Turning Point in Early June 2015

Yesterday I was out on my porch with my camera. Turning around, I noticed my reflection in the window. Interesting to discover when I downloaded the photo that through my silhouette I can see photos of mother's mother and father, my mother, my father's mother and father, and my father, as well as my two sisters, my only nephew's father, and my nephew and his girlfriend and their now 1-year-old son, Pablo. Over my heart is the light I draw and paint by at my work table. If you look closely, you will see the carved red cardinal who perches on the light. The book is The Songs of Bob Dylan: 1966-1975 on a wooden music holder.  In front of that is one of the caned chairs that my mother's parents bought when they were first married in Boston in the early 1900s.  What appear to be white polka dots on dark blue is the pattern on my couch. On the couch is a colorful pillow with Fair Isle patterns knitted by my Scottish / German mother years ago. Sweet to see that my old dulcimer, made in Santa Cruz, California, in the 1970s, appears to be out on the porch with me, along with everything else, including the red Salvia plant that I bought and put in a planter in my porch garden this past week and the lush cattail pond, nearby dark hills, and lovely grey sky.

What we are talking about when we talk about living with eating disorders

"Return: The Turning Point" was painted in the first year of my recovery from bulimia and anorexia. My blog isn't specifically about eating disorders, but I do mention my experience with them from time to time. This post and accompanying slideshow are inspired by Nicole who has been recovering from bulimia and anorexia for 18 months. Her blog shows that recovery from eating disorders is possible, and that it is not an easy road for any of us. Each of us has a different story, but we all have much in common in recovery as we find peace with food and with ourselves. Nicole's photos from her years of living with eating disorders and her recovery inspired me to put this slideshow together. I believe I may have been born with an eating disorder. 

 My perception is that eating disorders are not about what a person weighs but about a person's difficult relationship with food. When I was a baby, my first word was not "mama" or "dada." My first word was "cookie." I was what was called a "picky eater." It has occurred to me that it is likely that my mother gave me cookies because they were something that I would eat. I recall that many foods made me feel like vomiting, but I was always told to "at least take a bite." I remember my grandmother commenting to my mother when I was about 3 years old that I was "spoiled" because I wouldn't eat an egg she had cooked for me. My mother would give me only the yolk, because egg whites made me gag. I have many early childhood memories of craving sugar, of sneaking food, of hiding food, and of having adults force me to eat foods that made me gag. I clearly remember being photographed at 2 years old in the first photo in the slideshow. My perception of myself at 2 years old, while that photo was being taken, was that I was a "bad" girl. I tried so hard to be a "good" girl but just couldn't meet the expectation. "Bad" girls were spanked, and I didn't want to be spanked. 

I went on my first "diet" when I was 10 years old. I was not overweight, just taller than my peers and weighed more than anyone else in my 5th grade class, except for one friend who was shorter than I was and noticeably overweight. We went on a diet together. She ate only 1 apple and a cup of coffee a day and lost weight, and returned to normal eating as far as I knew, and didn't regain the weight. I wonder, though, if she went on suffer from eating disorders. Girls aren't overweight at 10 years old for no reason. I didn't lose any weight at that time because I couldn't stay on a diet. At 12 years old, I looked as if I were 16 years old. I kept trying one diet or another, thinking I was overweight. I wasn't. My weight would go up and down about 5 pounds. I became bulimic when I was 17 years old. My goal, beginning at age 17, was to lose 20 pounds. I did that once in 1970, becoming a borderline anorexic but returned to being a bulimic at a normal weight. 

When I was 21 years old, my boyfriend teased me that I had a "double chin." I vowed to lose weight and get rid of that "double chin." My dieting, binging and vomiting, continued throughout my 20s and early 30s. As you can see in the slideshow, my face and neck became swollen after throwing up regularly. I thought the swelling was "fat," and that only made me more convinced that I needed to keep throwing up to lose weight. Going back to college at age 30 made the bulimia worse. At 35 years old, I began to descend into anorexia again. 

At 37 years old, I met a group of women who were recovering from eating disorders. I was at a normal weight, the same weight I had been at 17 years old. Most of the women were noticeably overweight. There was one woman, bulimic and anorexic, who had stopped throwing up six months previously and was at a normal weight. She was my role model as I began my recovery from bulimia and anorexia. When I look through the photos in the slideshow, the change in me that began when I was 37 years old still astonishes me. I did not go through eating disorder treatment. I did not take any of the prescription medications that are routinely prescribed to people with eating disorders. 

