Breaking Down the Labyrinth

For me, Pesach prep is a bit like everything else--the anticipation is nearly always worse than the reality. For weeks, I am an anxious mess as I stare down the monstrous amounts of cleaning and cooking I need to do, and then the actual day comes, and I wake up at 7 am, bang it out, and am done by 3 pm. I do recognize that in this one particular instance, living alone in a small city apartment is a blessing, because the cleaning is manageable and I am cooking for one. Bottom line--I'm officially Kosher L'Pesach with time left in the afternoon to do some writing, so I feel pretty accomplished. The OU would probably find fault with a few things, but lately I've found fault with a few of their things, so I guess that makes us even.

Despite all the frenzy (or perhaps partly because of it; it's such a classic cultural ritual), I really enjoy Pesach. I appreciate that it forces me to do things differently--staying up late, eating different foods, etc. But what I really love doing during this holiday, especially in the days leading up to it, is thinking about freedom and what it means for me, personally.

In the conventional sense, I have never been an unfree person. I had the good fortune to be born in the United States to a middle-class family who never needed to worry about money. Though I'm in a religious minority in this country, I'm also in the racial majority, which has bestowed upon me benefits I would be remiss not to mention. I have never been tied down to unfavorable circumstances by debt, and though my finances do not afford me every option, I have enough decent options that I can build a good life for myself. In short, I have been very, very lucky, both as an accident of birth and as the result of planning and hard work.

But there has always been something that has bound me. In childhood, it was OCD; I could not go to bed without making two trips around my bedroom to touch certain objects, and my stuffed animals had to be arranged just so on my bed or it physically didn't feel right. I played endless games of "magical thinking," telling myself that I would do well on a test if I could throw a small object in the air and catch it with one hand three times in a row, three times (also, I loved the number 3). If I was out for a walk and stepped on a manhole cover with one foot, I had to step on it with the other foot, as well. I was never sure what, exactly, would happen if I didn't adhere to these rituals, but I had a firm (if vague) sense that it would be "something bad."

In college, some of those compulsions lessened because I was physically removed from the environment where they took place (my childhood bedroom), but that was okay because I found something better: compulsive exercise and obsessive dieting. Anorexia was the ultimate ritual. Every morning, at the same hour every day, I went to the gym. I did the same machines, in the same order, for the same amounts of time (or a little more, but never a little less). I ran the same distance every day (or a little longer, but never a little shorter). It was mind-numbingly boring, but OMG THE ENDORPHINS. Then, there was eating. I ate at the same times every day, picking from the same narrow variety of foods, counting out numbers of things to make sure my intake was exactly the same as the day before (or a little less, but never a little more). Of course, I had rituals WITH food, too--precise methods of eating from which I could not deviate. By the middle of freshman year, I had come up with a system that I had fully mastered. It did not occur to me that the system had mastered me.


_______________________________________________________________________________


I recently read a book of memoirs called, Abandon Me, by an author named Melissa Febos. I actually don't think I can adequately describe this book or its effect on me, except to say that it is, hands down, the most powerful memoir I have ever read. I got it from the library and it was a "speed read" so there were no renewals, and on the day I had to return it I went to my local bookstore and bought my own copy, even though it just came out and is only in hardcover, and I have a somewhat strict (if informal) policy against paying "extra" for hardcover books. But this book, I needed to own, and immediately.

My favorite essay is the one called, "Labyrinths," in which Melissa outlines her own addiction to heroin and her recovery from it, as well as her brother's battle with bipolar disorder. The title of the essay is a reference to the 1986 movie, "Labyrinth," in which a teenage girl named Sarah (played by Jennifer Connelly) wishes for her baby brother to disappear--and then he does; he gets taken away by Jareth, the Goblin King (played by David Bowie), who stores the baby in a castle in the center of a labyrinth. Sarah has 13 hours to solve the labyrinth and rescue her brother.

Sarah enters the labyrinth and begins to run. She falls into many distracting traps designed to throw her off course; in actuality, like all labyrinths, it is only one path and will inevitably lead to the center, so all Sarah needs to do is follow it. But, as Melissa Febos writes:

Throughout the film Jareth tries to convince her that the labyrinth is too difficult to solve. He drugs her. He sends creatures to mislead her. He promises her that happiness is in succumbing to his fantasy and abandoning her quest to solve the labyrinth.

"I ask for so little," he pleads. "Just let me rule you, and you can have everything that you want."

When I read that, I thought of how similar Jareth's voice sounded to that of my eating disorder. When I fell into anorexia's labyrinth, my list of "everything I wanted" was simple: I wanted to fill the empty space within me. Anorexia promised me that if I allowed it to rule me, it would fulfill my wish by simply erasing my need altogether. And so, I gave in. The labyrinth seemed too complicated, the center too elusive, and so I allowed myself to be swallowed up. The truth is that I didn't even know I was trapped--I still felt like I was in control.

Recognizing the structural layout of my labyrinth was the key to its undoing. Once I knew that the voice of my captor was lying, that I would never be free unless I broke down the walls myself, I started to come back to life. But there were so many distractions. I had to learn to recognize my own anxieties and compulsions for what they were, and to be in tune to the mental and physical cues that signaled I was starting to give in to the eating disorder. Let me say: it was a complicated f*cking labyrinth. But I used my tools: I went to treatment, I participated in therapy, I took my medication. And I found the center, where my self was waiting.

My favorite excerpt from Melissa's essay is in the picture below:

I love it because this is the key to everything, this realization that our addictions, our obsessive and compulsive belief systems, are nothing more than captors trying to take away our power. They will promise us everything, but leave us with nothing. The truth is that we hold the power. The minute we even entertain the idea that we might not have to listen, the labyrinth weakens a little bit. And as soon as we are willing to say the word, "No," even if we just whisper it, that is the moment that we start to get back our freedom. The labyrinth cannot withstand a lack of worship, and when we refuse to fear it any longer, it will begin to crumble.

Sometimes, it can seem tempting to go back to the labyrinth, with its small enclosed spaces and clear boundaries. But it will never again be as satisfying as it once was, because it will have lost its luster. Every time I went back to anorexia after my first round of treatment, I found that I had too much knowledge for it to stick for long--I knew what I was doing, I recognized the irrationalities, and I knew what I should be doing instead. More importantly, I understood what my eating disorder had taken from me, and was still taking from me, and that made me angry. The day I decided that I was simply tired of this particular labyrinth, that it held nothing of value for me anymore, was the day I left treatment and never went back.

Putting my life back together and growing into a functional adult has been a lot of work; it isn't always fun and sometimes makes me cry. But since I left the labyrinth, my life has never again felt as empty as it did when I was held captive by the eating disorder that promised to fill me. I make my own choices, now. I have space for relationships, I have energy and passion for a demanding profession, and I actually have emotions, which are quite possibly the most wondrous part of the whole operation.

Freedom is everything.

And so, my Pesach wish for each of us is that we recognize the labyrinths that hold us captive, and that we start to deconstruct them, brick by brick. Freedom is out there, and in it our true selves are waiting, as they have always been.

Beautifully Broken

www.jerichochambers.com

When I started this blog, I tried hard to publish something at least every other week...I think because I had so much to say, and sharing it felt so urgent. Clearly, I have gotten away from that level of frequency, and it's not that I haven't had anything to write about...it's more that I haven't been able to find the most effective way to write about what has been going on for me. I feel as though I need a degree of separation from things in order to write about them clearly, and that separation hasn't happened yet, so the words haven't come. I say this not as an apology for not writing, but more as an explanation as to why I haven't been on the blog as much lately.





But then, last weekend happened, and words started to come.

I had the privilege of attending a workshop led by the amazing Laura McKowen, whom I have raved about quite a bit on this blog, and Holly Whitaker, whom I have talked about less but who is no less fabulous. These two women do incredibly important work in the recovery world; both are in sobriety and are also in recovery from eating disorders. They are impassioned writers, speakers, and yoga people, and I am a little bit (or a lot) of a groupie, so I took my yoga-ambivalent self to a yoga studio and practiced yoga for four hours, just to learn from them. (Okay, there was writing involved, too, which is more my jam.)

