for me. Right next to them were the Cheetos, now also not on my list of foods. I restrained myself, got ice, a big glass of water, ate a few nuts I'd brought with me and called it good. I wasn't hungry. Dinner had been delicious and I wasn't even tempted by the huge chunks of chocolate cake at each place but once I got back here, I really needed soothing. Oy!

Deciding that we matter

2011-04-26T14:03:00.000-07:00

I am deep in a self-conversation about what matters (see http://www.thewritingwheel.blogspot.com/ for my ideas on mattering and creativity), sparked by a book I'm reading on anxiety and artists. The author, Eric Maisel, suggests that making a decision to matter is central to relieving ourselves of anxiety. I've been in a related conversation for a while about what matters to me, in other words, what my priorities are: writing, painting, well-being, friends and family, paid work. Some of my friends also have a service category but I see all these five priorities as forms of service.

But Maisel is taking this further. It's acknowledging and believing and acting from a stance that who we are matters. Anxiety and meaninglessness are good chums and so deciding, declaring that I matter, that what I do matters, each day, each thingis meaningful is rather revolutionary for me and certainly for our culture as we now live in it. In our culture today, most things are seen as pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of the universe, a small kindness is dismissed because it doesn't solve the global issue. Our efforts seem puny on the huge scale of a tsunami or nuclear meltdown and so we shop and eat and watch TV. And all this leads to an underlying anxiety that fuels more distractions.

But if I matter, if writing this blog matters, if doing my dishes matters, if painting or writing a poem or editing a website matters, then my life feels different to me, richer, clearer, more important--to me. And that may just be enough.

Completing my drainers and a surprising result

2011-04-22T11:48:00.000-07:00

For years, I've been passing on Cheryl Richardson's ideas about "drainers," those tasks and projects that have been lurking in our brains and on our to-do lists for too long. That chair that needs repairing or recovering, that purse that never worked out that I keep meaning to return, the watch with the cracked crystal, that phone call to the bank to protest a charge. All those things that when we think of them our energy just gets drained away. Richardson really encourages getting those things done. Make a decision, find the money, take the time, or let them go/give them away. Release that energy for something else.

Over the past year or so, I've been steadily working through my drainers. I saved up my money, got the big green chair and its ottoman recovered. I got the broken leg on the antique table fixed and sold it. I sold several other things that had been in my basement storage unit. I cleaned out the basement storage unit and got rid of a lot of stuff. I got that watch fixed this week and that purse returned earlier in the month. And two weeks ago, I found a beautiful small rug on a great sale that is a perfect replacement for the worn one too well favored by my old cat Reinie. My list is now pretty much complete.

Curiously, while taking care of each one was a great relief and felt good, there was a curious emptiness when the list really shrank to next to nothing. I felt caught up, unburdened by the drainers, and yet I also felt lost, or perhaps more accurately, at loose ends. And I wondered if somehow having that list of tasks and incomplete projects serves a deeper purpose. If it keeps us grounded, feeling connected to life, maybe even important in a different form of busy-ness. Kind of a "boy am I needed--look at all these things I need to do."

And they also kept me from turning my energy to some of those things on my excuses list. I couldn't possibly paint, I have too many drainers to take care of. Now with the drainers gone, I'm looking at what is really standing in the way of my doing what I say I want to. Hmmm.

More on excuses

2011-04-19T17:11:00.000-07:00

Thanks for all your many comments, both public and private, about the post on excuses. I've really been sitting with this since last Friday. Sitting with the fears, the inertia. And again looking at the difference between wanting to do something and committing to it. I wanted to stop eating sugar for a long time and not much changed until I made a commitment to abstaining from dessert. It's been 14 months and I have an easier and easier time just saying no (not exactly what LadyBird Johnson meant but it works).

I'm also aware that I can't take on all 5 of my issues at once. So I've decided to take on the relatively easier ones, in that there are concrete things I can do right away to turn the energy in another direction.

First, I have approached a friend who paints and who has invited me to paint with her about getting together four days in June to paint, either all in one week or two days over two weeks. I'm hoping that four painting sessions will shift me into gear and get me back in the proverbial saddle.

Second, I'm committing to doing the footwork to market my completed novel and spending at least half of writing Fridays upcoming on that project, which will require some time and some attention to detail. I need to "woman up" and just do this, regardless of the outcome.

Third in May, I'll be headed to the beach for a week's retreat and will start the second draft of the second novel then, with a goal of completing it by August 1.

That leaves, of course, the two much more difficult issues that I dance around: food and men. These are such long-standing issues that coming up with a quick, concrete solution isn't so easy, but I think taking some more substantial creative risks may help me get the courage to do so in the more private areas of my life. We'll see what happens.

Making excuses

2011-04-15T15:13:00.000-07:00

Once a month (first Wednesday), I get together with an amazing group of women and we encourage each other in building the best lives we can create. This month we talked about excuses and where we are making them and why.

