Rest in Pieces, Old Friend

I feel inclined to write another blog post, if for no other reason than to process a decision I made this morning. I chose to take a step toward recovery from my eating disorder that I have been procrastinating for a very long time.

Today I decided to drive up into the Provo Canyon, and I determined I would not leave until my previously beloved scale was utterly shattered. While I planned for this to be a symbolic representation of my giving up another piece of my eating disorder that I’ve held fast to for so long, it became much more representative of my recovery journey than I originally intended. My first attempt to demolish my scale, and old best friend, failed miserably. I parked and exited my car, and attempted to smash the glass with a hammer. All that came as a result was a very loud sound.

After several attempts to hammer the thing to destruction, I decided that I needed a new technique. I placed the scale under my front tire (just like Kip and the Tupperware in Napoleon Dynamite, hoping for the same result), only to run over it 4 times, to no avail. The beastly piece of technology would not die.

At this point, I began pondering on this experience. I thought about my recovery journey. I thought about how many times I have resolved to give up my eating disorder, only to be thwarted by what seemed to be an overpowering trigger. When I thought of my first attempt at destroying my scale, when I emotionlessly pounded against it without success, I thought of all of the times I went through the motions of treatment (following my prescribed meal plan, avoiding exercise, attending therapy and dietary sessions, completing written therapy assignments, etc.), without having a real desire to leave my eating disorder behind. For a long time, my efforts to recover were really just efforts to please others; just as my effort to rid myself of my scale the first time was a thoughtless action to please someone else: perhaps my husband, my family, my treatment team, etc.

I entered another level of symbolism to my recovery journey as I placed my scale under my front tire, in hopes that my car would take care of it once and for all. I likened this to the times during my journey to recovery, when I relied on other people to achieve my recovery. At different times, I relied on my best friend, on my family members, on my therapist, on my dietician, on my significant other- but never on me. I was hopeful that I could obtain recovery based on the belief my loved ones had that I was enough; that I didn’t need to cultivate that belief in my heart and mind. After several years, I realized other people could only do so much for me, and that I needed to make the choice to accept myself- my body, my personality, my strengths, my weaknesses, my emotions, my opinions- all of which combine to make me who I am. I’m grateful that I had more sense today than to sit in my car and repeatedly run over the scale for several years’ time, as I emblematically did in the past, by idly sitting in misery while hoping for others to rid me of the bondage created by my eating disorder. Just as my loved ones could not recover from my disorder for me, so my car did not remove from my life the destructive tool that had once meant so much to me.

After two failed attempts to destroy what seemed to be the undestroyable, I began feeling discouraged. I wondered if perhaps I should’ve just thrown my scale in a dumpster somewhere. Then, I remembered how much mental anguish it had caused me over the years; I thought of the many life experiences it inclined me to miss out on by overwhelming me with feelings of self-loathing and shame. Reflecting on those lost experiences provided me the necessary encouragement I needed to press forward in my journey to utter-scale-destruction.

With these newfound memories and emotions came increased motivation to act. I realized that I needed to give this effort my all. I needed to make this experience meaningful; to make it more than an outward appearance of increased mental health. I needed to shatter its importance in my soul as much as I needed to see it in physical pieces on the road. So I picked it up, and hurled it down on the ground, and nothing happened. I did it again, still nothing. I realized I needed to hit the ground with it at a different angle, so I did. Still nothing.

I picked it up again, hurled it at the ground, and to my great delight, heard a shattering sound awaited more anxiously than any sound I’d ever heard! I looked down, and saw shards of glass and was overwhelmed with a feeling of triumph, for a short moment, followed by a momentary feeling of empowerment, followed by an unpleasant feeling of uncertainty and regret. What a complicated array of emotions I was experiencing, considering that I had simply succeeded in a goal I had been working toward for most of the morning.

How similar the end of today’s journey is to my life in recovery. Sometime during the past few months, I made a solid resolution to leave my eating disorder behind once and for all. Despite this resolution and the supporting decisions I have made to attain that goal, there are still many days that I wake feeling gut-sick about the body I find myself in, or about the lifestyle I am living. Many days I feel regretful about the body I “gave up,” or I miss the admiration that so consistently came from others at my level of “discipline” and “self-control.” Some days it seems there is much more to miss about my eating disorder than there would be to miss about recovery, should I choose to abandon my resolution and go back to my old life. When these feelings overwhelm me, I think of all that I have in recovery that I lacked when I was sick. I don't have the body I once did, but I do have a body that functions properly. I don’t have consistent expressions of adoration regarding my excessive exercise habits and strict dietary guidelines (as they no longer exist), but I do have deep and meaningful relationships. I don’t have a low BMI and an “athlete’s heart rate,” but I do have a heart beat that I don’t need to fear will stop at any given moment. I don’t have the ability to numb out undesirable emotions and anxiety, but I do have the ability to experience a range of desirable feelings and sensations unknown to my disordered body. I don’t have the pseudo-confidence that came with having what others defined as a “perfect body,” but I am developing real confidence, the kind that is not dependent upon whatever comments people choose to make about me, for better or for worse. And when I think about the kind of life I want to live, the kind of legacy I want to leave behind on this earth, it seems to me that recovery is the only way to go. 

