Feeling Pain

I have spent nearly 5 years trying to make sense of the nonsensical. What is meant for me here? I have grasped tightly on to the notion that there must be something to gain, to learn, to uncover in the hell that has been infertility and pregnancy loss as a way to preserve hope for myself. As the days, months, and now years pass the overwhelming belief that there isn’t a reason or remedy haunts me. Why am I going through this?

A couple weeks ago I was lying in bed and felt the beginning of what would be my period. It’s a swelling signal that radiates throughout my entire body, first beginning in my head and then pulsating in my uterus, permeating every limb. I get dizzy, distracted, and find it hard to concentrate. The fatigue enters every cell as if to prepare me. “Brace yourself,” my body whispers.

I made the mistake of listening to the advice of an Instagram health professional this particular cycle who was touting the benefits of curcumin for pain relief during menstruation. I thought I’d give it a try because at this point…why the fuck not? I took the dose she recommended and then doubled it, nearly tripling it as I felt the wave of pain escalate. I conceded. “Fuck her,” I silently thought. But in reality, “Fuck this. Fuck my body. Fuck endometriosis. Fuck infertility. Fuck it all.”

Pain and anger are ever present during these moments; there is no gratitude journaling my way out of either of these emotions as desperately disappointed as that must make everyone.

When the hot pain arrives, I tolerate it. I wonder how much more intense, how much longer. I know it will end, which is the only saving grace I have in those moments. After about an hour of pain, I begin to cry. It’s a particular cry that I have become familiar with. It’s not the physical pain that brings me to tears, it’s the emotional fatigue. I have spent nearly 10 years cycling through this scenario every month and I’ve grown tired.

My husband lies next to me exhausted from his day. He rolls over and asks if there is anything he can do, although we both know there isn’t. He gets up and gets my heating pad, the bottle of Ibuprofen, a glass of water and returns to massage my leg; on this night, my right leg was in far more pain than my left. It helps, slightly, but ultimately it feels defeating. He tires of massaging and we both know it’s best if he gets rest. I have no choice but to continue to lay in unrest until the pain passes.

Recently, I’ve been working on trying to be present, to come home to myself. “Mediate,” they tell me. I know, I know. I need to meditate and all my life’s problems will be solved. Fuck. Although I cognitively know it would help, I’ve been immaturely resistant to the idea. Sitting with myself inside my body is a discomfort I’ve been avoiding for over a decade.  

I have spent many years of my life, intentionally and unintentionally, disconnecting myself from my physical body; existing outside of myself as a way to keep climbing the proverbial latter of life. Stuffing, hiding, concealing and avoiding the hard stuff in order to get to the things I thought would erase the pain. I assumed both consciously and unconsciously that the disconnection was making me lighter but the weight of the unpacked bullshit has ultimately weighed me down.  

I have come to view my 20s as a hike uphill. I could see in the distance that there was a destination, a stopping point. When anything difficult or challenging would happen, I would put it in my backpack and continue hiking. I kept telling myself, “once we get to the destination then I can put down this backpack and breathe. For now, just keep it moving, we are almost there.” The moment I recognized that my infertility was a real thing, I also recognized that the destination I had been fantasizing about reaching was a mirage. It didn’t actually exist and I could no longer bear the weight of the backpack I had been lugging around. All of this was terrifying.

I spent the first few years of my infertility trying to “fix” my infertility problem. It was more of the same; me believing I could muscle through, figure it out, and get to the next destination. Obviously this strategy hasn’t worked.

I was being forced to pause on my hill and I was frantically searching for a way I could keep moving.  I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be paused. I don’t like it here.  

My frenetic, anxious self was spinning on my hill like the Tazmanian devil trying to make sense of our inability to start our family. Paused, but still moving. When we were all forced into quarantine, it felt to me like the universe picked me up, held me in the air, shook me like a child and yelled, “SIT! Be still! Stop moving!!”