Here's my list of where I'm most often making excuses:

1. Why I don't paint anymore (no time, too messy, no studio)
2. Why I'm not shopping my first novel (no time, too complicated)
3. Why I'm not working on my second novel (no time, need a big block of time)
4. Why I'm not losing weight (I refuse to diet or join a group)
5. Why I don't do something about having more men in my life (too busy, too fat)

I know you can see the pattern here. First, my excuses are mostly about time, yet I find the time to read a lot of mystery novels and watch a lot of Netflix and eat out with friends and putter around the house. I read somewhere that when your excuses are about time and money, the reality isn't about time or money. It's about fear. And that is so true for me.

1. I'm afraid my good paintings were a fluke and that I have no talent or skill.
2. I'm afraid no one will want my novel.
3. I'm afraid the second novel isn't very good either.
4. I'm afraid I'll be hungry and depressed and miserable if I stop eating what I want.
5. I'm afraid none of the men I might meet will like me.

At this point, I'm not sure how to go about resolving the issues in the reality but it at least seems more honest to me to tell the truth about it, rather than hiding behind the excuses. More later on this, Jill

Three great quotes about excuses

For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future but an excuse can last for life—Eric Hoffer

The trick is not how much pain you feel but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses. –Erica Jong

I will not take “but” for an answer. –Langston Hughes

Suggestions from the fabulous Patti Digh:

When you feel an excuse coming on, rather than verbalize it, stop for a moment:
• What are you making an excuse about? Change it.
• Your hair doesn’t look right? Change it.
• Your house is a mess when someone stops by unexpectedly. Spend just 15 minutes a day putting things away so visitors aren’t dreaded but welcomed.
• You didn’t have time to finish something? Reprioritize or say no to more things.
• Keep a catalog of your excuses. Then make your life an excuse-free zone.

The ongoing conversation about food

2011-04-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

My friend Kathie, who reads my blog from time to time, asked me why I hadn't been writing about food much lately. After all, she said, wasn't that why I started the blog in the first place?

I've been thinking about this since she asked me, as I had no ready answer. First, it was one of the reasons I started this blog. I'd been meaning to create one for a while and giving up desserts in Feb 2010 seemed a good topic to begin with, chronicling my experience as I moved off the huge quantities of sugar I'd been consuming for years. The blog was also intended as an extension of my memoir, Sober Truths: The Making of an Honest Woman, about my descent into alcoholism and my two decades of sobriety. So all kinds of internal and external conversations seem appropriate to me to include.

But that doesn't answer her first questions. I haven't been writing about food because I'm stuck again. I've kept the 20 pounds I lost in the first 6 months of no dessert and my weight hasn't budged from there, mostly I think because other than dessert, I'm eating pretty much anything I want to at any time. I did give up Cheetos, another huge favorite, about 6 weeks ago. I have definite Cheeto cravings (or Cheeto substitutes like clam dip and potato chips or Fritos and bean dip). But other than that, I've been unwilling to take necessary steps to get unstuck and move forward.

I also know why I'm stuck. It's because I've found a dessert substitute: an organic crispy rice peanut butter granola bar. It is pretty low fat and not high in sugar but it is yummy and yummy translates into eating a lot of the yummy item. I have other snack bars that are tasty but one is plenty. But not the pb bars. I can eat 3 or 4 at a time. I don't get the sugar high but I do feel sated and my blood sugar soothed in some way. And I just honestly don't want to give them up and find out what will happen. I just don't.

So I am stuck. And I don't know what I'm waiting for, but I'm waiting.

Feng Shui and me-- Part II

2011-04-08T11:41:00.000-07:00

Since that first feng shui experience 10 years ago, I've lived conscious of the basic principles. Keeping my home clutter-free, not storing anything under my bed (the chi needs to circulate freely for us to have healthy sleep), keeping my closets tidy. I know which areas of my house relate to the areas of life in a the bagua system (9 categories) but mostly I just subscribe to tidiness and cleanliness and less clutter.

But in the past month, I've had two other interesting feng shui experiences. One was learning that basements have an impact on our health and well-being. Under my apartment is a communal storage area and laundry room, so the other tenants of the complex mingle their energies with mine down there. I asked Tina to come back for a consultation and we did a smudging and then I effected some cures by hanging crystals in the corners of the room and placing some symbolic objects in the wealth area. I haven't noticed any big changes but I do feel better knowing I've done what I can to make that a more harmonious space.

Second, I've been taking a course in prosperity thinking that is based on feng shui ideas. Each day I've been writing out a given affirmation 9 times, then spending a brief time visualizing what I'd like to have in a certain area (wardrobe, livelihood, education, home, etc.). And there's an added tip or cure that can be done for each of the 27 days of the course (numerology is important in feng shui). Some of them are very elaborate (for example, obtaining water from 9 prosperous business) but others have been worth doing: candle burning, placing red envelopes with special Chinese coins in auspicious places in my home. I figure they can't hurt.

