I have to let this go, so I'm going to write it here.
I have always had body issues. They started with my mother and hers started with hers. Most of the women in my family think thin=good. My mother is 5'7 and maybe...110? When I was a teenager I was chubby. I lost weight, at first with exercise and then by simply starving. My eating issues weren't something my mother noticed. If I didn't eat dinner or anything else, she didn't notice. She noticed if I gained 5lbs though.
I settled at 125 lbs in my 20s. I'm 5'4 and that was a good weight for me. I'm a medium build and I was a size 4, had no excess fat and I liked how I looked. I was certainly less disordered and healthier than I ever was as a teen.
Then I got pregnant. Twice.
It's been 4 years of oregnsncy, post partum and breastfeeding. My younger daughter will be two on May 30 and just over the last few months, I've gradually gotten my body back in shape. Clothes that I've hidden in the back of my closet for years fit and fit well. I work out 6 days a week, I've discovered weight training, I can run a 5k in under 30 minutes (which may sound pathetic to many of you but I was running a solid 13 minute mile when I started). I just turned 33 and I feel and look better than I did at 29.
My mother came over this weekend and proceeded to tell me all the ways I can lose weight. She mentioned more than once how I can " get off those last few pounds". And I will admit that I was really angry about that at first. Angry and hurt and miserable. Discouraged that she couldn't see how good I look, couldn't compliment me at all, couldn't just keep her mouth shut because weight it not the only thing that matters.
But here's the thing: my mother thinks that it is. And that is the saddest thing in the world. She is incredibly thin, loves to eat and cook but never let's herself enjoy anything, only sees other people's size (to my knowledge, she has never, ever met a person who's size she didn't comment on) rather than their worth. She is unhappy. I can't change that. I can tell her how I feel but I know fr experience that she will turn sarcastic and condescending (So sorry I tried to help you. That was SO mean of me) and nothing will get better. So I'm going to let all the hurt and pain and anger go. I'm going to stop being the victimized teenager who hates her body.
I can't change her. But I can change me.
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