Marriage, y'all. It's happening!

Well, friends, I feel desirous to share with you the experience I’ve had over the past several months. As the majority of you are aware, I was hospitalized last January with an eating disorder, and the months following my release have been the most difficult months of my life. I continue to struggle on a daily basis to make recovery-based choices. Some days, it’s all I can do to follow through with my meal plan as prescribed by my dietitian, and resist the temptation to spend all of my free time (as well as my not-so-free-time) climbing stairs at the gym.

While the past several months have been extremely challenging and emotionally exhausting for me, I feel I’d be misrepresenting my experience of them if I left my description solely to the previous paragraph. As I’ve consciously and consistently been making choices to increase the distance between myself and my eating disorder, I have experienced a great deal of emotional turmoil; that is true. However, the benefits associated with these same choices have been overwhelming. The blessings that have followed my recovery choices are more wonderful than I ever could have imagined. I have a body that functions properly, a mind that is capable of mental processes unimagined by my previously malnourished brain, and a greater quantity of meaningful relationships than I’ve ever had before. I’ve been able to reclaim my status as “favorite aunt” to my cute nieces (a title I never plan to rescind), I’ve opened my heart and connected to my siblings and parents in new ways, and I find that I’m better able to form genuine connections with other people I associate with on a daily basis. My favorite benefit of all, though, has been my new-found ability to fall in love! Fortunately for me, this beautiful process of falling in love has taken place with the most wonderful man I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting. My ability to connect deeply with and fall in love with my fiancé, Bo, is a result of those choices, and I am filled with overwhelming joy and excitement when I consider the fact that I am fortunate enough to be the one to spend eternity with him.

A great deal of excitement has followed his marriage proposal last week, but unfortunately, the excitement has been matched with all manner of body shaming articles and advertisements. My fragile body image has been thrashed around as I’ve begun my journey to plan the perfect wedding. I’m one week into wedding planning, and I’ve already been bombarded by all kinds of diets and workout plans to “shred before the wedding,” various tactics to assist me in manipulating my body to fit into a tiny dress it was never created to fit in, and wardrobe items created to hide this, or suck that in; and quite honestly, it’s all been quite overwhelming, and at times, quite a deflating experience. 

After spending a great deal of time contemplating these things and agonizing in my own body shame, I’ve come to a conclusion that I’d like to share. I’ve decided that I’ve worked way too hard to leave my malnourished body behind to run back to it now. What good will it do to be a thin, “beautiful” bride if I am fainting instead of saying “I do,” and lacking the energy to give my new-found husband (eeeeek! I’m gonna have a husband!) so much as a simple kiss over the altar? What fun will my wedding reception be if I can’t even enjoy my extremely pricey wedding cake with my sweet boy? How can I enjoy a paradisaical Hawaiian honeymoon with my hubby if I don’t even have the energy to leave my bed? For these reasons and many others, I say: forget you, beauty industry! I’m not interested in your crash diets, tummy tuckers, or anything else you have to offer me. There’s no need for you to assist me in changing my body to fit into a dress only my pre-pubescent body could have fit into without restricting my food intake; me and my ghetto booty are entirely content to find a dress that fits us just the way we presently are. My decision is as simple as that.

Now, if you need me, I’ll be out with my handsome fiancé, sampling wedding food and cakes, trying on dressed with sizes in the double digits (heaven forbid!) that fit my recovering body, and ENJOYING the whole process.

The Greatest Gift: Gratitude For My Body

Well, it’s been about ten months since I’ve made a blog post. In the course of that ten months, my body has been through all but hell and back. To make a long, scary story short, my body hit rock bottom, and I was hospitalized in January in order to allow my body an opportunity to stabilize and heal. It’s been four months since I first entered treatment, and since then, everything in my world has improved a great deal. I still struggle on many levels in the way I feel about myself, but my body is healthier now than it ever has been in the past!

