Forgiveness, Feeling Good and Ho'oponopono

   In an earlier post about defiance,  I shared how my dad spanked me using a belt when I was younger. As I looked back at what I had written, I realized that I missed an integral part of the story.  

   Not that it happened all the time, but being spanked as I was, with a belt and for as long as I was, well into my late adolescence, I carried a lot of shame around. The message I got was one of unworthiness. It is very humiliating to be over powered that way.  That shame manifested in my eating getting out of control and my becoming bigger and bigger every year.  

   In the past few years I lost over 100 lbs., It only happened after dealing with a lot of my childhood pain. I discuss a lot of that here if you'd like to read about it. 

   The beautiful thing about revisiting old hurts is that you can so many times see them in a different light than when you were in the thick of it living it.  It’s all about perspective. Time can give you a much broader perspective. And so it went with my own past as I began to explore it.  

     I remember my mother being hurt by some things I wanted to discuss up. She asked me why I wanted to dredge up hurtful things from the past and talk about them.  I reassured her that I only wanted to talk about things so I could figure out why I am the way I am, so I might change some things I didn’t like about the person I'd become. I wanted to let go of my resentment, anger and shame. My insecurity reared its ugly head time after time in my marriage and in my other relationships and I wanted to have more self confidence. 

   After my second daughter was born, I was reading lots of self help books written by very wise people and learning ways to move forward and let go of the past. I wanted emotional freedom.  Having kids will do that to you.  You see their beautiful innocence. You see their unsullied selves. You see that joy is their natural state. It becomes apparent that almost any issues kids have are issues that we their parents and society as a whole give them. It becomes obvious what precious gems children are and what an immense responsibility parenting is.  

   And I so wanted to be an amazing parent. I dreamed of it my whole life!  I had waited 10 years to have my kids and I now had the two girls I wanted. I was in my late 30s, calmer, wiser, more stable emotionally. I had a wonderful marriage. I felt like a grown up!  I felt ready!

   But, I still harbored unresolved feelings of anger toward my father that would come up almost every time we’d spend any amount of extended time together. I could hold my stuff together for a little while, but give it a day or two and something would trigger it and I’d go off and end up a sobbing mess in tears feeling like I was 14 again unloved and so alone.

 And not only did it affect my relationship with my dad, the insecurity and anger would cause me to react from a place of fear every time something didn't go right in my world. I would get angry, cry, yell and complain a whole lot.  Even though I thought I was a happy person and there was a smile on my face, those hurt feelings were all just under the surface waiting to bubble up when the heat got turned on. 

  To make matters worse, through my learning and reading, I was understanding that all these unresolved feelings within me were not good for my health at all.  Dis-ease can contribute to disease. Emotional stress can cause a state of inflammation in your body in which diseases thrive.  This was a huge wake up call for me.  I had to get my stuff together!

I knew it was really important for me to deal with my issues. I could see I was emotionally stuck in a rut and I needed to pull myself out.  I was looking back figuring out why I acted the way I did, but now I needed some tools to use to move past the hurt into healing. 

One of the major themes along the way for letting the past go had to do with forgiveness. When we forgive someone, we release the negative energy we are putting into holding the grudge or resenting them for what they did, so we can focus our energy on what we want instead.  

   A helpful strategy was to imagine the person I needed to forgive as a child of around 5 or 6 years in age. It seemed a bit silly at first, but  I closed my eyes and pictured my dad as a kid. I saw him standing in his own boyish innocence.  Unsullied, trying to navigate his own way through the world. 

   I then realized that my grandfather, who had once popped me in the mouth from across the dinner table without warning, was my dad’s dad. My dad treated me like that when he was mad at me, because that’s how he’d been treated. He didn’t know any better way. Even my grandfather was living from the previous cycle of his own life and his parents before him and so on.  I could see that. Children learn what they live and then they become adults who have kids who live what they have been taught and the cycle goes on and on and on.  

   When I saw my dad as the boy he once was, it hit my heart like a bolt of lightning. And I wept and wept for him.  I wept for the child he was, I wept for the man he might have been and I wept for the girl I might have been too. One who wasn’t hit. One who didn’t have a root of rejection and feelings of unworthiness she was trying to rid herself of.  Oh, how wonderful it must be to not have to do this kind of work as an adult!  Do any of us make it through unscathed? Probably very few.  

   Seeing my dad so vulnerable and helpless helped me to see that he too was a product of his environment. As was his dad and his before him, and so on and so on.  It made it easy to forgive my dad for the mistakes he'd made.  And I could let the resentment and anger go. I saw my dad was doing the best he could with the tools he had. As Bob Marley once wrote:

"The biggest man you ever did see was once a baby... In this life... we're coming in from the cold." 

