Love

Love

Why do we over eat things when we know we’re not supposed to? People talk about learning to eat properly and I have trouble with that statement. I think we all know how to eat from a logical standpoint. We know our food groups, we know fruits and veggies are supposed to fill our days. We know we need protein and a little fat to keep us healthy. We know fast food is bad for us. We know everything should be in moderation. Even if we were brought up in a cave, our bodies know, they tell us through our weight, our blood, our energy levels and so on. Why do we do it then? Why do we put more and more inside ourselves? I have learned that it all comes down to one thing: Love. Our ability to feel love is what effects the way we treat our bodies. Whether we are overweight or have an eating disorder, it all comes down to our ability to feel love. I am talking about both the love of the outside world, and the love we have for ourselves (or in this case often don’t have). When we feel loved, I mean really feel it, we don’t want to abuse ourselves in any way. When we feel loved, we cherish ourselves, we protect ourselves, we hold ourselves in high esteem. The world can be a lonely place right now. It isn’t the way it was in the past with neighborhood get togethers and stay at home moms. (Though many people are beginning to try to regain this.) Families aren’t together in the same town anymore. People lose touch. People keep to themselves and are less likely today than ever before to really reach out and take in new friends. People are lonely. The world can be full of judgement right now. The media (including television and movies) portrays an image of women (and men too) that is physically impossible for most people to reach. Why do you think many celebrities, men and women, suffer from eating disorders? Even they cannot reach the standards that so many of us are holding ourselves and each other to at this time. We hear all the time that only 2% of the population can look the way we think we all should look. At the same time, obesity rates are gaining at a rapid pace, and more individuals are finding themselves faced with eating disorders in many forms. The two are definitely tied together. Most of us spend so much time in our heads thinking of the things we dislike about our bodies, more than we think good thoughts toward ourselves. We’re lonely, making us feel disconnected and therefor unloved. We’re ashamed because our bodies don’t look like the cookie-cutter mold that they’re supposed to, a mold that in most of our eyes would definitely bring more love into our lives. There is no miracle cure for this. It all comes down to the individual, as it always does. We can’t sit and wait for others to come to us and love us. We have to learn how to love ourselves and to feel loved even in our loneliest moments. More than relearning how to eat, we need to relearn how to think about ourselves. This is a time of individuals more than groups. People stand on their own these days more than ever before. If you can get to the point where you feel love within yourself, no matter what is going outside of you, you will find peace with yourself, your body, and no longer have the urge to hurt yourself. Whether we are overeating or purging, we are hurting ourselves. We are punishing ourselves for not being good enough, for not being strong enough, appealing enough, and lovable enough. But we are. Every one of us is beautiful, sexy, strong, appealing and lovable. We’re not supposed to look or be like each other. We are individual reflections of God, and we are what He wants us to be. Finding your way back to love can be easy or hard, depending on how much you doubt your worth, how long you’ve let yourself think badly about you. This is how I began my process. For everyone it will be a little different, but this can be a sort of guide on your way to rediscovering that self-love we are all born with. The realization that I didn’t feel love took awhile to come upon. I don’t have a lot of family, but what I have is very important to me. My mother, two younger brothers, my husband and my son are all important and close to me. And yet I often had trouble believing in their love as well. I had convinced myself so much that I was unlovable, that I didn’t always trust what they said, their motives for saying or doing things, or their stability in my future. Two things played big roles in discovering I was worthy of love. One was my son. As he grew into a toddler I was able to see more and more the love he held for me. He saw me as beautiful, wonderful, extremely loving and lovable. He didn’t know about anything in my past, he didn’t see my mistakes or pain. He just saw me, the real core of me. Most importantly, he felt my unconditional love for him and responded to it in kind.The second thing was my dad. After a bitter divorce between my parents when I was 27, my dad separated from all of us and started a new life with a new woman. He was often very unkind in things he said of us to others, and even to us. The couple years after the divorce were really only a magnification of what had been going on subtly for years. I know he loved us all, but he was never good at love. He didn’t trust people’s love and I had learned this from him. He also didn’t really know what love is and seemed to think it was made up of pity and the ability to lean on others. Because of these things I had to do something I would have never thought I’d have to do with my dad – take him out of my life, step away from him and move on. It was painful and extremely disappointing. But through it I had the opportunity to learn that the idea of a father is not limited to one man in our lives. I learned that God is our one true parent. God is our Father and our Mother. God is not some distant spirit, but is right here with me every single day. He has plans for me, dreams for me, bigger than anything I could imagine. And most importantly, His love for me is beyond anything I could ever fathom. That love is there every moment for every
one of us, filling us up. I hope that I never find myself in the position of having to spend every moment of every day for the rest of my life without any human companionship. But if that would happen, I now know that I would never really be alone. My Father and Mother, my Best Friend, my true Companion would be there every second of every day loving me. Knowing that someone as big and powerful as God loves me, knowing it to my core, has allowed me to begin to see how lovable, beautiful and wonderful I really am. There are still moments when I question these things, but these questions and moments of self-doubt and self-destruction are getting fewer and farther between. By exploring my worth and my innate love, I am beginning to find my passions and my purpose in life. All these things are pointing me on a path to self-fulfillment in which I am full of love more than I have been in a long time. Now that I am feeling more loved within myself, I am not looking as much to the people around me for that love. I am finding more peace around others, more ability to trust them and their love for me, more moments of happiness and joy and fulfillment than of self-loathing. All abusive eating habits are self-punishment. When we love ourselves, no matter our size, shape, look, we no longer feel the need to punish. Instead we feel the need to inspire, to lift up, to stand strong and proud. I want this for everyone out there who has ever felt a moment of self-loathing. You are loved beyond your wildest dreams. You are cared for, you are protected and you are beautiful and strong. Embrace it and learn to believe it.