Living As All of Me

[HannahOne]

The Pilates class was AMAZING and I am going back on Monday!

There was a male teacher and two men in the class. The teacher was humble and made jokes throughout. He stayed on his mat and corrected verbally when needed. The room was beautiful and light. Everyone was kind. A woman handed me a ring when I needed one.

Afterward I felt so alive. Not exhausted and sore like after weightlifting or elliptical. Just alive. I have been reading a bit about Joseph Pilates and his method is very interesting. It's about opposites, balance, vitality, mind-body connection. I was a bit dubious about Pilates as in the last I associated it with my time in LA and the "keep it tight" ladies. But it's nothing to do with appearance actually. It's about presence and a way of being alive, like an animal. Joe even talks about animals and "pandiculation" which is somewhat akin to Peter Levine's animal post-trauma tremors. I'm here for it.

New obsession unlocked. Dopamine and happiness ensues.

[HannahOne]

Talking with some friends today about food got me thinking. I have mini potatoes and broccoli in the air fryer right now and I just mixed up a Greek yogurt sauce with lemon juice, garlic and salt. I'll swirl the yogurt sauce on the plate and put the vegetables on top. Yum.

I can make what I want. I can buy what I need. I can have my yum.

Growing up there wasn't enough food. A few red delicious apples in the fridge, a head of iceberg. A bag of white bread. I'd eat the bread one raw slice at a time, rolled up into a ball so it had more bite to it. Eat the head of lettuce for dinner watching Popeye. It didn't make me strong. Eat the apple, hoping another would magically appear before I got hungry again.

After my sibling was born when I was almost 7, there was more food. More often a PBJ or a bowl of cheerios with milk poured for me. And more to forage from as needed. The occasional chicken and rice left me sitting at the table in the dark till 9 pm, refusing to eat it. I don't know why. Once I sat there till midnight.

Sometimes I still ate the dog biscuits for old time's sake.

By the time I was twelve the fridge was generally full and more meals. I didn't like the meals. After growing up on raw cereal and apples, a big bowl of chili was revolting. I started making my own meals from what we had. Or didn't eat.

In college appeared the miracle of the cafeteria. You could push your tray down a line and rows and rows of steaming hot food, take as much as you want, only what you want. I lived abroad for a year in England and France. The figs! The goat cheese! The Indian curry! The BREAD! Picking rosemary off the mountain side right before a goat went to grab it, and putting the leaves of it in my tomato sauce. That was the life.

I got married a month after graduating. I walked to the grocery every day. My poor partner was subjected to a variety of awful dishes but ate without complaint. I learned over time. When the kids came along it was breastmilk, then homemade sweet potato puree, organic everything. As they grew, chicken pot pies, homemade chicken noodle soup, and their favorite, tacos. We followed Ellen Satter, division of responsibility. I chose where they ate and when, at the table at meal and snack times. They chose what to eat and how much. Always deconstructed meals, with the chicken pot pie always bread, salad, always a "safe" food." No one left hungry. No one sat there for hours alone in the dark. I ate what they liked. Tacos, ok fine.

A few years ago a friend hosted me for lunch on a regular basis. I loved the food and started making it myself. She ate Mediterranean style, for health, but it was so delicious. Lentil soups, goat cheese salads, salmon and potatoes, steamed green beans with garlic. Hence this yogurt and vegetable meal I'm having now. Very South of France. Thank you, kind friend, for feeding me so many lunches. I guess part of me was still a hungry kid.

All grown up now, my kids male their own meals. Today I entered the kitchen to find the oldest singing opera and frying up a steak. The youngest was fake crying loudly, apparently to make the dog feel guilty. I had to check it wasn't real crying. Nope. No crying here. That one opened the fridge and started pulling out vegetables. I had plans for those vegetables... I kept quiet. Half an hour later she presented a stir fry. Yum.

[sanmagic7]

so very glad for you, hannah1, that you were able to grow out of that nutrition-poor environment and find foods (and enough of them) that you enjoy, could eat as much of as you wanted, and felt nourished and satisfied.  that's so wonderful!

pilates sounds like it hit the spot for you.  i love when that happens.  personally, i think we get more out of whatever we're doing when we're doing it for an organic reason.  enjoy enjoy!  love and hugs

[TheBigBlue]

Hannah,
Reading this felt like watching a long arc bend toward care. From a child trying to quiet hunger with bread rolled into a ball, to someone who made sure no one sat alone in the dark at the table. That's a powerful shift.

And the image at the end with opera, stir fry, and a kitchen full of food and life, feels like something important was rebuilt there.

