This post is going to be about the movie Penelope. And pants. And wisdom teeth. And crying. Lots of crying. And running in circles. And vegetable soup. And learning to love yourself. Interested? Keep reading.
First of all, let me say how hard this post has been for me to write. It’s been hard for several reasons. One, because not a lot of people know about what we’re going to talk about. (I actually think only about five people know.) Two, because not everyone who does know about what we’re going to talk about has reacted positively. And three, because sometimes I still struggle with everything I’m about to talk about, so really, who am I to give advice?
So let’s just pretend you’re my best friend, and we’re sitting on the couch eating popcorn, talking about our feelings. Because trust me, this post is going to be full of feelings.
Now, where to start?
Has anyone ever noticed that I don’t have any pictures posted from my year-and-a-half LDS mission to Belgium and the Netherlands? For a girl who loved her mission as much as I did, this might seem a little strange.
Are you ready to find out why?
It’s kind of a long story.
First the facts.
Fact: On my mission, I gained 50 pounds. There, I said it. Everyone who teased me about gaining weight before I left? (All teasing which was done in good humor.) You were right. Not only did I gain weight, but I gained A LOT of weight. And I was well aware of it. See, the Dutch are a very blunt people, and they had no problem letting me know I had gained the extra pounds. In fact, they frequently came right out and told me. Want to know what the Dutch word for fat is? Dik. (And yes, it is pronounced just like that.) Try being called that multiple times a day and see what it does for your self-esteem. I was the “stevig” sister. (FYI-Mountains are supposed to be stevig, not 21-year-old-girls.)
Fact: My journey to lose that weight was very bittersweet. Mostly bitter, long and frustrating, but sweet in it’s own spiritually enlightening ways. The spiritually enlightening part is what prompts me to share my story with you. Perhaps in re-living all I went through, I’ll be able to help someone else. And if not, I’m pretty sure that this is the first time I’ve actually written this all out, so I’m sure it will have plenty of therapeutic value for me.
Let’s go all the way back to January 2010. The start of a new year. For me, this was a very needed new year. 2009 was not a highlight year for me. January 2010 found me home in Kentucky, one month away from starting my year-and-a-half LDS mission in Belgium and the Netherlands. I was ecstatic to be home, and more than ready to leave for what I felt like I had waited my whole life for.
Part of preparing to leave on my mission required me to get my wisdom teeth out. Getting my wisdom teeth out was MISERABLE. Seriously, everything that could go wrong did. I ended up getting several infections and dry sockets and all kinds of other gross stuff. Because of all this mess, I ended up being on a liquid only diet for about 3 weeks.
As miserable as my liquid diet was (really though, how many PediSures a day can you drink?), at the end of the 3 weeks I remember getting on a scale and BOOM, I had lost 20 lbs. Whaat? Now, I had never been one to care too much about my weight, but for the first time ever, people started commenting on it, for positive reasons. I would go out with friends and everyone would go, “Oh my gosh, Jane, you look so great, how did you do it?” etc.
How perfect! I thought. I’m about to go on my mission (something that stereotypes say tends to make girls gain weight) and I’m already losing weight. Say goodbye to the fat sister missionary rumors, I got this. Before I left I bought a super skinny pair of skinny pants. My goal was to bring them on my mission with me, and they could serve as my “goal pants.” As long as I could fit into them, I would be ok.
Well guess what? It didn’t take too long living in Belgium before my pants didn’t fit. Like at all. And despite what everyone may think, I really hadn’t changed my lifestyle that much. I wasn’t eating frietjes or donors for every meal. I was exercising every morning and we walked everywhere. But for some reason, my beautiful, beloved goal pants no longer fit.
Cue my freak-out.
At first I was responsible, I tried cutting out sugar from my diet, bread, dairy. I tried every trick I knew but for some reason, not only was I not losing weight, I kept gaining it. Comments from people kept coming into my head. Guy friends teasing me, “Now don’t come back all fat on us!” Or people commenting on how skinny I was when I left. It was somewhere in this whirlwind of words that I started losing myself. I began to hate what I was becoming. I felt trapped in a body that wasn’t mine.
What followed next wasn’t pretty. And I’m going to do my best to be honest with you. Without the knowledge of my companions, family, or those around me, I started taking laxatives like crazy. People would notice if I threw up, I thought, but no one would notice if I just had bowel movements frequently. I drink a lot of water right? Besides, throwing up would mean I had an eating disorder, and this wasn’t one of those.
