be responsible for your own well-being

I didn’t fully appreciate my red hair when I had it. There were too many downsides: nicknames like “Big Red” and “Carrot Top.” And the companion un-tannable skin splattered with freckles that became huge in the summer on some parts of my body, like my face and shoulders, but never on my legs, those translucent pegs that looked like cotton balls stretched out on the beach next to my easily tanned friends. Many an achingly futile afternoon in the sun with baby oil provided me with nothing other than future skin cancer scares.

I grew up and grew into what it means to be unusual—red-haired and left-handed, both of which made me exotic at the time. There was great celebration in my house when the first catalog of left-handed scissors and composition books arrived, an acknowledgement that we were citizens of the world just like our right-handed compatriots.

Not surprisingly, orange-haired Pippi Longstocking was my childhood hero.

Now that I’ve been gray for many years, I long for that orange hue sometimes. And yes, I know I could have it again, but that’s not it. It’s the claustrophobic sense I get sometimes of aging, of wasting time, of wishing I had those last thirty years back sometimes. Of wanting to see myself young with this current heart and this current mind. And without this current body.

Yes, they serve me, these legs and this torso. But there is so much more of me now. And it’s a moreness, a muchness, that weighs me down. I know it literally weighs me down, but emotionally too. I’ve built layers of protection—from myself, more than from anything else. Do you ever feel that way?

What is the cost for this particular kind of self-loathing?

I had a revelation. Two of them, actually. Okay, three. Or twelve.

One: My husband, John, created a video for our oldest daughter’s graduation from high school, one documenting Emma’s life since birth to that moment of leaving home, going to college, walking into the world on her own. As I watched this beautiful progression of her life, it became so, so clear to me that I have spent the last 18 years trying to hide behind other people in photographs, buying and wearing clothing I didn’t love but that fit over my hips. Eighteen years. And probably, yes, longer even than that. Not walking in the world in jeans, a simple t-shirt and flip flops, but in every outfit covered by a big overshirt. Not wearing a bathing suit, never wearing shorts. Hiding. I watched it a few times, each time realizing that I knew exactly how I felt about my body at that point in time. “Oh, that’s baby weight,” I said until Emma was 10, for example. Every pound a witness to a heartbreak, a change, a fear, a celebration.

Two: I’ve spent a year being tested for things. Ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer, and repeat. The morning they first tested for ovarian cancer, I sat in the parking lot sobbing, and then drove to the Chocolate Fetish and bought a nine-pack of chocolate covered caramels with sea salt and ate them all in the car. When I found out that test was negative two weeks later, I drove back to the Chocolate Fetish, bought another nine-pack of chocolate covered caramels with sea salt and ate them all in the car. I told Michael Scholtz, a brilliant wellness coach and personal trainer. “So,” I said jokingly, “do you think this means I’m an emotional eater?” He smiled a quiet smile. “Well, Patti,” he said, “if you had only eaten them when you thought you were dying, maybe not.” He paused. “But the fact that you ate them when you found out you would live… yeah, maybe.” We laughed. Yes.

Three: In November, I ended up in the emergency room with what I thought was a heart attack. It wasn’t. But my blood pressure was very high: 188/144. I typically have very low blood pressure. And I am now on medication to bring it down. I am not fond of taking medication and want to find other less intrusive ways to lower my blood pressure. “I want you to sweat six days a week,” my doctor said when giving me the prescription. I knew what he meant: lose weight.

There was an article in Wired Magazine a few years ago called “Change or Die.” It reported, among other things, that 90 percent of heart patients, when told they had to change their diet and exercise or they would die, did not change anything. Not even the threat of death got them to change their Krispy Kreme couch potato habits. Not even death.

I will change. Yes, I surely will.

I no longer have in front of me the “lose 50 pounds” mantra. It is gone, irrelevant. While I do know that my natural, happy, comfortable weight is less than where I am right now, I am no longer measuring happiness–or the lack of it–by a number. I am not concerned with a size, but a measure of wellness.

I am measuring wellness from now on by how bendy I am.

What is bendy?

Bendy is flexible, strong, able to run when it wants to. Bendy feels connected to body, stretched, confident, able. Bendy is a body not in competition with other bodies, and not even in competition with itself. It just is. Stretched and tall and aware of its Self. Bendy is a body to go along with a head; it is learning from the neck down. It is embodied learning. Embodied living. Embodied mindfulness.

I’m not measuring anything.

I am putting down my scale, my measuring tape. I am not marking little hash marks on a wall or graph.

