29th to 6th December - Retreats than changed my life

Blog 29th Nov to the 6th of December Retreat I have just come back from my third retreat with the Living Room. The retreats are amazing experiences that enhance and strengthen my recovery, I also learn to look at things in a different way and embrace new ways of thinking that require willingness and an ability to challenge what you think you know. All this in the company of like-minded individuals in a safe and loving environment, that is non-judgmental humbling and very healing. The first retreat I went on I had such an outpouring of emotion that I was quite overwhelmed. On return I was exhausted it had been one of the most enlightening and freeing experiences of my life. I went consumed with shame and guilt, but with the help of the group and Carol in particular I was able to leave that in Trefeca. For the first time I was able to be honest with another human being about the past, whilst continuing to feel safe to trust and to feel the power of unconditional love. I returned from that retreat with the strength hope and courage to face step 4 and 5. The second retreat in St Non’s was cathartic as I was able to examine my relationship with my mother a relationship that had been strained and difficult for as long as I can remember. The sense of fellowship on that retreat was amazing, the group bonded so well and so much as there were tears there were many, many laughs as well. One member of the group remarked that you could go for a walk and no matter what member of the group you met on return you felt comfortable and safe, there were no chiefs everyone found their place and fitted perfectly. It just worked. I was told in the early days that recovery was like peeling an onion removing layer after layer to reveal the person underneath the personality. This statement is very true, as each layer is peeled off you discover more and more layers underneath. In St Non’s I learnt all about my eating disorder where it originated from and how I could be free of it if I took action, accepted it and surrendered. I was unable to do this until September when comforted by a year in recovery from drink and drugs I decided to take that leap of faith and deal with the elephant in the room - the food. For a year I had white knuckled it “take the drugs take the drink but you’re not taking my food”, all the time binging, getting bigger, clothes not fitting, feeling fat, hopeless and enslaved by that compulsion to binge on chocolate, cake, biscuits and sweets. I had experience with the 12 steps; I knew they worked. If they worked for drugs and drink they would work for food too. In order to do that I had to surrender, to recognise that one day at a time my trigger foods had to go; to me those foods were my alcohol and drugs. I could eat anything savoury as I did not binge on savoury foods; sweet foods, however, were no longer part of my repertoire and I realised that this was actually OK with me as I could not use these foods in moderation. I am incapable of eating 1 bar of chocolate, so my daily simple plan is don’t take the first bite, follow your eating plan, be honest, eat at certain times and in certain places, go to meetings, daily contact with your sponsor, do some service, prayer, reading, hand it over, and always stay close to the group. On the third retreat this weekend (again in Trefeca) I had two aims, the first was to learn how to make contact, comfort and love my inner child, the second was to build a solid recovery to boost what recovery I have and to trust that I would be taken care of, and to plan my action over the festive period. Planning for me is key when it comes to food. I was fearful about breaking down and being overwhelmed by emotion. I don’t know why I fear this so much; I think it’s to do with being vulnerable. I dislike crying in front of others as I see it as a display of vulnerability and not being able to cope. I know this is utter clap trap and if someone said this to me I would laugh. Challenge those negative thoughts. Crying actually hurts me, I can get so far, tears will fall down my cheeks but it’s silent. Totally silent and really painful, the pain is in my throat and jaw, no sound just a pain and a block in these areas. Weird! I had an epiphany moment on retreat when we looked at active and passive signs of seeking and looking for love and pushing love away or pretending that we were self-contained and did not need love anyway thank you very much. I realised that my confusion came from trying to be different things to different parents, active with my mother and passive with my father. For the first time in my life I saw my father as a human being, I brought him down off that pedestal and began to feel some real feelings for him. I could see that he was not a saint nor was he perfect, my great protector; I had made him those things. I had wanted him to be those things, so I had created this fantasy world where he became them. It was a huge step in my recovery. I wrote him a letter and the resentment poured out, it also helped me see my mother in a more compassionate light and I wrote her a letter of apology. The third letter I wrote was to me as a child apologising for everything that I did to hurt, damage and poison the child within and resolving to look after that child and listen to its needs from now on, to comfort that child. I am the adult now and I can take care of it. I felt a huge sense of relief when we burnt those letters. I was beginning to get to the core of who I am and why I was behaving the way I was. Finally, I learnt that I had to love myself, that this is the most important thing for me now. No one else can or will ever love me the way I want to be loved, so I had better jolly well learn to do this for myself, and to realise that it is possible. The end of the retreat was a beautiful experience; we had an interdenominational service in the little chapel where all of us, in different stages of recovery, took part and read, sang, recited and gave thanks. Some of us read verses from various texts and poems that had inspired and helped us in recovery; some of us chose songs that had special meanings for us; some told their own personal stories and expressed their gratitude for recovery. It was a moving, humbling and very special occasion and I felt privileged to have been a part of it. Roll on the next one! Until then, one day at a time. Julie

Blog 22nd to 29th November - The Damnation of Weighing Scales.

