Being human is hard

 

I scrolled by this picture the other day on Instagram and just loved it.

If you're off the 're-creation', 'quantum physics' sort of mindset, then you get this. Otherwise, maybe not...

 

Today is May- well actually tomorrow is May, but since I usually spend most of Sunday preparing for Monday, it might as well be May.

 

May is hard for me. May if full. It's full of to-do's at work. It's full of anxiety about rumors of changes for next school year while trying desperately to finish all work left to do this school year. Also meetings- so many, many meetings.  May is when a full social calendar at home leaves me it's own to-do list there too. May is when my baby girl was born and when my father died. By the time May is over, I usually am too. Done, tired, spent.

 

Today as I peered into May, I realized that in the span of one week I will be celebrating my son's First Communion, my daughter's 5th birthday and my remembering my father's 3rd anniversary of death.

 

"Dear God" I thought (appropriately so as I was in church at the time) "how in the world am I going to handle all of those things in such a short span of time? How ever will I survive that emotional shit storm?".

 

Talk to any mother and they will share the range of emotions that comes with watching your babies grow. It truly defines "bittersweet". There is so much joy and love but also so much heartache and even more 'where did the time go?'.  So birthdays can be tough. Milestones, like First Communion only add to that seeming heartbreak. It's heavy, even when its really a celebration, that's how it feels for the feely type of people- heavy. And then, after that, will come the grief. The grief that arrives as May marches on and we remember my Dad.

 

I wondered how I- how any of us- navigate the range of emotions that comes along with being Human. How do we get up every day, go to work and function when we're carrying around all this stuff? How do we fake a smile and answer "fine" when someone asks how we are doing?

 

We are not fine! We are drowning! We are drowning in a sea of feely emotions! Well, maybe not every day...but sometimes!

 

It is no wonder why some people check out. Why they numb out with wine, or pills, or social media or cookies.

 

Because numb is easier than feeling. Numb is predictable. Emotions are not. As an experienced numb-er, I get that. I lived that. Sealing your heart up behind a border wall is a much safer way to negotiate life.

 

But here's the thing. Life- life is in those emotions. A numb life may be predictable but it's no  life at all.

 

We are here so briefly. We need to soak this shit up. The good, the bad and the ugly. We need to feel it. The good, the bad and the ugly. And we need to live it. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

 

So how will I survive this May? How will I ensure that I don't dive so deep into this sea of emotions that I will float away? Or more realistically, spend the month in a binge of epic proportions...

 

- I will breathe. Sometimes that's enough. A good deep, diaphragmatic (hello voice lessons!) breath

- I will move. Whether it's working out or taking a walk or digging in my garden. Doing helps to process those emotions, to move through them.

- I will talk. Maybe I won't answer "fine" the next time someone asks me how I am. Or maybe I'll write more. Experience tells me that breathing my thoughts into words is therapeutic.

- I will show up. Be present. Live these moments. For these are the moments that I've got.

and most importantly I will remember...

 

 

Like the moon waxes and wanes, and the tide rises and falls. So, too, can I. And be OK.

 

Here's to not only surviving May, but living it.

When the bottom falls out

If there's one thing certain about life, it's the uncertainty. One day, you'll be floating  through life with seeming ease and the next thing you know, the bottom falls out from under you.

Maybe you loose your job, or get sick, or discover some awful reality, maybe someone in your life whose been hanging on by a thread decides it's too much. Maybe a file cabinet in the middle of the highway kills a family member (that's a real story from last week).

No matter what it is, when these things happen in our world, it feels like the bottom falls out. The solid ground you were standing on just a minute ago has suddenly disappeared. 

You find yourself unsure, scared, angry, incredulous. 

Just a minute ago everything was fine. How could this happen?! What did I do to deserve this?

It's like a punch in the gut, the wind is knocked out of you and without solid ground beneath your feet- you fall. 

The scary thing about all this uncertainty is not knowing when that other shoe is going to drop. Not knowing when the tests will show a malignancy or when the phone call will come. 

Not knowing is the hard part.

Here's one thing we do know- the other shoe will always drop. One day, whether tomorrow or 10 years from now, you'll get that phone call or those test results or see a file cabinet in the middle of the highway.

 Bad things happen- they just do.

So the way I see it is we either wait in fearful anticipation of our bad news or know that whatever happens, we will survive. 

