I remember a time when I was about 8 years old. I was laying in my bed crying.

why do I have to have red hair?
why do I have to be short?
I just want to fit in.
I don’t want to stick out.
I want to blend in.

These things were beyond my control, though. And, it was about this time that I started to feel stuck in my life. Growing up, I felt there were eyes watching me. Things needed to be beautiful. Things needed to be perfect. I felt like I was in a cage being watched.

Food was how I found my freedom. It became like a companion. Although my full fledged eating disorder didn’t begin until much later, the seeds of it started here. Food served me. And, it got me through when I didn’t know what else to do. I just wanted to feel free. I wanted to be a kid. I wanted to make mistakes and not feel like I was being analyzed or judged.

I was a dancer growing up, and one time I when I was 7, I put on my jazz costume and was excited to go show my mom. She immediately said something about my stomach and pointed out that it wasn’t flat. And, clothing shopping…she would say things like…”well, you don’t look the skinniest in that”.

It’s hard for me to talk about this because there were so many good things about her too. I don’t want to paint a picture that she wasn’t a caring person. She didn’t have confidence in her body. And, would feel so bad if I had pointed this out to her. But, I really felt under the microscope…always questioning what’s wrong with me, and what’s wrong with my body. And, always comparing myself to other people.

I have a deep seated belief that I’m not gonna be the best person I can be until I lose weight. And, that how I look is a measure of my self worth. Even at 39, this is still so ingrained in me.

March of this year, my mom entered hospice. She was no longer able to eat. Her throat was damaged by the multiple bouts of cancer radiation. Refusing a feeding tube, her choice was to starve to death. I immediately flew to Wisconsin to be with her. The week I was there, I held her hand, I brushed her hair, I sang to her, I told her I loved her. She told me she was sorry and I told her I forgave her. And, I truly meant it.

Nest imagery has been coming up in my life for many years. It has always felt like a safe place, a place of comfort, and a place of refuge. And, I wanted to bring my vulnerability to the nest. I wanted to be gentle with myself and take a risk with my body image issues. This felt like an opportunity to let myself be vulnerable in a way that I haven’t before. I also brought the grief from my Mom’s death along with the processing our recent and past experiences, hoping to understand how they all tie together and have influenced how I feel about myself.

When looking at the picture in the Nest, I prepared myself for it to look awful and for it to be gross. But, I was shocked that when I first opened it, my eyes went to the things that I thought were beautiful about it. I saw the expression on my face. I saw how my tattoos looked. I saw the shininess on my leg. And the thing I feel most self conscious about, my stomach…I was able to look at it and see a cohesive unit. This is me. This is all parts of me. It was really powerful to see the image and not go to what is bad about it. I’ve been trying to look at it with an eye of acceptance rather than an eye of criticism.

I have definitely come a long way. I feel like I’m re-framing and healing these old traumas from my past and saying to that little girl…

Nicole,

You are perfect just the way you are. Your body is the way it’s supposed to be. And, you’re the way you’re supposed to be. You have value and you have worth and you are a good person. And, it’s ok to make mistakes and it doesn’t mean that you are a bad person if you do. You are worthy of LOVE.