I'm glad you get to have your yum now. 💛 

[HannahOne]

SanMAgic7 and TheBigBlue, thank you for following and commenting, and validating my celebration and happiness. I am amazed at how good I can feel how often. It was a Long five years of severe depression. I am really coming back alive and enjoying life, feeling much more present more of the time, and being more embodied, eating and moving. The more I take care of my body, the better I feel emotionally, too.  Thank you for being on the "journey" of coming out of the storm.

[HannahOne]

I went to Pilates/yoga today but the man wasn't teaching. The teacher began chanting and I felt very alarmed. I don't want religious yoga. Her ego also felt all over the place, she clearly enjoyed herself chanting and I didn't feel included in the chant, if that makes sense. It was like she was surrounding herself with a wall of ego noise. It felt like being around a narcissist, that sense that you're just an object of their performance. I can't say of course anything about the woman, it was probably entirely an EF on my end. But I didn't like the feeling at all. I froze for a minute, it was embarrassing to roll up my mat and go and I didn't want to offend. But I know that if I don't allow myself to leave things that don't work for me I wont' want to try anything new and I'll go back to bed. If I made myself sit there and tried to talk myself into feeling ok, I'd end up dissociated, when the entire point of Pilates and yoga is to be present. I can't be here. so I left. If I can't be here, then I need to go somewhere I can be. I quietly rolled up my mat and left and I felt really good about leaving. I will go back Friday when the man is teaching and pay more attention to who is teaching on the schedule. I came home and made pesto vegetables and Fasolika. I am eating like before the pandemic and feeling better and better. I will get healthier. Fasolika for the heart, pesto for the bones.

I saw the surgeon this morning before the non-yoga. I liked the surgeon who did the first procedure but the aftercare was no good and I had some wound healing problems. Because of my genetic disorder I don't heal well and make weird scar formation. So I got a new surgeon that is within network and is said to be very good. But today she is pushing me to start the medication while she consults with an expert in my genetic condition. I'm confident she is my best option. So fine. I give up, and I will start it this week. I hope it won't make me utterly miserable. My primary care doctor wrote me on the portal and said that she saw the note and is increase my nerve pain medication to try to compensate for the chemopreventive. She also prescribed a statin and a bone density pill. Heart and bones. I hate both of those medications. and that's part of what I wanted to avoid by doing surgery. But again, fine. Fine fine fine. Whatever. I will take all the medications and keep exercising and eating well and see what happens.

I feel like in some ways I am catching up with myself. Looking at my hands, they are 50 year old hands. Older than I feel. But all parts of me are starting to accept, it's over. I'm an adult. I won't get what I thought I needed. Turns out, I don't need it, I survived without it. I won't become who I would have been. Turns out, I don't need to become anything other than what I am. Who knew? Parts of me are shocked, their hands falling open, disappointed---was all their work for nothing? No, friends...how to explain---it was needed then, but now is not then. And now, now what? They'll need to find new jobs. Anyone want to be chief pig petter? Anyone want to be a red-tailed hawk watcher? Anyone want to be in charge of activating the core in Pilates? Who wants to snap the ends off the green beans? Not so glorious, I know, as Survivor in Chief. It feels like a demotion, but it's a demotion to the hard ground. Feel your heartbeat? Feel your shin bones against your arms?

A demotion of sorts, an early retirement. But being All of Me at 50 is cool, too. I promote it wholeheartedly. I can make my own food, take myself to and fro, come and go at will. I am starting to be-bop again, be-bopping around the planet, here and there, not so much pressure. There's not the feeling of guilt, fear, doom, grasping. All that drove me so hard, to be "successful" as I then defined it, to be safe. I'm not so driven now. It's a downshift. Parts of me worry, I'm stepping off the rat race? I'm leaving the cheese? I guess so? Volunteering at the wildlife refuge isn't going to net me a cushy retirement. But I really need to be here and now, now. In a year? Maybe things will shift. I have a few more clients work to finish and then I can take a break from my business. We are not having to spend so much to care for the kids now so there is room to step back. And room to step forward, into new things that just make me happy. Hello, Homer the pig! Hello, red-tailed hawk!

The house is in disarray from the weekend, there's craft stuff all over the table I see. I need to run laundry, dishes, mop the floors for the week. I need to make a crockpot full of chicken. I have mounds of clothes all over the bed where I tried things on for fun. And the poodle shredded some paper wrappers. I will be-bop to the chores, not frantically, not parentified, not overwhelmed. As the adult I am, taking care of business. "Hearts and Bones" playing on the Alexa.