{the weight}

my mother is still in hospital.
she has recovered well from the stroke but unfortunately had a fall which resulted in a fracture to her arm and two cracked ribs. as a result, she's not only in a lot of pain, but she's lost a lot of confidence too. they hope to transfer her to an intermediate care bed soon for more rehabilitation, and then hopefully home in about two weeks. inadvertently then, other than visiting her everyday, cam and i have been having a temporary respite.

what i've realised in this time is: my mother is not to blame for a lot my frustrations. rather, she has been a smokescreen i hid behind. an excuse i have used to defend my own inaction as inability.

maybe it is no coincidence i work with people who struggle with the same issues. the labels might be different, but the question is the same: what is stopping the change from happening?

as i sat and meditated on the question, i could hear the whispering in my heart...

as a child i was overweight.
taunted and teased both by children and adults, i learnt early on how to pretend i didn't care. it seemed easier to deflect rather than defend and i learnt to laugh it off, change the subject, or do anything to take the focus away from something i was embarrassed about and felt unable to justify. what i am beginning to see now is how, as a child, my weight and my identity were intertwined and i was not just embarassed about being overweight; i was embarassed by me. overtime, as i accepted other peoples ridicule, my own self worth and self esteem was unconsciously eroding with it.

obviously i was a child then and i could only do what i felt able to do. but i am a grown woman now and suddenly i recognise how much of that fat little girl still lives in me: the timidity. the insecurity...

generally speaking i hide it well, but the point is: i am still hiding.

when i read this quote it spoke to me. it stirred something deep inside, although i didn't know what it meant at the time. now i do. i need to go back to where this all starts. i need to strip back, literally, and reconnect with my body.

you know, i'm not ripping my husbands clothes off and having wild sex every night not because my mother is in the other room, but because i feel fat. i feel old and tired and yes, part of that is the physical. but it goes much deeper than that, and now i know where i need to start working on.

i signed up to this before i had this realisation.
now i call that synchronicity ;)