Monday, May 11, 2009

My Story, Part VIII


Even before I even met C., I had a terrible body image. Mostly because I was fat and had been for as long as I could remember. My grandmother had all these lovely old-lady friends who really did love me to pieces but they gave me not-so mixed messages about my weight. For presents they gave me not only books but also things like jump ropes with the implied message that I should use them to "slim-down." I was about eight years old at the time. Believe me, the pressure to be thin wasn't invented yesterday.
The kids at school were not nearly so subtle. They just called me fat.
It was hard to find clothes so my mother and grandmother made me dresses. I have written about the pain of having to shop in the "Chubette" section of clothing stores and I don't think I'll ever quite get over that one. Chubette? The person who came up with that label should have been flogged until bloody.
Anyway, being sexually abused did not help with the body image thing. It was quite confusing, actually, to be treated in a sexual manner at all, having already, at the age of nine, gotten the message loud and clear that I was fat and thus, hideously unnattractive. Food and reading were my main sources of comfort and I could even combine the two activities which did not help. It wasn't so much junk food that I ate. My mother didn't keep much of that in the house. But I learned to cook at a very early age and when you can make a chocolate cake from scratch, you don't need Twinkies.
But here came C. and when he and Mother first started dating, he treated me as if I was as beautiful as any little girl on earth. I don't remember him saying this overtly, but somehow, I felt that. And I appreciated it. As would have any little fat girl. In fact, he made me feel special in all ways. He praised my cooking, he praised my intelligence. And so forth.
This is a very complicated subject. And a hard one to write about. But as I said before, even when a child is touched against his or her will, there is a part of the body which responds. Predators know this. They use it. And they also find the child who is so thirsty for praise and to be made to feel special that she will tolerate more than she should to get the praise and whatever is making her feel special. C. would take me down to work on the grove with him for the day and although that doesn't sound like much fun, it was something out of the ordinary and he would treat me as if I was an intelligent human being, not a bothersome child, and he would often stop and take me out to eat at a restaurant on the way home. I don't recall anything happening on those trips but I do know that after awhile, after the abuse had begun, I quit wanting to go with him and started refusing.
And then, when the abuse had finally stopped (the sexual abuse, at least), and I was just entering puberty with full force, my feelings about myself got very weird. Every time I would think about a boy I had a crush on, I would wonder if he thought about having sex with me. It seemed to me that the only reason a fellow would be interested in me was because there was some way to know that there was something about me that invited sexual feelings. Not that I was pretty or sexy but something that I did or some way I acted that sent off the message. Otherwise, why would my stepfather have done what he did to me? My fault, my fault. It had to have been my fault.
This is a common feeling, I now realize, and one I've had my entire life. What we tell ourselves, we survivors, is that our worth is in our sexuality and it ends there. Even when we're grown and no matter what we accomplish, we still seem to have this feeling.
It's called being "sexualized," I think, and whenever I see a very young girl acting in a way that seems to be far more mature, flirtation-wise, than would be expected for her age, I wonder what has gone on in her past. Who has taught her at such a young age that she can get attention and what she wants through this sort of behavior? Now don't get me wrong. I think all little girls have some idea of the power of the feminine but there is an innocence about most of this which is lacking in children who have been sexually abused. Girls who start having sex very early and relatively indiscriminately are also often victims.
Anyway, I lost a lot of weight when I had the creeping erruption and was no longer a fat child although I still felt that I was. Looking at pictures of me then, I see I was becoming, in fact, beautiful. But I had no idea at all. None.
But C. noticed. He kept telling me how pretty I was. How much thinner I was. This served only to creep me out and it's a wonder, looking back, that I didn't do everything in my power to gain weight and be fat again. I suppose I didn't because it hadn't mattered when I had been fat. He'd messed with me then anyway. And of course I didn't believe him when he told me I was pretty. Why should I? By then I trusted nothing he said, especially about me.
And besides, I liked getting attention from boys. I liked being able to shop in the normal-sized section. I liked, quite simply, not being fat.
