Trigger Warning: This article includes my typical level of personal vulnerability and shocking inner honesty, but also goes into the gnarly details of my life using pictures of my Body (sans nudity, sorry-not-sorry 😉). Anyone not willing to read with an open heart and mind need read no further, and a sincere warning to those who might be triggered by body images both large and small, or the topic of sexual abuse.
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Shape Shifter Table of Contents:
How does one begin the story of their life in all its garbled glory?
How can I capture just one aspect of what I've experienced, how it 'shaped me' both mentally and physically, in hope of raising the same awareness-expanding insights in others? I'm not sure to be honest, but I'll give it a hell of a go.... 🐇🔥
I've always wanted to write a book about my weight-loss journey; a sardonic cautionary tale I planned to title 'The Slippery Slope' capturing my transition from morbid obesity, to a brief pause at a healthy weight before plunging into an irrational void later diagnosed as an 'eating disorder not otherwise specified.' It was there I stayed for so long that I became too embarrassed to write about the amazing transformation I'd accomplished. I wasn't proud of what I'd done, I was regretful and ashamed. I honestly never thought I'd heal the mental demons I'd created as a consequence of mixing an addiction-prone personality with both a fear of re-gaining the weight and deep mistrust in my Body's ability to maintain it's new shape without rather severe oversight. Tragically, there was no ending to my book, so I couldn't write it...until now. 🙏💖
I became inspired one day as I contemplated a text I'd written to my Sister, suddenly all the entangled conscious and subconscious pieces began to fall into place. Nearly overcome with emotion, I realised there was finally a closing chapter to my damned book, one I could have never anticipated in my wildest dreams; one with a peaceful ending, if not a happy one 🌈. The slope that was once hopelessly lost to the abyss had miraculously ascended without my notice. With stunning clarity, an epiphany that only the light bulb of profound self-awareness can offer after exhaustive self-reflection, I marveled... I have always learned by shaping and moving my Body; somehow coming to terms with the mental, emotional and physical scars created by a turbulent childhood. This eluded me because from an early age my Body has mostly been a stranger to me. I couldn't understand how it communicated and refused to listen even when urges became increasingly demanding and could no longer be ignored. I lived life entirely from my head where it felt safe because logic ruled and emotions were suppressed. My brain, where I had control and power. I couldn't have known then, but that disconnectedness between Brain and Body was at least one of the driving forces behind the generalised anxiety, panic and compulsive thoughts that plagued me until my mid-thirties. It seems both obvious and ironic now, but how could a life lived solely from the neck-up have been otherwise? My brain was a like a run-away train thinking itself into a frenzy with no brakes, no sense of groundedness to the rest of my Being to slow it down.
Despite this proclivity for 'headiness' and perception of control, my Body's agenda remained underneath, subtle and mysterious, yet extremely influential. Throughout my entire life, I rarely felt like I fit inside my skin but could never understand why. Was that normal? It wasn't until I set out to willfully improve the connection and communication between my Brain and my Body in my early-30s that a true transformation began, supported by the book mBraining. Small wonder now that one of my most prominent blog themes evolved into Body Lessons, strokes of inspiration gleaned during exercise. For whatever reason, as I move my Body and put it in control rather than my Brain, phenomenal ideas and creative thoughts flood my Being. IRONY. 😂🐇.
Goodness, typical me, but I'm getting ahead of myself! Let's start from the beginning shall we?
Body State: Never Enough
Meet little Summie...
'What the f*%# happened?!' one might ask... To be completely honest, it wasn't until gathering pictures to write this tantalising tale that I even noticed this drastic difference in my childhood form with so little time between them. I summarised it well in my Journal the next morning, flecked with foreshadows...
"I got rather a fright when I realised my 'skinny' kid picture and my 'chubby' kid picture couldn't be more than 2 years apart. It seems so obvious now that my body had a reaction to Mom leaving...no doubt because my brain couldn't cope so I literally 'swallowed' the trauma... To say nothing of what happened afterward, which perpetuated that cycle."
For years and years I pondered the explanation for my childhood obesity on and off. The only attributable cause that stood out was the memory of never feeling full, my hunger felt insatiable. Unwilling to confront the details of my childhood and that unappeasable sensation however, I opted to pin it on some natural tendency towards being overweight. Wonky hormones, simple as that; yet after many tests nothing abnormal appeared in my body chemistry. Anyway, 'baby fat' is cute, right? Though not so cute when it stayed with me through young adulthood, and left me feeling more than a bit hopeless with regard to romantic prospects.