The title of the workshop was, "Never Not Broken," and it centered on the premise that we have each been broken open by various life situations, and we will bear those cracks for the rest of our lives...but instead of weakening us, our brokenness makes us stronger and wiser. I was attracted to this idea because I view my life into very clearly divided "before" and "after" segments: "before," being before I developed an eating disorder my freshman year in college, and "after," being everything after my last hospitalization in 2007 (I call the in-between years, "the mess").  I visualize "before" and "after" through two photographs that sit on my parents' coffee table--one of me as a senior in high school, the other of me graduating from college. When I look at my high school senior self, I see her smile as genuine, the gleam in her eyes as a sign of her full life and endless hope, for she has no idea what's coming. The photo of me as a college senior, I hate. I look at that version of myself and I know my smile is fake; my eyes masking how trapped I felt in my body, in my mind, in my misery. For most of my time in recovery, I have wanted desperately to get back to the way I was "before." Why can I not be happy anymore? I often wonder. Instead, I'm stuck being this broken thing. Put back together, yes, but still cracked in ways that I haven't figured out how to repair.

Before the workshop started, I anticipated that I would spend most of it brooding over all the broken, shattered parts of me, and maybe I would even cry, which would be a huge breach of my "no public displays of emotion" rule. But somewhere around hour three, a weird thing happened. We were journaling in response to the prompt, "What do You Want?" and I realized that although there are still some things I desire but have yet to achieve, I actually have a lot of good things in my life. I have the most fulfilling job I could ask for; I get to do what I love and I know I am making a difference. My "work family" is close-knit and supportive. Through my Jewish education, I have made dear friends in Israel who nurture me in ways that no one else does. My parents and I have great relationships with each other. I am living on my own and paying my own bills, driving around in a car that I own, with enough money saved to allow me to plan for a future child. All told, I am actually not doing too badly. And admitting this was new to me, because my usual line of thinking is to focus on the negative...but sitting there in that workshop, I was able to really see all the vitality I have built into my life, and that I have achieved successes that were absolutely not possible a decade ago.

I pondered this as I lay on my mat, listening to Laura's calm voice easing us into the final restorative pose. Then, from the speakers, I heard familiar tune begin to play...the lyrics came:

I heard there was a sacred chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord...

Yup. She played Hallelujah. She played LEONARD COHEN.

There I was on my mat, with a big old grin on my face, because THIS WAS A WORKSHOP ABOUT BROKENNESS AND SHE'S PLAYING LEONARD F**KING COHEN (no disrespect intended).

Leonard Cohen, the iconic Jewish singer and songwriter, penned the following lyrics about human brokenness:

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.

We are all broken in some ways, some of us more than others, but we all bear at least a few cracks bequeathed upon us by the world and our own psyches. The challenge, as with any perceived weakness, is to learn how to leverage it to one's advantage. I know that I, personally, have gained enormous insight into myself and others from having gone through everything I've endured, much of which was excruciatingly painful while it was happening. I might not ever return to that innocent teenager I was before the eating disorder, the one who grins out from that high school senior photo. But I am damn sure more in tune with my emotions, more able to empathize with others, and more able to manage the demands of the world than she ever was. It was a trade I was never asked if I wanted to make; I was never given the choice of opting out.  Brokenness can't work that way, because who would ever elect to be split open? Not I. But there were lessons I needed to learn, that I am still learning, and so I was given the pain and the blessing of being broken to my core.

At the end of the workshop, Laura and Holly herded all 50 of us into a circle, and we did the "go-around": say your name, where you're from, and one thing you're taking away from today. Every single person in the room had been touched by addiction, and many were in the beginning stages of recovery. Some people shared from a place of strength, others from a place of insecurity, but the underlying current was vulnerability.

Vulnerability sounded like the man who had just begun sobriety and said, "I'm on day 28."

It was the woman who ventured, "I'm an alcoholic. I've never actually said that before."

It came through in the voice of a young woman who shared about her suicide attempt.

It was the person who admitted, "I don't actually know anyone in recovery."

And as I sat there listening and waiting for my turn, I could see my self of ten years ago mirrored back to me in my fellow participants' words. I remembered the first time I ever said, "I am anorexic," and how exhilarating was that release, and how terrifying the admission. I remembered my "day one" in my first treatment program, where I finally found comfort among other people who understood the way my brain functioned and the twisted logic by which I lived my life. I remembered meeting my first recovered person, and how powerful that encounter was. I remembered all the times I had gone to bed, wishing that I would sleep forever. And I knew, sitting in that circle, that I wasn't there anymore. I had done the work and was still doing it. And I had a lot to be proud of.

The truth is, I still go through periods of depression, where I feel like I honestly might not make it through the day. I sometimes still find that when I am stressed or in periods of transition, my first instinct is to micro-manage my food as a release. I am socially anxious, extremely introverted, and yet often feel starved for genuine connection. All of those cracks are real. But I know how to navigate them and to avoid the traps they set. I prefer to view my current self as one who has been made stronger for having been broken.

The Japanese have a practice of putting broken pottery back together by sealing the cracks with lacquer mixed with gold dust. The artist Barbara Bloom explains:

www.simplyblessed.heartsdesire.com

"When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful." 

That's us, lovelies. Never not broken. And growing more beautiful all the time.

Why We Need Setbacks

I'm writing my first post of 2017, twenty-six days late. I've been thinking about blogging a lot, but something has been in the way--call it writer's block, or apathy, or fatigue, or maybe a combination of those--whatever it is, it has loomed in my brain, imposing and opaque, blocking all my attempts to get any thoughts into writing.

But two days ago, a dear friend messaged me and said, "Any reason you haven't been blogging? I miss your posts!" At which point, I thought, "Oh...I guess people do read it." And then I went through the motions of going online and looking up what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has to say about this week's parasha, because when I'm coming up dry on inspiration, he's pretty much my go-to.

I'll get to Rabbi Sacks in a minute, but I think it's clear what the real lesson is here: friends are our best weapon in overcoming inertia.




So.  In last week's parasha, Hashem speaks to Moses and tells him that he is being tasked with leading the Jewish people out of Egypt. Moses protests, insisting he's not up for the task, but G-d wins the argument because, you know, He's G-d. So Moses and Aaron appear before Pharaoh and plead their case, but it doesn't go well--Pharaoh retaliates by forcing the Israelites to not only make their quota of bricks, but now also gather their own straw for the bricks. The Israelites then basically turn against Moses and Aaron, accusing the two men of making their burden even harder to bear.

This week, Moses and Aaron begin bringing G-d's plagues to Pharaoh, but each one fails to do what it is intended to do: convince Pharaoh to let the Jews go. Moses does absolutely everything he can, and still, no freedom. But all along, Hashem reassures Moses that the Jewish people will go free, if Moses can just see the process through.

Rabbi Sacks teaches that the key take-away here is this: the greatest leaders are plagued by significant setbacks, but still manage to rise. This is certainly true of Moses, and is also true of successful leaders in many other fields--politics, science, the arts, business. And if this is true of our leaders, who are arguably among our best and brightest, how much more so is it true of us "regular people"? We are going to encounter setbacks, some of which will be pretty major. The key, as many a motivational speaker has proclaimed, is to not stay down, but rather to use the challenge to make ourselves stronger.

I have been in recovery for 12 years and cannot even begin to count my setbacks. The severe ones landed me in psychiatric hospitals and day programs. But there were also dozens of tiny bumps in the road--a missed snack, a forbidden walk, a resurrection of an arbitrary food rule--that I could (and sometimes did) brush off as insignificant, but that were really symptoms of a larger lapse in my recovery mindset. Any setbacks, large or small, can be demoralizing because they spark self-criticism and self-doubt: I am not really in recovery. I'm actually not doing well at all. I am such a loser for still having a hard time with this. (At least, that's my soundtrack. Maybe yours is different, but I suspect there are some similar lines.)

The key, for me, has been to allow myself a few negative thoughts but then start to take a deeper look at what is going on when I hit a bump. Am I anxious about something? Am I feeling vulnerable? Is there a particular stressor in my life and I'm using an old coping mechanism to deal with it? Once I start taking that careful look and talking about it with my people, I can actually deal with the underlying issue and avoid falling back into the eating disorder. And that whole process--encountering struggle, examining it, and adjusting for it--makes me stronger.

Rabbi Sacks cites a letter written by Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner to one of his students who was discouraged after repeatedly failing to master a piece of Talmud. Rabbi Hutner wrote:

Know, however, my dear friend, that your soul is rooted not in the tranquility of the good inclination, but in the battle of the good inclination...The wisest of men said, "A righteous man falls seven times, but rises again." Fools believe that the intent of the verse is to teach us that the righteous man falls seven times and, despite this, he rises. But the knowledgeable are aware that the essence of the righteous man's rising again is because of his seven falls.

The line I keep coming back to is: your soul is rooted not in the tranquility of the good inclination, but in the battle of the good inclination.

