'Maybe your life will be a lighthouse for the other aching hearts'....

22 Jul

Life happened when I stopped focusing entirely on how to shrink myself and starting to focus on how I could expand myself.

yearning to know that there is another way to walk through their years, that there is still hope amid it all.

Inspired by today's passage in Brianna Wiest's beautiful book 'The Pivot Year' I thought I'd share a bit of my story in the hope that it may resonate with those who need to hear it today.

8 years ago I was heavily pregnant, enjoying a daily afternoon nap with the furry one waiting for the arrival of the less furry one. Blissfully naive to what was about to unfold. Becoming a mother for the first time aged 40 was hard and tested me in so many ways. I looked around and my 'village' was nowhere to be seen.

I am an over achiever, everything I do I do with everything I have and I don't fail. Yet here I was failing at motherhood BIG time. I was drowning in a cocktail of exhaustion, anxiety, overwhelm and sadness. The joy I had been anticipating was AWOL.

Enter stage right my old faithful friends, the ones who had always been there for me

The friends who gave me unconditional love

The friends who were always there waiting in the wings

The friends whose presence gave me the ability to calm a frazzled nervous system

The friends who carried me through some tough days with just the thought that they would be there waiting at end the day....

Like Statler and Waldorf sitting up their in their box providing a running commentary they became a little noisy, they became a bit disruptive, they outstayed their welcome.

My old friends aka Food and Alcohol had been there for me in some difficult times, they had been a light in the darkness, they had given me solace through the tears but like some friendships they had started to take more than they were giving. I was beginning to evolve beyond the confines of that relationship. They were holding me back.

These old patterns and coping mechanisms that had lane dormant waiting for an opportunity to revisit were pulling me under.

Fast forward to the moment I was stood in the Tesco Express queue with a screamy 1 year old running amok and a lovely gentleman tapped on my shoulder and asked whether he could hold my shopping whilst I restrained the wee man. The look on his face when he saw that I was clutching a bottle of Malbec and a large bag of Malteser's buttons will haunt me. I felt that judgement deeply and I knew that I wasn't ok.

I had gained weight, my mental health was suffering, I was swinging from feeling completely numb and not present to an onslaught of emotions. My family was bearing the full force of the storm and we were taking on board water, lots of it.

I was so lost, I lost my identity and I knew I was losing my physical self. I was aware that I was using food and alcohol to cope I just didn't know how to stop.

Before I was pregnant I had been a runner, so my go to method to 'sorting myself' out was to start running again. The weight I gained felt heavy and uncomfortable and I wanted rid of it. Losing the weight would mean that I would be ok, life would be good again...

So I embarked on a number of clean eating programmes with HIIT, remember I said I was an overachiever...I smashed the programmes, did all the exercise, ate all the chicken and steamed vegetables, no alcohol, no sugar for 1 month no problem I can do that. I can do anything...

End of the month came, lost weight, felt great, went on holiday, hit a bump in the road and it was less chicken and steamed vegetables and more pass me the Malbec.

This Boom Bust cycle was repeated more times than I care to remember and each time I regained weight that I'd tried so hard to lose. Each time losing more and more of my soul in the process. Fuelled by frustration and shame I started to look for another way.

I embarked on a Health and Nutrition Coaching programme, understanding more about nutrition would be the answer said my cognitive brain.

It really wasn't, satisfying my brain with feeding it more knowledge only served to put me in a place of cognitive dissonance. I understood the health risks of drinking alcohol and yet I continued, using my smarts to take detox supplements to support my liver. I still couldn't get through the day without wanting to eat the entire contents of the cupboard once I'd put the wee man to bed.

Here I was an intelligent woman, capable of so much, I was studying health and nutrition, I had an English degree and diploma in strategic leadership and management for goodness sake, why the heck couldn't I figure this out. The shame was weighing so heavily.

Until one day I woke up.

April 7th 2022, lots of expletives later I accepted the burgeoning knowing that had been garnering strength over the last few years. The small quiet voice was amplified just enough for me to hear.

Enough.

I hadn't particularly planned on quitting alcohol on that day, I had just returned from a gorgeous lodge holiday in the forest, I should've felt rejuvenated and replenished and yet I felt anything but. Exhausted, emotional, frustrated, bloated, grumpy, unwell, grey, heavy (all actual words from my journal on that day)

No more.

I made a promise to myself on that morning and it really was the biggest gift I could've given myself.

I chose ME.

My coaching training has been a voyage of discovery, I have grown so much as a result and have been exploring my own emotional experiences. Building the foundations of emotional awareness, resilience and agility.

Much like a game of Jenga these foundations were now solid enough for me to remove one of the lower layers.

I knew alcohol and food were deeply entwinned and I also knew that I couldn't remove both blocks at the same time without it toppling.

I knew removing alcohol would mean facing everything which I'd been using it to avoid, suppress, numb and calm and I also knew that I could do hard things.

I was ready.

Once my mind was on board I knew I could do this. I satisfied the cognitive part of my brain by immersing myself in all the learning, reading all the books, listening to all the podcasts, engaging with all the social media content.

I went all in.

This time there wasn't any short term mindset, there was a sense of real permanence. I was exhausted with the brain power it was taking to fight the battle every day. I wanted my energy back and I wanted peace from all the noise.

Day by day I woke up and renewed that promise to myself, I did it with compassion and a whole load of curiosity.

Both have led to so much more discovery, much more peeling back layers of understanding and ultimately starting to uncover the root causes of my relationship with food and alcohol. There is so much more to share on this at another point.

Repair not replace.

Once I had gained some momentum and confidence with my new alcohol free life I started to turn my attention to my use of food to manage my emotional state. Oftentimes we end up replacing one substance for another and I knew I need to repair my relationship and not just replace alcohol with chocolate.

The methods I was learning in my health coaching programme focused on motivational interviewing and setting SMART goals. These strategies didn't come close to resolving my food challenges. In actual fact they made them so much worse because then I was stuck in a place of failing at the targets I set for myself. My brain knows that when I feel bad I can eat food to feel better.....

This logical, strategic and counting calories/measurement based method kept me 'in my head' and disconnected from my own body wisdom. My natural appetite, my own nourishment needs and it failed me.

What am I missing?

Why can't I figure this out?

I had in place a number of practices which helped me to regulate my nervous system and be more emotionally responsive rather than reactive so I started the process of excavating the roots. Understanding what needs were going unmet. Looking for the deeper meaning in my food challenges.

I started to focus less on the food and more on my higher goals.

I focused more on what I could add to my life and less on what I had removed.

I expanded the possibilities for connection, joy, learning, laughter, presence.

My new life grew to fill the void which was left by alcohol and my reliance on food started to recede.

I became more emotionally aware and agile and learned how to go with the ebb and flow, the waves were no longer taking me under.

I didn't need another eating plan,

I didn't need an app to tell me what to do,

I didn't need to weigh my food,

I didn't need to count calories,

I didn't need to exercise like a woman possessed,

I didn't need to restrict food

I didn't need to self flagellate myself every time I ate something 'bad'

I just needed to accept myself, accept that I was enough just as I was and that my self worth was not in direct correlation to how much I weighed or what dress size I wore. That I was worthy of nourishing myself, celebrating myself and I was a messy and imperfect human being. That I was enough and I was loved.

Acceptance is a prerequisite for change and for me it was only when I stopped hanging all my future happiness on the goal of losing weight and chose to accept where I was right now that I was able to make small consistent changes and start to turn the ship around.

The excess weight was symbolic of so much that was going on under the surface. It wasn't about the food, it was about why I was overeating in the first place and no diet or eating regime was ever going to 'fix' that.

Our relationship with food can be more challenging as unlike alcohol we can't simply just chose to completely exclude it from our lives. We have to acknowledge it's presence, we have to make peace with it and honour our needs.

That peace is not found from a place of restriction, deprivation and punishment. That peace is found in an exploration of self awareness, self compassion, self love.

You simply can't hate yourself into any kind of sustainable change. I tried this for so many years and it doesn't work.

As I approach my 2 year sober anniversary I am reflecting on how far I have travelled in the last two years. How much I have learned about myself, how much I have healed and how much I have expanded my capacity for life and all that it entails. In opening up to the unwanted emotions I had been shoving down so deep inside I have opened up to more joy, more calm, more peace, more fun, more laughter, more presence, more energy, more patience, more connection, more love, more pleasure.

My life force is vibrating at a higher frequency

Am I diminishing myself or uplifting myself?

Did I lose weight? Well yes, my body started to naturally release the excess weight I was carrying. It was a by-product of the growth elsewhere.

It only happened when I stopped focusing entirely on how to shrink myself and starting to focus on how I could expand myself.

I diverted the brain power needed to restrict and deny my appetite, overrule my body wisdom, control cravings, squash obsessive food thoughts onto ways in which I could elevate my life, my thoughts, my behaviours, my relationships, my work, my impact.

Here I am having channelled all of that life learning into my mission which is to 'help people live a life they no longer need to escape from'.

I'm done with using food and alcohol to escape from my life and other than the odd tough day with my soon to be 8 year old my life is no longer one which I want to escape from.

So that's my story and that's my happy, ever evolving, ending.

Claire Dew