Once I became brave enough to confront and reflect on myself as a child and the circumstances of my environment, I identified a few things that might account for my inability to feel sated, and the resulting chubbiness. First, let me be crystal clear, I DO NOT BLAME ANYONE for what I'm about to write. Blame belongs within the victim-mindset realm, a bleak landscape I've fought to flee all my life. Blame, a fickle mistress that leaves us both disempowered and optionless. No thanks! Life is not kind to anyone, everyone does the best they can with what they have, sees situations through the filter of their lifes' experiences. Parents, grandparents, gaurdians are fallible. Instead of blame I focus on gratitude, because as pitiful as the following points may seem, each and every one led me to becoming the f&$%ing magical Gypsy that I am, who I was always meant to be.
That said, the facts were these (from the lofty vantage of 20/20 hindsight), any of which likely contributed to my Body seeking its 'well-padded' state.
- My parents split up when I was 4-years old, my Mother left home and my Sisters and I stayed with our Father until middle school age. Though not wholly unhappy with the arrangement, I remember counting the days of the week in accordance with when I'd be able to see my Mom. My emotional appetite for her attention was as insatiable as my physical hunger, and through no fault of hers, I could never get enough. Being the giving Mother that she was, she saw that food made me happy so she always gave me what I wanted and never once shamed me for eating to excess or questioned my food choices; she loved me no matter how big I grew. Despite the struggles that would come later upon losing the weight I remain thankful that I didn't have those types of demons to contend with, as many other young adults do unfortunately.
- To my young mind, who couldn't understand the emotional complexities of the situation, I misinterpreted my Mother leaving as rejection; I took it personally. I logically concluded that it must have somehow been my fault, which began a vicious cycle of subconscious self-rejection. Many years later when I asked my Sister what she thought about how I felt, she hilariously humbled me by saying, 'Summer, I hate to tell you, but you're not that f%#@ing important!' 😅
- Ok, here we go... no joke, I've been avoiding writing this bullet point for about an hour now... Not long after my Mom left my Father hired a babysitter to watch us after school, and sometimes her husband and son would be there as well. All my life I held a half-memory involving her husband, one that would shut down as mysteriously as it appeared from time to time... I wasn't ready to know the truth. What I did clearly remember was that my Sisters told an explicit lie about said babysitter to bait my Father into firing her, and it worked. I also knew that my physical sexual senses were somehow inhibited, but always assumed it was based on some biological malfunction. The enigma of this phenomena remained until one day decades later, seemingly out of the blue whilst running, this half memory filled itself in; though upon reflection it was more that my body was finally ready to release its' trauma to my brain so I could process and finally let it go. I'm sorry, I still can't explicitly say what happened, I'll leave it open for obvious interpretation. But how might this relate to my budding obesity as a child all those years ago? Well, I grew up convinced (very wrongly so, I might add), that if I were fat then I'd never [again] be a victim of sexual abuse... because fat people aren't attractive and/or their girth makes them more difficult targets. Trust me, I know how horrific that sounds, it's abhorrent, but it's truly what I believed and it also explains one aspect of my persistent expansion.
- Once I was old enough to decide where to live for myself, I excitedly went to live with my Mom; finally! Unfortunately, for reasons I now assume had to do with her own trauma driven by the profound pain of having to leave her 3 little girls for the sake of self-protection, she had taken to drinking the way I'd taken to eating. Two-sides of the same coin, really. More misperceived rejection for my part reinforced the subconscious beliefs I already held, I still wasn't good enough or worth being around, and so the cycle perpetuated.
- Now an adult body carrying childhood insecurities and trauma-driven attributes, chronic self-rejection and attention-seeking prime among them, I ate to fill an emotional void, to subconsciously manifest the external rejection I internally came to expect, or to gain some sense of deranged self-protection; each of which are decidedly f&*#-ing BLEAK. Well into my twenties these energies inside me sopped up every morsel and still wanted more, I felt starved though I was obviously not physically lacking for calories.
Surrounded by this quite literal defensive barrier, I couldn't accurately feel myself in a physical sense, couldn't HEAR or KNOW myself. Of course I left all this shit hidden away in my subconscious, my brain was pitifully attempting to protect me. So long as they remained underneath however, I couldn't heal and break the unhealthy and self-defeating cycles they influenced. Only becoming aware 🐇 of the truth could do that, but being honest with ourselves on that level takes courage. ✊💪
F$#%... let's move on shall we? I promise there is light at the end of the tunnel. It's going to get a bit more dire before the Sun finally shines through the other side, but hey, that's life. 🌩🐇🌅
Original Publication Date 21 May 2022, Revised TBD