Another Layer of Armour Gone
Last week, I closed my 2022 Rundown blog post with this:
“I’m working on a post where I will share my Word for 2023. I typically do a Phrase of the Year, but when this word popped in unexpectedly, it soundly resonated immediately.”
And within an hour of that blog post going live, my 2023 Word had become a Phrase.
And it’s a phrase that feels more energetically at home in my body and mind than any other Year Ahead Phrase ever has- and I’ve been doing these for over 20 years.
As 2023 was speeding towards me, I was mentally spinning out trying to locate my 2023 word/phrase.
I was trying things on, but not finding anything that gave me that lock-set feeling of, “That’s it!”
…Lord, I was huntin’
Then, on December 30th, while watching an episode of Lauren Lucas’ podcast, The Happiest Hour, (she has a podcast with a video element), I found my word.
Lauren’s guest on the podcast was Cindy Landham.
Cindy has a website and coaching business called, The Liberated Eater.
She runs a workshop that teaches people how to break free from unhealthy associations with food- things like compulsive and emotional behaviors- and much more.
She offers ideas around training our brains to unlearn harmful diet culture thinking & restrictive behaviors based on the ideas that certain foods are either “good” or “bad.”
Lauren has worked with Cindy for several years and in their discussion on the episode, Lauren talked about the word/concept that helped her to turn a corner in her relationship with food and nutrition (paraphrasing there).
That word was, “Surrender.”
It hit me hard in that very moment- it felt like my word for 2023.
The word, surrender, is one of those words that’s sometimes misused or overused until it becomes so familiar that often when we hear it, its true meaning has been lost.
Go with the flow, is a phrase like this- it sounds like nothing because we hear it so often but it’s a concept with the potential to change a life.
Awesome, is another of these words. I overuse and misuse it all the time. I have no plans to stop, by the way. I’ve got bigger fish to fry than to worry about my illegitimate use of the word, awesome, but these are examples of what I mean by the overuse/misuse of certain words.
Now, back to the story I’m trying to tell here…
When Lauren talked about her surrender, I was able to take in, and apply to myself, the true meaning of the word.
It triggered a want to surrender to the impossible, unwinnable fights that my ego keeps calling me back into the ring to finish.
I want to surrender harmful- hurtful relationships, surrender creative demons, self-imposed, arbitrary life-rules-- that I often make up as I go, btw.
I want to surrender old stories around money & material possessions,
Surrender my need to people-please and my habit of bending (‘til it hurts) toward perfectionist ways,
Surrender the lies I tell myself about what I do and don’t deserve.
I want to surrender shame.
I want to surrender everything that keeps me butting up against these same old walls.
And the “everything” is all of the above and more.
And the “more” is the toxic, shitty relationship I’ve had with food and nutrition for all of my life.
For as long as I can remember.
Food and nutrition have never occupied an appropriate or healthy place in my brain.
This showed up years before alcohol, though the parallels are nearly identical in the ways they manifest in my life.
This is the first time I have specifically addressed this issue, publicly.
This is a personal topic full of pain, shame and shadow for me- much more than my alcohol addiction ever conjured in me.
And that said, for decades, I’ve talked to (nearly all) my girlfriends openly and vulnerably about it.
We’ve shared our war stories with one another.
I’ve nodded back to them, as they shared their stories.
I’ve been nodded back to, as I’ve shared mine.
We joke, we commiserate, we self-deprecate while diet culture, just like wine culture, rages around us.
Cindy used the word, indoctrinated- and that’s it.
The indoctrination goes back generations and today it’s backed up by the powerful, unstoppable muscle of the internet.
The marketing tactics that are so deplorable in the Big Alcohol are also thriving in the diet culture world.
Everywhere we look and everywhere we go, there are things that emphatically tell us what is good and what is bad.
What is acceptable and what is unacceptable.
What is valuable and what is garbage.
What will make our lives better.
What will save us.
And boy, have we been taking notes.
It’s nuts to turn the lights on and notice how Big Alcohol and diet culture mentality has been relentless in its targeting of women.
It’s called thinspiration, or thinspo…
All of this untruthful trash being directed at and absorbed by our brains now shapes and determines self-worth and self-esteem, for millions of people.
It informs how we love or don’t love these precious, precious bodies we’ve been gifted to be the stewards of through this one, brief and precious lifetime.
And Big alcohol is right in there- always tirelessly marketing to women
And even more specifically to moms…
And it’s all utterly and egregiously harmful to the humans who are being targeted.
Starting a SIDEBAR here, but please stick with me…I’ll bring this wagon back around….
At the end of 2022, back when I was still looking for my word/phrase, two words kept popping in my head:
As is
As is
As is…
For about 8 months in 2021 I was a member of a women’s mastermind community- a powerful discussion group made up of bright, funny, creative people.
One of the concepts that the teacher talked about was the concept of showing up in life, “as is.”
Being yourself, as is.
Presenting yourself, as is.
As is.
It’s harder than you might think.
When she first introduced this idea to the group, I was a little defensive, because I didn’t fully grasp this “as is” thing.
“What do you mean, look at myself, as is? I AM, as is. I’m living, as is. This is me, I’m right here today in front of you and I’m, as is.”
But as the conversation continued, I came to understand what she really meant.
As is, is not:
A future version of yourself.
A past version of yourself.
It is not as a shiny, perfect version of yourself that you put on and haul around for other people because it pleases them or makes them more comfortable.
As is, is about presenting yourself with authenticity.
And I knew I wasn’t living, as is.
I was living some combination of all the other versions- past, future, and shiny & perfect (aka false), and none were truly me, as is.
So when these words, as is, appeared again and began to swirl and hang around, it felt like important messaging, but I couldn’t get the context together to make it a thing that had any traction.