Oh Jane. I look back at this time and wish I could just give myself a big hug. Not only was I hurting my body, but I was hurting my spirit as well. I would cry every night and write in my journal about how I hated my body. I would curse myself inside for being so fat, for not having better self control, for not being prettier.
It didn’t take long before all those laxatives started having an effect on my body. To my dismay, however, I wasn’t losing weight as drastically as I wanted to, I was simply getting sick. I would have terrible stomach pains, I would throw up, I wouldn’t be able to breathe properly. My companions and others started to notice, but no one but me knew why. I went to countless doctors looking for a “cure” to my stomach pains, but never let on that I might have known why they were happening.
One particularly miserable night I ended up crying to one of my companions about how fat I felt and how much I hated my body and how it wouldn’t change. To her eternal credit, my companion responded with something I will never forget.
“Have you ever seen the movie Penelope?”
“...yes…”
“So remember how much she hated her pig-nose and wanted to do whatever she could to change it?”
“Yeah.”
“And remember how she thought it would take a man to break the spell and make her beautiful again?”
“Yeah sure.”
“Well, if you remember correctly, her hating on herself and waiting for someone else to change her body didn’t help at all. It only made her more frustrated. What finally made her change was when she accepted herself the way she was and learned to love herself in spite of it. Maybe that’s what you need to do. Maybe if you stopped hating your body, and learned to love it, things would change.”
What finally made her change was when she accepted herself the way she was and learned to love herself in spite of it.
This was what I had been missing. In my heart I knew immediately that it was true. I had been so angry at myself, at my body, at everything around me that it was literally killing me inside. I needed to learn to be happy and love myself the way I was. If I could do that, if I could learn to be grateful for the body that God had given me, and learn to love and respect it, maybe things could get better.
What happened next wasn’t easy. It’s always after moments of enlightenment that the real trials start, right? I had developed a lot of bad habits. I had to retrain my brain to think positively about myself and my body. I had to replace bad habits like taking laxatives with prune juice for every meal to better ones like running in the morning and eating homemade vegetable soup. I began to really study the what it meant to be a daughter of God and why He loved me.
IT WAS REALLY HARD.
But, and this is the important part, it worked. Once I stopped focusing on losing the weight, once I stopped cursing myself every time I looked in the mirror, once I remembered that it wasn’t my looks that defined me, the weight came off. And I felt lighter--inside and out. It was easier to laugh, easier to love, and I felt closer to my Heavenly Father and Savior Jesus Christ than ever, which in turn made me a better missionary.
The process was long, it was hard, and it continued to be something I dealt with when I returned from my mission. But I didn’t give up, I kept trying to love my body and be grateful for the blessing it was in my life. Upon coming home I tried opening up with those around me about what I had experienced. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in the beginning, not everyone reacted positively. (One person actually accused me of being a sinner, and told me they would have to try hard not to think less of me because of it.)
But no matter what people said, or what people will say, in reaction to this post, I’m grateful for everything I experienced. While I wouldn’t want to relive it, I’m grateful for what I learned. I learned that my body doesn’t define me. I learned that it is so so important to love myself the way I am. I learned that God loves me and wants me to know that I am His daughter. I learned that Jesus Christ is my Savior and with His help I can overcome hard things. I learned that it’s ok to not be ok, and that things will always get better.
So I guess that’s my message to anyone out there who may be struggling like I did. Who maybe hates their body or thinks that they’ve failed and are defining themselves for all the wrong reasons. My message to you is to learn to accept yourself the way you are and love yourself in spite of it. None of us are ever going to be perfect. While that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t always be trying to improve ourselves, it also doesn’t mean that we need to kill ourselves if we can’t fit into our college jeans forever. If we can learn to love ourselves, I have complete faith that our bodies will end up they way God intended them to be, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll learn to be ok with that.
If you’re struggling now, it’s ok. You’re not a bad person. If anything, I can tell you from personal experience that what you’re going through can ultimately become a spiritually building experience for you, if you’ll let it. Turn to your Father in Heaven and Savior Jesus Christ. I have a feeling this is a problem they deal with on a regular basis.
Today I have an amazing husband who tells me every day he loves me, not because I’m skinny, but because I’m beautiful, just the way I am. He hugs my hips and loves my curves. And I’m better because I love myself too. I get better every day, and when I struggle I remember that I’m a daughter of God and because of that, I can let go of the rest.
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| Pure happiness. Loving myself, and loving life. :) |
