A Bowl of Potato Chips

When I was seven, I met my first best friend, Carla McCoy. With her blonde hair and blue eyes, Carla was everyone’s idea of the girl next door. We first met because her grandmother lived across the street from my favorite great aunt, Micki, in Wisconsin. Life and her father’s job later moved them from Wisconsin to Nebraska, so there really was no choice except for us to be best friends.

There was something about the McCoy’s that fascinated me. Mrs. McCoy, Dorothy, was a stay-at-home mom with salt and pepper hair and a slight hooked nose who cooked lunch and dinner for Carla and her father. They had a golden retriever and Mr. McCoy, Fred, trim and neat and careful right down to his manicured fingernails, carefully mowed and clipped the lawn every weekend. They composted too, although that wasn’t yet fashionable in 1969 in Nebraska.

There were sleep-overs during the winter and sun burns and playing Mother May I in the velvet of their perfectly coiffed front lawn in the summer. I was regularly invited to the beach; where we ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and potato chips and drank grape Kool-Aid while perfecting our tan and bettering our front crawl. On Friday nights, the McCoy’s took me with them to the Dairy Queen, and we all sat on the curb licking our ice cream cones while the Nebraska heat attempted to melt the ice cream faster than our tongues could lap it up.

While I have many memories of the McCoys, the memory of a bowl of potato chips lingers. It was after school on what must have been a winter night. We had finished our homework and playing Barbie’s, and I was waiting for my mother to pick me up. As it got later and later, the McCoy’s were getting ready for dinner. Mr. McCoy, Mrs. McCoy, and Carla. Mrs. McCoy gave me a bowl of potato chips and kept the television on so that I could watch cartoons as I waited for the ride while they said grace and began their meal.

From the carefully measured serving of potato chips, I took tiny nibbly bites and licked each finger to get the last bit of salt and crumbled chip. But they didn’t last long enough to comfort me as both the hour and my mother grew later. From the corner of my eye, I watched the McCoy’s cutting manageable bite-sized pieces of steak and chewing noiselessly. In laughter and whispers, they shared details about their day. In an odd way, I was transfixed by what I observed. I saw what I thought looked like the perfect family. What was it that made them a unit? What was it that made them more than just people who shared the same address and phone number? What was it that made them…well…actually like each other? Maybe it was because Carla was an only child and her arrival had been long and sweetly anticipated. Maybe it was because Mr. McCoy had a regular 9 to 5 job and watered the lawn and picked weeds. Maybe it was the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the trips to the beach. Whatever the reason, they were a family.

But I was not a McCoy, and I was waiting for someone to feed me. My parents owned an A&W Drive In and the demands of feeding the public meant that as a child, family dinners and vacations were few and far between. My parents had an obligation to make sure that whoever wanted a Papa Burger, Mama Burger, French fries or a root beer float got their desire fulfilled. I knew from an early age that other people’s needs came first.
When my mother finally arrived, I was starving and she was furious. She couldn’t believe that the McCoy’s were so selfish and heartless as to not feed me while they were eating. I sat in silence in the car. My eight year old mind didn’t know how to say that it was her job to feed me, and she wasn’t doing her job.

Not too long ago, my friend Jan told me that children are excellent observers, but not very good decision makers. Looking back, I can see that I made a lot of decisions that for better or worse have shaped the course of my life. I decided I was not loved or wanted. I decided to stop crying and emotions were to be avoided. I decided to stop asking for what I needed. I decided other people came first. I decided I could only rely on me. I decided that my only value came from being a good girl, following the rules, getting good grades, and never causing trouble.

I made all of these decisions because my mother was late and I was starving.
As a child, I was not able to reconcile my longing for the warmth and protection of my mother with her absence, both physical and emotional and my overeating. Years later, I remember my mother talking about how hearing her parents arguing made her decide that she would never allow her children to hear their parents yelling at each other. And that hearing my grandfather saying there was $5 to last for two weeks and there wasn’t enough food to feed everyone would cause my mother to choose to work day and night so that her children would never starve.