Blog 22nd to 29th of November Weighing scales I hate them. I have spent years either ignoring them and denying their every existence or leaping on and off them with gay abandon five or six times a day. I succumbed again to the lure of the weight machine on Monday. Over the last few weeks I have been feeling lighter, fitter, leaner, better about myself, a little spring in my step and a shake of my tail. Ego taking shape nicely. The scales were out in the office in work one of the other staff (a chubber ) like me, clambered aboard, I was stood there and against my better nature pride took over and I thought “Well if she can do it so can I” comparison and ego were next “ I wonder if I’m the same size as her?” I jumped up looked down and bang it hit me, I expected it to register much less, I was pissed off angry and resentful then filled with fatness and self-loathing. At that moment I could have happily walked around the ward beating myself senseless with a birch twig. I looked at my friend “What were you?” feeling nasty hollow and bitchy for even asking. “Considerably more than you” she tried to laugh it off. There we were two women with eating disorders who had just put ourselves through the torture and indignity of a public weighing and I assume feeling the same things without sharing. Embarrassment, shame and guilt. I felt uneasy for a long time after doing this. It’s fatal for me, the scales never show me what I want them to. I’ve followed my eating plan religiously, so the scales should cut me some slack and show up as 10 stone right? Wrong! When I’m on my restricting spiral, scales and exercise become my obsession. I know this is really bad for me. I know I need to avoid them and measure my health on clothing and the way I feel inside alongside my daily mantra; ‘I am the right weight for me today’. I had to really work hard to try and quash the negative thoughts following that weighing. My head was screaming, pig, fat cow, lump of lard, porky, ugly, birthing heifer. I was beating myself up good and proper. Thought you’d lost weight did you? You’re no good; you can’t even do that properly. Sharing what I felt with others is hard as people try and make you feel better by stating that it’s not true, but you don’t believe them as you don’t believe in yourself. All these negative thoughts need to be challenged, adult me knows these are lies built from years of criticism. Little frightened child me feel’s those feelings and it’s dangerous and unhealthy for me to feel them as they become self-perpetuating and have led in the past to that “ sodd it” moment and a binge. That’s exactly the type of behavior I need to arrest. So no more scales for me. I can share it in my blog with no fear of reprisals and I feel I can express it better on paper than by talking about it. On Friday I am going on retreat with the Living Room. I’m looking forward to it and fully intend to blog when I’m there. My hope is that it will strengthen my recovery and give me a powerful boost to manage and cope with Christmas. Just hope there’s no scales there! Julie

Blog 17th to 22nd November. 'When someone tells you that you're a walking disaster area, it's inevitable that you eventually become one'.'