A few weeks ago, I was brainstorming what I might do for my mother for Mother’s Day. While writing a list of things I could choose from to create for her, I began writing a letter spontaneously. Interestingly enough, the letter was not addressed to my mother. The letter I wrote that day was addressed to my own body, and it caused me to reflect back on a poem I had written in the darkest days of my disorder. The two pieces of writing are in opposition to one another, yet both are reflective of intense feelings I have experienced on my journey to find physical and emotional health.

After writing the letter, I decided to share both pieces of writing with my parents as a Mother’s Day surprise. When I shared each piece with my mother and father, I looked up to find them both in tears. My mother expressed that she loved her gift; that it showed her a great return on the investment she had made in my treatment beginning in January. Beginning with the poem I wrote while bound up in my eating disorder, my writings are included below.

November 22, 2014

Before you put that in your mouth,

Think about how you’ll feel

Sad, so sad, and full of regret,

A girl no man will steal.

Food’s never done you any good

Yet misery and pain it’s brought

Remember what it is you really want

The thin body for years you’ve sought.

You’ll never get there eating that food

You’ll just fail, and fail again.

If you keep giving in and eating,

Forever you’ll remain broken.

If you’re struggling now to resist

Take a breath, or better, go and run.

Starving yourself isn’t all that bad

And your results, no man will shun.

Keep it up, girl, you’ve got this down.

Be strong and do not give in.

Embrace the hunger and suck it up;

That’s the only way you’ll ever win.

How difficult it is for me to read and reflect on the words I penned several months ago, that represent the pain I experienced each day in the captivity of a horrible mental illness. Although openly sharing these things causes me to feel extremely vulnerable, I trust that I can share them with my tender-hearted friends, and hope that my words might be appreciated for the transformation they indicate is coming over me as I embark each day on my healing journey to recovery. Brace yourself: a very different Hilary is about to present herself throughout the course of this letter.

Dear body,

I am sorry for disrespecting you in so many ways, for so many years. I am sorry for starving you, stuffing you, and forcing you to run freakishly long distances on no fuel. I am sorry for the few times I desperately stuck my finger down your throat and attempted to purge, in order to relieve what seemed at the time to be unbearable anxiety. I am sorry for hating you, hurting you, and hiding you. I am sorry for seeing you as an object to be used only to gratify others’ lustful desires. You are so much more than that.

I’ve spent so much time and energy trying to make you fit a standard you were never created to be. When I finally managed to squeeze you into a size 0, you were in much worse health than you were at a size 24. Your frail size 0 frame may have been devoid of body fat, but was certainly not lacking in pain, discomfort, and bruises. Yet I continued to push you, thinking that if you could only be a little thinner, a little faster, and a little stronger, perhaps we would finally be enough.

But we were never enough, were we? Not even the “105 pounds down” mark was enough. Time passed, your mass continued to decrease, and I realized I was slowly killing you. Laying down in bed each night, desperately trying to obtain much needed rest, I thought my heart might stop, as it very well could have at any time. But I told you time and again that you were being over-dramatic, and that even if you were to die, at least it would be in pursuit of a worthy cause.

How wrong I was on both accounts, and how grateful I am that you made it through all of that! You endured so much, and I want to dedicate the rest of my life to respecting and cherishing you.

You’re no longer a size 0, but from here on out, I am choosing to be grateful for that, rather than ashamed of it. Thank you for falling to a place that allows me a cushion on my bottom to sit upon. Sitting is so much more comfortable now! Thank you for providing me with an awesome set of baby-bearing hips, and for allowing my menstrual cycle to return to go with them. I am confident that both will come in handy in the future. Thank you for providing me with body-wide insulation, so I won’t need to bundle up in my winter coat all summer long. Thank you for giving me strong arms – good for much more than compulsively lifting weights at Planet Fitness at 2:00 in the morning, trying to compensate for the frozen yogurt I had earlier in the day with friends. No, I’m grateful for your arms because they allow me to serve others, soothe crying children, and give the best hugs, among other things. And thank you for giving me killer calves – my most complimented feature. Great for running, hiking, and looking fabulous in high heels. Don’t you ever marry a short guy.

But more than any individual feature, I am grateful for your resilience and full functionality. Thank you for staying strong and enduring so much abuse. From here on out, I will respect and honor you. I will provide you with proper nourishment to allow you to function well and to be active. When you are tired, I will let you rest. I will stop fighting you, and will learn instead to embrace you.

Well, dear body, I hope you can forgive me for the cruel treatment I have given you for so many years. The healing you have been able to accomplish in the past several months is evidence to me that you can. My hope is that we can leave the past behind us now, and move forward and relate with one another in a positive and healthy way.

