Marshall, Ed, and Me.....

One of the managers of the store I work at is one of those fantistically funny, confident fearless women I have always wanted to be. Actually, all of the managers I work for are wonderful, admirable, confident women; but this one also has some priceless sayings that are all her own. Megan is the type of person who, if she hears you (And by you, I mean me) whining about something, she offers a solution or idea...which is how I came to be trying on yoga pants at the end of my shift despite my mortal fear of what they would look like on my 30+ body. (If you don't know what yoga pants are, look them up on the internet..try Urban Dictionary, it's very helpful) While browsing about for fun clothes to outfit me in my eternal quest to appear cool, she asked a simple question "what size?" and like a deer in headlights...I didn't answer.
 Don't get me wrong, I spoke but the answer didn't come from me. I know what sizes I wear in the clothes we sell, I have plenty of them at home and I can read the  tags. That wasn't the size I gave though, which prompted laughter and the question "Who are you?" from Megan as she grabbed a sweatshirt in the right size and shooed me into the fitting rooms. I'm sure my manager had no idea that at that moment she was looking not at Jean Ann who comes smiling into work every day with her Ipod headphones blaring some obscene rapper, but at Jean Ann who was hearing that voice screaming in her head that she could never possibly fit into these tiny clothes....Jean Ann who is fat and ugly...Jean Ann who doesn't deserve to have fun friends like Megan....
Anyone who has known me for very long knows that Recovery is more than just my favorite Eminem cd. I went on my first diet when I was about 9, and had a full blown eating disorder by 14. I finally started treatment and Recovery about 6 years ago, at that point it hurt to sit in chairs. I weighed about what my 11 year old does now. Everyone has their own approach, but what saved me (and I am not being overdramatic here, because I believe with every bone in my body that saved is the word I should use) was the book Life Without Ed by Jenni Schaefer. It was about the therapy approach she learned, where you see the eating disorder, or "Ed" as we call him, as an abusive relationship. A bit like the one my favorite rapper sings about in Love the Way You Lie...and slowly I have  come to understand that the feelings about my body are not mine, and I learned to "talk back" and that the image I see in the mirror is not necessarily real. I learned that I didn't "like the way it hurts" anymore, and that everything I believed about myself was lies...and the hard work of recovery began.
The last 3 years have been pretty good, Recovery is a fight but it's one I had been winning. I've become a different person, as I had never known myself as an adult without "Ed" telling me how to live. In the meantime Jenni wrote another book, about moving past Recovery-that daily battle with Ed-to Recovered, and I realized life could get even better. There is life without this voice. I've seen it, I saw it when I had the first normal shopping trip of my life about 3 years ago....I saw it when I tried on a pair of jeans and just thought "these look good!" No other voices, just mine ( I bought them, thank you Justin Timberlake). I saw it when my kids and I went to Texas and who cares if I skipped a day or two of exercise. I saw it when I started running and understood that I had to feed my body for it to work properly and I ran a 10K.
But this last year has been one of the most stressful of my life, and it seemed all of that wonderful progress of Recovery was thrown in my face.  It was a hard ugly year, full of fear and frustration and my old friend Ed has been right there to "help" me through it. Or he's been trying....calling...texting....sending me a facebook friend request...
He's noticed that those fantastic jeans are a little tight (and he's right, they are); he's pointed out that one more mile even when I'm exhausted or I don't have time is a necessity; he's noticed that tummy that is sticking out a little more than it used to; he's noticed which sizes fit and which don't. He's the guy who catches me in the mirrors at work and sees how "old" and "tired" and "heavy" I look, even though I'd knock someone out who ever spoke to one of my coworkers or clients like that. In other words, the work of Recovery has gone from work to a fight to some days an all out war again.....
September is National Recoevery Month and I write this blog not so anyone will feel sorry for me or look at me different or notice if I am eating my lunch or not. My recovery and my life are my responsibility; I may have learned that my "Ed" is not me, but I have the choice of whether to listen and obey or not. But I doubt I am the only person you know who hears him. I write this blog because chances are you know someone else who is, was, or might soon be struggling with an eating disorder. We look like you, we act like you. No one chooses to have an eating disorder. No one wakes up one day and says "I want to destroy my life with food, or I want to starve myself to death"; research tells us it is much more than that. Just as the research tells me I have literally damaged my brain to the point I really don't see what's in the mirror, research also tells me my brain chemistry may have set me up for an eating disorder long before I started worrying about "fat." Eating disorders are complex illnesses that are treated like fads in our country and ignored by insurance companies while people suffer in sillence because of social stigma. I write this for awareness and compassion, it's time to be okay talking about eating disorders and it's time to be educated.
My favorite song on Recovery-the cd- by my favorite rapper is Not Afraid. Eminem released the song and cd about the time I started struggling again. He sings about "going to that place to get to this one" and I listen to this song sometimes when I feel like I'm slipping. I remember that place and I know this life (even if I have to suck it in to wear those jeans) is better. I much prefer the voice of Marshall Mathers in my head to Ed these days, so much so that I saved up and went to see Eminem in concert this summer. I waited 10 hours...in 100 degree heat....the last 5-6 of those standing...without water...to be on the front row. My body could not have done that when Ed was in charge, it wasn't strong enough. When that little snotty girl tried to push her way to the front row,  it was my strong  legs and butt that pushed right back; those same legs Ed likes to call fat. And when Eminem asked us girls if we had ever been in a dysfunctional relationship, I screamed yes...and sang along to Love the Way You Lie. I screamed until I was hoarse, I jumped, I danced, I waved (he waved back, Youtube it, I'm not crazy) and I was by myself, Ed free. I didn't wait for any of my friends to decide to buy tickets, I wanted to see Eminem so much, so I really did go alone.  But I was not afraid, and I am not afraid now. It's time for me to do the hard work of answering that question "who are you?" for myself because I have seen too much of this Life Without Ed and I won't go back.

