PART TWO

Of the many conflicting messages received from mommy-dearest growing up, these two were on her high-frequency-repeat playlist: “It’s ok dear, you’ll lose the weight.” and “Go ahead – stuff your face!”

The first message was meant as empathy whenever I expressed discomfort with my physical condition. The second was intended to reassure me that food was the solution to all of life’s problems so “fill your plate and then some more”. 

I was raised by a woman born two years prior to the start of WWII. As a GenX’er I learned a lot more about the Silent Generation than most of my peers who were raised by Baby Boomers.

Given the era she was raised in, and despite growing up on a farm by the sea with a fisherman for a father, food scarcity was never far from my mother’s mind. Comfort from homemade preserves (pickled or jammed), baked goods and as many fruits as you could stuff your face with, were her go-to.

She weighed not much more than 130lbs well into her fifties. She walked for exercise, jogging when the odd occasion inspired her, and before my father pulled the plug on their marriage she once splurged on a Racquetball Club membership. 

After their break-up things got rough for her financially, fast. She had to pay the bills with a pittance for child support, tried to hold down three part time jobs, and was terrible with her income taxes. (Ironically my father was a Chartered Accountant, among other things.)

Referring back to PART ONE, here’s where the book What Happened To You?, my quest for unconditional self-love (no matter what body shape), and my family history of conditional love – all converge:

Though she towed the church-lady line that “All of us are created equal”, mother’s thoughts, words and deeds were out of alignment. Since she struggled to find a suitable partner post-divorce, any time she spotted a couple where the man was long and lean and the wife plump and short, I came to expect her bitter tone as she’d whisper under her breath something like, “That’s ridiculous. If SHE can get a man, why can’t I? Disgusting. What does he see in her?”

As I edged nearer to being a highly self-conscious tween, there were many times I’d witness Mom’s anxiety attacks over her newly impoverished life. Her inability to find a full time teaching job, bussing all around town when called in for substitute teaching, being too proud to collect pogey while struggling to pay all the utilities some months, weighed on her mind and heart heavily.

Down on her luck she was a real trooper, but mostly she was down on herself. By the time I turned twelve, the more she braved the waters of expressing her discontent aloud at home. Like that summer’s day inside our apartment she stood angrily in front of me with shorts on, grabbed both upper inner thighs with both hands and fumed, “No wonder no man wants me! Look at this flab!”

Small-framed Mom was feeling unhappy, unlucky and unlovable. She made it very clear that her body was not good enough to serve her needs. I was 40 lbs heavier than her at this time. That was when I learned to truly hate my body too.

In the eight grade, while many other girls were socializing on sports teams, I spent my evenings and weekends at the local rec-centre wearing a Jane Fonda-esque one-piece lycra, quietly sweating to the oldies with the older ladies. I spent my time as far away from any peer group as possible, fearing judgement for my off-trend hand-me-downs, and the body that overflowed inside them.

Plenty of older women in my group fitness classes watched me shrink in my lycra from 170lbs down to 140lbs in an unhealthy window of three months. All impressed by my progress, the attention was addictive. No one there more aware than I, of how much the feeling of hunger made the workouts extra hard. Some days I nearly fainted.

I trained myself to love the feeling of starvation as my mark of progress, power and commitment to be lovable one day.

My father, a Sunday dinner’s by invitation-only kind of father, was a large man. Tall and wide. He had a food addiction, a smoking addiction, a work addiction, a power addiction and though it was well hidden, he lacked impulse control.

When he was angry he was absolutely terrifying… even on his 70th birthday when he threw a temper tantrum for not getting his own way over his birthday cake. (Though I nearly laughed at him that time since four toddlers were present to witness his outburst.)

In all fairness he was recovering from a brain tumour so I resisted, but I had reason to find humour in it.

In our rare encounters while they were still married, before he left my Mom, I recall many times cowering under the kitchen table from his temper. I even managed to run away from a spanking once until he grabbed me by the scruff of my neck (I was seven). When he caught me, he spun me around so hard my head hit the bannister of my grandmother’s front porch. The colour of red must’ve switched his impulse control back on, since he wept from guilt as my nose bled.

He was a tyrant or a teddy bear depending on the company, time-of-day, and mood. Before he died at 74 he claimed to me that incident (at grandmother’s) was the one thing he feared made him a monster in my eyes forevermore, and that he could never quite “get through to me” after that. He was wrong. He only became a monster after he attempted to sexually and psychologically abuse my sister in her twenties.

He also neglected to recall all the events he didn’t show up at, the phone calls he never instigated to check in on me as a teen or young adult. But the one way he did seem to express his love towards us was when we were well-groomed and looked “pretty”.

By all accounts growing up, my child-brain interpreted that looking appealing would gain affection, attention, and love from my father… and eventually, all men in positions of power in my life. 

In What Happened To You? Oprah says, “…for most children divorce is like a death. And if one parent is no longer available, it impacts the areas of the brain involved in shaping self-worth. The sense of self informs every relationship or decision we make as we move through life. And when children don’t feel respected by the decisions of their parents, their beliefs about how they are valued are crushed.”

I’ve known for a long time that my childhood’s “little t” traumas have been the source of much self-doubt throughout my adult life. So it’s presently reassuring to read Oprah’s book because it explains how both “big T” and “little t” traumas impact brain development in children.

My new understanding of hindered brain development as a result of childhood trauma provides some hope, proving I’m not as “crazy” as I thought in my struggle to find self-love and to self-regulate my harmful thoughts when things go sideways. It’s a learned behaviour which I can UNLEARN.

And as for whether or not I found self-love while on vacation this week, or how much of it was found, I believe I’ve caught it by the tail. I’m not letting it go this time. No matter how flabby or fit I’m feeling physically, my goal henceforth is to love myself on the inside, outside, and all of the in-between.

I’m a work in progress. But aren’t we all? 

By Penny Greening