And so I did. And I have been. There has been nowhere to go, nothing to do, no achievements to achieve, no latter to climb. So I have been forced to be still but I have chosen to try and be present and be in my body.  

I don’t like it here, I am reminded over and over.

Just as mandatory lockdowns were beginning last year, I learned I was pregnant but it was soon determined that the pregnancy was ectopic and not viable. I have spent the past year letting go of trying to figure out how to start our family because I’m exhausted. Instead I began trying to figure out how to fix my tired, broken heart.

Being unhappy is inconvenient for other people. It’s uncomfortable.  We assume that we aren’t supposed to feel grief and I certainly don’t want to burden people with mine so I’ve tried my best to shield it. Lately it feels as if its been spewing from my pores.

And because of this perhaps I haven’t been the person who others expect me to be recently. “We just want you to be happy,” they say. “Well, I’m not happy,” I remind them.  The idea that I’m not meeting others’ expectations is upsetting to me but I also feel like the expectation is unrealistic. Someone telling me they want me to be happy when I’m not feels like they’re asking me to be 5’1” when I’m 5’8”…I simply can’t do that.

It doesn’t mean I’m not grateful. I am grateful for so much that I have. But I am also in pain, and it’s pain that I’ve been ignoring for a really long time.

I have been trying to outrun my grief, trying to “fix” it, to manage it. I’ve been spinning yet again, trying to come up with a solution for how I can move through the discomfort of unhappiness and be more pleasant for the sake of others. It’s not been as easy as one might think. 

As I lied there in pain the other night I felt anger and frustration bubble to the surface, simmering underneath the heavy sheet of physical pain. I’m so uncomfortable with my own anger and frustration. I judge myself for it and question it. I try not to feel my anger (not sure if you’ve heard, but people don’t really like angry women). I resist these emotions as if it would help them disappear.

I remember thinking, I don’t want to be here: a familiar desire to leave my own body.  And I went on thinking about all the ways I numb and distract myself in my life from my own feelings, from being present in my body. But this is different, I argued with myself. This is physically painful.  Why would anyone want to be present for this? What is meant for me here?  

And suddenly I understood something I haven’t before: maybe I was meant to feel the pain. That’s it. Nothing more complicated than that. Just be still, exist and feel the pain. Yes it hurts. Yes it sucks. And I’m meant to feel it.  

I’ve become aware that my body has been trying to communicate with me: “You cannot escape this,” she reminds me. “Stop trying to. Feel the pain. It will end.” And I finally hear her.

So I am here. In pain. In sadness. Feeling it. Choosing to not run from it. It hurts but it will end.  

*Note: I wrote this essay yesterday afternoon. Yesterday evening, I approached my husband in a panicked state—frustrated that we don’t have a plan, a next step into how we will start our family. I end with this because my emotions are fickle and temperamental. I am working on trying to create peace but there is still a lot of unrest.

Eff Words

Alrighty. So I have struggled with keeping this blog for many reasons, but one being I felt pigeoned-holed by the name I chose initially (Unearthed Nutrition) and my original intention to use this blog to write professionally. When I say “professionally” I don’t mean that I was hoping to make money off blogging (I hardly know how to get people to read it let alone profit off of it). I am more so referring to the tone of my writing, and my initial intention to make the “content” food/health/nutrition related and share information from the perspective of a registered dietitian.

I am still a registered dietitian, and I do love what I do, but when I thought about what I would like to write about I started thinking of things that are currently on my mind. I then realized that all these words start with F. So there you go.

I don’t have a specific intention with blogging this time. But I know that when I write it helps me give meaning to things that sometimes feel meaningless otherwise. So, I guess that’s what I hope to do here…give meaning to my experiences. I don’t know.

Fuck it. The last and ultimate F word.