“But how can you tell you’re making progress?” someone asked.

I know. You know.

You know when you’re making a healthy choice and when you’re not. You know this.

You know when you’re too full and still keep eating.

You know when your legs feel different: stronger, tighter.

You know when your torso is straighter, stronger.

You know when you feel lighter. And when you don’t.

You know when your skin is clearer and brighter.

You know when your shoulders are stronger.

You know when your hips are more open and flexible and surer.

You know when you are making decisions that support your heart and when you are not.

You know when you are happy and open and vibrant, and when you are not. And you know how to get there. You really do.

We seek so many answers outside ourselves, don’t we?

You know. Deep inside that place you’ve given over to experts and programs, you know.

The things that have made me overweight are many. Or few. Among them: Emotional eating. Stressed? Eat. Happy? Eat. Unhappy? Eat. Anxious, sad, depressed, overworked, unappreciated, traveling too much, bored? Not planning ahead? Lots of airports? Eat, eat, eat, eat, eat.

I think you can imagine what 30 years of that can do to you.

Also among them: For me, being overweight can be a protection, a wall. I need to explore that more to know exactly what I mean, but I feel that it’s true.

I love to savor a great meal. But it’s not great meals that have made me overweight. It is mindless eating, finishing my plate even when I was full far before the plate got cleared, having nothing in the house to eat that is healthy, and so opting for doughnuts or chips. Eating when I’m not hungry. Eating what’s there.

I am enjoying reacquainting myself with simple foods. A banana in a peel, an orange wrapped in orange, an apple in a skin, a red pepper that is exquisitely sweet when our mouths are not numbed by sugar. Simple snacks of fruit, almonds. Simple meals of salad, soup, luscious breads.

Simple. Spacious. Open. Fuel, not comfort.

I feel like I have turned a little corner, like I am aware of my shoulders, arms, back, and legs in a different way. I look the same, but I feel different.

Something has definitely shifted.

It is a simplification, a slowing down, a quieting. Me on a mat, me on a treadmill, just me. Yoga positions quiet and slow and significant. Feeling the stretch in a shoulder, just a stretch and not a pain.

Yes.

[bctt tweet=”it is regret I need to lose, not weight”]

I am giving away all my body history in this moment–giving away all those plans and charts and failures to lose weight, giving away all the gym fees paid and never used, giving away the regret at years of inactivity and all the ways in which my body has kept me from feeling free. It is that regret that has filled me up. I realized recently that it is regret I need to lose, not weight. I am even giving away having turned this corner before. I am giving all that away, because it no longer serves me. I am only taking with me the parts of that story that serve me now, and not the rest.

I bought a new piece of luggage last week, one that is smaller than my beloved Ogio bag, one that I can carry on my back like a backpack. On a recent trip with my Ogio suitcase and backpack, I realized that I filled up every inch of the space in each, used less than half of what I was carrying, and they were so heavy I could barely heave them around, even if they were small-ish. Now I am carrying only what I need and I am relying on my body to move it through space, not wheels.

That’s my plan for my body as well. Carry only what I need. Take responsibility for my own well-being.

Yes.

Here is my new mantra:

I am responsible for my own well-being.

That means accepting my new neck, puckered like a roman shade in the middle. It means thanking my vein-marked legs for holding me up every single day. It means giving up stories of looking like Gabrielle Reece, the beach volleyball star, and loving what is. My body, in my 50s, is courageous and scarred and big, able to hold a big heart and a big mind. It is both me and not me. I can choose happiness, or I can choose blame. I choose happiness.

When I was in graduate school at the University of Virginia, personal computers were unknown. There was a computer lab in the basement of the English Department building and one evening, my bright orange hair up in a high bun, I sat, typing. A fellow student sat nearby, also typing. Until at one point, he looked over at me and said, “You have an amazingly long and beautiful neck.” In the world of things that have been said to me, why do I remember this one? And why, when I look in the mirror now, do I see only where that neck has succumbed to gravity. Those gaps between what was and what is will block us from happiness every time.

I grow panicked, my chest tight and scattered, when I think about aging. I know it is a privilege – having a father dead at age 53 taught me that – and yet I can’t help sometimes the physical reaction I have. A smothering feeling, a visceral denial, a great fear, a hot flutter I can’t control in my chest. It is only when I can fully inhabit my body without comparison—to others, to myself at 19, to the “ideals” our culture so worships—that I can be free.

Honor what was: You can honor your younger self most beautifully by honoring your current self.

(an excerpt from my book, The Geography of Loss)