Brilliant, right?

We are primed for struggle, and that is what strengthens us. We cannot become great without it. We can't recover without it.  That's not to say that we don't also need times without struggle, but our souls get their juice from being squeezed a little bit. That's where we're rooted, and it's from where we grow.

Being Holey

You guys. I just finished the most AMAZING book:

www.goodreads.com

Not "amazing" as in, best writing I've ever seen, but "amazing" as in, Oh my G-d, this book understands me. I feel held by this book.

The plot lines of Glennon's life and my life don't really have much in common, but the subtexts sure do. Though I can't relate to being a wife and mother, I absolutely can relate to being mired in self-destruction and having to claw oneself out, only to discover that, Hey, adulting is hard. Life is hard. But life is also beautiful.

In one essay, Glennon writes about how we all live our lives searching for something. We each have an "unquenchable thirst," what author Anne Lamott calls our "God-sized hole." The struggle of life is trying to find things to fill this hole. Some people choose, perhaps obviously, to fill it with G-d. Other people fill it with work or relationships. And still other people, like Glennon and I, fill it with eating disorders and addiction. It all goes to the same purpose: feeling full. It's just that some people seek fullness from the wrong things.

When I think back to my eating disorder years, the word that first comes to mind is, hunger. There was physical hunger for sure, but there was also a deeper, more agonizing emotional hunger. I could satisfy my physical hunger, but the emotional hunger was never, ever satisfied. It just kept burning, and the hole kept growing, and I kept trying to fill it with more of the same things that weren't working: more starving, more exercising, more studying. In recovery, I've had to find different hole-fillers. My favorites are: work, nature, reading, writing, family, and friends. Those work much better. For me, recovery has been about finding positive hole-fillers, and using them regularly.

I don't think it's any coincidence that I became religious soon after letting go of my eating disorder. I had a huge hole to fill, and observant Judaism is a great hole-filler. It has given me structure and rules, a context within which to meet people, and a basis from which to define my values. And, it has given me a deeper connection to G-d, one of my greatest comforts (and challenges). I have known for a long time that my attraction to the religious life isn't purely a desire to live a "holy life"--it's a desire to fill the hole, albeit with something meaningful and nourishing. I don't think that's such a bad thing.

To an extent, it has worked, though I can't honestly say that Judaism and G-d fill me completely. They don't, though sometimes I feel like they should. I daven every day, I observe Shabbat, I keep kosher, I say dozens of brachot daily, and G-d and I have a chat every night before bed. It's soulful and lovely. But here's the thing: the hole is still there. I am still hungry, still seeking. You'd think that G-d would perfectly fill a "God-sized hole," but, at least in my case, it hasn't really worked out that way. And I think it's because, with very rare exceptions, we need other people. A person cannot subsist on G-d alone. And so when I feel hungry these days, in spite of the davening and the chatting with Hashem, I have a more honest assessment of what I need: more connection and more belonging. That is my work right now in recovery--getting myself those things. 

Glennon explains it this way:

"Some people of faith swear that their God-shaped hole was filled when they found God, or Jesus, or meditation, or whatever else. I believe them, but that's not been my experience. My experience has been that even with God, life is hard. It's hard just because it's hard being holey."

I couldn't agree more.

And what I've learned from Glennon through her writing is that everyone is holey. We all are.  While our instinct might be to stay quiet about our holes, we really should be doing the opposite, because being holey is something we can connect over. I know that when my friends come to me with their holes, when they say, I'm so lonely, or, I don't feel like I'm doing anything meaningful with my time, etc., I feel honored to meet them in their vulnerability, AND I feel energized because those holes are things we can talk about. Connection is a beautiful byproduct of our emptiness.

So if you, too, ever feel like you have a hunger that will never be satisfied, know that you're not alone. It's God-sized, which explains why it feels so big. And we all have one, even the people who hide it well. The secret is that the more we give voice to it, the more we use it to connect to nourishing people and life practices, the more it fills. Little by little. 

Adult Aloneness

Yup, I know. I've been away for a while...readjusting. "Coming down" from being in Israel is always an interesting process and it seems appropriate that it took me pretty much the entire month of Av to work through it. It might have taken longer, but...Starbucks Cold Brew. Secret weapon of champions.

There have been a lot of feelings. One incident in particular really rattled me; it happened on my first Shabbat back at home.

When services were over, the usual controlled chaos ensued: kids made a beeline for the Kiddush tables and adults began socializing. (I want to go on record RIGHT NOW and say that Kiddush is my absolute least favorite part of Shabbat services. Introvert nightmare.) But on this particular day I spotted someone I wanted to talk to, a friend who had also been in Israel at the same time I was. I was excited to trade stories with this person and tell about my experience. So I walked straight over to this friend and was rewarded with a big, warm hug. All good. Until this person asked The Question:

"So...did you meet anyone?"

That was it. No, "How was your learning?" or even a simple, "How was it?" Instead, we got right to what was apparently the critical issue: did I meet anyone. As in, Meet Anyone. Bold and italics.

I was completely brought up short. I had not, in fact, Met Anyone while in Israel. To be 100% truthful, that hadn't been anywhere on my list of goals for the summer. And when I told my friend as much, this friend actually gave me an eye roll and said, "Okaaayyy," as if to imply, "What a missed opportunity!"

At first, I felt a flicker of anger. Wait a HOT SECOND, I wanted to say. I had an AMAZING time in Israel. I learned so much, I grew so much, and all you want to know is if I MET SOMEONE?!

And then shame rushed onto the scene. I felt like I had just failed a test I hadn't even known I was taking. Was I supposed to have met someone in Israel? Would other people be similarly horrified to know that I had not even made an effort to do so? Why hadn't I tried? And then, my all-time favorite, go-to Line of Shame:

There is something really wrong with me.

Because here's the thing: I never think about meeting anyone. Well, not never, but pretty much never. I can't remember ever "playing wedding" as a kid or fantasizing about a wedding dress as a teenager. At the time, I figured I was just too busy with other things. But even once I got to college, I still resisted the pull toward partnering off. A large contributor to my eating disorder was the primal fear I felt at having to enter the dating-for-marriage world; I simply let anorexia take me out of commission. In recovery, I've worked hard to change, "There is something really wrong with me because I'm still single," to, "Maybe being partnered just isn't important to me right now." To me, this feels fine. I am not big on romantic intimacy and I relish my independence. I plan on being a foster or adoptive parent and I do not tie that to the condition of being partnered. In my own head, being coupled feels like a "should," not like a "want," so I've been content to leave it alone.

And yet.

Social pressure is a real thing. I cannot deny that everyone around me is partnering off and having babies. And pretty much nowhere is this more apparent than at shul. I am not exaggerating when I say that, to my knowledge, out of an entire congregation, I am the only single-by-choice person there. As much as my friend's question caught me off guard, it really shouldn't have--the mission of most observant Jews under age 35 is to get married, and the mission of the community is to help make this happen. There's no protocol for how to handle a person who chooses to remain single. And so, I do often feel like something is truly "wrong" with me, because I don't want what everyone else wants. I want to want it, but it's not my truth. My truth is, I'm 34 and single, and that's how I want it to be for now. Even if I am the only person in the world who feels that way, I can't deny that it feels right at this time.

But maybe I'm not the only one.

I am not the biggest consumer of social media, but I LOVE Instagram. I use it mainly to follow people I admire and organizations I support, both for the work they do and the positive messages they put out into the world. One of my favorite Instagramers is Laura McKowen, a writer and "recovery warrior" who writes bravely and honestly about sobriety, motherhood, love, fear, and hope. I am routinely inspired by her work, but about a week ago she posted an image that went straight to my heart:

The temple of my adult aloneness. 

YES.

I hadn't even KNOWN there was such a thing, or that other people chose to live in that house, too. It had never occurred to me that is is okay to be single by choice, that it's not merely a condition to be endured until one eventually finds a partner. I mean, maybe most single people do end up getting married, and maybe I will, too. But in the meantime, I can be single without shame. I can live--and thrive--in my adult aloneness. Because that's the house where my soul belongs. Instead of wishing to be different, I just have to honor the way that I am, the way that G-d made me.

I think I could make that house into something beautiful.

Hishtadlut

Wow...it has been a long time since I last wrote!  It seems I completely missed writing about Pesach this year--and actually missed the entire month of April--due to G.L.C (General Life Craziness). What can I say?  It happens.  Good thing Pesach Sheni is around the corner!