What happened was that I had a role model for recovery, and I completely stopped eating trigger foods, i.e., any food that I couldn't stop eating once I started eating it. Alcohol was one of those foods. I could stop at one drink, but then I could not stop eating from the craving that the alcohol caused. That craving is a classic sign of a real alcoholic. Nobody told me to stop eating trigger foods. It was my decision. I found that there were plenty of foods that I loved that didn't trigger craving. I found that I could eat much more food than I had ever eaten since I was 10 years old, and I didn't gain weight. 

My 50s were difficult years for reasons besides eating disorders. PTSD from the Vietnam War era caught up with me, and my sense of well-being was shaken to the core. I don't think I would have survived those years if I had been dealing with an active eating disorder. A friend of mine who had an active eating disorder during those years suffered a disabling stroke as a result. 

The last photo shows how I look now. I look 62 years old and am grateful to have good health and nearly 25 years of freedom from something that took over my life for 27 years. I doubt that anyone can recover from eating disorders in isolation. Nicole is hosting a blog that gives those of us with eating disorders a place to visit and know that we are not alone. I am much older than most of the visitors to Nicole's blog, but I can relate to much of what they say about themselves and their experiences. In 1987, I was fortunate to find a small group of people in recovery in Bellingham. Those people were the key to my recovery. With Nicole's blog, one of many groups of people is forming on the internet to share diverse experiences with eating disorders and to share recovery. 

My creative energy is going into writing this post today. I've been working on this since about 5 a.m., and it is after 1 o'clock now. It took some time to scan the old photos from a photo album, crop them, and then to create a slideshow on Flickr. In this photo, I'm holding my hair up to see what I look like that way. I usually wear it down, or I wear a hat. I like being 62 years old, even on the days that are challenging. May all bulimics and anorexics be relieved of suffering.

FOG AT 7 A.M. / 32 DEGREES

Yesterday I completed the emptying of my storage unit. I feel as if I have moved away from a place where I lived longer than I needed to. It's a good feeling. Still have to sort through the last of the possessions that I brought home yesterday, most of which are books, some of which belonged to my mother and father. As I was carrying them into my home I thought, "If I didn't have all these books, it would be much easier to move." I'll be wearing a dust mask as I sort through them, letting go of those that I can't read again anyway because of my sensitivity to book mold. Most of the books were in my storage unit for that reason, but I wasn't ready to let them go completely. I remember how difficult it was to let go of my father's moldy papers from his college days because letting them go felt like a betrayal of him.

A few days ago, while sorting, I found these handknit socks which were a gift from the mother of a former classmate who came from Turkey to study at our local community college in the early 1980s. I love them. They keep my feet warm on this chilly foggy morning.






















Update: A clear sunny day at 11:30 a.m. after the fog burned off. It's 55 degrees out on the porch now. I forgot to say that the fog this morning was filled with the sound of the Canada Geese who arrive here this time of year. The swallows usually arrive within the next week. This is the week my daffodil bulbs will begin to bloom.

I am finding that I am able to let go of approximately half of the books which were in the storage unit. That half will go to "The Friends of the Library" who will sell them, and the money will go to the public library. My delight in the other half of the books is still strong, and I've made room for them.

A BIRTHDAY IN SEPTEMBER / REAL DIFFERENT

First it gets better.
Then it gets worse.
Then it gets real.
Then it gets different.
Then it gets real different.
(Anonymous)

Although I've been in recovery from eating disorders for twenty years, I don't take that for granted. I continue to celebrate two days from the first year of my recovery when I was 36 years old. Remembering those two days is crucial to my continuing recovery.

This is my first year of blogging, so some of you already know about my birthday in May which marks the last day I practiced bulimia in 1987.

September 26, 1987, was the day I realized that my eating disorder was triggered, in part, by refined sugar and alcohol and that if I wanted to be permanently free from bulimia, I would have to stop ingesting those substances. No one told me to do that. It was a decision I made based on experience, a pragmatic decision. It has proven to be the key to 20 years of recovery from a life-threatening disorder which is notoriously difficult to arrest.

What worked for me certainly isn't the standard protocol today when a person with an eating disorder receives treatment from the conventional medical community. In 1987, there were few, if any, treatment centers for eating disorders. I don't recall that medications were prescribed for people with eating disorders at that time.

