It’s been a couple weeks since I posted a blog! This is always a busy time of year as my son starts school, and I usually begin another enLIGHTen Your Life! mastermind course.
This year, I have two classes beginning at once! Double fun!
It’s also an interesting time because my birthday falls in September too. That, combined with telling my weight loss story to my new classes, has directed me to a more introspective perspective on my journey than usual.
Losing weight permanently opened up my whole world on so many levels. I gained confidence. I took risks I’d never taken before. I began to chart my own destiny in terms of work, relationships, parenting, creativity.
I literally found myself under the layer of insulation I carried for over 20 years.
Perhaps it was my birthday, but I recently thought about what I found when I lost weight from the inside out. What was hiding underneath all that fat?
This is what I found:
I believe this photo was taken on my first birthday because you’ll notice I’m standing by the ice cream churn! My mother used to make homemade ice cream on our birthdays.
No doubt I am waiting for ice cream! Maybe I’ve been churning and I’m taking a break. But this is what I see:
Smallness
Vulnerability
Aloneness
Comfortable with self/body (even wearing just a diaper!)
A sense of beauty (or at least a love of jewelry – notice the heart necklace around my neck! I still have that locket.)
Different-ness (Everyone all around me, including all my cousins, were blonde and blue eyed. My father was Ojibwe and kids at school called me by the lovely nickname “chink” – a racist reference to chinese. I don’t recall ever feel “sameness” – I always felt different.)
Completeness
Sensitivity
And there is something else there – a sense of discernment? A fear? I see that I’m already looking out at the world wondering who will hurt me next. A lot of my fat was built on self-protection. Maybe I’d already experienced being hurt at the age of one. Maybe I had just tried to get to the ice cream before it was finished and been punished! Maybe I was somehow born with it.
But it’s there.
So, what is different today? Everything and nothing.
Smallness / Vulnerability / Aloneness / Comfortable with self/body / Sense-Love of beauty / Different-ness / Completeness / Sensitivity / Fear
It’s all still there.
The only difference is today I recognize it and own it.
Pat, what I see when I look at that picture is also your beautiful, deep, insightful eyes… so much already in such a small person.
I’m glad you are who you are, where you are, and that you are out in the world to do what you do so well!
Huzzah!
Thank you Hanna!
Deeply touched by your words Pat – how true .. we are who we are .. who we have always been. What you seem to have now in addtion is a sense of being at peace with that and an acceptance of this truth and wholeness .. and you share that with us all in what you teach and what you model. Thank you x
It’s interesting to look back and see what’s different and not different. And, for me, I don’t quite know yet, but now I’m going to give it thought.
And what you said about the layers of insulation resonates with me in a powerful way. I feel like I peeled off one of those layers this week when I recognized and owned the fact that I currently weigh 291 pounds. I have many layers left, but I feel myself plowing through them…and I feel strong enough to do it again.
I’m not sure how I was born, but I’m learning who I am now…and actively seeking that “wholeness” along the way.
I love what you said about owning your weight Kenlie! It wasn’t until my 10 year anniversary of losing 74 lbs that I really OWNED it. And I almost immediately began losing more weight then! My fight to keep that 74 lbs had kept me stuck at one weight (good on one hand, because I never went back).
I think knowing, deep in your bones, that what you have lost is REALLY gone is very powerful.
Thanks for commenting!