   We are all just doing the best we can. Most of the time, when I think of my dad, I remember so many good times. Seriously, my dad was cool.  He even had a motorcycle!  I think of the music my dad exposed me to, from Dave Brubeck to The Doors,  the work ethic he instilled in me, the rock concerts he took me to, the father/daughter talks we would have, the wonderful vacations he took us on as a family, how when I was 16 he drove me and a girlfriend around and around O’Hare airport looking for a band I was a huge fan of because my girlfriend had gotten a tip the band was landing at a certain gate!
Oh my goodness the things daddies do for their little girls! And my dad did it all!  

He was a total trooper!  And always, always there when I need him. Even to this day. I have so much love for my dad. He's a wonderful man and father. The good stuff totally out weights the bad stuff, but I had been letting the bad moments basically run my life like a computer program that’s open in the background but you can’t see it.  I thought I had closed that window a long time ago, but man... it was really slowing things down. But, I ran some forgiveness software and cleaned it up! 

   

I heard Dr. Matt James talk about ho’oponopono years ago and it resonated with me deeply.  Ho’oponopono is an ancient Hawaiian forgiveness exercise in which you forgive hurts of the past in a step by step process.  It’s not about condoning the behavior in any way, but instead using the experience and learning from it, but releasing the hurt. 

   He also spoke of using the practice of forgiveness and release on people who were no longer in the physical world. In those exercises, you imagine the person you’d like to forgive sitting in front of you and follow the steps with them as you would if they were there physically. 

   I have found it to be very freeing and it has helped me to begin to move on and stand in my own authentic power. It has allowed me to forgive my grandfather and see that he too was doing the best he could. I forgave, but took the wisdom of the experience with me. The wisdom is knowing I do not want to repeat the same mistakes. 

   Now that I have my own children, I am bound and determined to break the cycle. I realize the importance of taking the time to discipline my children with respect and love. I know that these choices I make will have a rippling effect for generations to come and I want the ripples I make to be ones of unconditional love and hope. 

Some people don’t want to forgive because they think it excuses the behavior somehow.  I don’t condone or excuse any of it.  But I understand. One of my favorite quotes is: 

                       “Do not weep. Do not wax indignant. Understand.” ~ Spinoza

    I didn’t want to drink the poison of unforgiveness anymore.  I am the one who will suffer from swallowing the unforgiveness and it is me who will benefit from putting it down!  To carry it around would weigh me down.  I can forgive the mistakes of the past and move forward. Not forgetting the lessons, but taking that wisdom with me into a lighter and brighter tomorrow for myself to live unencumbered by the burdens of the past while blessing generations of the future. 

How I Lost 125 Lbs.- Part 7: Doing The Hard

Like so many of us, many of my friends are making resolutions that involve dieting or weight loss.  I too find myself, after a moment of weakness spiraled into a week of bad eating, resolving to get my 'food' house in order once again.

I recently stepped on the scale after the holidays and was horrified by how quickly the numbers had risen! What, what. what???? F....f...F...FOURTEEN POUNDS???? I looked at my slightly rounder reflection in the mirror... How could YOU let this happen??? I glared at myself. You are supposed to know better!!  You have lost 125 lbs. after all... You are supposed to know how to do this!

I stood there disgusted with myself for a few moments. And then realized something:

“Nothing tastes as good as feeling good about myself feels.”

I had forgotten the minute that tempting food was in front of my face. I let myself go... too far... too long.  That’s the problem with a little taste sometimes... it can lead us into a downward spiral if the timing is right. And mine was.

It all began when my husband, knowing my affinity for the local donut shop’s bear-claw, wanted to surprise me with a treat.  He had taken our girls for donuts one Saturday morning as he has been known to do. Usually they go while I am still sleeping and get back before I wake. All I see are empty remnants of a fun, sugar-fueled morning with Daddy when Mommy wakes from her sleep in day. But this morning there was bag that was still full. I peeked inside. My first mistake.

To put it in a small dough-filled nutshell, one bear claw led to a slice of apple pie which I had gotten to celebrate my husband’s birthday that week. That led to another (oh, it was SO good!) with dairy-free vanilla ice cream the next night, which rolled into another piece of pie ala-mode the next night. Don’t look at me like that...  There was some left! I couldn’t let it go to waste! 