But lest you think that I've been slacking off, I'm going to tell you a bit about what I've been doing, and I'm going to be a bit more specific than in past posts because I feel like there's no way to tell this story otherwise.

First, the background:  I was an active kid who played several different sports during grade school, but once I got to college, exercise morphed into something completely unhealthy.  Like, I actually can't think of one way in which the benefits outweighed the enormous cost to me physically and mentally. When I started working on recovery, I had to quit exercising completely, and I stayed away from it for probably around three years before I tried it again.  It did not go well.  So, for the past 6 or so years, I've abstained from "purposeful exercise" (that is, exercise done for the purpose of exercising), and have relied solely on "incidental exercise" (such as walking to and from places, etc).

But this past year, I started to feel deeply an intense desire to try exercising again, but the wanting felt different to me--I didn't want to exercise to lose weight or burn calories; instead, I wanted to feel stronger and healthier in my body.  I wanted to feel like my body was powerful.  My team and I talked about how I would do it differently this time around:  no numbers, no pushing for a certain time, no using any technology to record distance, heart rate, or calories burned. I wouldn't do it every day. I would not force myself to exercise outside in bad weather.  No gyms.  I wouldn't make myself eat less on days when I did not exercise.  And on and on.  Finally, we agreed on a plan. The only remaining obstacle was, I needed to gain some weight.

Not a lot of weight, but enough to give myself a cushion and to support my body in being more active, and also to help me stay recovery-focused mentally. Objectively, it seemed like something I should have been able to accomplish in a little over a month.  After all, I'm in solid recovery. I knew why I needed to gain weight, and I was in favor of it.  I had a goal that I really wanted to reach.  How hard could this be?

Hard.

What I predicted would take me two months ended up taking four, and not because I wasn't trying.  I tried really, really hard.  For anyone who has ever had to gain weight, you know what it's like--eating past the point of fullness, eating when your'e not hungry, etc.  It's completely unpleasant.  But what's even MORE unpleasant is doing all those things, and then getting weighed and hearing, "Your weight is stable." For a while, I heard this nearly every week, and let me tell you, there was a lot of crying involved.  A lot of crying, a lot of frustration, and a lot of fear. I was already doing everything I could do. What if I just wasn't able to reach this goal?  What if it never happened for me?

When I first set my goal, I shared it with a good friend, someone who I knew would support me but also wouldn't ask me about it unless I brought it up first (if you don't have one, find yourself a friend like this).  One day, after a particularly disappointing doctor's appointment, I called this friend and shared with her my frustration and my fear.  She listened and gave encouragement, and then said, "You know, hishtadlut."

I said, "What's that?"

She explained that hishtadlut means putting in maximum effort and not giving up until you reach your goal.  I looked it up after our conversation and found that even when a person thinks that all the hishtadlut in the world won't achieve his or her goal, that person is still obligated to try.  In other words, pessimism is allowed, but giving up is not.

Sometimes, when I'm in the headspace of, "This feels IMPOSSIBLE," hearing someone say, "Just keep trying," feels invalidating.  But when my friend explained the meaning of hishtadlut, it felt different, I think because it felt like my problem was common enough that there was an actual name for how to handle it.  And the more I thought about hishtadlut, the more I realized that I really had only two options:  quit, or push ahead.  If I continued to put in all my effort, I had a chance at reaching my goal.  But if I gave up, there was no way it was happening.  So what else could I do, really, but keep trying?

And here's the thing:  it worked.

I met my goal.  Today was my first day of exercising, and it felt great--physically, but also mentally, because I knew I had worked really hard for this.  It was hishtadlut that got me there.

Whatever your recovery goals, know that sometimes the only way is the long way...but maximum effort does pay off.  It's not magic--it's something anyone can do.  But there's no giving up.  You deserve to feel the satisfaction and elation that comes with reaching your goal, so stick with hishtadlut--that's what will get you there.
 

The Reckoning

This past Shabbat we finished the book of Shemot, which ends with parasha Pekudei.  The word pekudei can be translated as, "reckoning," and the parasha opens with the following verse:

אלה פקודי המשכן משכן העדת אשר פקד על–פי משה עבדת הלוים ביד איתמר בן–אהרן הכהן

These are the reckonings of the Tabernacle, the Tabernacle of Testimony, which were reckoned at Moses' bidding.  The labor of the Levites was under the authority of Itamar, son of Aaron the Kohen.

What follows is a detailed list of all the gold, silver, and copper that people donated for the construction of the Tabernacle.  Moses kept track of every contribution and how it was used, a biblical version of what we might now call, "transparency."

Coincidentally, during the same week in which we read Pekudei, I was also reading Brené Brown's new book, Rising Strong, and happened to be on the chapter called, "The Reckoning."  (Brief book evaluation:  not my favorite of hers, a little sound bite-y, but I'm still a fan.)  In this book, Brené explores the process of "rising strong" after a fall, and the first stage of doing so is what she calls The Reckoning--engaging with our feelings and getting curious about why we have them.

Brené says:

"I don't think we can learn much about ourselves, our relationships, or the world without recognizing and getting curious about emotion.  Fortunately, unlike navigating using dead reckoning, we don't need to immediately be precise in order to find our way.  We just need to bring our feelings to light.  We just need to be honest and curious.  I'm having an emotional reaction to what's happened and I want to understand is enough for the reckoning."

For me, this resonates strongly.  Even as a child, I would have emotional reactions to things and would immediately judge myself harshly for what I considered, "wrong feelings" (usually anger or fear).  I never got curious or wanted to understand; in fact, I never even really talked about it because I was so sure that my feelings made me a bad person.

When I was a freshman in college, it didn't take me long to figure out that I was miserable.  I didn't get curious then, either.  Instead, I told myself that there was something wrong with me because everyone else was happy and I was not.  Keep it to yourself and deal with it, was pretty much my philosophy.  "Dealing with it" meant exercising and dieting away my pain; in short, developing the eating disorder that would control my life for most of the next decade. I shut down all my feelings and all my connections in an effort to protect myself, but didn't stop to think of what this might cost me.  As Brené Brown says, "...shutting down comes with a price--a price we rarely consider when we're focused on finding our way out of pain." Truth.

And now?  Now, my first response to an emotional reaction is sometimes still judgment (old habits die hard), which nearly always leads to shame.  The difference is that I now recognize that this is unhelpful, and instead I try to "observe" my feelings neutrally.  Then, usually in therapy, I can do the work of getting curious and figuring out why I reacted the way I did.  For me, doing that work in the context of therapy is hugely important because the support of an objective observer (my therapist) helps me to avoid the shame traps that are easy to fall into when I'm alone.

Reckoning with emotion--acknowledging our feelings and approaching them with curiosity--is a lot of work and often feels harder than shutting down.  But I've found that this is deceptive; in fact, the reckoning often leads to a way out of the feelings, whereas shutting down pretty much ensures that I'll stay stuck in them.  My eating disorder was all about shutting down; recovery is about open and honest emotional exploration.  I don't think it's any coincidence that since I've been engaged in the process of emotional reckoning, I've developed more satisfying and authentic relationships--with others and with myself--than I ever did in the entire time I struggled with anorexia.

Sometimes it seems like we are the only ones who feel what we feel, with the intensity that we feel it.  This is false. Everyone has feelings; some people just prefer to deny them.  I propose a different approach:  get honest, get curious.  Strive to understand your emotions, rather than stuff them away.  It's healthier, and it leads to more resiliency and greater insight.  If you're brave enough to engage in The Reckoning, you might just find that you are stronger than you thought--and you will begin to see a way out of the darkness of the icky feelings and back into the light.      

The Challenge of Relaxation

The past few weeks have put me back in close touch with a familiar, unpleasant emotional state:  stress.  It's getting to be the end of the school year, which is always a fun time but also brings with it a lot of Things That Must Get Done Immediately.  At the top of my list have been 23 narrative progress reports, one for each student in my class--an endeavor that is time consuming, to say the least.  Close behind that is the realization that I have exactly three days between my last day of school and when I leave for Israel, and one of them is Shabbat--not a whole lot of time to get ready!  Then, there are all the small-yet-significant items such as student assessments, work meetings, and closing down a classroom that has accumulated a year's worth of papers and other random items.  So, I've spent the better part of the past two weeks alternating between frantically trying to stay on top of things at work while also attempting to tackle some pre-trip preparations.  The result has been a near-constant knot of stress in my stomach and frayed emotional ends...and, as this past Shabbat approached, I thought, "I CANNOT afford to take 25 hours off!"  For the first time in a long time, I found myself resenting Shabbat.