Blog 17th of November to the 22nd of November I had a very strange experience on Sunday. It showed how distorted my own body image is. I think that I am gargantuan, enormous, I see myself as a hulking clumsy giant of a woman. We were talking in work about buying clothes for one of the patients who is fast running out of them. I informed the staff that I would go out and buy the clothes then stated “She’s about my size” The staff stared at me as though my head had fallen off. One of them finally responded “How big do you think you are? She’s twice the size of you” I laughed and said “No she’s not, she’s about my dap” I didn't say this in the way that some females do fishing for compliments waiting for someone to say “Don’t be ridiculous you’re teeny tiny” I said it because I truly believed it. The poor staff were baffled “She’s about a size 26 Ju’ll your nowhere near that” I was baffled “Is she? She looks the same size as me” There was more laughter, then real curiosity “Do you really think you’re that big?” I’m sad to say that I do, I really do. It made me think about how I see myself and how others see me. When I watch Miranda Hart on television I feel her pain, she’s awkward, freakishly tall and big and has learned to laugh through her pain. I recognize this in myself. Get the laughs in first before someone makes them at your expense. I learnt how to do that from early in life, it deflected from the hurt and the embarrassment of feeling different. Different, because I was taller and bigger than all the other girls and most of the boys as well. I was told that there was nothing graceful about me, that I was clumsy and accident prone. As a child I would run in to my Nan and Grandpa’s house where my Grandfather would shout “Jesus Christ Dolly, nail everything down here she comes”. When you are told that you’re a walking disaster area I suppose it’s inevitable that you eventually become one. My school nickname was Julie Jumbo. Looking at the photos today I would not even class myself as fat, big yes, tall yes, but no fatter than anyone else. Yet due to that cruel nickname and my mother’s obsession with my weight and dieting I grew up thinking I was the size of a small bungalow. School nicknames hurt, I hated that nickname, I dreaded going to secondary school with the thought that it would follow me there when I wanted to make a fresh start, and it did. So you learn to cope the best way you know how, so you want me to be the fat girl, do you? Then I’ll develop the big loud brash jokey personality to go with it. You want gobby? You got it. Yu want the cheeky class joker? Here she comes large as life and twice as brazen. And I do it myself, how often have I referred to a woman as “Big…….” Compared myself “At least I’m not as big as ………..” - Sneering, passing comment, sitting in judgment, forgetting the hurt, scared person underneath the mask. Defining people by their size. When you are an overeater you can’t hide it. You can hide being an alcoholic a drug addict and a gambler up to a certain point, but you can’t hide being an overeater. The world can clearly see it; overeaters are fat and the outside world can see that and point it out with gay abandon. Fat people are considered greedy gluttonous weak-willed and useless, they are ridiculed by society. They are not considered, useful, beautiful or given much credit. If they are lucky enough to achieve success in their chosen field, their weight is still mentioned. In the case of Dawn French: “Oh! She’s so pretty, if only she wasn’t so fat”. The media does not like fat people as a rule, they scare “normal” folk. My friend Julia and I used to joke that we were anorexic as we had read that anorexic people look in the mirror and see fat people staring back at them. Another favorite joke was to tell people that we walked over drains with our arms out stretched to stop us from falling in. To hide that shame and the pain we laughed it away. Fat folk are jolly. We allowed people to make fun of us and we mocked ourselves right along with them. We once went to see a drag act that pointed at us and said, “Oh, would you look at that pair, they’ve been to weight watchers, to watch.” The audience howled and we laughed along with them shrugging it off, cat-calling back, pretending it didn’t matter. But it did. Would the drag have pointed at someone in a wheelchair and made jokes about not being able to walk or told a racist joke? Probably not. But fat people are fair game and we learn to live with it. I never thought there was a way out of this - God knows! I’d tried everything or so I thought: diets, excessive exercise, diet pills, laxatives, fat binders, tea, vomiting and, dramatically, surgery. None of them worked. They were never going to work. As Wyn says, “The way out is in.” I need to go inwards to solve my problems not outwards. The key to changing my thoughts and feelings about my size and my body lies in learning to love myself. I repeat the mantra everyday “I am the right weight for me today”. This coupled with my food plan, my 12 step programme, my meetings, the group and my one-to-ones are helping me become the person I was always meant to be. It’s a process. It’s a journey. And I’m well on the road….. Part Two: Blog Nov 23rd 2014 "Private Hell" Closer than close - you see yourself - A mirrored image - of what you wanted to be. As each day goes by - a little more - You can't remember - what it was you wanted anyway. The fingers feel the lines - they prod the space - Your ageing face - the face that once was so beautiful, is still there but unrecognizable - Private Hell. The man who you once loved - is bald and fat - And seldom in - working late as usual. Your interest has waned - you feel the strain - The bed springs snap - on the occasions he lies upon you - close your eyes and think of nothing but - Private Hell. Think of Emma - wonder what she's doing - Her husband Terry - and your grandchildren. Think of Edward - who's still at college - You send him letters - which he doesn't acknowledge. 'Cause he don't care, They don't care. 'Cause they're all going through their own - Private Hell. The morning slips away - in a valium haze, And catalogues - and numerous cups of coffee. In the afternoon - the weekly food, Is put in bags - as you float off down the high street The shop windows reflect - play a nameless host, To a closet ghost - a picture of your fantasy - A victim of your misery - and Private Hell Alone at 6 o'clock - you drop a cup - You see it smash - inside you crack - You can't go on - but you sweep it up - Safe at last inside your Private Hell. Sanity at last inside your Private Hell. Paul Weller from Setting Sons I went to a concert on Thursday and was instantly catapulted back in time. The song above transported me to my teenage bedroom with its posters of the Mod Father Paul Weller. Lying there in the dark listening to my teenage fantasy spit the bitter lyrics of a woman who was deeply dissatisfied and dead inside. At the age of thirteen I thought the song was a predication of what my life would turn in to, perhaps that’s what all women were destined for? I looked at my mother, was she going through her own “Private Hell”? I could see the effects of my mother’s generation, married for duty, trapped in domestic drudgery, whitening door steps , stuffing mushrooms, buying hostess trolleys, feeling as though they had missed out. I certainly didn’t want to end up like that. Eventually of course I did enter my own Private hell but it was one of addiction. Similar to the Valium haze of the woman in the song, to take the edge off life, to soften the edges, to run from reality. I wondered what made the eighteen year old Paul Weller write a song like that? How could he possibly know what goes on in the head of a forty something woman? Was he looking at his own mother? Did he have such a jaded view of women and marriage that he imagined that this was our fate? Did he fear that that would be his lot trapped in the suburb’s peeping out from behind the nets? Arrogance or clairvoyance? Who knows? Perhaps I should write and ask him? I am now a forty six year old woman whose kids have left home and has a bald (a bit chunky) but not fat man who I still love and he never works late. It could be someone’s idea of a private hell but I’m quite content with it today thank you very much. Addiction is private and sometimes very public hell. It saps you, it takes everything, it is a living breathing parasite draining the life blood out of you. All consuming, preoccupying, repetitive and revolving. Unsafe and insane. Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Existing. Like the woman in the song. Julie