I'm not looking to be wealthy. That, frankly, has never interested me. But I am interested in having steadier work and in feeling comfortable with the money I have. I'll keep you posted on the results.

friends, snacks, and meals

2011-04-06T11:46:00.000-07:00

This past week I've had two houseguests, my good friend Barb from Tacoma and my good friend Beth from Nashville. Both visits were really fun. We did a certain amount of touristing, a little shopping, and a lot of talking and laughing. We also ate out quite a bit as Portland has so many wonderful restaurants.

What I found during both visits is that I wasn't inclined to snack at all between meals. We had plenty of activity and I was hungry for each meal, and we didn't overeat at meals, picking restaurants with reasonable portions. But the combination of such good food and such good times really satisfied something in me that I often fill with food when I'm alone, especially if I'm alone too long.

I certainly could have sneaked snack bars or extra food or eaten it in front of them but I didn't need to. At the same time, most of the time, when I'm at home working or just hanging out, I'm not conscious of being lonely or of suffering even mildly. So I'm not quite sure how these things are connected, but I sure can see that they are.

Yes anyway

2011-04-03T18:19:00.000-07:00

I gave her a ride from the train
Station to Burnside, a tall woman
With brown curly hair, maybe 40
I’d just hugged Barb goodbye
Told a last joke about puddles and said
I love you and she said “Are you headed
To Burnside can you give me a ride?”
All in one question and I looked
At this stranger and felt afraid and
Ashamed that I wondered
If she had a gun in her purse
And said “Yea, sure” in spite of myself
And before I knew it
She was buckled in next to me
And for seven blocks, we made
Halting conversation
About the first sunny morning
In six weeks and her mother
Headed back to Port Townsend
And how much she liked living on 22nd
And for the whole seven blocks
I wondered if I’d get out of this alive
And felt ashamed that I trust so little
And she unbuckled the seat belt
Before I even came to a stop at the light
And thanked me with a shy smile
And striding off around the corner
Was out of sight so quickly I wondered
If she was a messenger sent to remind me
Of a different way to be in the world

Feng Shui and me--Part I

2011-04-01T09:46:00.000-07:00

In 2000, I was part of a personal growth program that was big on projects to move us forward in life. I decided to take on a fairly safe project, one that would have definite and successful outcomes. I took on revamping my apartment to better support what I was up to in my life. I called the project Zen Home.

I gave the walls a fresh coat of paint, including some more interesting colors (I had a very tolerant landlord at the time who was okay with anything I wanted to do as long as he didn't have to pay for it). I moved my office out of the living room (where I had positioned my desk for the view into the courtyard) and into the mostly unused second bedroom/guest room, thereby separating work and private life. I pulled up the ancient wool carpet to expose the lovely hardwood floors underneath. I bought a couple of great rugs from Pottery Barn. All these things made a huge difference in the way things looked.

But it wasn't until I hired a friend who'd just finished her training in Feng Shui that things really shifted. Tina came and spent two hours orienting me to the Feng Shui system and making suggestions. The most dramatic had to do with the healthiest placement of my bed in the bedroom (with my feet facing the door) and the position of my couch again facing the door. She also suggested some simple cures for some of the less harmonious angles (good chi likes round, not sharp) and suggested some color adjustments and other minor things.

None of these things meant very much to me, to be honest, but they were simple enough to do and I was willing to go on faith. Once it was all complete, I felt good in my home. It seemed nicer to me but I couldn't have said whether it was the angle of the couch or the mango colored wall in the new office. But everyone, I mean everyone who came to my home after that remarked on how wonderful it looked and even more importantly on how peaceful my place felt. And I became a believer.

Taking action

2011-03-30T17:59:00.000-07:00

One of the blogs I subscribe to had a post yesterday about taking action. That it's all well and good to set intentions and speak your desires into the universe but that you still have to get moving and do something. In AA, this taking action is called "doing the footwork." You do your part in getting things done, in making things happen.

The blog post made me think about where I'm not taking action and they are all things that scare me, that seem risky. Can I give up the fruit popsicles and granola bars that are seeming a little too close to dessert now? Can I acknowledge that I'm using them to stave off feelings rather than hunger? Can I send off the draft of my novel, finished for over a year, to an agent or publisher or three dozen of them and see if I can publish it? Can I raise my rates with my clients and keep their business? Can I make a foray into a different kind of social life, one with more men in it, so that I might meet somebody I'd like to get to know? Can I actually change my work schedule around even more so that I have two days a week to write or paint and more fully step into the life of the artist that I dream about?

I'm finding it scary just to write these things down. But I know that it's with taking action that things happen. And while there's a nice fantasy about having things drop into our laps or show up at the door, there's also a lot of satisfaction in getting what we want from our own efforts.