Because of the pain of her childhood, she made decisions about what love looked like that affected me and not always for the best. I did not learn how to be angry and still be someone’s friend. I didn’t learn that a good fight is healthy and necessary to loving. I did not learn that emotional sustenance was the real food I craved. I did not learn to be emotionally honest. I learned that love hurt. But I did learn the value of work and commitment. I learned that I can accomplish anything if I put enough muscle behind it.

While my parents were working and feeding the public, I made food into my parent. Food soothed and calmed me so I did not have to hear the questions that I didn’t yet understand and when I did understand them, they were too frightening to ask. The questions that sounded like: Why doesn’t Mommy tuck me in at night? Why don’t we eat together or go on vacations? Why doesn’t my daddy mow the lawn? Why doesn’t anyone ask me what I think or feel or want or hope? Why don’t they spend time with me? Does this mean they don’t love me? And many years later, why can’t I stop eating?

I can’t stop eating because I haven’t allowed myself to stand still long enough to feel the pain of sitting on the couch with a bowl of potato chips waiting for someone who wasn’t really there. Instead, I spent years being angry at my mother for her decisions. I sought to punish and get revenge for all of the ways in which I was hard done by. I avoided responsibility for my own life and blamed her for my own choices, my heart hardened by disappointment and loneliness because of decisions I made at the age of eight.

It was a seemingly random conversation with my sister about one month ago that began to melt my heart and release tears that had been frozen in gallons of ice cream, unable to be melted even with rivers of molten hot fudge. My sister told me how my mother sat with shoulders hunched and back bent at the kitchen table as she began to remember the events that shaped her life story.

As my mother was growing up, her parents lived on a farm. Each Friday night, their five children begged to be allowed to go to town, to buy some candy or perhaps see their friends. Grudgingly, my grandfather would allow them to accompany him. As they arrived in town and in spite of their pleading cries to please park on the street so they could see what was happening, my grandfather insisted on parking the car in the back of a grocery store parking lot. The children and my grandmother eagerly leaped out to do their errands and to walk up and down the Main Street while my grandfather nearly ran to the bar to play pool.

Once finished with their little jobs, my grandmother and the rest of the family crawled back into the car and waited for my grandfather to return. They waited until they could not hold the heavy lids of their eyes open any longer and drifted to sleep. At 1 a.m. or later, my grandfather would drunkenly return to find his pregnant wife and five children huddled together for warmth and shelter in the pitch black of the parking lot.

My mother, now crying, asked my sister those familiar questions: Why couldn’t he park on the street? Why didn’t he spend time with us? Why, no matter how good we tried to be or how much we did for him, couldn’t he love us? Why couldn’t he love me?

My heart ached as I listened to my sister’s voice explaining without knowing what she was saying that my mother and I were not very different. Two little girls looking for someone to love us.

I woke up the next morning sobbing. Sobbing for my mother who was filled with bitterness and loss. Sobbing for myself, filled with sadness for both of us. Since that day, I have noticed that the voice of Sacred Hunger has grown louder within me and will not leave me alone at times. The voice is calling for forgiveness, understanding, and compassion. I’m not always sure how to go about this other than to write about the stories of my life. In the writing, there is grace and mercy. And when I don’t write, the food calls louder and louder to remind me it is time to stop being a victim chained to the past and start being a hero of my own story in the here and now.

I haven’t seen Carla McCoy since we made one last visit to Nebraska when I was 13, after my family moved to Wisconsin when I was ten. I don’t remember much about our visit except that Carla had recently lost 19 pounds, which gave me yet another reason to be jealous. But from where I stand today, wherever you are, Carla, I hope and pray that life has treated your kindly. And when it hasn’t, I hope and pray you can remember the velvet green grass of your front lawn, summer days filled with laughter and sun, and that first best friends are forever.

Blessed Be.