Our Job

One of the most embarrassing moments of my parenting career happened the other day. Unlike some of the more public parenting fiascos of my children's younger years (supermarket checkout aisles, church), this one happened in the privacy of my own home as my daughter and I were listening to the song Made in America by Kanye and Jay-Z. I was raving about how much I love the song when my daughter-after hearing the lyric "sweet Queen Coretta"- looked at my and blankly asked "who is Coretta?". I was stunned, horrified, and then right out embarrassed. How could my child know who Beyonce is but not Coretta Scott King?

My first response was to roll my eyes and mutter "what do you learn in school?" (grumble grumble) But then I realized; it's not their job-it's mine. It's my job to raise my child, both of my children, in a home that knows and understands the history of our country and the people who are important to it. And as I sit here on the eve of the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I am reminded again how important it is that we teach our children those things we remember-- simply because they don't.
I am not sure how much twentieth and twenty-first American history kids learn in school today. I know when I taught and events from the last 20-30 years would come up, they seemed woefully uninformed. Challenger, Columbine, Rodney King, Princess Diana, Waco, and the first Persian Gulf War are all discussions we have had at my house because they meant nothing to my children. Even more, I remember in the classroom, teaching a lesson to freshman about the Kennedy assassination and their complete lack of understanding that Reagan wasn't President in the 1960's. I remember explaining the Oklahoma City bombing to my children as we drove to Texas one time because we saw the sign for the memorial; the name Tim McVeigh had no significance to them.

We live in an information age, kids can Youtube anything they want. When I taught the Kennedy lesson, they could youtube the Zupruder (which I probably spelled wrong, showing I am no history expert) film or look up autopsy pictures. But it can't teach them what I learned when my parents told me about how the nation mourned. They can Youtube film of the towers falling on 9/11 but only we can put into perspective what it FELT like to watch it that day. The feeling that the world had just turned upside down, the confusion and fear we felt. Kids may enjoy their day out of school on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day; but it our job to be sure they understand the work of civil rights is never done. They can find the picture of the firefighter carrying the baby from the Oklahoma City rubble, but only we can explain that an American is the person who parked that truck in front of that building and daycare.
The next generation-one I spent a lot of time with until I recently left the classroom-catches criticism because of their lack of repsect. But how do we expect them to have it if we don't teach it? This is a generation which has been raised with antibullying and Safe Schools laws, without the context to understand it. My children may know the lockdown procedure at their schools, but really have no understanding of what happened in the days before we knew what to do. It is my job to teach them. I believe it is my job to teach my children what terrorism really is, as they have never known life without a National Terror Threat (or as I call it the Color Thing). That terrorism is an idea-it is not about the way a person looks or what religion they practice (i.e. Tim McVeigh) but more about what they are trying to accomplish. That even though I am not old enough to remember a time of separate water fountains, I will never tolerate bigotry, prejuidice, or racism in our home. That my job as an American is to be part of the process, so that is why we stand in line to vote.
Is it the job of schools to teach history? Of course it is (thankfully, as my knowledge of the Civil War is limited to Denzel's seech in Remember the Titans), but it is ours too. As parents, friends, uncles, aunts, or just adults in this world it is our job to live it and show we have learned from it. Start tomorrow. Chances are, you know someone who may have been alive but too little to remember (or even not yet born) on 9/11. Tell that someone what a hero really is; explain why your neighbor or friend is in Afghanistan or Iraq; tell them wy there is a memorial in a field in Pennsylvania instead of another federal landmark; or look at an old picture of the New York skyline and explain how it felt the day it changed. It's our job.