I'm not exactly sure where this is going. I guess we will see when we get there. This morning my pathway to this blog piece was much clearer than it is right now, but that is what having to be interrupted by an IEP, two loads of laundry, dishes, and cleaning the house will do to a creative process as well as a mental plan. It's fine though. I will muddle through and take you along for the ride. Shall we?
So let's go back to the beginning. In my best Sophia voice, "Picture it. It was 1960's Wichita." My mother was so thin, even after having me, her first baby, that she could almost blow away in a strong gust of Kansas wind. To look at her, she was thin and beautiful and you would think that she came from some pretty impressive genes. That would later prove to be incorrect...for her anyway.
My mom was the youngest of 11 kids. They were all farm kids, full of unpasteurized cows milk, farm fresh eggs, garden-fresh fruits and veggies, their own home butchered meats, and not a processed item in any food they ate. Of course, there was also a fair amount of DDT, asbestos, and other farm chemicals floating around, that they had no idea would prove to be deadly later on, but at the time, except for some asthma and an aunt with a heart ailment due to rheumatic fever, they were a healthy bunch, but they had no idea what genes and environmental issues were doing to their bodies or what the outcomes might someday be.
My grandmother was a short woman at 4'11" who after all those births, held a little weight. My grandfather was a tall thin man reaching about 6'2" who never put on much weight his entire life. Grandma in her later years suffered from heart issues and strokes, most of which she fully recovered from, until her last one. The one that took her life. Grandpa also ended up with heart issues and this was what took his.
Their kids came in all shapes and sizes, my mom being 5'4" and the tallest girl to my aunt who like her mom, was also 4'11" and the boys ranged from about 5' 9" to about 6'2". In this mix of 11 kids, there turned out to be everything growing and mutating in their bodies from multiple forms of cancer, to lupus, to heart disease and aneurysms. Funny though, while some died as early as their early 60's, others hit their 90th birthday, and then some. We also learned that our family had a nasty little genetic mutation called the Lynch Syndrome Gene which is a cancer gene. If a parent has it, there is a 50/50 chance their children will also have it. It has wreaked quite a bit of havoc in my family as a whole and in my immediate family as my mom had it and it was believed to be the root of her four primary cancers throughout her body. She also had Lupus Erythematosis and with the combination of Lupus and all those cancers, it is a true miracle that she lived as long as she did.
So why this genetic history of my family? Because I am learning that genetics, environment, hormones, societal norms and views, emotions, physical activity and everyday habits ALL have a huge effect on who we are, our emotional and physical health, and how we look and feel about ourselves. Some of this we can control and some of it we can't, but sometimes what we can't control seems to overwhelm and confuse us to the point that it seems to outweigh what we can.
I have started this blog piece (or likely pieces) with my mom because she created me in more than one way. She created my very being, blessing me with the good, the bad, and the ugly of my genetic makeup, but she also created my eating habits, health habits, and my view of myself and my body. Don't get me wrong, my mom was an amazing mom, but like most women of our modern world, she too was not immune to magazine models, social persuasions, and the constant advertising of what the perfect woman should look and act like. So on that note, let's get back to the 1960s and my mom.
My mom was an RN and for a while, a single mom. Being a working woman AND a single mom in the 1960s were definitely not social norms so with both of them came a certain amount of stress. At that point in my mom's life, stress was better than any diet pill that could have ever been on the market. Where most of us eat our stress away, Mom dropped 10 pounds in three days when she was stressed. She simply couldn't eat at these times which meant that at 105 pounds on her 5'4" frame, she really couldn't get a whole lot thinner and not get sick. By this time, she had already been diagnosed with Lupus (something even most doctors at the time knew little if anything about) so throw that into the mix and while Mom had the appearance of the willowy thin Twiggyesque models of the time, her body was anything but healthy.