At the root of this are two core beliefs that underpinned my eating disorder and my general tendency to be very, very hard on myself:

1)  You earn your worth through what you do.
If I wasn't actively engaged in some productive activity, if I wasn't constantly giving others the impression that I was hardworking and dedicated, then I would lose my right to claim those adjectives.  In order to be liked/admired/considered valuable, I must always be doing something visibly useful.

2) Relaxation is an indulgence.
If there was one word that would turn me off in an instant, it was indulgence.  I believed wholeheartedly that indulgences were for people who had no willpower, that relaxation was for people too weak to push themselves.  I, on the other hand, was a champion of self-denial who found some degree of satisfaction from forcing myself to work/study/exercise when others said, "I've had enough."

After years and years spent working on shedding these core beliefs, I've considered myself pretty much divorced from them...and yet, as this past Shabbat neared and my stress level rose, I found them creeping back into my line of thinking.  But I've worked really hard to learn how to enjoy Shabbat, and I did not want to lose my ability to give myself over to the spirit of those 25 hours.  I went back to some of the writings about Shabbat that I've collected over the years, and came across two that helped me refocus on the meaning of Shabbat:

"It is a day in which we abandon our plebeian pursuits and reclaim our authentic state, in which we may partake of a blessedness in which we are what we are, regardless of whether we are learned or not, of whether our career is a success or a failure..."
--Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath

and...

"Master of the world, let me merit the joy and freedom of the holy Shabbat, and let me nullify the enslavement of the days of the week.  I pray that my mind will be completely settled, without any confusion at all--and that on the holy Sabbath no thoughts of labor and business, nor any worry or trouble, will enter my mind.  Rather it will be in my eyes as though all my work is done.  Then I will have truly attained the rest and pleasure and joy of the holy Sabbath."
--Reb Natan of Breslav, Likutei Tefilot 2:13 

What I learn from these quotes is that Shabbat is a time for me to separate myself from doing and concentrate on being.  In those 25 hours, I get to believe that it's not what I do that makes me valuable, it's who I am.  And although that might be challenging to accept, it's also critical for maintaining a healthy attitude toward myself and toward life.  For sure, it was challenging this week for me to say to myself, "For the next 25 hours, I'm done with work.  There is nothing I have to do.  I get to just be."  But I managed, and let me tell you--if ever there was a week when I needed Shabbat, it was this week.  A day of putting away the to-do list was exactly what my body and mind required.

I know that Shabbat can be challenging because it bumps up against those eating-disordered core beliefs that we cling to so tightly.  Yet, to be able to lean into that window of time when we simply are who we are, is so precious and vital to recovery, and to life.  I hope that we all can begin to release ourselves from the pressures of constantly producing and give ourselves that chance every week to relax and recharge.

What About Love?

Recently, I made a new friend--which, let's face it, is something that becomes exponentially more difficult after graduating from college.  I always get excited about new friends, because a) they don't happen that often, and b) I often wish I had more of them.  As a textbook introvert, I have a small number of very close, deep friendships, but I tend to run into trouble when those few friends go out of town or can't be reached by phone.  So, the promise of an authentic bond with a new person feels exciting and refreshing, but also brings along with it some feelings of caution.  Despite my craving for close connection, there were many years in which friendships definitely were not my most successful endeavors.  Even now that I am in recovery, when I enter into a new relationship I always have in the back of my mind the thought, "Don't make the same mistakes you used to make."

During my eating disorder, one of my biggest liabilities in relationships was my neediness.  At that time, I had very, very few friends--there just wasn't room for many of them in my life alongside anorexia.  I was desperately lonely, and as a result I clung tightly to anyone who promised connection.  Since I had so little self-worth I usually felt incredulous when someone actually wanted to be my friend...and then I lived in fear that one wrong move on my part would sabotage the entire operation.  I went overboard trying to endear myself to others via what one of my friends calls the, "Love Me, Love Me Dance"...and every time one of my emails or phone calls went unanswered, I experienced utter devastation and was certain that I accidentally had done something terrible, that the friendship was over.  I hated myself for being so needy, yet I couldn't help it--that hunger for love was so wide and so deep that I felt it would never be satisfied.

Many years of therapy and a few lasting, precious friendships later, I am relieved and happy to say that I no longer approach relationships with anywhere near that degree of clinginess.  As I've gained a genuine sense of self-love, I've found that I'm much more able to connect with others in a way that feels healthy.  And yet, remnants of former insecurities remain, and I occasionally still worry that friendships I hold dear will one day vanish.  I know how to manage those anxieties and understand that they are not, in fact, grounded in reality...but, there they are, nevertheless.  Recently I read something in the book, Toward a Meaningful Life:  The Wisdom of the Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, that offered me some insight into the link between self-love and loving others:

"If you don't find a way to love G-d, to love the G-d that resides in your soul, you will find yourself in a constant search for love.  We may even turn to unhealthy forms of love to replace this lack of inner love."

To me, this makes perfect sense:  when I didn't love myself at all, I needed others to do all that loving for me--and there was no amount of "other-love" that would satisfy the void inside myself.  Now that I do have a healthy dose of self-love in my life, now that I recognize the
G-dliness within myself, I'm free to enjoy--but not cling to--positive connections with other people.

Recovery is all about learning, and some lessons I learned the hard way.  There were relationships of mine that suffered in large part because of how I approached them.  But, although there was a time when I truly hated myself for "ruining" those connections, I don't feel that way anymore.  Was it unfortunate?  Absolutely.  Was it the best I could do at the time, with what I had?  Yes.  And, going through this evolution of how I approach relationships has made me more able than ever to tune in to myself and assess how I am contributing to a connection:  too much, to little, or just right?  It's not a perfect science and sometimes there are adjustments to be made...but, I also know that I'm not in danger anymore of reverting to my old imbalanced system.

Recovery is a tough journey, and I wish that all of us have friends to walk it with us.  I hope that we can all achieve a genuine degree of self-love and self-worth that will make those connections possible!

Shabbat Shalom?

Last week I had the privilege of co-facilitating a discussion on eating disorders in the observant Jewish community.  We initially thought only a few people would voluntarily come to something like that...were we ever surprised when over twenty women showed up!  The discussion was passionate and thought provoking, and one topic that rose to the surface time and time again was:  Shabbat.  How, exactly, does an individual with an eating disorder navigate that "island in time"?

The Jewish year is dotted with festivals, but they each happen only once:  there is only one Pesach, one Yom Kippur, to get through each year.  Shabbat, however, comes EVERY WEEK.  This is supposed to be a blessing, a weekly opportunity for pleasure via food and rest.  But, what if you find neither food nor rest pleasurable?  For a person struggling with an eating disorder, Shabbat easily turns into 25 hours a week of facing head-on that which is most stressful.

I suppose it's not a stretch for people to understand why the lavish meals and seemingly constant presence of food can be so threatening to a person with an eating disorder.  The challenge posed by rest, however, is perhaps more difficult to parse out.  For me, physical rest is satisfying only if my brain is also able to quiet down...and, when I was actively engaged in my eating disorder, my brain was never, ever quiet.  I've always compared the endless stream of anxious, obsessive thoughts to the ticker tape that runs constantly across the bottom of the screen on CNN.  It felt like there was never a moment when my brain wasn't broadcasting some worry, and the way I dealt with the anxiety (and with any uncomfortable feeling, really) was to exercise.  Aside from the obvious "benefit" of burning calories, physical activity was my outlet for feelings and my way of coping with sensations that were unpleasant and scary.  For many people with eating disorders, exercise serves that dual purpose.  It's understandable, then, that to be faced with a day that is full of food AND devoid of physical exercise might feel like too much to bear.  

So, the challenges are clear.  What can we do?  Well, some aspects of Shabbat are probably not going to change.  There are always going to be meals, and it's probably never going to be considered "shabbosdik" to go for a long, sweaty run.  However, there are ways to work within the system that can make the Shabbat experience, if not actually pleasurable, at least bearable to someone with an eating disorder.  

Regarding food:  My discussion co-facilitator made the brilliant suggestion of simply not keeping platters of food on the table where people are eating.  If possible, put the food on a separate table or ledge so that it's not constantly staring people right in the face.  This also helps people focus on whom they're eating with, not just what they're eating.  To give the struggling individual some sense of control over the food, allow that person to serve him or herself, and ask ahead of time if he or she would like to be involved in the menu planning.   