Every night that week, I stood at the pantry looking... for... something... sweet.  Or salty. Salty would do too. Sweet and salty would be divine!  I got in the habit of eating at night again and the day after Christmas, I stepped on the scale. FOURTEEN pounds? WHAT? I was stunned temporarily. I gained 14 pounds?? In 12 days?? How is that even possible???

These questions ran through my mind as I kept stepping on and off the scale hoping there was some kind of mistake. A malfunction perhaps.  But no.  As I looked at myself, I could easily see it.  I fooled myself into thinking I could let myself go as long as I did.

I believe with all my heart that as Maya Angelou says, “When you know better, you do better.”  We all want to do better. What I have learned is that I must go through a sort of detox when it comes to salt and sugar. I have to eliminate it from my body for a time or it seems almost impossible for me to resist it and I could end up back where I started in a short time. We’ve seen this happen time and time again. People lose weight only to gain it all back, plus more! Heck, I’ve done that my whole life. Till now, because I know better.

We must realize that although the spiritual component to weight loss is huge and crucial to our success, we can not over look the physiological effects of salt and sugar on our bodies and the cravings they encourage. Most processed food is being stuffed with sugar and salt to keep us stuck in the cycle of eating till we bust. How many times have you said to yourself as you reach for the bag of chips again, “How on Earth can I still be hungry??”  Or looked back on a nights eating and wondered how the hell you ate what you did? I know... Me too. 

So, as I get myself back on track, I’d like to help you not waste time ‘dieting.’ Until you make up your mind that you are ready to make a life style change and not just go on a diet, you might as well not bother.  It might be harsh to hear, but really... we have an industry that has made BILLIONS of dollars on people believing there is an easy way to lose weight.  Buy this... eat that... add this... cut out that... have this surgery... eat only this food... go on this program. They pray on our feelings of wanting to be better now... of thinking we can do it without too much work. 

And oh, how they lie. It reminds me of that line from the Princess Bride when Westley, as The Dread Pirate Roberts, tells Buttercup, “Life is pain, Highness! Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.”

Anyone who tells you losing weight is easy isn’t being honest. Well, wait. It IS easy. Calories in have to be less than calories out. That’s pretty easy. But, to have an eating plan that allows you to keep calories to a minimum but still get the maximum of nutrition, is that hard part. And you will never do that if you are wasting your calories on sugar and salt. And not only that, but once you allow a little to creep in, the cravings begin and you are fighting  a losing battle.

Plus, the salt makes you hold onto a least a few pounds of excess water which is hard on your body for various reasons. I feel excess water in my knees right away. One of the best benefits for me in changing my eating was less knee pain! I can even sit here and type cross legged. No way I could have done that two years ago.

Ridding my body of salt and sugar was key for me. It wasn’t easy. But, it allowed me to gain control. It was only then that I was able to move forward in my weight loss journey. I had to go through the valley to get to the mountain. Some valleys can seem awfully deep.

I call it “Doing the Hard.”  Going through that uncomfortable period where the cravings are making you nuts. Having an action plan to handle them, but most of all realizing the temporary nature of it all. That this too shall pass and when it does- you are golden and it will be so much easier to say no. You can make use of the suffering you feel by letting it help you understand the control food can have for some of us. You’ll see it for what it is and the spell can be broken.

Of course, love yourself through it all. We need to give ourselves time to adjust. Give our taste buds time to change. Give our brains time to get the messages: Good food is good! Fruit is sweet! I can eat to live, not live to eat!  But when you try to eat an apple after you’ve had a candy bar earlier, you aren’t going to think the apple is sweet at all. It’s gonna be hard to enjoy the apple because the taste of the salt and sugar is fresh in your mind. People try to do this and wonder why the fruit doesn’t taste as sweet. So, they reach for the candy bar time and time again. This is text book self sabotage.

In my opinion, it is key to go for an extended period of time without salt and sugar to detox. In The Rice Diet Solution, they have a phase one that is very strict and no sugar or salt is allowed. No, you don’t just eat rice. I actually didn’t eat any rice at all, but learned healthy habits through calorie restriction.  It was hard. It was miserable at times. It made me cranky. It made my head hurt. I was hungry all the time at first. But, after years of dieting it was just what I needed. And it was life changing for me.

You may not be up for such restrictions. I can understand that. Not everyone is. But, if weight loss or fitness is your goal,  don’t be afraid to Do The Hard! Give yourself a fair chance at success by eliminating processed foods, salt and sugar for a while. You’ll be glad you did and your body will thank you.  

And again truly, NOTHING tastes as good as feeling good about yourself feels.

Are you willing to do the hard and find that out? I’d love to hear from you.