The photo on the right was taken of me in 2001. I remember the gig – it was at Wild Wings in Marietta, Georgia. My boyfriend at the time, was Jimmy DeMartini (who now plays violin for the Zac Brown Band,) and he played in my band as well as another band that had been on the road. He grew up in Marietta and so his whole family was there along with a bunch of his close friends. I was not a happy camper then. He spent so much time on the road and when he was home I could hardly get him to put down his fancy smart phone (15 years ago all smart phones were fancy!) and have a conversation with me. I felt like if I could just fix what was wrong with me, everything would be fine. And what was wrong was I was fat. Obviously. I mean, that’s what I thought. If I just get skinny enough, I will be lovable. If I can just make myself smaller, more people will like me. I will become a more legitimate person if can just shrink myself.
I remember every morning… every. single. morning… waking up and pinching the skin on my abdomen to see how thick it was. It never felt thin to me. I measured every bite I put in my mouth and wrote down every single calorie I ate. If I was under 1200 for the day, it was ok. If it was under 1100, I felt like such a badass. I didn’t understand why the sizes of clothes in the stores were so weird. A size 3 was falling off of me and I didn’t understand what was wrong with these giant, weird clothes with messed up sizes. I’m fat. I’ve been fat all my life. My nicknames in 7th grade were “Shamu” and “Sumo.”
I remember going to Tae Kwon Do class trying to learn the forms to test for my black belt. I would get dizzy after 5 minutes of drills and have to sit down so as not to pass out. But none of this seemed weird to me. But no matter how thin I got, no matter how small the number on the scale, no matter how loose my clothes got, I never once looked in the mirror and thought “Damn, I look good!” Every time I looked at myself, I thought I still needed to get smaller.
Fast forward to many years later, after that unhealthy relationship was over, after many many hours with therapists and in Al-Anon meetings, after countless hours of internal work, I started to heal. And as I healed I grew. I grew as a person. I grew my body and my muscles got strong. I grew to be more of who I really am. See, I don’t think any of us are meant to really shrink. I know my soul – it’s a fucking big soul – it’s honest and passionate and it’s growing and becoming. And once I started to feed my heart all of the love it needed, I started feeding my body with nourishment it needed. This post isn’t about diet. I’m still a nutrition junkie, not denying it. But it is about you are what you eat. I swallowed so much of other people’s shit for so many years and was starved for self-love. I hated myself and fed myself regret, and guilt and shame and those things ate. away. at. me. When I started to shift my focus to look for the things in my life to be grateful for – I started to grow again.
It’s so interesting to me that when my spirit grew stronger, my body did, too. I would never ever want to trade the (bigger) body I have now for the (smaller) one I had then. This body, my body, walks like a fucking superhero. It performs feats that skinny-girl never could have. There are times when it’s mere presence is downright formidable – and it’s not a stature thing, either, at 5’3.75″ but people don’t believe that’s my actual height. Owning this body, my body, is just a manifestation of something so much deeper and more profound – it is owning my powerful self.
The stronger I feet, the stronger my body gets. The more empowered I become, the more powerful my body becomes. I have the other kind of before/after also. I feel like the phoenix rising, year after year, constantly transforming. But, I never again want to feel like I need to be less. Let me always be becoming more. Stronger, more empowered, more myself.