Loving yourself is counter-cultural

2011-03-27T16:05:00.000-07:00

My monthly women and food group met this afternoon, and I shared part of the Lighten Up CD with them. We got into a wonderful discussion about the magic of love and the powerful nature of loving ourselves and the difficulty of doing that in a culture that is based on hatred of the body (both from our Puritanical origins and from over 50 years of constant advertising messages that teach us, or rather brainwash us, into dissatisfaction with what we have and who we are so that we will buy stuff and keep the economy going).

Women are, I think, drawn to the food group, because they are looking for yet another way to lose weight, to somehow avoid the deterioration of aging and regain that slim, youthful body that they still expect to see in the mirror. I reminded them that the group's goal is peace, peace with food, peace with ourselves and that there's nowhere to get to except there.

I have felt more of that in the week that I've been doing the simple Lighten Up exercise. I am able to look at myself in the huge mirror that stretches across one whole wall of my rather large bathroom and be okay with what I see, something I didn't think would ever happen. Going against the grain is not easy, turning off the discouraging, dissatisfaction-producing messages is also not easy, but maybe it's time more of us were revolutionary in this sense. Maybe it's time to say "enough" to our culture's obsession with only a certain kind
of beauty, only a certain look. I'd love to see Oprah with her own skin and hair on the cover of her magazine one of these days.

Low energy, low spirits

2011-03-24T15:26:00.000-07:00

I didn’t know Evangelista Torricelli from Adam
Until five minutes ago
Didn’t know he’d invented the barometer
Or that he had his own law
About the speed of a fluid
Flowing out of an opening
I just knew that we’d had 30 days of
Measurable rain and what’s worse for me
30 days of low barometric pressure
Which translates not into a useful invention
Or a property of matter but a matter of
Low energy and low spirits
As if I’m dragging along the bottom
Of my own particular ocean towing the
Water-logged carcass of my dreams

Evangelista called Galileo friend
And birthed the modern wind
Not blown by gods or angels but born
When hot sky meets cold or cool meets warm
He believed the sun was at the center
Of things although he clearly never spent a
Winter in Portland where the sun is so far
Out on the fringes of imagining
If he had, he would have forsaken Copernicus
And forgotten, as we do, that the sky is ever blue

Loving your body

2011-03-22T15:49:00.000-07:00

My good friend Judy Todd dropped off a CD last Thursday that she thought I might like. I'm not much of an aural learning so I don't listen to books on tape or talking CDs very often but Sunday when I took my day of ease, I popped it in and sat down with a cup of tea. The CD is by Carol Hansen and is an audio version of a workshop she does called "Lighten Up." It's Hansen's contention that one way we can learn to love ourselves better is to love our bodies. It's certainly true that in the US at least, most of us have lost whatever love we had for our selves. This is a consequence of living in a culture that has as a dominant theme, perpetual dissatisfaction so that we will continue to buy things in the hopes that that purchase will make us feel better.

And it's not news that the images we are bombarded with us, especially with the advent of airbrushing, means that we aren't thin enough, or shaped right, or pale enough, or tan enough, or blonde enough, or young enough. Whatever we are, it isn't what should be. Hansen's idea is to daily express gratitude to our bodies for all they do for us and to love them out loud. It's a simple two-step process that takes about 5 minutes a day. So I'm going to give it a try.

Hansen makes some pretty amazing claims about people who've done her program and I'm always skeptical about miracle cures, but if this can bring me into a better emotional alignment with my physical self, I'm willing and don't need promises of major weight loss or supreme health to convince me.

I'll keep you posted.

And to check out Carol's work: http://carolhansengrey.com/

Taking a Sabbath

2011-03-20T18:39:00.000-07:00

"Work when there is work to do. Rest when you are tired. One thing done in peace will most likely be better than ten things done in panic...I am not a hero if I deny rest; I am only tired. --Susan McHenry

Yesterday I ran out of steam. I had a busy early part of the day. I had breakfast with a good friend; then we went to a wonderful workshop on creativity and aging. I left there, hurried home so I could get to the bank and make a deposit before a friend arrived to do a Feng Shui consultation. Usually things aren't so hurried for me but I'd gotten it stuck in my head that I needed to get all these things done yesterday. Christina left at 3:45 and I was just all of a sudden done, even though it was only the middle of the afternoon.

I watched a movie, called my gym buddy and used a Get-out-of-the-gym Free card, made some dinner, watched another movie. Then I slept nearly 11 hours, 3 beyond my normal. I've been flirting with a virus so that may have been some of my fatigue but mostly I was just tired of doing and needed a rest. I needed a Sunday with nothing on my calendar: NOTHING. And sometimes I can't seem to just take that as a natural part of living; instead, I often wait until my body says NO MORE.