Even the worst of the worst. Even the death of a parent or child. Even watching someone you love suffer or continue to cause themselves pain. Even the thing you are most scared of- you will survive.

I'm not saying it won't be awful, I'm not promising that your heart won't be broken and ripped out. There will be disappointment and pain. But you will survive.

People have survived war and the holocaust. They survived the suffering and loss of parents and children. They have survived unimaginable personal tragedy.

You survive. You change. You see the world differently. But your survive. 

When you're bottom falls out, people show up. Gifts, and lessons and miracles show up. Safety nets to break your fall. They show up. You don't fall alone. 

This week my bottom fell out. My immediate reaction was anger- "How dare this fucks up my zen?!?" "I was doing so well, now what?!?". Then I remembered, life isn't promised to be sunshine and rainbows. No one ever said that.

So I cried and yelled, I screamed and sobbed in the Market Basket parking lot. I prayed out loud to my angels, begging really, for help for guidance for peace.

And then I did something new- I reached out, I opened up.

I sent some texts and made some phone calls. I talked and I listened. I felt the emotions- all of them. I opened up and my safety nets appeared- and for that I allowed myself to feel gratitude.

Then I wrote down the problem on a piece of paper, put it in my "God box" and let it go. 

I don't know how this story will end. I'm not even convinced it will have an ending. The shoes may just keep falling.

But here's what I know- my safety nets are there. My faith in God's grace and compassion help me believe that there will always be something to soften the fall.

This beautiful window (courtesy of Almost Fancy Designs- find her on Facebook!) has been hanging in my house for about a month now. This week I've been reading it a lot...

Here's hoping we all find our strength, our comfort and our light. 

THE post

I started this blog because I felt I had a story to tell, I mean, we all do- don't we?! And I've been telling stories, sure. But this is THE story. The one I've been struggling to articulate. So you can consider this my SFD (shitty first draft, ala Brené Brown).

My first memory of a "weight related incident" was probably when I was 6 years old. I can remember being in my grandparents living room watching TV. My grandfather sat in his wheelchair, watching too. I believe my uncle and older brother were also in the room. A commercial came on for whatever weight-loss method was popular in 1986 (Weight Watchers, Slim-o-matic, Drink My Shake- whatevs) and my grandfather pointed at the TV and said "Hey maybe we should get that for Laurie". His remark was met by laughter from the other men in the room, maybe I even laughed too.

 I can't remember what my reaction was. I mean the real one. The one on the inside. I do remember leaving the room and going out to the sun porch to be alone. Did I know then? Is that when this story started? When the word "fat" became a character trait.

I'm not sure- but it was probably the beginning of a very long story...

Fast forward to adolescence. Weight was my "thing". I didn't have pimples or frizzy hair. I had weight. So that was the issue du jour. Another one of those piercing memories comes from 6th grade. I was at a friends birthday party and was called "bubble butt" during a game of volleyball. The worst part is, it came from another friend I was very close too.

That reaction I remember- I was broken. As broken as a 12 year old can be. I internalized that pain and upset and once again "fat" became my most prominent character trait. Except now, even my friends thought so...

Fast forward through life. I gained weight and lost it. I joined Weight Watchers and counted points. The Special K Diet and 3 Day Hot Dog Diet. I went to college and drank on the pounds (also ice cream delivery to your dorm and many many late nights of pizza) then I would go home for the summer and lose them again. A never ending battle with the scale and ever complicated relationship with food.

That is, until May of 2014, right after the birth of my second child. I came home from the hospital, tipping the scales at 200lbs. It was May (almost summer- shorts, bathing suit?!? ) and I felt like crap. So I contacted a friend from high school who ran her own fitness and nutrition company. She put me on a clean eating meal plan and it was magic. The magic I'd been waiting for all my life. I learned to meal prep, I learned to cook, I bought a food scale and learned about portion sizes. I brought egg whites and spinach to the beach and brought my own food to parties in Tupperware.

This obsessive control over my food intake was my medicine to deal with raging postpartum depression and difficulties adjusting to life with two kids. I couldn't control my life, or the way my baby didn't sleep or my toddler's neediness- but I could eat chicken, spinach and brown rice all day and be SKINNY!

And that's what happened. I got skinnier and skinnier. I reveled in the comments and compliments. The admiration of other moms trying to loose the baby weight. Finally, Finally- the "fat" was no longer a character trait.