My story is that I recovered without entering a treatment center or taking medication. I did join a support group which allowed me to find my own way in recovery along with other people who found their own way to live without using food as a drug. Very few people with whom I recovered refrained from alcohol and/or refined sugar, but that is what worked for me. I had a brief but significant relapse in November of 2005, a time when I began eating refined sugar (mainly in the form of chocolate) in a period of severe stress. I didn't go on to practice bulimia, but I did gain 8 pounds in a very short time and developed ocular rosacea from the chocolate. When I stopped eating refined sugar and chocolate, that was the end of the ocular rosacea as well as a return to my normal healthy weight. It is clear that, for me, refined sugar and chocolate are physically harmful. Otherwise, I would love to enjoy them along with everyone else. I have wonderful memories of foods I can no longer eat if I want to remain in good health.

Yesterday I received an email from iTunes announcing September 25, 2007, as the release date of the first album in ten years by Joni Mitchell. So, for my 20th birthday, I'm going to buy Joni Mitchell's new CD, Shine.

When I called the Fred Meyer store to ask if they had the new Joni Mitchell CD, I had to smile when the young female clerk said, "Is that Country or Rock?"




















The photo of Joni Mitchell from January 2007 was taken by Aaron Harris / Canadian Press.

The above gouache and watercolor painting on Arches watercolor paper is "Calendar Series: 28th Month (Return / The Turning Point)," painted by am in 1988 in the early days of my recovery.

Calendar Series: 54th Month / Night of the Little Doves (Learning to Trust) (1989)

EVOLUTION OF FORGIVENESS

In this silence
I am looking for relief
Trusting grief
Loving the child never conceived
Loving all the shattered children
Who dared not trust, love or grieve
Loving the silent holy night
The wild blue sky of day
The courage of redwood trees
The beloved ocean
Still mirroring our wild hearts
Always calling to us:
Trust grief.

(poem begun in 6/17/2000, completed 8/26/2003)

Calendar Series: 28th Month / Return (The Turning Point) (1988)

Return (The Turning Point) is the 24th hexagram in the I Ching or Book of Changes. 

In the late 1960s, learning that Bob Dylan had been reading the I Ching, I became curious about that book. My college roommate had a copy of the Wilhelm/Baynes translation, the 3rd edition, and she showed me how to consult the I Ching using three pennies. Eventually I bought my own copy. The last time I consulted the I Ching was January 1, 2006. Maybe it's time to consult it again. 

 The following is the Wilhelm/Baynes translation for hexagram 24: 

 24. Fu / Return (The Turning Point) above K'UN THE RECEPTIVE, EARTH below CHêN THE AROUSING, THUNDER The idea of a turning point arises from the fact that after the dark lines have pushed all of the light lines upward and out of the hexagram, another light line enters the hexagram from below. The time of darkness is past. The winter solstice brings the victory of light. This hexagram is linked with the eleventh month, the month of the solstice (December-January). 

 THE JUDGMENT 

RETURN. Success. Going out and coming in without error. Friends come without blame. To and fro goes the way. On the seventh day comes return. It furthers one to have somewhere to go. After a time of decay comes the turning point. The powerful light that has been banished returns. There is movement, but it is not brought about by force. The upper trigram K'un is characterized by devotion; thus the movement is natural, arising spontaneously. For this reason the transformation of the old becomes easy. The old is discarded and the new is introduced. Both measures accord with the time; therefore no harm results. Societies of people sharing the same views are formed. But since these groups come together in full public knowledge and are in harmony with the time, all selfish separatist tendencies are excluded, and no mistake is made. 

The idea of RETURN is based on the course of nature. The movement is cyclic, and the course completes itself. Therefore it is not necessary to hasten anything artificially. Everything comes of itself at the appointed time. This is the meaning of heaven and earth. All movements are accomplished in six stages, and the seventh brings return. Thus the winter solstice, with which the decline of the year begins, comes in the seventh month after the summer solstice; so too sunrise comes in the seventh double hour after sunset. Therefore seven is the number of the young light, and it arises when six, the number of the great darkness, is increased by one. In this way the state of rest gives place to movement.

THE IMAGE Thunder within the earth: The image of THE TURNING POINT. Thus the kings of antiquity closed the passes At the time of solstice. Merchants and strangers did not go about, And the ruler Did not travel through the provinces. The winter solstice has always been celebrated in China as the resting time of the year--a custom that survives in the time of rest observed at the new year. In winter the life energy, symbolized by thunder, the Arousing, is still underground. Movement is just at its beginning; therefore it must be strengthened by rest so that it will not be dissipated by being used prematurely. This principle, i.e., of allowing energy that is renewing itself to be reinforced by rest, applies to all similar situations. The return of health after illness, the return of understanding after an estrangement: everything must be treated tenderly and with care at the beginning, so that the return may lead to a flowering.