Today has been wonderful. I've had what I call a do-whatever's-next day. I just do whatever I think of next. I wrote in my journal, did a little personal email, made some breakfast, took down my outside porch lights from the winter dark time, finished the novel I'd been reading, did some collage, did the exercises for next month's creativity class, had something to eat, listened to a CD a friend loaned me, did a little more collage, did the dishes, wrote my two blogs. I know that's a lot but it was so restful to have all the time I wanted for each activity that it didn't feel like a lot at all. I'd had so much sleep I didn't need a nap but I would have taken one if it had occurred to me. I feel re-energized and reconnected. Hurray!

Glorification of bad behavior

2011-03-18T13:46:00.000-07:00

Lat night, I watched the movie Social Network. I almost turned it off after the first few minutes, as the main character, Mark Zuckerberg, is portrayed as such a callous narcissist that I could barely watch him. I hung in there, fascinated and horrified at the story unfolding before me, barely a likeable character among them, except the girl who bookends the story. And when I'd finished and learned that Facebook is a 25-billion-dollar company (for what?) and thought about the fact that this was a Best Picture nominee (for what?) and thought about the glorification of insensitivity and callousness and narcissicism, I just felt so discouraged.

It's a sad story to me that the "hero" of the film, whose life is worthy of a big-budget bio-pic, is someone who is brilliant and who cheats others and doesn't care whom he hurts. Are integrity and kindness and some amount of decorum so old-fashioned? And I wonder if this is how my parents felt about my generation, though as I remember us in our youth, we had social ideals of improving life for the poor and it wasn't all about making piles of money, disrespectful of tradition as we may have been. I want very much to blame this on the Reagan years, when rugged individualism became about "me" getting rich.

The party scenes didn't disturb me. I partied like that some and I find that kind of thing rather boring now. It may be more excessive and less personal today, the drugs harder, the sex more public, but lust is lust and addiction is well what fuels most of that and I have my own stories there.

The one really interesting character for me was the ethical brother of the twins, the guy who believed in being a gentleman, who believed that going to Harvard was an important privilege and that you play by the rules. He's made out to be a ninny by his brother and their friend and his ethics are scoffed at even by the president of the university, one of the most discouraging characters of all.

I don't often feel morally righteous, and I sure don't like that feeling, but that's what I was left with.

The capacity to witness suffering

2011-03-15T20:43:00.000-07:00

I was struck over the weekend by our fascination with disaster, our ability to watch the same few seconds or minutes of video footage of horror and trauma again and again. I'm not sure what fuels that fascination, whether it's relief that it isn't us, the vicarious thrill of experiencing from the safety of a warm living room, or just the innate human curiosity to see what happens to others.

I stopped attending to the news in any systematic way in 1986 when the Challenger exploded and we became riveted onto the fiery deaths of those individuals. I had already become disenchanted with the focus on violence and negativity that fueled both newspapers and TV news programs as if no one ever did anything nice for anybody anywhere. But that replay and replay and replay of those seconds of immolation unnerved me in a way I hadn't expected, and I stopped paying attention to what was wrong and began to focus on what was right in the world.

Although my opinion is in no way scientific, I don't think we are programmed/wired/geared to handle the knowledge of mass suffering. In our early times, we would have known of only the suffering of our village or tribe and perhaps a neighboring village or tribe if the plague or famine or flood reached that far. On that scale, we could explain it, according to our beliefs, and what's more important we could cope and help out. We could integrate it into our worldview and into our beings.

But when disaster is so large, as with the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear reactors, and so pervasive (Katrina, Haiti, New Zealand, AIDS, genocide in Africa, child sex trafficking, drug wars, etc.), we cannot absorb this into our understandings and so we live in fear and anxiety and impotence and we run the risk of turning away in protective indifference from any suffering and turning a blind eye to where we can help.

I'm not sure how we best protect our psyches so that we can be of service. I just know that after an hour in front of the TV on Friday morning, I've stayed away from the news and tried to be as kind to the others I encounter as I can be.

tsunami

2011-03-11T12:20:00.000-08:00

I slept through the knocking of the kindly man canvassing the neighborhood at 2:30 to warn us of the earthquake in Japan. I didn't hear the hurried conference between two housemates here at the beach about when they should wake us. I didn't hear the first round of sirens in the distance. But I did hear the voices at my door telling us to get up, get packed, load the cars, and hurry on to higher ground.

Every March, six of us old friends come to Arch Cape on the Oregon Coast to the house of the recliners. The old house has four bedrooms that sleep us comfortably and a long row of plate glass windows out onto the ocean below. In front of the windows are five royal blue recliners, where we assume the reading, napping, dozing, reflecting, dreaming position for 3 days. We also play a lot of canasta, do art together, read a lot, eat, and talk. Some years we get great weather and some of the group hikes; some years we get rain, rain, rain. This year so far we've had sun, rain, wind, cool, warmer, and early this morning our own version of the devastating tsunami that hit Japan last night.