Thought You'd Enjoy this Quote

I've noticed that I've been writing lately about the theme of valuing myself from the inside out. Many years ago...I think while I was doing Weight Watchers for the first of who knows how many times...the leader read us this quote. I remember getting chills the first time I heard it. And I've had that same reaction every time since.

I also wanted to say to anyone reading my blog, that I'm committed (Yikes! Now it's real!) to posting at least one story each week on either Monday or Tuesday.

I always thought this quote was anonymous, but I've just learned this is copywrited material published by Natasha M. Beard entitled "After A While." It apparently was also copywrited in 1971 by Veronica A. Shoftstall with the same title. I hope you enjoy it...whatever the source.

After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul.
After a while you learn that love doesn't mean leaning and company doesn't mean security, and you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't promises.
And you begin to accept your defeats with your head held up high and your eyes wide open, with the grace of an adult, and not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads on today because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans.
And after a while you learn that even sunshine can burn if you get to much... so plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure... that you really are strong, and you really do have worth... you never lose by loving, you always lose by holding back....

Walking on the White Cliffs of Dover

Sixty days in a treatment center in the English countryside isn’t all bad. Along with getting a fresh start and a good night’s sleep for the first time in years, I also got to see some spectacular sights during Saturday afternoon outings. We went to mass at Canterbury Cathedral one Saturday, while another Saturday found us bowling. I won. On my birthday, I elected a walk along the canals near the sea. Winning and birthdays aside, my favorite outing was a visit to the White Cliffs of Dover. Arriving at the Cliffs, we leapt out of the van. Two by two or three to a bunch, I joined the group, oblivious to the life trajectory that would be re-set that day.

Our legs moved us further and further away from the van and it’s reminder of where we had come from and deeper and deeper onto the trail that had been worn bare by thousands, perhaps millions of pairs of feet having trudged this path in awe and wonder atop this stony piece of ground. The sea wind whipped through our hair and roughened our skin to a sun-drenched red, glowing of health and hardiness in stark contrast with the whiteness of the face of the Cliffs.

I looked at the stretch of hill in front of me, knowing that my already reddened skin would turn redder yet from the exertion of 200 plus pounds I carried. I had come a long way already, having lost 50 pounds in the past six months, but I still had a way to travel on what I hoped would be my last journey to thinness. And so I pushed forward. Step after step, I followed. Step after step, I breathed the expanse of blue sky and sea air. I felt free.

Our counselor, chirpy and slightly balding, Paul, was walking in front of me a few paces. Hearing my labored breathing, he stopped for a moment, turning around with a quizzical look on his face to enquire whether I was okay.

Yes, I answered. I’m experiencing consequences of all of the fat years, but I’ll make it. After a few moments, Paul responded to me in working class accented English, “Well, my little treasure, you’ll go right back there unless you seek a spiritual solution.”

Finishing our walk, we stopped for tea and conversation and then piled back into the mini-van, retracing the country lanes to our home away from home. But Paul’s words clung to me. My mind, filled with chaotic thoughts crashing like so many waves against the breakers, I asked myself was I doomed to repeat the desperation, sadness and regrets which fuelled my compulsions? Doomed to repeat the patterns that dictated finding just the right length jacket so no one would guess I weighed 265 pounds? Destined to be ruled by the need to find the ideal brown eye shadow so I would be beautiful? Sentenced to being stuffed to overflowing with loneliness and fear as I hid in my apartment yelling at the answering machine “Would you all just leave me alone!”?

Paul’s words sounded like a dire warning. Spiritual life or death. Clearly, I needed this spiritual solution. But what solution? And what is spiritual? How do I become that? If I’m spiritual, does that mean I will never struggle with compulsion again? Pray God, yes, that’s what it means. Someone just tell me what to do. Show me the path, and I will follow.