Regarding rest:  "Rest" does not have to equal, "sitting around doing nothing."  It is perfectly permissible to do leisurely activities such as taking a walk, playing board games (may I suggest Bananagrams?), or going to the park.  Weather permitting, I personally go for a walk in nature EVERY Shabbat, and I also try to do something intellectually stimulating such as learning Torah or having a meaningful conversation.  But, really, people are encouraged to engage in any pleasurable activity (within the bounds of halacha).  For someone with an eating disorder, "distress tolerance" skills will be especially important on Shabbat and that person should be permitted to do whatever he or she finds soothing, no matter how "unusual" the choice might seem to others.  

For people working on recovery, know this:  there are going to be tough Shabbats...and that's okay.  You are NOT a "bad Jew" because you fail to enjoy Shabbat, or because you can't freely partake of what everyone else seems to find pleasurable.  You are doing the best you can.  Beating yourself up for all the Shabbats that you "should have" enjoyed serves no purpose other than to make you feel badly about yourself.  I was a big-time self-berator until I finally realized that punishing myself for missed opportunities did not bring back those chances, nor did it do anything to help me take advantage of future ones.  That said, knowing I was unhappy was a major motivator for me to get well.  And, now when I actually enjoy sitting at a Shabbat table with friends and good food, the experience is so much sweeter because it is a prize I've won.  I wish for all of you that you find your own paths to future Shabbats full of pleasure and satisfaction--one small step at a time.

The Challenge of Freedom

Yesterday my good friend and chevruta introduced me to my new favorite haggadah:  A Night To Remember by Mishael Zion and Noam Zion.  It has the full traditional text accompanied by contemporary insights, spectacularly clever artwork, and commentary from a wide range of contributors (Rav Soloveitchik, Aviva Zornberg, Yehuda Amichai, and Amos Oz to name but a few).  I loved it so much that this morning I had to rush out and get my own copy.  If you've never been to the haggadah section of a Jewish bookstore on the day before Erev Pesach, put it on your to-do list for next year.

In a section discussing the meaning of freedom, the haggadah quotes 20th century French author Andre Gide:

"To be liberated--that is easy.  To be a free person--that is very hard."

I think this is a critical yet often unspoken aspect of freedom:  the challenge of maintaining it after it has been won.  In fact, the responsibilities of living as a free human being can be so daunting that sometimes people find themselves missing the predictability and security of slavery.  The ancient Israelites certainly experienced this--not even two months into their liberation from Egypt, the Jews began to whine about their new living conditions.  What would they eat?  Where would the food come from?  Oh, if only they had stayed in Egypt where they had their fill of meat and bread!  But, the Jews weren't being simply ungrateful complainers.  Rather, they were experiencing the fear that comes from understanding the responsibility of being self-sufficient.  When they were slaves, the Jews didn't have to worry about their own upkeep--they ate what was given to them and had their basic needs met by their masters.  Once the novelty of freedom wore off, the Jews woke up to the knowledge that life was no longer predictable and security could no longer be counted on.  Crossing the sea was a scary but finite event; in contrast, freedom stretched before them as a continuous stretch of fending for themselves.  Through those infamous rose-colored glasses, the Jews forgot about the backbreaking labor and crushing oppression that had been their lot as slaves, and saw only one thing:  the comfort of a lifestyle that had been familiar to them.

Andre Gide's quote resonates for me personally as well.  I remember that when I first went into intensive treatment for my eating disorder, I felt relieved that I would no longer be allowed to be a slave to my anorexia.  I was scared, of course, but I was also exhausted and tired of having every day be a battle between my mind and body.  Treatment provided me with a kind of scaffolded freedom--it taught me how to make more liberated choices around food and exercise but also provided me with a supportive framework in which to practice those skills.  A nutritionist watched over my meal plan, a staff of therapists and counselors tended to my emotional needs, and my case manager handled most of the major decisions around my treatment.  I had my hands full just trying to assimilate all the new knowledge and emotions, but I definitely didn't have any big "life responsibilities" during that time.

When I left treatment and began to live as a "free person," all of that changed.  I still had the skills that I learned in the program, but now I was fully responsible for using them.  I had an outpatient team that coached me along, but the major legwork was on me:  the responsibilities of shopping for food, following my meal plan, monitoring my own exercise, and providing my own in-the-moment distress tolerance fell squarely on my shoulders.  It was very, very hard.  There were many times when I wished I could go back to treatment...not because I wanted to be sick again, but because I just wanted to be taken care of.  Never mind that intensive treatment had been hard in a completely different way; when I was newly into "independent recovery" all I could remember was that it had been safe and secure.  Learning to take ownership of my own life of freedom from my eating disorder was a challenging yet critical step in my process of attaining recovery.

Years later, I still have all the "real world" obligations that come with living an adult life:  I have a full-time job, pay my own bills, and cook and clean for myself.  I am responsible for continuing to make recovery-oriented choices and for keeping myself physically and emotionally healthy.  There are times of overwhelm, but really, these "burdens" don't seem unbearable anymore--they just feel like life.  Recovered life.  And, although they bring their share of stress, these responsibilities also bring me lots of joy and a sense of accomplishment.  I remember what it felt like to be enslaved to an eating disorder, and I am proud that I now have what it takes to sustain my own recovery.

This Pesach, I hope we can all validate for ourselves that freedom is hard, and it is normal to miss the familiarity and security of whatever oppression we've left behind.  But, I hope we can also remind ourselves that what freedom brings is infinitely more gratifying than anything we could expect in slavery.  Remember--the Jews didn't go back to Egypt.  They trusted Hashem, they persevered, and they became a stronger people because of it.  If our ancestors could do it, we can do it, too.

חג כשר ושמח!

Sing Your Inner Song

This past Shabbat was Shabbat Shira, the Shabbat on which we commemorate the miracle of Hashem splitting the sea and of the Israelites crossing through it, on dry land, to freedom.  Central to parashat Beshalach is שירת הים, The Song of the Sea.

This week I learned that there are differing views as to when the Israelites sang the Song.  At the end of the Song comes Shemot 15:19, which reads:

"When Pharoah's cavalry came with his chariots and horsemen into the sea and Hashem turned back the waters of the sea upon them, the Children of Israel walked on the dry land amid the sea."

According to Ibn Ezra, this verse is part of the Song; the crossing of the Israelites is included in the list of miracles that Hashem performed for the Israelites.  However, other commentators (including Ramban and Sforno) offer a different view.  They hold that this verse came after the Song, and therefore the Jews sang the Song while they were still in the process of crossing the sea.  I can see the validity of both positions, but personally I prefer the latter.  The idea that after all their years of slavery--years in which their bodies and spirits were pushed to the breaking point, years in which they nearly lost all hope--the Israelites still had within them the power of song, strikes me as poignant and powerfully moving.  Despite all their anxiety and fear, the Jews recognized that they were on a journey of liberation, and so they celebrated even before their passage was complete.  From this we can learn a valuable example of how to keep our inner song alive through difficult times, and how to emerge from periods of personal darkness with our voices strong.

Personally, I found that the darkness of my eating disorder was accompanied by silence--both external and internal.  Not only could I no longer hear my own song, but I also had lost the ability to express myself in any way other than monotone.  Singing (or at least singing well) requires emotions and a sense of connectivity to the present moment and the world at large.  Recovery is about reopening those channels of connection and reawakening emotions from the eating disorder-induced state of dormancy. I know that I often found this process a bit overwhelming, and it was frightening to get back in touch with the power of my own song (who was I to try to add my voice to this world?!)...but what I discovered is that my song had never really gone away--I just had to release the "mute" button.  I find that to be both comforting and remarkable...the idea that despite everything, my heart never forgot the words to its own song and was just waiting to be allowed to sing once more.

Just as the Israelites did not wait to finish crossing the sea before they began singing, neither should any of us believe that we must be "done" with recovery before we can begin to use our own voices.  What merits celebration is not only the finish line, but also the journey--the willingness to take step after step in faith toward a fuller, more authentic life.

One of my favorite poets is Mary Oliver, who explores this theme of the resilience of the inner song in several of her poems in the collection, Red Bird.  I'm including here one that I particularly love...I hope it resonates with some of you, as well!

I will try

I will try.
I will step from the house to see what I see
and hear and I will praise it.
I did not come into this world

www.fineartamerica.com

to be comforted.
I came, like red bird, to sing.
But I'm not red bird, with his head-mop of flame
and the red triangle of his mouth
full of tongue and whistles,
but a woman whose love has vanished,
who thinks now, too much, of roots
and the dark places
where everything is simply holding on.
But this too, I believe, is a place
where God is keeping watch
until we rise, and step forth again and--
but wait.  Be still.  Listen!
Is it red bird?  Or something
inside myself, singing?

