The Tum Chronicles... pondering my navel as it were. Weight or selflove...

Looking at my tummy, I am remembering that it used to create lips and eyebrows, fingers and spinal colums, brains and hearts. I am realizing that it used to house life. That the soft pulse of my veins kept my offspring feeling warm, alive and safe in there. It used to bulge to the size it is now because it had life burgeoning in it, eager to be born, definite in the eventuality that a birth was to occur. It housed and created three human beings.

I am realizing with the changes in my life, that I have moved myself into that warm, alive, safe space and that I am having a 'startover', a rebirth of myself. It is the same size as when I harboured life in there, but now I am the life in that space. I think that by working at CEDRIC and learning that I am not dealing with an eating disorder but a series of unfortunate circumstances, has led me to understanding better about once again having the tummy I used to have, back twenty years ago, when I used to carry my babies, prior to their birth. This tummy today, which has increased in size since the birth of my final baby, Grace, is now at maximum capacity for me. It has been creeping up in size and girth in spite of my lame efforts at eating wisely and trying to keep moving enough to avoid it. I've been dealt blows and benefits that have combined to affect my physiology because eating well and menopause, combined with knee / leg injuries have rendered me a much larger woman than I intended to be, or am comfortable with and that is what I am addressing now.

At 6 feet tall, my water weight has fluctuated 30lbs at any given day. Once I started exhibiting the swelling legs and ankles of edema in my 40's, I knew that I was going to have problems if I didn't get a handle on it. Root compounds from my chinese medicine doctor helped, but I stopped looking at scales as a result, because they could rarely depict an accurate representation of the state of my health. This caused me to subtly put on weight, for the fat to creep on a little at a time while I tried to get my feet under me. Its so disconcerting now that scales don't even go high enough to tell me what I weigh.

I look down at this tummy and think how I can get out of the shell of protection that I have wrapped around myself and realize that it is almost time for my own rebirth, for my own eventual inevitability that I will become chrysalis and butterfly in the imminent future. Enter hesitation and anxiety at losing the safe little nook I've tucked myself away in. I counter with the thoughts of new friends who don't let me withdraw. I remember yesterday when I tried to leave early from a monthly craft luncheon with a group of new girlfriends and got told to sit right down, there's no escaping, you're one of us now... lol

So now, as I sit in my solituded, tv on in the background with an episode of 'Hoarders', of all things, and I realize that like the people on the show, I'm hoarding my self, inside myself.

This brings me to the next question, and I'm wondering if I wait till the birth decides itself when it's ready, or if I take it upon myself to birth me at a time of my own choosing.

And I guess that why I am writing this, in wondering if there are any ideas or insights that my wonderful friends and family who read this note, can share with me.

I have two months in which to initiate changes that both honour me and create the steps I need to let go and let Goddess, to break out of this shell of comforting pudge and confront the things that have been holding me back, while my better half is out of town on a teaching course, clear across the continent. Shall I strike while the iron is hot?

I have had medical tests that reassure me that I am not diabetic, don't have heart issues, no cancers, no debilitating diseases. What I can do anything about, I will. There is a trauma specialist who is going to consider the pros and cons of my harbouring sharp shrapnel against my carotid artery, when I can finally get an appointment, at the end of a great long waiting list. Same with the orthopedic surgeon who will decide what my knees need. I feel caught in a conundrum. I can't get breast reduction surgery or have my knees fixed until I lose about 150 lbs, I can't lose 150 lbs very easily if I can't do any weight bearing exercise that involves my knees.

The bright light in all of this, besides that in spite of being morbidly obese, i am healthy. I was told by the doc's locum that my ACL was not torn completely and has since healed, but are showing stress because of having to carry my weight. Hopefully I will be able to get a handle on my weight now that I'm taking thyroid synthetic meds, She also said that I will likely feel my metabolism speed up and will notice that weight loss comes easier to me now. :)

So, do I take the proverbial bull by the horns and initiate my own rebirth, radically changing my habits and coping strategies, or do I approach it organically and let time take its course, so that I come to end of packing it on and turn it around simply by becoming more involved in the world, in getting more things done, in being more active... just asking...