Thirty days later I left the strangely comforting camaraderie of strangers at the center and returned to civilization to begin building my idea of a spiritual solution. Five support group meetings each week. Daily inventory. If reading three meditation books each morning was good, five was better. Prayer on my knees in the morning and again at night. And the phone calls in between to give my most generous support to those who did not work a perfect program or who had not read so many self-help books. I could talk the talk. But more importantly, I had found a spiritual solution. And it was called a food plan.

I lost 90 pounds that year and inwardly judged anyone who continued to struggle and whine. I would never be like them. I could follow a food plan. Why couldn’t you? But I was careful to swallow my contempt and to keep it quiet, under wraps. Just keep coming back.

When a food plan is what you’re leaning on, when life’s storms hit like the English Sea pounding the beach below, there is no shelter. No higher ground. Two years later, job woes and an unhealed heart meant that once again, sugar sounded like a good idea. One dessert a day couldn’t be harmful. An extra snack wasn’t really a problem. As long as I planned it all, I still had a spiritual solution that was working in my life. Except my jeans were getting tight and I couldn’t tell you because I had a rock solid image to protect. Losing 90 pounds had gained me guru status in my group. The sad thing about being a guru is that it is rather lonely business. There was no one around who wanted to see me struggle. And God knows, I couldn’t show you. But sadder still was that I didn’t know why I needed to turn to food again as my rock, my comfort, my solace. I didn’t know how to tell you who I was, because I had lost myself so long ago that I didn’t know I was missing. I didn’t know that a food plan, a fellowship, and a few prayers were no foundation, no ancient cliff underneath upon which to build a life. Unlike those glorious chalky Cliffs, I was not sunk firmly into the deepest depths of the earth. My roots were shallow. My faith was slim. And by now, I’d outgrown my jeans.

I repeated this struggle for five years. While I prayed, attended support group meetings, followed a food plan, and looked like I was doing all the right things, the wellspring of life within me was drying out. I was a human doing who had no idea about her being. Inside me, was a chasm that scared me to death. If I descended to the depths, who would be there? I couldn’t tell you because I had long ago bought the lie that to be loved I had to be who you wanted me to be and do what you told me to do. I was a chameleon. A performer. A good girl.

But underneath the chameleon, the performer and the good girl lived a risk-taking devil-may-care child who knew what it was like to see angels while watching dust motes dancing in the morning sunlight. Nearly buried alive from years of neglect and control, she was fighting for her life. Fighting back against rigid self-discipline and the impossible pursuit of making everyone else happy, I was shaken awake one October night hearing her sobbing “Please don’t make me stay inside the lines. I need to get out. I need to be messy.”

The only problem was I didn’t know how to be messy except with my food. That I knew by heart. And I hated myself for it. I didn’t know about Sacred Hunger. I didn’t know that the language of compulsion with food was the language of the child in me screaming that she would be her own person and that her Hunger mattered.

Sometime in March of the following year and seemingly out of nowhere, I was compelled to go see the film Finding Neverland. I asked several friends to go with me on this quest for resolution to my inner emptiness and confusion, but no one had time. Feeling abandoned yet oddly happy in my aloneness, I sat in the darkened theatre with six other strangers and heard the voiceless voice of those dust-mote dancing angels: You have forgotten you are magic and you know how to fly.

I wept. There was nothing else for me to do. I needed to find my wings. While I had spent the past several years valuing the ideal of being firmly rooted to the ground, what I found out was that I was on someone else’s plot of land and I needed to find my own terra firma. Without permission or so much as a by your leave, I leapt.

Three weeks later the net appeared as the relationship with my ex-boyfriend was resurrected from the ashes in which we had both burned when I cruelly deserted him on New Years Eve without a word of explanation. On the last Friday evening in May, we stood together in the intimate company of friends as we were married in front of the fireplace in our living room. Jimmy recounted the pain of the struggle I forced him through on my way to learning that my wants, my heart felt desires, my Sacred Hungers are the foundation of my life. He read a poem he had written for me that spoke of knowing from nearly the moment we met, and in spite of it all, we were meant to be together. For all of our lives. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Embraced in the container of this mighty love, I took another leap – no more food plans. No more weighing and measuring. No more eating vegetables when what I craved was a chocolate chip cookie. Jimmy was teaching me that I deserved to have my heart’s desire. No more depriving myself of what I really wanted. I wrote in my journal in my firmest hand: I want recovery not a food plan.