We got online right away, saw that we had about 40 minutes to pack and go but we all went into adrenaline alert, making a quick cup of tea to take with, putting everything unloaded last night into our cars, heading up the hill to the church. At 60 feet above sea level, it's considered a safe zone though I argued for going further south and up to Nehalem. But we agreed to stick together and the church got opened up and heat on and lights on and about 50 of us waited for information.

About an hour later, we got word that the big waves were coming. My car was parked facing west out onto the ocean through a slice of trees so I went out and sat in it and watched the Pacific do its dance. The waves looked big but no more than a winter storm. We waited another hour, playing canasta, then cold, tired, we headed back to the house. Unpacked the cars again. Made some breakfast. The bigger effect on the water has been a series of very low tides and I suspect tide is not the word for it, where the water is sucked out, leaving the beach exposed, and then after a minute or so, it all rushes back in. This has been happening over and over since we got back.

We're all tired, not only from getting up early but from the adrenaline rush, the worry, the not knowing. Two people have been napping for several hours. I can feel my own fatigue and an interesting relentless kind of hunger that may well have to do with survival and certainly has something to do with needing to soothe myself. I think I'm going to go take a shower and see if that helps. There have to be more options in my life than food. :)

On bosoms

2011-03-07T15:02:00.000-08:00

The TV at my gym is always on
Bret Maverick and John Wayne
And sometimes Mickey Rooney
And I always watch for the old matriarchs,
All of 50 or 60 years old
In their shapeless dresses, each bosom
A pillow any street corner Santa would have coveted
And I wonder if they didn’t have decent bras
Or if in their youth they’d been corseted to the point
Of collapse and wanted just to breathe free
Modern bras were invented in France, of course,
And widely sold by the 20s
But maybe they only came in small sizes
In the 30s and 40s, or maybe costumers or directors
Couldn’t handle the sexuality of these women
And needed to de-sex them into bosomy pillars
Of the community
Who never ran the bank or became mayor,
Their power sidelined into clubs and meetings about books
And pseudo-charlatans like Mesmer and Houdini
While their railroad-owning husbands chased showgirls
Whose tits needed no support
And I wonder where those cinematic stereotypes came from
The sexless Ma Kettle, the shapeless banker’s wife
Who never had much say in anything
And why women, who went to many more movies than men did,
Put up with it

The care and feeding of grandmothers

2011-03-04T15:24:00.001-08:00

My grandmothers fed me, Cynthia said
A glass of water, honey? A piece of pie?
And I thought of Mabel Brainard
And her parceled-out sweetness
Of Vicks cherry cough drops, one for each of us
As she read Anne of Green Gables aloud
In her bed early on those summer mornings
My mother took us each August to visit her family
But I don’t remember a single thing
Grandma B ever cooked for us
I can’t remember a meal or snack or treat in all those
Years of one-week vacations after the burgers and milkshakes
We got in Pasco at the drive-in as we headed up to Kellogg.
And I thought of Violet Kelly
And her brown-sugar fruit cocktail cake
Coming out of that iron beast of a wood stove
In the kitchen at St Cloud Ranch
Me kneeling on a rough wooden chair
To spin the beaters and whip the cream
She’d urge me to take a second big piece
And finish the cream
Violet whose blood sugar had kept sweets
From her own lips all my life
Her thin legs roughly scarred from the daily insulin injection
I caught her at once
Made us sugar cookies in the deep winter
Of my 9-year-old unhappiness
Bought me caramels and movie magazines
When I was a sullen 13
Made huckleberry cobbler with her sister Edythe
And hand cranked the ice cream when we stayed
On the dairy in Cloverdale
And I thought about how I still miss Violet
Who died when I was 16
And how I hadn’t seen Mabel
In 20 years when she died at 101.

Joy in relationship

2011-03-02T13:05:00.000-08:00

I had a powerful session with my spiritual director Anna today around my relationship with food. What's missing, she said, among other wise things, is joy. And I thought back to my childhood and the tensions at mealtimes and how food seemed a necessary evil to my mother, who'd grown up in a conservative religious home and battled her weight for decades, doing Weight Watchers and stashing Mr. Goodbars all over the house. I was stick thin in those years, running on nervous energy, stuffing myself with my own hidden candy bars, guiltily stopping at the Rexall Drug for cherry cokes and Milk Duds.

My mother fixed good food for us. There was pride in her work; staunch Puritans always have pride in their work. But there was no joy in it. Over my own decades I've taken a lot of sensual pleasure in eating and even for a while in cooking, but there was little joy, always a big tinge of guilt, both in the pleasure and in the calories.

When I got sober, I went back to food but always with guilt, always with that not-so-little voice telling me I was harming my body or harming my soul by enjoying the brownies I'd bake after dinner or the ice cream I'd bring home. I ate a lot in secret, just like my mom, I see now. Ashamed, guilty, embarrassed, and defiant.