August 2013. At my skinniest, but always 5 pounds away from my goal

But no matter how skinny I got, it was never enough. All I wanted was 5 more pounds or 1 more size down.

When the scale stopped moving, I tried a new approach. I hired coaches from Instagram to figure out my macros so I could do IIFYM. I mean, that's what worked for the #fitspo girls I obsessively followed on social media.  So if it worked for them, it could work for me!?

I would spend the next few months analyzing (protein, carbs, fats) every piece of food that entered my mouth or even my eye sight.

Well, if I eat this muffin, then I can have egg whites and mustard for dinner.

Literally, all day. Obsessive figuring and re-figuring and calculating. And for a girl who ain't so good at math, that blows!

But its what needed to be done to maintain my size 6's.

And that's how life went until I got the phone call.

The phone call came on a Wednesday morning about 5am.  Ironically, when the phone call came- I didn't hear it because I was in the middle of a workout.

The message left by my mom went something like this "Laurie, you need to get someone else to watch the kids today. I'm on my way to the hospital with Dad. Call me".

By the time I had called her back, they had pronounced my Dad dead in the ER. Just like that, on a Wednesday morning. Dead. 66 years old.

I remember much everything about those next few hours and days like you do with most traumatic events.

I remember rushing to my parents' house with my protein shake for breakfast.
I remember promising myself I wasn't going to eat my grief away and get fat again.
I remember sitting in the house, looking at a plate of food brought over by a family friend wondering how would I track my macros for this and scolding a friend who brought over chocolates.

At the time, none of this seemed odd. It was just the way I was used to living. I didn't even tell my "macro coach" at the time my father died because I was afraid he'd change my program and impact my progress.

In the months following my father's death, we learned more about his life than I could have ever anticipated. These new facts, brought to light by paperwork and lawyers and insurance policies, changed our reality.

Here I was, grieving, hurting and facing a difficult view of a man I thought I knew. I didn't know how to deal with it. I had no coping skills for this. So I retreated to the one thing that brought me comfort- food.

During the day, when people were watching, I ate my clean, measured way. But at night or when I was alone, I consoled myself with cookies. I ate them until my mouth was raw and my belly hurt. After all, its easier to be mad at yourself for eating cookies than it is to be mad at your dead father. The pounds started creeping back on. But tomorrow, I'd stop. Tomorrow I'd go back to tracking macros and being skinny. But tomorrow was the same thing...

And then, I read a book. A fiction book by Jennifer Weiner called All Fall Down. It was the story of a suburban mom who numbed the mundane and challenging parts of her life with prescription pills and the lengths she would go to in order to hide this behavior from her husband and family.

As I was reading, I realized there was no difference between me and her. My pills were cookies. But aside from that, it was the same story.

 I had no coping skills to deal with the immense grief, so I ate it out.

 I'm not even so sure I knew I was grieving at the time that's how numb I'd become to feeling my feelings. Controlling my food wasn't working for me this time because life had just shown me how OUT of control I really was in the grand scheme of things.

It had been 4 months since my father died and all I'd been doing was stalling my healing. I wasn't in denial of his death, I was in denial of my grief and my pain.

That "aha" moment came about a year ago. And in this past year, I've been on quite a journey.

It's been a journey of re-discovering myself and renaming my character traits.

Along the way I've had amazing conversation with my best friends. Women I've known for decades who've opened up about their own struggles with weight, and comparison, and self-image.

I've met a women, 10 years my junior, who shares my struggles. My advice and conversations with her are things I wish I could have told myself 10 years ago.

Along the way I've read amazing books like Women, Food and God by Geneen Roth, and It Was Me All Along by Andi Mitchell. Gifts from the universe to help my healing and let me know I'm not alone. Gifts from my Dad.

I've meditated, I've prayed, I've cried, I've grieved. I've become more positive. More accepting and more forgiving. I've counted my blessing daily. I've come to accept that I know my father better in his death than I did in his life. I've stopped obsessing over food and the size of my pants (most days). I've stopped wishing and cleansing and detoxing my way back to that SKINNY version of me.

My journey isn't over. This is life and its a little like an onion. You just keep peeling away at those layers. And you cry because onions do that to you. The closer I get to the core, the more it feels like I'm living life as me- with my whole heart open to the truth and the hurt and the feelings.

The way my Dad would have liked to live too...

August 2015