Releasing the ties that bound me over the past year and some months has been some of the scariest moments I have ever lived. There were – and are - times when my body would shake, rattle, and roll with fear as I claimed my path and owned my truth. I reminded myself that fear was excitement that had forgotten to breathe. Leaning into that breathing space, I spent hours in what might have looked like isolation but was really solitude so that I could begin to hear my own voice. I stopped asking five people for their opinion on whether or not I should do this, that or the other thing. I stopped following the rules and started living my values. I began to ask myself what I wanted instead of silently and sullenly doing what felt like duty or obligation.

By leaping into the unknown of marriage and life without a food plan, I am experiencing a revived relationship with the God of my understanding. I am becoming my own person. The need for reliance on things outside of me to tell me what to do and who to be is no longer the driving force of my life. I am free falling into my own being. I am a work in progress. And it is good.

I thought for the longest time that there was only one way to seek a spiritual solution. I was wrong. Sacred Hunger is my personalized program of spiritual recovery. The path of Sacred Hunger is built on trust: trust in myself, trust in the purity of my longings and desires, and trust in the voice of intuition that must be listened to because that is the ultimate of Hungers – the longing to experience Spirit within.

German philosopher Goethe said “Trust yourself and you will know how to live.” In the abandonment of food plans and my ideas about what my life was supposed to look like, I am learning that my problems as a compulsive eater were never about food. My problem was that my foundation in life was outside of me and that until I learned to trust my body, my wisdom, and my Hungers, I would be forever bound to earth when instead I was meant to fly.

Some day, I will return to the Cliffs and see them again with new eyes and a new heart. To see the well-worn paths on those Cliffs and be reminded that my footprints follow in the wake of other pilgrims. And pray God, oh please God, I will utter in silent prayer, may my footprints make the trail a little smoother for those brave souls who took the leap as I did, to listen to their Sacred Hunger.

Blessed Be.

No More Self-Help Books

This summer, I packed all of my self-help books into five boxes and put them in the garage. I swore off anything that promised I could create my own reality in 10 easy steps and instead, I took up reading trashy romance novels. I grieved the loss of these books as I pulled one after another off the maple book shelves that flank the red brick fireplace in our living room.

My entire being over these past several years has been all about pushing and prodding myself to change. My comrades in arms were my books. Whenever life felt a little overwhelming, a trip to Barnes and Noble, three self-help books and sixty dollars later, I felt relief from the anxiety of living in my own skin. I had a plan for improvement as I pored over the chapters and took inventories of my most glaring defects (but only usually after I was bored with taking inventories of my enemies both real and imagined), I prayed for release and then promptly sat on my duff, exhausted and bloodied from the civil war raging inside. I was beaten into submission by my inability to change myself. One would think that I would learn the lesson that pushing and prodding don't work - acceptance does.

But about one month ago, I was reading. Again. This time, reading felt like all of the old diet schemes with the charts and graphs and expectations that teased, tempted, and tantalized but never satisfied. Empty in the way my favorite binge foods left me craving and sick to my stomach at the same time. And then I heard it. The plaintive wail of a five year old voice from deep inside me begging “Leave me alone. I don’t want to change.”

This five year old knew more about Sacred Hunger than I gave her credit for. I was coming to believe that the root of my compulsive eating lay buried in my refusal to accept myself as I was – blessed imperfections and all. I knew my eating was a valid response to whatever was eating me, which usually involved thinking I was not quite good enough. Although I had waved the white flag of surrender in my attempts to diet, I was not yet ready to call a halt to forcing myself into the confines of perfection.

