Permission to Grieve the “Little Things”

I found these photographs recently in a forgotten file on my computer. They were taken four years ago on a film camera by a French acquaintance in a small town in Denmark, where we all slept in sleeping bags on the floor for a week in renovated army barracks and ate pickled fish on rye bread.
I’ve been missing Europe lately. I miss trains and meeting people who speak languages other than English, unexpected conversations and new friends. I knew I felt bummed out and housebound, but I was surprised (and a bit judgemental) to feel a lump in my throat when I mentioned to my therapist that I miss travel, at the depth of feeling that was there.
I have thought often of the people who are far worse off than me, who are struggling to make ends meet and working long hours, who have lost family members to covid. They are the ones that are allowed to feel grief, I was telling myself. Not you. But feelings don’t like to conform to what we deem reasonable. Sometimes what’s being brought up have much deeper roots, unrelated to what’s going on on the surface. Which is why it is so important to validate those feelings, even if they seem petty and unjustifiable. We don’t need to make ourselves wrong for what’s there.

Beautiful film photography by Apolline Fjara.

The Repairman

A couple of weeks ago I received “The Repairman”, which feels fitting for my life right now. 
Long term disordered eating has very real consequences. It can take a long time to unravel. 
The first time I began to restrict food, I remember a vague yet distinct feeling of having been robbed. The “thinspiration” blogs, romantic comedies and teen magazines that I’d been exposed to had never mentioned the dullness, the cold, the constant anxiety, how pointless and not-fun everything would feel. How thin my hair would be. 
The second time I began starving myself, it eventually led to PTSD and extreme binge eating, which has caused leaky gut, trouble absorbing essential nutrients, chronic fatigue, anemia, and hormone imbalances characterized by sudden spells of suicidal depression. The more painful life is, the more out of control everything feels, the weaker the bodymind feels, the harder it becomes to step out of the cycle of self-destruction. And so the snowball of repercussions grows larger and larger. There were days when it felt better to overeat simply so that I could be comforted by knowing what was making me feel terrible, rather than rest in the amorphous pain and feelings of weakness. It is not easy to become reacquainted with a body that feels so wrecked. 
And yet I believe that, with enough commitment and the right conditions, the extent to which we can heal is limitless. I am methodically re-feeding my body and mind, venturing into my mental attic to locate the false beliefs that are rotting the foundation. Doggedly chipping away at the ones that have calcified, weakening them, building a new internal environment. One of nourishment, safety and rest. Returning to the simple pleasure of reading a well-written mystery novel in bed with a purring grey cat beside me, of forest thunderstorms and watching Normal People and fresh picked blueberries. Of remembering that we live in a universe that loves us, and that there is no body weight or accomplishment that will ever make us more or less worthy of that love.

The Repairman is from The Deck of Character.

Romeo.

Relief In the Unknown

2 months until test results…??
There I was, sleeping 12 hours a day, waking up tired and unfocused. Unable to formulate cohesive thoughts, feeling like neither my mind nor body were working properly. It was unsettling and disorientating, even scary at times. After investing in an alternative gut and health doctor, I was informed that no “answers” would available for at least two months. Was I stuck being a zombie until then?
I could have continued in the same vein that had kept me running in circles the last two years and attempt to “figure everything out”. Figure out the ultimate way to eat, my career, where I needed to live. But after having recently realized that I was still operating under diet mentality’s influence (and subsequently working to unravel it), I knew that there was, in fact, another option available. So rather than seeing it as an enemy to be evaded and avoided whenever possible, I relaxed into not knowing. 
While I continue to experience symptoms, the sheer relief of relinquishing the impossible need to know everything has acted as its own profound medicine. Life has opened. Letting go is so different from giving up. It’s like performing an energetic trust fall with the universe; impossible without having the faith that you will be held, and that what you need to know will come when you are ready.
It’s not our fault that we spend so much time living and scheming in the nonexistent future. When intense sensations and emotions are present in the body it can be really overwhelming, and it feels so much safer to leave the body and live in the head instead. Trying to solve the discomfort with our minds It gives us a feeling of control. But no matter how hard we run on our mental hamster wheel, there are aspects of our experience that simply cannot be understood in the mental realm, and trying to only leaves us frustrated. When we step out of our frenetic thought loops and let ourselves be guided we remember that we are a facet of a larger, infinitely mysterious whole. And when we realize how futile trying to constantly plan and predict the future is, we are finally liberated to enjoy what is available to us in the here and now.