In the ninth grade I achieved the stunning victory of becoming a cheerleader. Yes! Hippie Ms. Moon was a cheerleader. As corny as it sounds, I loved it. The try-outs were long and arduous. I practiced and practiced and practiced. And when I made the squad, I thought I had achieved the very tip-top of all and any aspirations I may have dreamed of. Fat girls do not become cheerleaders! And I loved my cheerleading sponser. She was our gym teacher and a mother and she was awesome and she treated us all with respect and humor and she took us seriously and she nurtured us. And hell, I loved being in front of a crowd. I loved wearing my coolio blue and red uniform to school on game days. I loved wearing saddle oxfords. They were so retro. I loved having cheerleading practice. I loved using my body in an athletic way for the very first time in my life. I think I liked that most of all. I had never in my life considered myself to have any athletic abilities at all. And here I was, doing back jumps and touching my head with my feet, doing splits, doing all this cool stuff and I was good at it! Back in those days, girls weren't given the opportunity to do much in the way of athletics. We had PE but that was mostly spent playing some hot, sweaty team sport that no one in their right mind would have enjoyed. Every year we had to do the President's Physical Fitness exam which was a nightmare for me and for most of us, I think. We had to do sit-ups, the flexed arm hang, run the fifty-yard dash, the one-hundred yard dash and do the standing broad jump. I sucked at all of it. Except the sit-ups. Those I could, for some reason, do.
But cheerleading was physical and I discovered I loved it.
I tried out again in high school and didn't make the squad. By then, I didn't really care so much and began to sort of disdain the whole cheerleading thing, although one of the coolest girls in my class and one I worshipped from afar, was on the squad. One of the biggest fakes was too.
It was about this same time that I got to go on a Girl Scout trip in the summer to a camping opportunity on a mountain in North Carolina. For some reason, my little band of Girl Scouts had no adult with us. Why? I have no idea. And we were in the highest camp on the mountain and so had to walk the longest way to tote our food up and down. It was terrific! We lashed tables and cooked on a fire and hauled water and bathed in an icy stream. We sang songs and we cracked jokes and I noticed that by the end of the two weeks, or whatever it was, my thigh muscles were amazing. This gave me great joy! I had muscles! Girls could have muscles!
Ah. The beginnings of Jock Girl.
And so I began to see that my body could be strong as well as not-fat. Big difference. And I liked both.
But I never, ever seemed to be thin enough. I never developed a full-blown eating disorder, but I flirted with it. I went for weeks, eating less than a thousand calories a day. I counted each stick of gum. I was proudest on the days when I ate less than five hundred calories. This went on all through high school. Counting calories. I actually fasted for several days before a prom. Not this new-age type of fasting either where you're allowed juice or maple syrup and red pepper or whatever that fast is. We're talking water. Now I know that starving oneself is a very inefficient way to lose weight but it was the only way I knew back then.
When I went back to school after having had mono, I was put in what we called "retarded PE" because it was for the kids who had physical challenges. I wasn't supposed to over-exert. Every day we played volleyball. Have you ever played volleyball with a group of kids who either weigh over two-hundred and fifty pounds or else have celerebral palsy or are dwarves? It loses its entertainment value quickly so I started walking the track with another girl who was in the class because she'd had some illness earlier in the year and never bothered to get herself out of retard PE. (Please- I don't mean to offend any group of people here. This was 1970 or something. We were not politically correct.)
Anyway, this girl and I walked the track and then we started running. I discovered that I liked to run. A lot. There was no teacher involved in this. No coach. Just me. And somehow I got in a track meet or something and ended up being the second-fastest girl in the school for the mile run.
I couldn't believe it. No one else could either. It was a fluke. I quit running.
And all my life, my weight has fluctuated. And I used to use what I realize now are punishing methods of to lose weight. Strict dieting, excess exercise. The usual. I never got into bullemia, thank god. But this continued into my adult life. Losing weight after having babies has always been difficult for me but finally I found Weight Watchers which taught me I could eat well and still lose weight. It was like dying and going to heaven for someone who thought she had to starve to achieve and maintain a healthy weight.
And I used Weight Watchers for a long, long time. I even worked for them.
But back to body-image and sexuality.
