Reflections on my before picture, long!
So sorry, I have NO CLUE how to get a picture on here, so let me describe my before picture: very happy and exhausted 250 lb, 5'3" me on the top of Algonquin Mountain, I was a size 24 and short, I couldn't find proper hiking clothes in my size so I was wearing cotton shorts and a loose cotton tank top. It was one month before surgery and I was so proud of myself for getting to the top of that mountain. It was steep and I had to crawl at times because I didn't have the agility to climb. I remember other people seeing me and just looking shocked, and then concerned. At the time I remember being embarrassed by that but also a little amused. But mostly I remember just staying focused on getting up that mountain. When I got to the top another hiker took my picture. It took me 14 hours to hike the 8 miles and I could barely walk afterwards.
Last year, on my one year anniversary I hung that picture up along with a pic of me on a neighboring peak one hundred pounds lighter. Up until yesterday, every time I would look at that picture I would feel a little cringe of shame and embarrassment. I would remember all the people who saw me and feel so embarrassed. I was just so huge and because I was cut off from my own body I don't think I even realized how huge I was.
But the most amazing thing happened yesterday. I again hiked Algonquin. It was hard. It is a steep climb. I hiked to the top in 2 hours. It had taken me 8 pre-op. There is a section where the trail becomes very steep, it is just a mile of straight up, much on bare rock. you have to use hand holds in the rock to claw your way up. Nowadays I adore that kind of climb and as I was doing it I thought of my before picture and I thought of me doing that carrying an extra 100 pounds in my inappropriate clothes and my bigness and for the first time I held nothing but admiration for myself. I just kept thinking, "Holy $#%&! I did this as that huge person, despite the stares and concerns and incredible difficulty. I literally crawled my way up this mountain. How is that for tenacity and grit?"
And then I started to see all these images of myself in my life that I have always been so ashamed of and I started realizing, "Wait, that was just me showing an awful lot of tenacity and grit, it might not have looked pretty but good for me." It was such a freeing and powerful thing to start looking at that before picture with tenderness instead of disgust. And I realize that the tenacity I had there is the same tenacity that is getting me through this journey. Because it takes an awful lot of tenacity to get up every day and stay on my plan and pick myself up when I fall off and have so much of my internal private struggle be so public because my body tells the story.
Once I got to the summit of Algonquin yesterday I continued on to Boundary Peak and then on to Iroquois. On the way down I stopped at a waterfall and there was this giant boulder with a tree growing on top of it. I love it when that happens. The roots of the tree wind themselves down the boulder and into the ground. The tree often looks a little bedraggled and sad but the roots are spectacular. Every time I see those trees I think, "Man, that little tree wanted to live. It didn't care that it was planted on the top of a giant boulder far from soil and water, tenacious!" As I sat there looking at that tree on the boulder I realized that it was totally me. I got planted in a life with loads of challenges, with a genetic heritage that could have let me survive any famine, with a mother who put me on the I Love NY Diet when I was seven, with a alcoholic father who couldn't be present for me, with trauma and abuse and neglect and depression and anxiety and on and on. But I am becoming aware of this tiny seed in me that is full of tenacity and grit, that is like, "I don't care if I got planted in a ****ty place, I am gonna grow. Period."
So, I am celebrating my tenacity and grit. And I am feeling an awful lot of tenderness for that morbidly obese gal in my before picture. I want to start a movement to appreciate our before pictures. Yes, we were really big, yes, we are way tinier now. But we were more than just big. We were showing up every day in a life that, for many of us, was excruciating. Sure, some of us were eating ourselves to death or were holed up in our houses but we all showed up at some surgeon's office saying, "I can't live like this anymore. I need help." And that is pretty incredible really. We are all pretty incredible really.
(there's just dust in my eyes....)
"almost there,...keep going,...stay focused,...eyes on the prize" - the guy at my gym
