Reverb15 | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

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Prompt: “How can you replenish your (physical, mental, spiritual and/or emotional) resources? What do you need most of all at this moment?”

I know the answer to this, even as I resist it. Step one is to let go of my attachment to external permission or approval. I absolutely need to stop seeking what I need from “out there.” Even if everyone, every single human on the planet, supported and liked and agreed with what I was doing, it wouldn’t be the right reason for doing any of it. I have to trust myself, be myself. I have to stop polling the whole universe for some sort of consensus when I determine what to do next, how to spend my day, how to live my life. I need to stop abandoning myself.

I also need to find a balance between effort and ease, between what I offer and what I receive. Instead of denying myself, restricting and starving, I have to nourish myself too, make sure I am fed in every way that I am hungry. It’s not selfish. It’s necessary, essential. I can have a new bathroom. I’m allowed to buy new towels for said bathroom, even get rid of the old ones. I’m allowed to replace the throw blanket Ringo chewed holes in so I have something nice for myself when I take a nap or watch TV or read a book, things that I am allowed to do and to enjoy. I have the right to care for myself, to feed and to cherish myself. I can trust that choices made from this truth are a manifestation of love, and the world needs more of that, however it can get it.

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Prompt: “If you’ve been a part of Reverb before, you know that this is the bit where I invite you to share your favourite photo of yourself from the year (selfie or otherwise).”

I didn’t take many selfies this year. I’m having a hard time allowing my body to be as it is. For almost 40 years, I overexercised and dieted to look like what I was “supposed to” look like. This turned into an eating disorder, binging when my body and heart couldn’t stand the deprivation any longer, and then starving and overexercising to try and compensate for the extra food I was eating. I lost and regained the same pounds over and over. I also spent those years hating myself, anxious and depressed, and at times suicidal.

I don’t ever want to go back there. And I’ve said I’d rather be fat than ever be that particular version of unhappy again, and I mean it, but…it’s hard. I know that where I am is temporary, the pendulum necessarily swinging the other way before it settles at a midpoint, a middle way. And I will learn to love it, accept it just as it is, no matter where it lands.

And still, it’s difficult. I’m uncomfortable, and it’s hard to allow my body to be as it is, to feed it and let it rest, to care for it, to not push or force or attempt to control it, to trust it and trust myself.

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The truth is I want my story to be the one where she stopped starving herself, stopped overexercising, stopped smashing herself to bits and started intuitive eating, joyfully moving, loving herself, and it resulted in a thin, fit body.

The real story is that while the first part is true, it has so far resulted in a more relaxed, more content, soft, bigger body that bears the weight of years of mistreatment and some deep, heavy love.