As the 1960s wore on, Mom got married, but it wasn't particularly a happy marriage and soon she was pregnant. The funny thing about Lupus and pregnancy is, that often the second you conceive, all of your symptoms go away. There is a small percentage of a chance that when the baby is delivered, the Lupus will go into remission. This was not the case for my mom. Her Lupus symptoms did in fact go away during her pregnancy, but her pregnancy was not particularly a pleasant one with all the things going on in her life and the stress took over. She lost tremendous weight and her health took a major hit and she got extremely sick with strep throat. The delivery was no picnic either as she had a reaction to the epidural which nearly killed her, the cord was wrapped around my brother's neck which nearly killed him, and the second she delivered, not only was the Lupus back, but it had affected her kidneys causing her to have Glameral Nephritis. Her kidneys were not good for the rest of her life.
So stress, Lupus, and an unhappy marriage not to mention two kids weighed heavily on my mom and it affected everything from her hormones to her emotional well-being, and her physical health. Through it all though, she tried hard to be a good mom and one thing she learned from her mom was to feed her family well. As a kid though, I don't remember food being a focal point in our life. Maybe it was because there was just too much else going on. In fact, I remember being a rather picky eater who made my parents crazy, as I could out-stubborn them every time when they insisted I eat a food I didn't like. Flaked hominy comes to mind and I, as a very young child would go on a days-long hunger strike before I would touch that icky stuff. Because of this, I was a pretty small child and I was just slightly underweight for the first few years of my life.
My brother and I were also asthmatics at a young age and allergic to many things in our environment. Often our asthma would send us both into all sorts of infections along with bronchitis and pneumonia, causing us to both be on a plethora of antibiotics and steroids. What doctors were thinking back then, I don't know, but changing our diets wasn't at the top of their lists. They treated it all with medications and some of those medications were tough on our little bodies.
In the early 1970s, my mom and dad were finally divorced but dad was still a fixture in our lives which I know was tough on my mom, as he was not particularly kind to her. It was at this time, two things happened in my life that changed my outlook on food and myself and that I have continued to struggle with throughout my life.
At this point in time, my mom was in her mid to late 30s and her hormones and body were starting to change. No longer did stress take the weight right off of her, but instead, it started causing her to gain weight. Part of it too was likely the fact that she became a foodie and spent a lot of time in the kitchen baking. It was also the dawn of fast food and often it was easier for mom to get pizza or burgers than it was for her to think about cooking a full meal. Suddenly our bodies were taking in a lot of carbs, fats, grease, processed food, and sugar that they hadn't before. This was also when diet Pepsi hit the market and we drank diet Pepsi like it was our job. Gone were the days of well-planned and balanced meals. They had been replaced by Mom's emotional eating and our newfound love of fast food, sugar, and artificial sugar. So that was thing one that changed me!
Thing two that changed my world was the fact that I was at that preteen stage of life where I was about to start my period and become a full-fledged teenager. My body held some baby fat, but it was no more or less than any girl at my stage of life, even with our newfound less-than-stellar eating habits. I was an active kid and left to my own devices, my body would have likely self-corrected and been perfectly fine, but Mom took me to a new pediatrician who had different ideas. He told my mom that I was on the heavy end of what I should weigh and that if I wasn't put on a diet right then, I would likely get fat. What was worse, he said it in front of me and fat-shamed me right there in his office. A part of me immediately shut down that day. No one I even knew was fat and yet this doctor had basically told me that I was headed down that path. I was devastated. I thought I must somehow be strange and defective. Now mind you, I was not fat and at 11 years old, that thought should never have been put in my head, but it was, and it was also put in my mom's head. She immediately felt like a failure mom for causing me to be fat (I am sure this was in part due to how she was feeling about her own body at the time) and I immediately lost all sense of my real self and saw myself only as this fat creature that the doctor had created in his office that day. Sadly, I have never looked at food or myself the same way since. If only that doctor knew the life-long damage he caused me that day and likely caused others just like me with his incorrect conjecture and his insensitive words. If only.
(There is a story I am telling here and it will be continued in installments. This was the first installment and I hope that you will continue reading the future installments. I am thinking that some of you will see yourself in parts of this, learn as I am learning and before all is said and done, understand that true change is the only constant in our lives. Until next time.)