I love you, body, and I’m looking forward to our future together. We’ve had a rough several years, but we have all of eternity ahead of us to make up for it, and I know we can do it, together.

With love and gratitude, Hilary Anne Growcock

Though I still struggle on a daily basis to accept the truths I wrote to my body in that letter that day, I am coming to accept each truth a little more fully, each day. I am growing, I am changing, I am healing. I believe that my body and spirit were created with an incredible capacity to heal, and I am so grateful that I am seeing the evidence of that beautiful truth each day. 

Time for a course correction! I have a NEW VISION!

Well, I believe I am long overdue for a blog post! The past few months have been filled with stress, decisions, and change. In the midst of all that was simultaneously heaped upon me, I resorted to my coping mechanism of choice to deal with it all: excessive exercise and food restriction. This led me to what many would refer to as “relapse.”

For a while, things were going really well! I was making huge leaps in recovery and was eating more and exercising less than I had in years. It felt good! After a few really great months, it came time to make decisions. One decision I made was the choice to end a relationship with a wonderful man, who spent every day trying to make me feel like the most beautiful woman alive. What a gem! I didn’t realize what a huge support he was to me until we broke up. While I still believe ending the relationship was the right thing to do, I lost my best friend and greatest support in a particularly difficult and stressful time. RECIPE FOR DISASTER! At this time, I was also trying to decide whether or not to move across the country, whether to serve a mission for my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, whether to attend graduate school and what program to pursue, and what kind of job to pursue at the end of my nanny contract. I wavered back and forth between all of the different options, without any sense of closure or decisiveness.

I finally decided that I needed to decide on SOMETHING, so without a job or any serious prospects, I decided I would move to Utah at the end of the summer. My structured, perfectionist personality is not fond of ANYTHING that is not certain and set in stone, so this decision nearly killed me. I spent countless hours applying and interviewing for jobs, and spent a great deal of time trying to decide which offer to accept. After months of weighing all my options, I finally decided to accept a job in Price, Utah as an Early Childhood Interventionist. Moving from Washington DC to Price, Utah- a dramatic change, to say the least! But I am so excited about this decision.

With a job and apartment secured, my stress level has decreased a great deal. Now that things are settling down a bit, I’ve realized that my eating and exercise habits are out of control. I realized this last week as I pondered on the past few weeks and the feelings I’ve had. Last week, I was in Vermont with the family I nanny for, and I ran 60 miles. In one week, I ran 60 MILES, and I felt like it was a LAZY week. (At least it was in Vermont, where everything is BEAUTIFUL!)

The week before that, I spent an hour on the Stairmaster every morning, climbing 500 floors of stairs each morning. And some days I felt the need to make a second trip to the gym after work. In addition to that, I felt it necessary to cut all sweets from my diet and limit my food intake dramatically. Sadly enough, the past two weeks are not the most exercise intensive that I’ve experienced in the past several months. The worst part of all this is that it has become so normal to me. If I don’t burn at least 800 calories working out every day, it is difficult for me to allow myself to eat much of anything.

While I’ve exercised myself into a tough place, I know I can come out of it. I’ve pushed through many hard things before. I’ve come to know that the key to overcoming difficulty is VISION. Having a vision of who I want to become is the most powerful recovery tool I have. And I can see that my vision has been tainted recently by my excessive habits. But today, I’m redefining my vision. The woman I truly want to be is not one who spends every spare moment she has at the gym, on a run, or counting calories. The woman I want to be is one who spends her spare time serving and lifting others. I want to be a woman who can be relied on and trusted by others. I want to be a woman who will be a faithful wife and a loving mother. The women I truly admire and look up to the most are not the women who are the most physically attractive, but the women who make a difference in the lives of others. That is what I want to become! ON TO THE NEW VISION! J

PS: The past few months have been very stressful, but I’ve had so many blessings, as well! One of the many was a visit from my grandma and little sister. Here is a picture of us with my favorite munchkins at the Washington DC LDS temple. J

PPS: On a much shallower note, I’ve always wanted to develop the necessary strength to do a pull-up. Does anyone have any advice for how to make that happen? J

March update! One hundred pounds later...

Life has been really crazy for me lately! For the past month, I have been taking part in an extensive training to become a volunteer on a suicide hotline. Between spending 10 hours a day with the kids I nanny, and 13 hours a week at training, life has been crazy busy. But not too crazy to fit in some fun time--the most notable fun being Disney On Ice! Ben surprised me with tickets the day after Valentine's and it was wonderful. I don't remember ever being so excited before! Despite all the craziness in life, I've realized lately that I have been blessed with so many wonderful people who love and care for me. 