My husband noticed my habit of self-flagellation long before I became aware of my addiction to perfection, pain, and struggle. He noticed I had a penchant for hurting myself as I wandered through the house because he heard me saying Ouch every 15 minutes or so. Passing through the bathroom, I would bump against the door on the way out. Ouch. Reaching for a can of diced tomatoes while making Sunday night spaghetti sauce, I scraped my finger on the shelf. Ouch. Putting the clean sheets on the bed, I banged my hand against the headboard. Ouch and ouch again.

I started to notice that I said Ouch at least 30 times each day. One day, I received the grace-filled gift of breathing space between a self-critical thought and the Ouch. I had spilled milk on the counter and a string of abuse flew through my mind like a intercontinental ballistic missile bent on destruction. “How could you be such an idiot? What is wrong with you? Look at what you've done. You've made such a mess!”

OUCH. I spilled milk. Nothing more. It was not an unrecoverable event like launching a nuclear missile which would shower the world in fall out, creating a by-product of cancer. Or was it? The cancer of the constant self-criticism was out-pictured in real bruises, cuts, and scrapes on my limbs. The tiny child within me trembled in terror in front of the adult who was on a perpetual search and destroy mission for who I thought I shouldn't be and what I shouldn't do, instead of praising what courageous steps she made each day. No wonder she’d had enough. Sacred Hunger asked for tender mercy in my way of relating to myself.

This mercy came when my husband challenged me to adopt his daily on your knees prayer practice. Little did I know that this almost infinitesimal act would begin to lead me away from a rocky battle ground and into gentle pastures. On my knees each morning, I whispered humble prayers of gratitude and acceptance while savoring the simple silence of communion with my Creator. I prayed to embrace everything – especially my imperfections. While on my knees, I found my footing once again when I was reminded of my earliest lesson of recovery: Act as If. In the first 30 days of my recovery walk, intuitively I had known that the only way to learn to love and accept myself was to make small changes that did not overwhelm me or feel like work. These movements needed to be so small that they could squeak through the enemy lines drawn by my inner rebel.

I remember peering into the mirror one wintry February morning. Shivering and covered in goose bumps from the English wind whistling through the space between the window and the sash, I asked myself one question: What would someone who really loved themselves do for themselves every single day? A simple response to a simple question arose in my gut: A person who loved themselves would wash their face every night before they went to bed. And so I did. Every night for more than 7 years, I washed my face before crawling into the warmth of my bed.

Eight years later and with no small amount of surprise, it feels as if I'm in that same bathroom asking myself the same question again. The call of Sacred Hunger for self-acceptance asks me to take one small action, which I can practice daily, in an attempt to love and honor my body. I made a deal with my husband that I would take my vitamins every day and drink a glass of water before each meal. These two tiny movements feel like revolutionary acts. No complicated campaign this time, but rather a strategic maneuver in making and keeping promises to myself, which are the bricks and mortar of self-trust and self-love.

This morning, I took an inventory of these seemingly unimportant acts. The list included:
1. Pray on my knees
2. A daily gratitude list
3. Using the bathroom on the 1st floor at work instead of the close at hand bathroom on the 2nd floor
4. Walking twice a week with a friend after work
5. Writing 15 minutes daily
6. Eating 9 servings of fruits and vegetables on most days
7. Stretching for 10 minutes while my husband and I watch t.v. each evening

And oh yes....the glasses of water and vitamins. Frankly, I was amazed at the growing list of these seemingly inconsequential micro-movements. Somewhere I was taught that if you look at your checkbook and your calendar, you will find out what matters to you. Looking at the list, I could no longer buy the lie that I didn't like myself. The truth was I mattered to myself. War over. Truce declared.

It’s been a while now since I’ve heard myself saying Ouch. My bruises have healed, and the self-help books are back in the garage. I'm hopeful that soon they'll be on their way to Goodwill. In the war against perfection, I’m learning to surrender to Less is More. And that feels good.

Blessed Be.