Add to that the cultural guilt that gets lobbed at us by the media. That being overweight is a failure, that we lack discipline or will power. Many of us have plenty of both. But we are reluctant to give up this pleasure in an insecure world.

I no longer want to feel those emotions around food. I've got some big unlearning ahead of me.

My good friend Cynthia, after reading my last post, said that she heard a tug of war in my words, a struggle. What would happen she said, if you put down the rope, and found another way to be? What would happen?
I'm now ready to wonder.

Mindlessness: Cunning, baffling, powerful

2011-02-27T10:18:00.000-08:00

Friday night, I dutifully ate my dinner at the dining table. I tried to eat slowly but that just seemed a way to prolong an unpleasant task. I was hungry, I needed to eat, I had good food to eat, but there was no enjoyment. It seemed weird to sit at the table by myself and watch myself eat. That's the way it felt. And I was glad when it was over and I could turn on the current spy series I'm watching on Netflix.

I'd love to be able to say that I stopped eating after dinner, mastered my restlessness in front of the tube, and lived slimly ever after. No such luck.

For the first hour, I reined myself in, then got up and ate a low-fat granola bar in front of the computer. Then another. That's my limit. I noticed that I was eating them really fast so that I could get back to the TV. I watched the episode for another 20 minutes or so then remembered there were some Cheetos left in the cupboard. I got up to get them and the next thing I remember was getting up for the second bowl and realizing I had eaten the first bowl in front of the TV. I had no memory of sitting down in front of it, no memory of eating any of the Cheetos, only the telltale orange-smeared paper towel on the chair for cheesy fingers. No memory whatsoever. I ate the second bowl in front of the computer.

Yesterday I snacked all day: grapes, the rest of the Cheetos, granola bars, nuts, you name it. If it was here, I ate some of it. I couldn't seem to get full, to get satisfied. I was working on a hard project--preparing for a 3-day writing teaching gig for a new client. Did I register the stress? Nope. I registered hunger and restlessness.

I finally stopped working about 5:30, turned on the TV. I ate my dinner at the computer, ate the first three snacks at the computer, watching myself wolf them down in emotional starvation as fast as I could stuff it in and then I said to myself, "Self, this isn't working." And I let myself eat in front of the TV and the frenzy slowed and the eating stopped. I'm having to rethink this.

Loved this poem so much I'm sending it on to you

2011-02-25T14:00:00.000-08:00

The Hymn of a Fat Woman

Joyce Huff

All of the saints starved themselves.
Not a single fat one.
The words “deity” and “diet” must have come from the same
Latin root.

Those saints must have been thin as knucklebones
or shards of stained
glass or Christ carved
on his cross.

Hard
as pew seats. Brittle
as hair shirts. Women
made from bone, like the ribs that protrude from his wasted
wooden chest. Women consumed
by fervor.

They must have been able to walk three or four abreast
down that straight and oh-so-narrow path.
They must have slipped with ease through the eye
of the needle, leaving the weighty
camels stranded at the city gate.

Within that spare city’s walls,
I do not think I would find anyone like me.

I imagine I will find my kind outside
lolling in the garden
munching on the apples.

My new commitment

2011-02-24T17:53:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I got home about 4:30. I'd been travelling all day (10 hours of airports and airplanes) and I was both tired and wired. I did the bulk of the unpacking, snuggled Frannie and Nellie, did my best to unclog a kitchen sink with standing water, caught up on email and mail and the life that had been on hold for 8 days.

I wasn't very hungry. I'd snacked on nuts and pretzels and an airport cafe sandwich and lots of sparkling water to stay hydrated. But I knew I needed to eat something and I knew I needed to slow down and for several decades my way to do that has been to eat dinner and then snack in front of the TV with a good Netflix series on. Except...

Except that I'm into my new commitment. On Feb 14, the one-year anniversary of giving up dessert, I committed to breaking the TV/food connection, a long-standing habit of mindless eating. I'd thought about starting on Feb 1, which was just after the first meeting of the Women and Food group and I stated my commitment. But I decided having one food-related "sobriety" date was plenty and of course, that gave me two more weeks to eat and watch. But come Feb 14, I didn't eat and watch and on Feb 15, I didn't either.

Then I went to Nashville and led a 5-day writing retreat and gave a workshop and did some touristing and there was no TV involved at all. So last night was actually the third night I had a chance to step into my commitment. I made myself a simple supper and did not know what to do. I didn't want to eat in the dining room by myself, I couldn't sit in front of the TV, so I ate in front of the computer and kept answering emails.
It wasn't at all satisfying. I didn't pay attention to the food, rather focussed on the emails. I honored my commitment to not eat mindlessly in front of the TV but I still ate mindlessly.

Now I'm facing that same dilemma again. It's curious that I don't mind eating lunch alone at the table and I eat breakfast alone at the table but dinner, that seems too much aloneness. So having the TV for company has been really meaningful and now I don't know what else to do. I'll have to give this some thought.