My Review of Taylor Swift's Miss Americana

I watched Miss Americana last night and I’m having a hard time getting past one of the last interviews Taylor gave in the documentary. She was passionately talking about reframing ideas she has about what it means to be a woman by challenging negatively constructed female archetypes (the bitch, the slut, etc.) It was awesome. And then…she apologizes.

“Sorry…that was a soapbox.” Taylor catches herself and IMMEDIATELY says, “why did I say sorry?” to which the interviewer responds, “because we are trained to say sorry.” 

Taylor then parodies herself, poking holes in the ridiculousness of apologizing for something that didn’t warrant one. And it didn’t. She was enthusiastically speaking about a topic she seemed knowledgable and interested in, in her own house that she bought with her money from songs she wrote about her life to an interviewer for a documentary about herself. The fact that she apologizes is actually insane. And she seemed to know it.  

But a lot of us do that, don’t we? Especially women.

I think it’s likely we’ve been conditioned to apologize for any slight inconvenience we feel we might impose—not because we are always actually sorry—but because we’ve been taught to try and make other people comfortable, sometimes at our own expense. 

Which brings me to a major theme of the documentary: the call to be a “good girl.” Taylor says, “my entire moral code, as a kid and now, is a need to be thought of as ‘good.’” She describes her experience of seeking external validation and constructing her identity around achieving praise, approval and applause from others. She explains how quickly and easily that came crashing down when it was taken away, causing her to question her value.

Although most people will never experience Taylor Swift-like stardom, the desire for acceptance is universal. Most people can relate to the idea of seeking external validation. It doesn’t have to be winning a Grammy or having millions of Instagram followers. It could be getting a college degree, making a certain amount of money, getting a promotion, buying a house, having a baby, etc. Of course there is nothing wrong with any of those things—but the idea that the grass is greener doesn’t hold up and achieving those things only for the expected positive reinforcement will ultimately prove to be an unsustainable way to cultivate self-worth.

What I find most interesting and important to highlight is the reward/condemnation trap that exists for women with regard to their appearance, their age, and their ability to be uncontroversial and likeable: the praise women receive for being young, thin, pretty, and charming versus the fear that exists for women to be anything other than those things, because ultimately, there is a price to pay for bulldozing female expectations.

There are some obvious examples of this in the documentary. Taylor describes receiving positive reinforcement for being “nice,” staying quiet about political issues, and fitting into sample size dresses. “A nice girl doesn’t force their opinion on people. A nice girl smiles and waves and says thank you. A nice girl doesn’t make people feel uncomfortable with her views,” she explains. She also acknowledges the unspoken but seemingly obvious expiration date that exists for women in her profession, highlighting the asset her youth has been thus far.

Conversely, she was confronted with a pregnancy rumor early in her career when a photo showed her tummy sticking out ever-so-slightly (like all tummies will) which ultimately, she explains, contributed to her poor body image and disordered eating behaviors. We also see a pretty intense conversation where she receives heavy pushback regarding speaking up on a political issue . And she explains that she worries about whether she will be able to make her career sustainable as she ages. “As I’m reaching thirty I’m like, ‘I want to work really hard...uhm...while society is still tolerating me being successful.’”

The documentary highlights, through the lens of a pop star, an omnipresent message that most women recieve: stay young, stay small, stay pleasing.

This isn’t just an expectation for Taylor Swift; it’s a ubiquitous female experience in my opinion. It’s no wonder we are constantly apologizing. “I’m sorry” is the buffer between who we are and who we are taught we’re supposed to be.

Towards the end of the documentary Taylor acknowledges that it felt good to not be “muzzled” but admits that being muzzled was her own doing. She said she needed to learn before she spoke. What’s problematic, in my opinion, is when women learn but don’t speak. Adult women can’t rely on the world to change without changing their own behavior…without changing the way they operate in the world. So I am going to work on my own apologizing when it’s not needed. Because apologizing for things I don’t need to be sorry for is only perpetuating a false belief that there is less space for girls to make mistakes, and be loud, and messy, and opinionated. And girls should be allowed to be all of those things without having to be sorry for it. Girls should be allowed to break free from the restrictions of being a “good girl.”