I’m going to recap some things now:
-End of 2022 - no word no phrase
-Triumphantly, I found a word through listening to Lauren’s podcast conversation with Cindy
-I told my blog readers to stay tuned! I’d be sharing my 2023 word soon
-Within an hour of telling my readers this news, I had a revelation delivered to me and my word changed to a phrase with PROFOUND personal resonance.
Surrender, As Is
Oooohh- and it’s sittin big in here, y’all.
I want this.
I feel ready for this but that doesn’t mean there’s no fear around this.
To Surrender, As Is, requires me to let go of the need to care about being judged by others.
It requires me to move forward with things that I’m intensely uncomfortable doing.
It requires me to start living my life in new ways right now, as is.
Not as a future or past version of myself.
Not as a version of myself that’s hiding behind what I think other people want me to be.
It requires me to let go of an ingrained belief that my worthiness is attached to my appearance.
We’re taught to judge others on appearance.
We’re taught that we will be judged by others on our own appearance.
We live in a world that actively and passively “teaches” us what we’re supposed to look like if we want to be in the winner’s circle of life.
Diet Culture hammers us, nearly out of the gate…
Throughout my life, my strategy around food and nutrition has been one of punishment, restriction & rule making then more punishment when the rules inevitably get broken.
In the book, My Last Hangover, I wrote about being tired of thinking about drinking- and there is an actual website by that name that helped to kickstart my road to life without alcohol.
I don’t think about drinking the way I did in my early days of life without alcohol, thankfully.
My obsessive brain has moved on from alcohol obsession.
Now I’m tired of thinking about food- and how to best (and worst) fuel my body.
This is good
This is bad
That’s too much.
That wasn’t enough.
When can I have more
I should never have that.
This shit has been running my brain since I was 6 years old.
I’m tired.
In my quest to live a life without harmful obsessions,
food / nutrition is my next dragon.
Time’s up, motherfucker.
My declaration of “time’s up,” is an incredibly personal one but what I’m talking about is happening in epidemic numbers around the world.
This is personal to a lot of people.
I understand that I am not alone.
Just like in the early days of going public about my alcohol struggle, this is so hard to talk about.
I’m uncomfortable right now, on this page, in ways I can’t even begin to articulate.
Outside of the confines of my safe circle of friends and with therapists, I’ve never spoken out loud about this and I know it will be nearly impossible to cork this conversation, now that I have.
And I don’t want to cork it but I do want it to be understood that just because I’m sharing this does not mean it’s now a casual conversation for me.
Sharing here, does not come with an implied invitation to others who are lucky enough to not know about this kind of struggle, to insert themselves into the conversation or dole out “compliments.”
For people who struggle, it isn’t helpful to hear the opinions of others about one’s appearance, however positive or helpful you might think your opinion is.
I’m inviting conversation and connection with those who do understand this issue and those who do walk this path, and who are looking for ways out.
Maybe (and most likely) on down the line, I’ll be more open to conversations and questions from those who live outside of this struggle, but today, I’m coming with all my honesty here in this first step, out loud, and saying- I’m not open to every conversation, with any person…yet.
Like my process to leave alcohol behind, I expect this will take time.
I do expect and that it’ll get easier and easier to talk about in ways that are more open and less self-conscious than I feel today.
That’s my goal- to be comfortable in my own skin, without shame or secrets.
As is.
My decision to share here came because I opted in, at the very last minute, on a 10-Day Challenge virtual group workshop with Cindy that finished just a few days ago.
I was hesitant AF to do that challenge.
In this area, around this particular struggle, I consider myself to be a jaded, cynic who is nearly change-resistant.
I had no expectation that I would get anything new out of the experience so I was ready to check it off and congratulate myself for being right again.
But I was wronger than wrong.
I got things.
Angles I’d never considered were presented to me, lights got turned on.
Things I had considered before and deemed unhelpful were presented in new ways that suddenly clicked with me.
I have a row to hoe, realistically speaking, but today I can envision a life without obsessive thinking around food and nutrition- and not for some other person over there…but for me.
2022 was a year of demolition and rebuilding- actually and energetically.
2023 feels like it’s going to be a year of finding a different pace and space in this new time in my life.
I’m not there yet but I’ve made the decision to begin my 2023 by surrendering, as is.
Here’s an inelegant transition of topic for you….
I did my Year Ahead Tarot Spread again this year- a new one and I quite like it…
Here it is, if’n you wanna do one for yourself.
Here are some links to things mentioned in this post:
Lauren Lucas, The Happiest Hour podcast-In addition to hosting her podcast, Lauren is an amazing artist and songwriter- and a lovely human! If you aren’t familiar with her music, I recommend that too!
Cindy Landham, The Liberated Eater- Cindy’s program teaches people to learn- or relearn how to be free of obsessive thinking and enjoy life- and that includes enjoying food. Her workshop is not about fitting into a certain size or getting on a scale. It is NOT about anything that has to do with points, intermittent fasting, carbs, sugar, bad food, good food, food journals, calorie counting, etc. It’s something else entirely and it’s worth looking into if anything I’ve talked about here sounds like something you’d like to know more about.
Tired of Thinking About Drinking site
My Last Hangover book- email me if you’d like a copy! $19 plus shiping…. DearMandyW@gmail.com
She Recovers - Not mentioned anywhere in this post but an awesome resource for women who are in, or seeking recovery from anything
Tiny Folk Art tiles- with the holiday season behind us, I’m taking new commissions for tiles!- you can check out examples here
Reach out if you would like to discuss a Tiny Folk Art Tile for yourself or a loved one~
It’s not too late to wish you a Happy New Year…Happy New Year. :)