Speaking in Nashville

2011-02-22T16:46:00.000-08:00

The last week I've been in Nashville, first leading a 5-day writing retreat, which was wonderful. Great place, great company, wrote some great poems. A really delightful time and healing for my sadness over Reinie.
Today I led a 3-hour workshop on story and choice: how our lives and our stories are the result of our choices and how we can change the first two by changing the third. It was a very friendly and responsive group of recovery professionals and lay folks and I had a great time. Then this afternoon, my host, Beth Easter, took me to Cheekwood, an amazing estate/park not far from her home.

There are, I'm sure, many tourist experiences to have in Nashville but being outside in the sunshine on a cool winter afternoon was perfect after a morning of intense concentration with others and I was glad to just walk and take in the stark winter beauty of the landscape. Most of the trees here are oak and maple, dramatic in their bare limbs and trunks. I was particularly struck by a row of crape myrtles whose bark was so fleshlike as to be astonishing. Beth is a wonderful friend and she took photos while I just looked and we sat quietly and contemplated the landscape.

It has been a wonderful trip. I like leading retreats, I love leading workshops. And I'm looking forward to heading home tomorrow.

I know Reinie's absence awaits me and more sadness will come but it has been good to be away this past week, to let the newness of that experience settle down and perhaps dissipate. And it will be really good to see Frannie and Nellie.

Requiem for Reinie

2011-02-21T15:56:00.000-08:00

I took my grief to Tennessee
Through airport security where
The shrapnel of loss went undetected
I buckled my grief into the empty middle seat
The woman at the window didn’t notice,
Casually tossed her worn jean jacket over it

I fed my grief pretzels and Ritz crackers
Let it sip from my diet coke
Choked back tears when it pushed itself
Against my chest at 32,000 feet

I walked my grief up and down
The dingy brown carpet in Kansas City
If the sharp-dressed man on his iPhone
Saw my pain, heard my cries,
He gave no sign, embarrassed perhaps
For the older woman in black

I flew my red eyes to Tennessee
The deepest anguish abated by clear decision
Then briefly revived by his yowled surprise
as the first surge of oblivion
Burned into his veins.
Yet I found my courage,
Cajoled him away
From the front door, assuring him
of a more certain escape, a deeper freedom
he could not see was coming
I stayed present, faithful as he staggered into sleep,
eyes open to the coming night.

I brought my grief to Akers Farm
To the big A-frame set on acres
Of February brown and gray
The air perfumed with the moldering
remains of fall, rebirth still months away
despite the soft kisses of global warming

I took my memories down to the waterfall
The small ball of fur loose in my lap
on the way home from the pound
The trust between us there from the start
The extravagant beauty, the regal bearing
Of Maine Coon, of white ruff, silky fur, bush of a tail
The alpha confidence
in the presence of larger cats
as he roamed his two-garden kingdom
His steadfast presence as one old belief
after another fell away and my life shifted
in ways I could not have expected

And now our journey was over
Our paths diverging
And now his frail body was laid to rest on a small soft mat
The final breaths coming deep and slow
And now touching the sweet chime twice
to send him on his way
To ring out the last loveliness of the trust we shared

Reinie Kelly 1992-2011

2011-02-15T19:55:00.000-08:00

I said goodbye to my dear old boy this afternoon. When he dipped low in his life force last week, I called and arranged for the home vet to come. Then he perked up the last couple of days, throwing me into agonizing indecision again. Curiously the indecision was all in my head: rational voices saying he might have a couple more months, that I should wait. But in my heart, I knew it was time.

Last night I went to bed very sad. I knew it was his last night with me. I was soothed only by knowing that he didn't know. And yet I wonder. He seldom sleeps on the bed, preferring in the last few months a corner of the bedroom rug. Yet he cried to come up right away and lay down right by my shoulder and looked right in my eyes. I petted him, I talked to him, I told him everything that was in my heart. He's deaf, been deaf for a year, but I could tell he read me. We stayed like that for nearly an hour. I cried a lot, he stayed right by me. Then we both went to sleep. When I awoke a couple of hours later, he was on the rug in his usual spot.

Despite the rain, he wanted out several times today. He followed me around. Was it more than usual? It felt like it to me. Before the vet came, I was wracked with indecision. And my wonderful friend Melanie helped me think through it. Or rather she encouraged me to listen to my heart. And I think it was mostly just grief and I wanted the grief to go away. Once the vet came, it all seemed clear what I needed to do.

There was only one bad moment. He balked at the sedative and it took him a while to relax. But then I just held him and it was okay, okay for him, I think, and okay for me.

I rang the meditation bell twice at his passing.

I'm leaving in the morning for Nashville for a week of retreat. That seems a wonderful gift right now--to be immersed in story and countryside with loving friends. I carry Reinie with me on the journey, tucked safe into my heart. Wherever he is on his journey, I know I'm in his heart as well.