The stresses and strains.... 9th to 16th November

Blog 9th of November to the 16th of November My son is an addict and he’s still out there. He still uses daily. In early recovery I dragged him along with me hoping that he would be cured and that the recovery process would be absorbed and filtered down to him like a bizarre type of osmosis. I wanted him to get well so badly I neglected my own recovery, totally missing the point and becoming preoccupied with trying to stop or control his using. No one can get another person clean. I failed to grasp this. He was not ready, he didn’t want to stop and didn’t know how to stop, he had not fully comprehended his true condition. I live in hope that one day the miracle will happen for him. The old timers have told me the seed is planted and I hope and pray that he will be brought to his knees by this illness that has swept like a tsunami through my family. I also have to accept that this may never happen and that he may be one of the few who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. My son is a massive trigger for me, I can see so many traits of myself in him that it scares me; he knows how to push my buttons. When I’m with him I can swing from love to frustration to hate to fear to anger and back again in the space of a minute. I love him but loathe his behaviors. I should know better but I continue to expect rational behavior from an irrational person. When the phone rings and his number pops up I immediately think the worse, what’s he done now? What does he want? Where is he? Hospital? Police cell? Who’s he hurt/ upset/ robbed/ hit/ hiding from/ upset or who is after him? It’s the same with a text, a seemingly harmless “How are you Mum” results in that fear, what does he want? What’s the ulterior motive? For it seems there is always one. He and I are cut from the same cloth, you can’t kid a kidder. He’s a rubbish liar yet he persists in doing so. He lies when there’s nothing to lie about - it is so ingrained it is second nature. He has no sense of self and no idea how to just be, he is not comfortable in his own skin he is like a chameleon changing skins to fit in. And I being his mother feel so many different emotions when I think of him. I explored these feelings a little in family group on Sunday night and my main feeling is fear. Fear of what he is capable of, fear of his death, a fear of failure as a parent and the fear that he has the ability to make me so angry that I lose control and that dagger inside me jumps out. Fear of the dagger inside him. Ours is not an easy relationship. I heard another piece of sad news this week, a young woman who I nursed in a past job died, she committed suicide when on home leave. It made me think how fragile life is. Sometimes, for these girls, life is too painful to live. This young girl had a desperate life full of abuse and pain, as Wyn said the other night, sometimes people like her turn to drink or drugs as it is the only way to cope, to come through the emotional pain. She didn’t have any support. She felt totally alone, un-nurtured and unloved by those who were supposed to protect and care for her. I remembered a day on the ward when the hard snow came a few years ago, the patients had really enjoyed themselves making snowmen having snowball fights with staff, she ran in breathless grabbed me and another staff member and said, eyes shining “THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE”. It was the happiest I had ever seen her and I was so glad I could share that with her. There was an incredible sad inevitability about her short life. This week has been a difficult one, it’s been overwhelming at times and I have felt stressed snappy and doubted my ability to cope. My work is very stressful at present we have had 4 new admissions over the last month and the ward is now full. Staffs are finding it hard to cope and the patients are going through the stormy period as it’s been a massive change for everyone. Everyone reacts differently; some people put their heads down and get on with it, others complain and can’t see a way through and are negative. I’ve been trying to hand it over, I know I’m powerless over people places and things and that this too will pass but it’s quite difficult when you’re in the thick of it. It seems that everyone wants a piece of you, you walk through the door and everyone accosts you. I accept it comes with the territory but it feels as though I’m being bombarded. I have to be careful; stress is not good for me at all. The eating plan has been followed this week. I had one instance of over-eating a little on Thursday. I came home from group on Thursday, my partner had gone to a gig and I was looking forward to my tea, a chicken pie, when I got back I had been left a tiny piece of pie and I was really hungry. My partner’s brother had come over and he had offered him some tea as he was dishing up when he arrived. I was rather perturbed about this, and felt angry, it meant I was hungry. I over-ate at supper I had 4 crackers instead of 2. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot but when you’re following an eating plan its significant as you have deviated from it and this means you are in active addiction. I can try to rationalize it by saying I was hungry all I like. This, combined with stress at work, made me feel restless, irritable and then I start beating myself up and the negativity creeps in “You’re useless, you’re hopeless, you may as well just eat, you’re big fat and ugly, you should be ashamed, you can’t even do this properly, you’re a failure; then I start loathing my body. I have to repeat “I am the right weight for me today” and trust to believe it. It’s hard when I feel like this. Work today was again difficult, lots of challenges and another new client thrown in to the mix, coupled with staff feeling the strain and finding it hard to manage the shift. You try and support best you can but I do recognize that I need to keep myself safe and try not to personalize the negative comments, they are not directed at me they are directed at the situation that we are placed in. I need to look for solutions and put the processes in place to try to keep the team and the patients safe. I need to ask for help and not be too proud and accept that I cannot change the current situation. I snapped and swore at a colleague on the phone this afternoon when we had a visitor in the office, I apologized instantly and admitted I was in the wrong, I also apologized to the visitor for my unprofessionalism but it was a warning to watch myself. I haven’t done much step-work this week so feel I need to up the program and start looking at step 1 in regards to my eating. It’s time now. I’m looking forward to going on retreat as that helps cement my recovery and always gives me a boost which will help me in the run-up to Christmas. I have a one-to-one on Tuesday so that will help too. Julie

My reply to James's email that accompanied his blog 'A New World'.

My reply to James's blog who, in his email to me, said this: ' funny I did a writing group today on faith and fear, I wonder where my faith is in this time of my life'. My dear Jim, Faith is a doing word. We have to meet God half way. If I ask someone to do something for me by Friday I have to trust that that guy will do it, and let go. Likewise with God. But whatever is going on in your life, I know one thing: that it has everything to do with your recovery. No matter how bleak or hopeless a situation is, there’s ALWAYS something positive lurking underneath. So look for that positive continually, and you will ALWAYS find it. And once you’ve found it – as you always will if you look long and hard enough – you will have found the solution to your problem. This is the practical way of doing Step 3. If you don’t yet trust God, trust what I say. My love and thanks for the piece. I’ve put it up on our blog. Who knows who will read it!

A New World

A New World August 8, 2014 Jim McGovern Pulling up out in front, I saw a couple of little black kids and a white one playing on the steps at a recreation center in Port Richmond. By their interaction, you could tell they were buddies. There was a time in the not-that-distant past where such a thing would have been unheard of. Growth, diversity, change, tolerance. Attitudes that can change a neighborhood…and a world. On yet another beautiful non-humid August night, having heard on the radio driving up about the massacres going on in Northern Iraq that were fueled by religious fanatics, la grande difference, struck me. Then there was the news that the bombings back’n’forth in Gaza, started up again moments after the 72-hour cease fire. About 45 minutes later, our 12-step meeting began. The topic and chapter was about the spiritual solution to our deadly disease. Eventually the literature makes it very clear that the Higher Power that will tear us away from the hell of our addicted lives is one of our own understanding. The practical step-by-step method to become aware of and then do - the will of our Creator, is what the steps and program is all about. Never is it far from my consciousness how world-changing it would be for a Shite, a Sunni, an Israeli, a Palestinian, a Christian and a Kurd to sit in a meeting together and to practice the 12 steps. The will of God, the will of Allah, the grasp of our Destiny that the sanctity of open-mindedness can lead us to, IS A MEANS to change our world. 14 years ago this very night was the first of the rest of my life without a drink or a drug. 8/8/00. Eights are huge in my life. My mom was 88 when she died. 1988 was when my dad died. On 8/3/98 a spiritual experience had near a minutes worth of pins and needles cascade my body as the thought ‘you will be insulated and protected because you believed that I love you’ stammered through my brain. 8’s – lay them flat and you have the Infinity sign. My wonder of how to pay back for that love, evolved into the taking of those steps to the world. Unfortunately I have not gotten very far. My book “12 Steps to Change the World” has not made much of a splash…my sloth and despair and lack of marketing focus or know how, get in my way. May my Higher Power guide me to and my world to overcome.