painting my fear

this artist, lee price, has captured the madness of eating disorders so powerfully i felt naked and sucker punched while looking at them. it has been over a decade since my own descent into this hell and they took me back instantly. it was visceral.

many are titled "self portraits" so she knows this pain personally.

Lee Price: American Figurative Realist Oil Painter

you don't just have a body, you ARE a body

awoke early to a quiet, christmas light filled home. so i lit my candles and sat in silence, waiting. it was a beautiful way to start the day.

after my knees gave out i sat on the stool, bemoaning the creaks i felt from the fall i took the other day. still so thankful nothing broke, but feeling every one of my 41 years.

i moved over to the computer and opened my email. each day i start with the storypeople. today's message said that he gets along much better with his relatives now that most of them are dead. it made me smile.

then i moved on to the newsletter from CBE - christians for biblical equality. they are a voice crying in the wilderness for me. i clicked on their newsletter and saw that this one focused on eating disorders and the church, body image and raising ourselves and our daughters to be engaged with their appetites, both sexual and regarding food. those two always go hand in hand.

i will link to all of the rich and wonderful articles here so you don't miss any, but i want to highlight the largest ah-ha i had this morning (many more will follow) that said "you don't just have a body, you are a body". obvious, eh? not for me.

the dualism that we, especially in the church, view our bodies with nears gnostic heretical proportions. did you know that rates for eating disorders are higher at christian colleges than others? something is drastically wrong with our theology and the way we are raising our girls.

i am a body. it's supposed to be that way. god made me that way. light bulb.

shocking that at 41 it had never occurred to me that it was not just a necessary evil, but that it's where i am, and the holy spirit is to dwell. it's always felt like two separate things. my body was (is, if i am really honest with myself) a curse. something that traps the real me inside who so longs to be free. lots of maintenance and much shame is associated with it. like i said in a post months ago, in my world women were either cooking meat or a piece of meat. there was no in between in my childhood.

i am a body.

i think i started to understand this a bit when i was pregnant with my kids. it was the first, and really, again, if i'm honest, the only times i have ever felt present in my body for extended periods of time. reading that back i realize how very lame (and sad) that is. i know much of what these articles explain is so necessary for me to understand. remedial, basic principles are necessary to re-wire the messed up circuitry in my head.

realizing things like this re-ignites the anger and betrayal i feel toward those in power in the church. i want them to have to answer for the mess they've made. disengaging generations of women from their bodies, the bodies god intended for them to inhabit and indwell, animate and engage the universe in. now you're reaping what you have sown. brokenness, confusion, inability to engage, addiction and even death. i hope it tastes like dust, cobweb filled dust.

i am a body. you can't take that away from me now. i will teach it to every woman, girl, boy and man i am able to. you are a body too. god meant it that way.

here are the articles from the newsletter:

• editors note - megan gruelich

• sheltering the body - lillian calles barger

• the church, sexuality and eating disorders - cissy brady-rogers

• body issues among the body - malia k.h. freeburg

• modesty - a word for boys and girls - marissa cwick

• disordered eating in the church - joy elasky fleming and bruce c.e. fleming

all artwork is done by eric nykamp of eyekons - read his story here:

about the artist

good question

tim asked in the comments "How did you come to realize you were addicted? What made you want to change?"

great question!

it probably started with my food, yah, definitely started with my food. it was when i finally got pregnant (infertility for 6 years) and realized that i was going to have to be responsible for teaching another human being how to eat. gulp...

i was making chocolate chip cookie dough (from memory, didn't even have to look at the recipe anymore - you know it's bad then...) nearly every other night and eating 1/2 of it raw, and baking cookies the next day, and consuming most of them.

i was hiding food, binging or starving myself, forgoing meals so that i could eat junk food and hiding to eat. that's especially when i knew it was at it's worst.

the car fools you into thinking you are eating in public, but it's a very private place. drive thru's or convenience stores were my best friend.

i can remember standing in front of the store clerk or donut shop worker, looking at the candy bars or donuts and lying "hmmmm, which kind did they want? i can't remember, i think my husband wanted these". while i knew the whole time i was going to eat them all myself - in a window of less than 30 minutes.

i never purged though, well through laxatives or vomiting. sexual addiction actually became my purge.

the cycle of shame drove me from the one to the other over and over. i felt like a gerbil on a wheel, or the stuff that circles the bowl as you flush - so out of control, and totally like a victim.

the other thing that happened around this time is that i became violent with my husband. it was ugly. there were about three times that i attacked him. (boy this is hard to write). he's a really big guy, and worked in corrections, so he knew how to restrain me in love while i spit, struggled and swore at him.

that was 'the bottom' for me. they say that you won't get help unless you hit bottom. i knew that if this wasn't the bottom somebody would probably have to die to get my attention.

it was also at that time that i finally heard the words 'compulsive overeater'. how could i have lived 30 years and not ever heard that term? i used to pray in high school that i could make myself throw up, so that i could be bulimic and get some help.

back in 1981 one of my friends my sophomore year was hospitalized for anorexia, i was so jealous. she was getting help. no one cared that i could eat a 2 lb. bag of peanut m&m's in one sitting or that i lived on ice cream for days.

compulsive overeater. unbelievably it gave me freedom. i believe information is power - i didn't suddenly become compulsive because i now had a definition of my problem - now i had power.

it was a tv commercial by overeaters anonymous, i had never heard of it before that day. we had internet access back then (1995) and i got online and searched (no google then...) for overeaters anonymous and found a meeting in my city.

i also found an underground community (way before blogs) where fellow strugglers would have irc (internet relay chat for you young ins) 12 step meetings. finally, light at the end of the tunnel. it was hope, i wasn't alone. it took me 4 months to screw up the courage to get to a f2f (face to face) meeting. but i finally did it, and life hasn't been the same since.