As I got older and the boys started paying more attention, I still felt that it was because they knew my dirty little secret. That's how it felt, as wrong as it was. I wasn't really pretty (I thought), I didn't have a pretty, cute little body, and so they must have wanted only one thing. And C.? He pretty much told me that all the time once I started dating. Mother somehow gave me this feeling too. That I used my sexuality to get boyfriends.
As if every sixteen-year old girl doesn't do that.
It was confusing.
Again, the hippie culture helped me out here. Bodies, in the hippie world, were all expected to be different and nudity was nothing special. When you're around a lot of nude people you realize that no one's body is perfect. At all. No one worked out in those days and and no one got plastic surgery except for Liberace and some women had tiny breasts and some women had enormous ones. Some women had tight little tummies and some women had bigger ones. Some women had no asses at all and some women had great, glorious ones. We were all different. We were all beautiful.
And we were. We were young.
And I started being able to see that my body was no more or less beautiful than anyone else's. When I got pregnant, I gloried in the way my body changed. For the first time in my life I loved having a big belly. And then- giving birth after twenty-eight hours of unmedicated, very difficult labor gave me a completely new and powerful feeling about my body.
I didn't hate it anymore. It had not only created life, it had safely and intelligently delivered it. I had experienced pain I didn't know I could experience, much less get through without drugs. I had, with my own body, my own work, my own sweat and pain and love and amazing strength, given birth to a perfect child. And then I managed to nurse that baby and produced enough milk for three, probably.
My body had given me the greatest love of my life- my child- and I was changed forever.
After all those years of thinking of myself and my body as tainted, as something cheap and not worth much, I had been shown quite startlingly and graphically that my body and my breasts could be used for the highest purpose of all- giving life and nurturing it.
That was the beginning of me respecting this gift- my own body. Of not thinking of it as something that was good for nothing more than a man's pleasure. Of believing that despite its "faults" it was beautiful.
And as I began to help attending other women in their home births, I began to see how amazingly well our women-bodies were constructed, how cleverly made, how strong they were, how infinitely beautiful, and I felt, for the first time in my life, that mine was truly as good as anyone else's. That no matter what had happened to me as a child, my body was my own and that I could use it for myself and share it only if I really wanted to. I had deserved that right.
When I say that my children have been my greatest teachers, I am not being sentimental or metaphorical. I am speaking what is merely the truth.
And the first lesson my first child taught me is that I am incredibly strong. And that my body does what it does incredibly well. And I believe quite frankly that having my children at home without intervention has been one of the greatest blessings of my life and has enabled me to believe in myself in ways I never would have if I hadn't.
And not only myself. When a woman is in labor, she becomes essentially a force of nature. She is a mountain, an ocean, a hurricane, a planet, the galaxy giving birth to a universe, and although things which have happened to her in her life may definitely affect how easily her body opens to birth, none of it really matters when she is in the midst of it. She is laboring with a power she knows is not entirely her own. It is the power of life.
Birth made me believe in life in a way I had never had before. All life. My own life, too.
I am still learning this lesson all the time. Even as I age, even as I have grown too old to have any more children. I am still learning how strong this body is, how even as it sags and grows wrinkles and does things with flesh and fat and tendons I would never have wanted it to do, it is still strong and can be made stronger. It serves me well in what I love doing.
And I can thank my children for that.
And I can thank Ina May Gaskin, too, who wrote and who still writes about the amazing strength and wisdom of women giving birth so elequently and well. And I can thank the women who midwifed me, who went before me in believing that giving birth at home was not only an option, but a great and spiritual experience. And also, it must be said, to the two husbands who have trusted me enough to allow me to do what I believed I could do. Who believed in me, too. Who helped me whole-heartedly.
Because of these people, because I was able to give birth at home, I learned that my body had not been ruined by my abuser. No matter how and where he had touched me, he could never, ever touch the core of my being in such a way to destroy my body's strength and even beauty.
And I don't think that if I had never had children the way I did that I would have known that.
I am blessed to have had the healing of giving birth.