Fire and Ice

In this week's parasha, Va'eira, Hashem begins inflicting the Ten Plagues on the Egyptians.  The seventh plague is hail--a tremendous hailstorm descends on Egypt, raining down icy precipitation that destroys all the plant life and also causes significant damage to the animals and humans.  But, this is hail with a twist:  deep inside every hailstone is a burning flame of fire.

Finding this to be a curious detail, I searched for an explanation.  I learned that the Zohar teaches that while the plagues were indeed intended to punish Pharoah and the Egyptians, they also served to teach the Israelites important lessons about spiritual growth.  The ice and fire in the hail symbolize two different personalities that reside within each individual.  Hail represents an "icy" personality, someone who is cold toward others and appears unable to love, connect, or be passionate about anything.  In contrast, the fire represents the spark of positive energy with a person--that which allows an individual to feel compassion, empathy, and enthusiasm for life.  Although each person carries that spark within, sometimes it is hidden underneath an icy veneer.  However, if the flame burns hot enough, it can melt the ice and burn freely.

To me, this sounds a lot like the dichotomy between who a person becomes when she or he has an eating disorder, and who that person actually is.  Although I was never what one would call "bubbly," growing up I definitely had a sparkle to my personality.  I had a sense of humor; I was affectionate; I was contagiously enthusiastic about my various passions.  When I fell into anorexia, all of that disappeared behind a wall of impenetrable ice.  I stopped valuing my relationships and prioritized my food and exercise obsessions above everything else.  I had very little to talk about with other people; I lost interest in nearly everything.  I felt as though I was wrapped inside my own narrow world, frozen off from the seemingly carefree existence that other people enjoyed.  In some ways, I craved the ice--the world was too big, too chaotic, and too loud; I longed for smallness, simplicity, and quiet.  Simply put, ice was safer than fire--easier to contain, and less likely to harm.

But, there was always a flame inside me, and my early recovery was nurtured by the people who were determined still to see it.  Even if I had forgotten who I was, people who loved me had not...and they found gentle yet powerful ways to remind me of the spirited person I once had been.  As I continued on my path, I discovered new ways to cultivate my spark:  teaching, hiking, writing, and learning are among the many activities that keep me passionate and connected.  I now have energy to feel love toward other people, and I'm aware that this is a beautifully self-perpetuating cycle:  my inner flame allows me to demonstrate love and care toward others, and the authentic relationships that form as a result are what stoke my fire and keep my energy burning.

So, my message here is two-fold...

To parents, partners, friends, and loved ones of a person with an eating disorder:  remember that the individual who is struggling is still who she or he was before the illness took hold.  Even if this person seems devoid of energy, passion, and motivation; even if she or he seems impossible to reach, remind yourself that buried under that ice is the person you love.  Find a way to see the spark within your loved one, and nurture it as best as you can, until the person once again can recognize her or his own inner fire.

To the person struggling with an eating disorder:  I know life feels dark, cold, and often hopeless.  But, remember that your illness is not who you are.  It might feel like it has taken over, but you are more resilient than you think.  After all, Hashem breathed your soul into you, so you have a piece of the Divine within.  That's a flame that will never burn out!  Trust the people around you who try to show you your spark--they know what they're talking about.  Dig deep and find that flame...and slowly but surely, it will melt the ice and bring you back to life.

The Struggle for Wholeness

Since I started learning Torah, my friends and teachers have been telling me that the power of Torah is that no matter how many times you read it, you can always find in it something new.  At this point, I haven't read the entire Torah enough times to really test that theory, but this week I'm getting the sense that it holds water.  Last year I blogged about the episode in this week's parasha, Vayishlach, where Jacob wrestles with the angel.  (A quick recap for those unfamiliar with the text:  After using deception to claim the birthright that was intended for his older brother, Esau, Jacob fled from his homeland and remained in exile for around 20 years.  Finally, he hears that Esau is coming to meet him and Jacob prepares for the reunion with a good amount of fear and anxiety.  The night before he is to see his brother, Jacob has a dream in which a mysterious being wrestles with him until the break of dawn.)  I really love this story, and as I started reading the parsha for the second time, I felt a little disappointed that I'd already written about that section of text...but then, I found it:  something new!

While reading the psukim about Jacob and the angel, I was drawn to the following midrashic commentary at the bottom of the page:

We can imagine Jacob saying to himself, "Until now, I have responded to difficult situations by lying and running.  I deceived my father.  I ran away from Esau.  I left Laban's house stealthily instead of confronting him.  I hate myself for being a person who lies and runs.  But I'm afraid of facing up to the situation."  By not defeating his conscience, Jacob wins.  He outgrows his Jacob identity as the trickster and becomes Israel, the one who contends with God and people instead of avoiding or manipulating them.  At the end of the struggle, he is physically wounded and emotionally depleted.  Nevertheless, the Torah describes him (in 33:18) as shalem, translated "safe" with connotations of "whole," at peace with himself (shalem is related to the word "shalom"), possessing an integrity he never had before (S'fat Emet).   --Etz Hayim chumash, page 201.

I often feel that part of the challenge of reading Torah is finding ways to connect with the central figures of the narrative--how can I relate to them and make their experiences applicable to my life?  Through this commentary, I discover a whole new way to relate to Jacob.  Like Jacob, I went through a period of my life when I was deceptive and untruthful.  When confronted with any type of uncomfortable situation, I chose the path of avoidance, which was usually paved with lies.  I hated how my eating disorder had turned me into someone sneaky and dishonest, but I was unable to find the strength to face confrontations or challenges head-on.  For me, recovery has meant growing into a person who is willing to bear discomfort.  It has meant finding a way to be honest even when it might upset someone else, because having a strong sense of integrity has become more important to me than insulating myself from the bumpy parts of real life.

Jacob's battle leaves him injured and exhausted, yet undeniably whole.  Recovery is similar, in that probably no one (at least no one I know) escapes it unscathed.  I have found it to be physically demanding and often painful, and it has pushed me to the outer limits of my capacity for handling tough emotions.  So, why have I put myself through all of that?  I've done it because the "me" who has emerged out the other side is a fuller, more authentic self than I ever would have been had I not engaged in the struggle.  Although recovery, in the moment, often seemed impossibly challenging, it has ended up being the process that brought me to a clearer, brighter existence.  The eating disorder gave me a false sense of protection, but recovery provides me with a path toward genuine wholeness.  I hope that each of us is able to internalize the courage and wisdom of Jacob and use this strength to further our own positive transformations--and that we emerge from it all as individuals who truly know the meaning of shalem.  

   

Make Room for Guests!

Chag sameach--happy Sukkot to all!  Before I dive into the blog post itself, I just want to take a little bit of space to acknowledge that this blog is now one year old!  Developing it has been such a fun journey for me...many thanks to everyone who is along for the ride!

Now, onto the festival of Sukkot, of which we are currently smack in the middle.  After the somber, contemplative mood of the High Holidays, Sukkot brings us into a week of festive celebration.  One of the themes of the holiday is that of, "welcoming guests," or hachnasat orchim in Hebrew.  (For an adorably amusing "Shalom Sesame" video explaining hachnasat orchim, click here...I can't be the only one who gets all nostalgic for "Shalom Sesame!")  Just as Abraham was famous for waiting for strangers to pass by his tent so he could invite them in, so are we supposed to make an extra effort to invite people into our sukkot or to otherwise share the holiday with us.  The spirit of reaching out and welcoming others into our lives is part of what makes Sukkot such a joyous time.

I find the idea of hachnasat orchim to be especially personally relevant because opening myself and my space to others is definitely not a natural instinct of mine.  I am introverted to the core and have been since childhood; but, I am also aware that for the years when I was actively engaged in my eating disorder, I took this particular personality trait to new heights.  In my mind, other people made things messy--and I hated mess.  I wanted things exactly how I wanted them, tightly under my control...and bringing other people into the mix inevitably meant letting in an element of unpredictability and uncertainty, which I simply could not tolerate.  Additionally, I was deeply afraid of rejection and of desiring a relationship with someone who did not want one with me.  I was not willing to risk feeling the pain of being unwanted--better to not reach out in the first place, than to reach out and be disappointed.  One of my early therapists had a name for this:  "people restricting."  In addition to restricting my intake of food, I was also severely limiting my intake of other people--I honestly felt it was the safest way to go.

I've since changed my mind.

