Growing Up Thin
One solitary, contemplative breakfast I found myself gazing upon the body of a middle-aged woman in the big life-sized mirror across our dining table. The initial shock was immediately replaced with disbelief. When and how did this happen to this body, to MY body?
Growing up thin, I never thought my soul would one day dwell in this kind of body. No, I don't despise this body. In fact, if there was a body I despised, that was my skinny body of the first 30 years of my life. Society's obsession with the sexy body image which often times is equated with a skinny model-like figure undermines the body image issues that thin girls have to live with. Many would think that the thin, underweight ones among us have no right to complain, that being overweight is a graver problem.
Having grown up thin and underweight, I knew the silent struggle and pain of being thin. And no, seeing others who struggled with obesity or were overweight didn't make me feel any better at all. I was thin and for a long time, being thin formed a significant part of my identity.
I still remember the many names I was teased with because of my physique. Payatot and Patpat (Tagalog word for stick) were the standouts. Then there were those who would baptize me screennames such as Palita (the female version of a Filipino commedianne, Palito) or Olive Oyl. What I like a lot now, though it annoyed me so much as a grade schooler, is Kelly which stood for skeleton.
My family and the doctors in my clan were so concerned about my seemingly undernourished body that I was bombarded with all sorts of weight-gain supplements and vitamins. Name it, I probably was given it at some point in my growing-up years. The attention to my body issues made me feel cared for, but the well-meaning people around me had no idea that the subtle message that my body-mind was picking up was that I was not good enough, that there was something terribly wrong with me even if I hardly got sick as a child. I had so internalized this obsession with gaining weight that I had tried all sorts of weigt-gain supplements and programs in my early adulthood years - royal jelly and bee polen, among these.
Adolescence was a challenging time. I would often hear people say, "maganda sana kaya lang payat" (she's beautiful but is just too thin). My feelings of inferiority were heightened when my other classmates and friends started showing some breasts while I remained as straight as a lollipop. I grew up thinking that I was ugly. The ugly ducking, as I shared in a previous blog entry.
It would take years and years of inner work for me to work on my body image issues. I can't remember when or how it exactly happened, but I just came to a point when I decided that, while I could listen to the feedback of others, I didn't have to allow what they had to say to shape my beliefs about my worth as a person. Likewise, I had this strong inner feeling that I am beautiful and that this beauty is more inner directed rather than socially dictated. I had learned to shed off the body anxiety and do things for my body because I felt like it and I wanted to be healthier.
Now that my body is going through another transition, I look back at my inner journey, and remind myself that the most important thing is to make my body a temple where my soul will be at peace, a healthy body that can hold the emotional and spiritual chaos of the final years of the middle age years and prepare my inner garden for the golden years of my life.
(This is a powerful healing image I found in the internet a few years ago. Unfortunately, I failed to track down the artist or the source.)
Growing up thin, I never thought my soul would one day dwell in this kind of body. No, I don't despise this body. In fact, if there was a body I despised, that was my skinny body of the first 30 years of my life. Society's obsession with the sexy body image which often times is equated with a skinny model-like figure undermines the body image issues that thin girls have to live with. Many would think that the thin, underweight ones among us have no right to complain, that being overweight is a graver problem.
Having grown up thin and underweight, I knew the silent struggle and pain of being thin. And no, seeing others who struggled with obesity or were overweight didn't make me feel any better at all. I was thin and for a long time, being thin formed a significant part of my identity.
I still remember the many names I was teased with because of my physique. Payatot and Patpat (Tagalog word for stick) were the standouts. Then there were those who would baptize me screennames such as Palita (the female version of a Filipino commedianne, Palito) or Olive Oyl. What I like a lot now, though it annoyed me so much as a grade schooler, is Kelly which stood for skeleton.
My family and the doctors in my clan were so concerned about my seemingly undernourished body that I was bombarded with all sorts of weight-gain supplements and vitamins. Name it, I probably was given it at some point in my growing-up years. The attention to my body issues made me feel cared for, but the well-meaning people around me had no idea that the subtle message that my body-mind was picking up was that I was not good enough, that there was something terribly wrong with me even if I hardly got sick as a child. I had so internalized this obsession with gaining weight that I had tried all sorts of weigt-gain supplements and programs in my early adulthood years - royal jelly and bee polen, among these.
Adolescence was a challenging time. I would often hear people say, "maganda sana kaya lang payat" (she's beautiful but is just too thin). My feelings of inferiority were heightened when my other classmates and friends started showing some breasts while I remained as straight as a lollipop. I grew up thinking that I was ugly. The ugly ducking, as I shared in a previous blog entry.
It would take years and years of inner work for me to work on my body image issues. I can't remember when or how it exactly happened, but I just came to a point when I decided that, while I could listen to the feedback of others, I didn't have to allow what they had to say to shape my beliefs about my worth as a person. Likewise, I had this strong inner feeling that I am beautiful and that this beauty is more inner directed rather than socially dictated. I had learned to shed off the body anxiety and do things for my body because I felt like it and I wanted to be healthier.
Now that my body is going through another transition, I look back at my inner journey, and remind myself that the most important thing is to make my body a temple where my soul will be at peace, a healthy body that can hold the emotional and spiritual chaos of the final years of the middle age years and prepare my inner garden for the golden years of my life.
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| To embrace my body and all of ME in the same way that the great Beloved does. . . . |
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