16 comments:

  1. You turned out to be such a beautiful person and obviously a great mom. The honesty is so powerful in your writing and yet even when you are writing of horrific events in your childhood, you write about them so eloquently. What strikes me, but it makes sense is how profoundly, even many years later, an abuser can affect a person (the victim) and the adjustments they have to make in their thinking about themselves. This goes for physical, emotional or both. My heart breaks so much for helpless kids like you were. It makes me so angry at the parents for not paying attention, or contributing somehow. And sometimes it's obvious who's being abused and sometimes it's not. I want to strangle mothers and fathers who yell out of control and humiliate their kids in public and I have always wondered how bad it really is at home if they think it's OK to act like that in front of people. I am sure I have no idea. And it's just scary to think it could be the unlikely ones who have the image of being put together and act like the Cleavers who could be abusing. Ugh.

    OK, anyway...that's my spew. I'm done. You're an awesome person Ms. Moon.

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  2. This post, your life, recovery and motherhood, are so beautiful.

    I have to admit I'm jealous of your birth stories. I've had two C-sections. On the other hand though I am grateful to live in a time when science made that possible and safe, I could have lost my daughter otherwise.

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  3. I struggled for years with my body image (and I wasn't even really overweight)...I was never abused but the words and your story has moved me so much...

    I was bulimic for several years as a teenager and never truly quit this destructive behaviour until I became pregnant with my first daughter...for once I embraced my changing shape and saw my body as something so much more than just a shape....I also thank Ina May and others like you for telling your truths and encourages us by your actions....I still remember the strength I felt birthing my baby on my bedroom floor as her older sister and my best friend watched (with tears streaming down her face)

    thank you xo

    ps my blog is officially open to the world again...i decided i don't give a shit anymore about privacy..

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  4. This made me think of giving birth to my youngest son, all 10 lbs, 3 oz of him, without any drugs or episiotomy (SP?). It was painful, yes, but I am still amazed at how my body was able to do that...and able to heal itself so quickly after.

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  5. Nicol- Thanks, sweetie bike girl. I'm just trying to shine a light here. For those who may have been abused and for those who may be being abused. There is no end to the effects which persist.

    Steph- I too am glad that your babies made it safely and I know how lucky I am to have had such experiences. Another huge blessing in my life.

    Ms. Bliss- We are never the same afterwards, are we? And in such a good way.

    Ginger- One of my babies was over ten pounds, too. And I am not a huge woman. Our bodies, given the chance, can do such amazing things.

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  6. You are a great writer, Ms. Moon. I am sorry for what happened to you as a young person, but I think the understanding that you have come to is very beautiful and moving.

    Thanks for sharing this with us. I think almost all women have body issues of some sort. I certainly do. This has helped.

    Much love,

    SB

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  7. I loved reading how your births transformed you. Birth changed me too, how could it not? I'm so thankful for that process, and all the teaching it did for me.

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  8. Ms. Bastard- Thank-you. Yes, we women do worry a lot about our bodies, don't we? All of us. Dammit.

    Lora- I can tell you have learned so much from your children and are open to all they have to teach you. I admire that.

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  9. Wow, amazing. I can really relate to the body image issues you addessed here. When I was 9 years old, one of my grandmothers asked my mother right in front of me if I was "pregnant" in reference to my large tummy.

    That kind of sting is hard to get rid of. It sitcks in your brain and rattles around in there.

    It sounds like you have made great strides to overcome this. I hope that one day I can too.

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  10. Beautiful! I just found your blog today and when I began reading I had to step away for a while. I thought for sure that you were describing my childhood. Thank you for your thoughts, beliefs and stories of your body. I learned a lot from this post and it left me with even more to think about.

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  11. I can't easily relate to this since I was so tiny when I was little, my parents wanted to hold me back a grade from school :) I was sick alot, and when my parents split at age 6, I got even sicker so I was a skinny little thing until well...now. Hehe. Funny thing about that is it eventually catches up and you realize oh WAIT I can actually get overweight if I eat anything and everything! When I was a kid, I had to eat a mandatory peice of pie every night to get my weight up. If only that could have continued :)

    Either way though, we carry those images from childhood about our bodies for the rest of our lives. I still have a hard time if someone makes a comment about my being short. Or when kids can look me in the eye! I have always looked young and even as I near my thirties, I could easily pass for a high school kid. A blessing in some respects, yeah, but sometimes difficult in the working world when you're trying to move up and establish a name for yourself when people keep thinking you're the intern :)

    Either way, posts like this (as always) make me ache for a kid and regret not having any yet. Someday soon, I hope.

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  12. Lady Lemon- I understand.

    Sarah- Thank-you for stopping by and commenting. I hope you visit again.

    SJ- I noticed while working for WW and with a friend that if you were skinny as a kid, you always think of yourself as skinny, no matter what. Just like if you are fat as a kid, you think of yourself as fat.
    And people don't believe that our childhood's experiences affect us forever and ever!
    And you will have babies someday. If that's what you want, you will.

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  13. Mama, I haven't been commenting but I have been reading and I am just every day blown away by you. Your courage and strength, your humor and wisdom. I am in awe and loving you every minute of every day. I am so goddamn proud that you are my mama.

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  14. Aunt Becky- Thanks, honey.

    Miss Maybelle- Oh, baby doll. You make me feel the exact same way. Proud and loving you, every second of every day.

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