Taylor said it best when, instead of apologizing, she asked for forgiveness (I believe from her father) for doing something she felt passionately about that he didn’t want her to do: “I need you to forgive me for doing it. Because I’m doing it.”

With the exception of that dude proposing to his girlfriend in front of Taylor and Taylor transporting her cat in a backpack…the documentary was great.

It's Why I'm a Dietitian

It’s the, “are we being good or bad tonight?” inquiry before the waiter even approaches the table. It’s your adult friend pacing around your kitchen island until her Fitbit vibrates; the 10,000 step benchmark distracting her from really listening to you talk about your hard day. It’s the “I like to drink my carbs, not eat them” comment from the two middle aged women you’re waiting on who order two bottles of wine and two salads at their 2pm lunch date…how fitting.

It’s the woman in her closet trying on clothes she fit in before she gave birth and crying because she feels like she has lost a part of herself—a former self, who fit in clothes a little bit smaller—and feeling like somehow she has failed. It’s the woman beaming from the surprise of her engagement but ultimately worried about the weight she believes must lose to be deserving of getting married.

It’s “friends just being friends” and telling one another that certain clothing reveals too much muffin top or not enough cleavage, despite asking whether it's comfortable or appealing to the person with the body who is wearing it.

It’s the Keto diet, or the “I’m not eating carbs” comment, or Weight Watchers. It’s the “ice cream is bad for you” declaration and the removal of this delicious item from the home in an attempt to protect innocent lives from it’s perceived viciousness.

It’s the doctor who tells a minor that they are “overweight” and instructs the parent to better supervise their child’s eating and exercise behavior because, even though the prevalence of eating disorders in adolescents is higher, the doctor is more concerned about type II diabetes.

It’s the questioning of someone’s weight, veiled as “concern,” without inquiry into their mental health, their happiness; devoid of any respect for the individual’s knowledge of their own body’s physical and medical wellbeing.

It’s a celebrity’s restrictive diet and women trying to simulate it. It’s a 14 year old girl wondering why her mom is doing a juice cleanse and questioning whether she needs to do the same. And the 11 year old girl not knowing what to eat because her doctor told her to “take it easy on the carbs” and she doesn’t know what carbs are or why she must “take it easy on them.” It’s the 17 year old girl not caring about her SATs because 75% of her day is spent thinking about whether her appearance is acceptable enough to survive senior year.

It’s puberty, is pregnancy, it’s post-partum, it’s menopause. And it’s every single life experience in between. It’s women’s ever-changing bodies and a deep seeded belief system that resists these changes. And it’s women trying to cope with it all… ultimately, rejecting and resisting their changing bodies too.

And it’s why I’m a dietitian. Because, like many other women, I too was once that young girl who became so distracted by the dissatisfaction of my own body that I lost focus on things that were actually important. Yet, while I have spent years learning how to protect myself and see through the bullshit, I witness others being suffocated by it on a daily basis. And I just want to clear the air so people can b.r.e.a.t..h.e.

And so I do my best to help individuals make peace with food and their bodies, promote positive changes, and reduce shame…but sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough and very often feels like swimming against the current. I just really, really want young girls to be afforded the opportunity to work towards goals other than getting a “bikini body.”

But we have to do it together.. All of us. Parents, doctors, nurses, school teachers, coaches, counselors, and even dietitians…all of us influence a child’s perception of their body and their health and so it is wise to heal our own relationships with food and our bodies to prevent our shame from continuing to persist through generations. Because, believe it or not, young girls who become adult women aren’t born hating their bodies…they are conditioned to do so.

Here are some really great resources to start:

Anti Diet by Christy Harrison

Body of Truth by Harriet Brown

Body Kindness by Rebecca Strichfield

Body Respect by Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor

Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch