Conflict and Transcendence

As I sit here with this gorgeous view around me, I feel so blessed. Not just because I am here in a beautiful place with a wonderful friend and at peace. But more because I feel blessed for the thought process I have had the opportunity to develop. I have many friends, family, teachers, counsellors to thank for that thought process, who will not be named but, if they are reading this, know what they mean to me. More importantly I have had many situations that life has put me through which forced me to re-examine, rethink, re-evaluate and respond.

We all grow up with a certain framework of thoughts and beliefs. These are shaped by close family and then by friends, teachers and other influences and then by what we choose to consume. Of course all of this falls under the umbrella of the societal framework relevant to the times we are in. And this framework has both the capacity to build us up and bring us down — in fact it is a combination of both.

My framework was one of knowing that if I set my mind to doing something I would succeed, but also that, as long as I am fat, I am not OK or enough for the world. I am sure you can imagine how these opposites clashed in my head. Because even though I achieved everything I set my mind to, the one thing I never achieved was adequate weight loss and, therefore, irrespective of what I did, I was not enough and could never be. This war raged on for years causing me deep misery until I decided my beliefs needed a little fact checking.

Already, with all the alternative healing practices I had been studying, many lies and truths were being redefined and recalibrated. Perhaps that opening of mind led to my questioning the belief that I could never be enough as long as I was fat, and therefore made me feel the need to look at this. Honestly, I am not sure of the trigger but I do know that I was so desperate to quell the voices in my head telling me I was a failure that I decided I need to question the voice itself. And that led me down a rabbit hole…

I discovered that there were women in bodies like mine living in radical acceptance of themselves and sharing the joy with the world.

I discovered that my body could walk 30kms in 6 hours, every day and kept getting stronger and faster even if not lighter.

I discovered that there was no health problem exclusive to fat people.

I discovered that there were studies disproving that fat was always unhealthy and showing that in fact there were lower mortality rates among fat people who had lifestyle diseases.

I discovered fat competitive dancers and ironman participants and yoga teachers.

I discovered health at every size and intuitive eating.

More than anything else I discovered that I could stop hating my body and seeing it as my biggest setback.

I discovered that I could heal and develop a new relationship with my body.

I discovered that there were people across the world working towards fat acceptance and fat liberation.

Very recently I have discovered the intersection of religion, politics, race and capitalist greed that finds it useful to demonise fat and fat people.

And with every new thing I learnt I have discovered another part of me and been able to integrate it. Ameya’s and my shared “therologer” wrote a blog post that I read yesterday. My understanding of what she said is that when we have two parts of our personality that are in conflict with each other, all we can do is hold space for them and hopefully we will experience a “transcendent whoosh” of a different thought process emerging.

I think the conflict within me of being someone who makes an impact versus being useless in my fat body birthed the transcendent whoosh of fat liberation and acceptance. And so I feel blessed, for the belief and the conflict that led me here. As I always say, let’s do the research. We are in unprecedented times when information is available to us at the click of a button. Let’s use it to build ourselves up and forge a new way…. or a new whoosh…