Although I had a busy month with work, training, and all the fun I was having, I still managed to find plenty of time to concern myself with my body. This past week, I came to a milestone that has intensified my contemplation on weight loss and body image: I lost my hundredth pound. While a small part of me feels some sense of accomplishment, the greater part of me feels a great sense of frustration and a LACK of accomplishment. If I could have seen a glimpse of myself now before I started losing weight, I am confident that I would have been more than happy to accept the body I now have. However, willingness to accept my body as it is now is not the current set of emotions I am experiencing. All of this has really got me thinking: when will I ever feel good enough?

I don't feel like I am the only person who has experienced this before. I am now at a healthy weight, but I am still unsatisfied because I don't feel like I have yet met the standards of beauty and thinness that I am exposed to every day. The more I've considered all of this, I've come to realize that I truly never will feel good enough if I make the standards imposed on women by our society the standards I strive to live by. At the beginning of this new month, I am recommitting myself to live by the standards of womanhood that I really do feel are important. Those standards include becoming a person who loves others and serves them, and is kind to all people. It includes rejecting the impulse to focus my life on physical characteristics and to instead focus my life on becoming the kind of woman I have always desired to become. It includes using my time to make a difference in the world, and to lift others up. If I could lose 100 pounds and still not feel good enough, what will make me feel like I am good enough? I believe that the answer to that question is a shift in focus--from myself to others.

I could lose another 50 pounds and still not feel satisfied with myself. But I've realized that there are ways to be happy with myself right now. When I finish out a shift at the hotline, having been able to divert someone from their plan to commit suicide, I feel good. When I make a call to a friend who I know needs a little extra support to make it through a tough day, I feel happy. When I take the time to read stories and play with the children I spend my days with, I feel so much more joy and happiness. Truly, a life lived to serve others is a happy life. That is the kind of life I am going to live!

New Year's Resolutions

It's been far too long since I've spent time on my blog. For the past few months, I've felt like I should get back into blogging, but I haven't taken the necessary time to do so. I've decided that the new year is a great time to start it up again, so here we are!

Although I'm not a big believer in waiting for a new year to make changes in life, I think that the beginning of a new year is a great time to consider areas that need improvement and to make specific goals to promote those changes. In past years, my resolutions have consisted of one or two things I could do to improve myself spiritually, combined with a lengthy list of things I needed to do to improve myself physically. My past resolutions have always included weight loss, and often included other things such as training for a marathon, totally cutting chocolate out of my diet, etc. 

While I do believe that physical health is extremely important to living a satisfying life, looking back on my resolutions, I can see that I was compromising my overall health in an attempt to achieve a worldly standard of physical health. I can see now that while to others it seemed like cutting chocolate was a really disciplined thing to do that would lead me to better health, I can see that it was just a year spent eating things that were just as unhealthy, I just didn't enjoy them as much. In another year, it seemed to others like I was so on top of things because I was training for a marathon, but I can see that my obsession with exercise took control of my life and on days that I wasn't able to have a lengthy workout, I slipped into an anxious depression that I felt nobody could understand. In years where I was "successful" in losing weight, I received nothing but positive feedback that let me know that others approved of what I was doing, when looking back I can see that I was slowly destroying my body and my self-image. 

At the time I set each of the previously mentioned resolutions as well as many others, I felt that they were my ticket to happiness. I felt that if only I was skinnier, more fit, or more disciplined, I would be happier. That's the message the media commonly portrays to us, and it was something I came to accept. Looking back, I can see that the majority of those goals led to the exact opposite of the happiness I was striving to achieve. My inability to meet the standard of beauty portrayed all around me made any accomplishments I did have seem so unimportant. My goals led me to have even poorer self-image, greater depression, and more obsession and preoccupation with my imperfect body.

While there's nothing I can do to change the past, there are a multitude of things I can do to shape my future. The challenges I've experienced in the past have made me into the woman I am not, and the woman I am now is capable of change. This year, I'm ditching the resolutions to lose weight, restrict my diet, and to get more "fit" in the way that society portrays fitness. Instead, I'm replacing them with resolutions to live a healthy life, to obtain a healthy view of myself, and to forget myself in serving others. I know I have a long journey ahead of me, but I've also had a long journey behind. Although nothing is possible on my own, I know that all things are possible when we have help from the right sources, both mortal and divine. Happy 2014, everyone! May this be the best year yet!