Don't get me wrong--I am still a classic introvert who craves "alone time," but I have also discovered that along with unpredictability and uncertainty, other people also inject a lot of energy and love into my life.  In fact, when I think about the moments in my recovery that stand out to me as major milestones, every one of them was an experience that I shared with other people, and the connectedness that I felt with those individuals was part of what made each of those moments so precious.  My eating disorder stepped in to fill a gaping void in my life during a time when I felt profoundly empty.  In order for me to be willing to give it up, I needed something else to slip into that space--and I have found other people to be a critical part of what now "fills me up."  Interestingly, it's only in recovery that I've found myself actually able to present with other people.  Connectedness fuels my recovery, and my recovery powers connectedness--it's a beautifully self-perpetuating phenomenon.

So, although I still find that quiet time alone in a sukkah is sometimes just what I need, I also must acknowledge that when I do go out of my way to let others in, I am almost never disappointed and am almost always enriched.  Hachnasat orchim might not be my natural instinct, but it's definitely one of the best learned habits I've picked up on the way, and is one I am still working hard to cultivate.  During this week of sukkot and beyond, I encourage any other "people restrictors" out there to try a different approach, even just one time.  Invite others to be with you, wherever you are.  It's true--other people do sometimes make a bit of a mess, but they also bring a lot of joy!

"Why Should I?"

Although I initially planned to spend each week of Elul looking at a different theme of the month, I've decided that for the time being I'm going to stick with teshuva, on the grounds that there is just so much to explore within that one theme.  The more I thought about what I wrote last week, the more it occurred to me that in explaining a reason why the process of recovery can be so painful, I had really addressed only half of the issue.  What naturally follows from that is the question, "Well, if recovery hurts so much and is so uncomfortable, why should I bother putting myself through that in the first place?" Convincing someone (or yourself) that enduring the unpleasantness of early recovery is a worthwhile process can be a tough sell, but recently I came upon some words from--you guessed it--Rav Kook, that I believe both validate the paradox of a painful recovery and offer a solid argument in favor of sitting with the discomfort:

"At the inception of creation it was intended that the tree have the same taste as the fruit (Genesis Rabbah 5:9).  All the supportive actions that sustain any general worthwhile spiritual goal should by right be experienced in the soul with the same feeling of elation and delight as the goal itself is experienced when we envision it.  But earthly existence, the instability of life, the weariness of the spirit when confined in a corporate frame, brought it about that only the fruition of the final step, which embodies the primary ideal, is experienced in its pleasure and splendor.  The trees that bear the fruit have, however, become coarse matter and have lost their taste...But every defect is destined to be mended.  Thus we are assured that the day will come when creation will return to its original state, when the taste of the tree will be the same as the taste of the fruit."  (Orot HaTeshuva)

Here, Rav Kook acknowledges the reality that oftentimes, the process by which we achieve what we most desire is not, in fact, pleasurable.  If full recovery is the "fruit," then the process of getting there is the "tree"...and I think we can all probably agree that the journey is nowhere near as sweet as the destination.  Rav Kook validates this and also normalizes it by teaching us that this is one of the imperfections of life on earth, a less than ideal situation that is familiar to anyone who has ever traveled a long, arduous path toward a much-anticipated goal.  But, he also reassures us that someday the "injustice" of this reality will correct itself, and we will find ourselves in a world where both the process and the result are full of delight.

You might be thinking, "Okay, great.  Someday far, far in the future, this yucky situation will no longer be the reality.  But what about NOW?  How do I deal with it in the present as it happens?"  I have received many valuable answers to the question of how to cope with the discomfort and have personally tried a wide variety of "distress tolerance skills" and methods of "cognitive restructuring."  While not every strategy hit the mark, there were many that did help me manage the uncomfortable feelings and sensations that came along with early recovery.  However, another critical contributor to my ability to push through the unpleasantness was the underlying sense I had that all of the struggles I was enduring were serving to teach me something important.  Even in the moment, underneath all my stubbornness, resentment, and fear was a glimmer of understanding that if I could just pull this off, I would end up stronger for it.  Rav Kook reinforces this idea when he says,

"Penitence does not come to embitter life but to make it more pleasurable.  The joy of life resulting from penitence emerges out of all those currents of bitterness in which the soul is entangled in its initial steps toward penitence.  This is the creative higher prowess, to know that sweetness is drawn from all bitterness, life from all the pangs of death, abiding delights from every disease and pain." (Orot HaTeshuva)

For me, this has proven to be true.  While I would never, ever wish an eating disorder on anyone, I also would not want to give back all the insight and understanding that I've gained through the process of recovery. This does not erase the significant pain I often felt or the very real losses I incurred along the way...but it helps me to accept that this struggle was given to me so that it might teach me something important, and I believe it has.  In that light, my hope for all of us is that we find the courage to radically accept the discomfort, move through it, and emerge stronger on the other side.

No Pain, No (internal) Gain

I would be remiss in my exploration of Elul themes if I did not venture into the realm of teshuva--certainly a central focus of this month preceding the High Holidays.  Teshuva (תשובה) is often translated as "repentance" or "penitence,"but there's more to it than that.  The Hebrew root of  תשובה is שוב, which means, "return."  When a person does teshuva, he or she repents for his or her sins, turns away from destructive patterns and actions, and returns to a life in harmony with Hashem.  Teshuva also signals new beginnings and a restoration of balance within oneself.  For years, the focus of my High Holiday teshuva was always apologizing to Hashem for yet another year spent engaging in eating disorder behaviors, a year in which I had, once again, fallen short of my "best self" in what felt like so many ways.  So, I prayed fervently for forgiveness and promised that in the year to come, I would really try to "do better" in recovery.  This happened year after year after year...and each time, I fully intended to follow through on my promise.  So, why didn't I?

I was a classic case of ambivalent teshuva.  I yearned to change, and yet I didn't.  It was puzzling and endlessly frustrating...and yet, it seems, not uncommon to the experience of many people who undergo teshuva for a variety of reasons.  In his brilliant work, Orot HaTeshuva, Rav Kook deeply examines the concept of teshuva.  (For more of Rav Kook's ideas, see this blog post.) This past Tuesday was 3 Elul, Rav Kook's yahrzeit, and I set aside some time that day to explore Orot HaTeshuva.  As I read, I came upon a passage that, I believe, gets right to the heart of why it was so hard for me to turn away from my eating disorder, even though I wanted to.  (Note:  instead of reading this text and making a direct inference that your eating disorder is "evil" or "sinful," perhaps think about it more generally as a negative force in your life.)

"The pain felt in the initial inspiration to penitence is due to the severance of the evil layers of the self, which cannot be mended as long as they are attached to and remain part of the person, and cause deterioration of the whole spirit.  Through penitence they are severed from the basic essence of the self. Every severance causes pain, like the pain felt at the amputation of deteriorated organs for medical reasons.  This is the most inward kind of pain, through which a person is liberated from the dark servitude to his sins and his lowly inclinations and their bitter aftereffects." (Orot HaTeshuva)

Rav Kook hits the nail on the head:  I clung to my eating disorder for so long, despite genuinely wanting to change, because separating from it was too painful.  Even though I knew anorexia was harming me, it had become so enmeshed in who I was that detaching it became a labor intensive, often excruciating process of pushing, pulling, and probing.  My eating disorder was killing me; yet, it felt integral to my being.  Letting go of it did, at times, feel as agonizing as if I was chopping off a limb.

But, Rav Kook is also correct about something else:  the necessity of distance to the process of repair.  When we are entrenched in a problem, it's often hard for us to see it clearly for what it is and figure out how to untangle it.  The same is true of eating disorder behaviors--when we're in the middle of using one, we're hardly in a position to view it objectively and make a plan to get rid of it.  For me, the magic of therapy was that it gave me a safe place to detach from my behaviors and observe, with the help of my clinicians, what function each behavior served and how I could begin to chip away at them one by one.  Being willing and able to separate from my anorexia in that context was what allowed me to internalize the tools that I needed in order to dismantle it.

So, for any of you who find yourselves wondering this month why you spent another year engaging in your eating disorder despite having had a genuine desire to kick it to the curb, remember what Rav Kook says:  it hurts to separate from part of yourself, even from a part that is negative.  And, like most people, you do your best to avoid pain.  But, remember also Rav Kook's message that separation is the key to repair.  If you allow yourself some distance from your eating disorder, you will be able to see it more clearly for what it is.  This year, may you be able to tolerate the pain of this separation, and may it lead you to lasting recovery, once and for all!