(and yes, my wife gave me permission to post this)
It came out of nowhere. We’d just arrived back to the house on the Oregon coast that we had rented for the weekend, and it looked like we were going to spend the rest of the afternoon sitting quietly, listening to the waves and taking it easy. Little did I know that things were going to go very differently.
Because suddenly my wife Holly was standing in the kitchen, with her hand on the counter, and her eyes filling with tears. She was obviously processing something that was very hard for her.
It kind of shocked me, because I am usually acutely aware of her feelings, and I’d had no sensation that there was anything wrong. We’d just gone out to pick up a few groceries, and other than having to leave a drive through because it was way too slow, everything seemed fine. Yet something had happened in the grocery store that led to a breakthrough of significant proportions.
And it all goes back to a change I made several years ago.
In 2016, I changed my way of eating to a somewhat restricted system of food intake, which sounds a little crazy until I tell you that I lost 145lbs in 18 months. While Holly was really happy for my change, we both realized it was going to be a struggle for her, as baking and cooking are her primary transmission love languages, and since I was no longer eating carbohydrates, a lot of her favorite foods were now off the table for me.
Believe me when I tell you this has been a struggle for us.
Since I changed my way of eating, I pretty much take care of my own food preparation and cleanup most of the time, and have tried to get her to eat what she likes and wants. I've encouraged her to cook different meals for herself and our sons, offered to cook for her myself or go and get take out no matter what the time of the day.
There were times where I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t.
In all the years that we’ve dealt with this, she has been really reluctant to have her own ‘food life’, and I sometimes felt like it was her way of expressing frustration with my choices, and that she was subconsciously hoping that things would change.
Yeah – it turns out it I was absolutely, totally and completely wrong about that.
Because while we were out getting food before returning back to our rented beach home, she was walking down a Safeway grocery aisle trying to find something for herself for dinner and she just gave up. She figured that since I was going to be eating chicken salad, she would just default to that, even though she really didn’t want it. Yet something inside of her, that has controlled her for a very long time, kept telling her the same story.
“You’re not enough, you shouldn’t make an effort for yourself, you’re not special enough to make it worth doing, you should just go along and not be a problem to yourself or anyone else”.
And as she stood there in tears, and in a very certain amount of rage in that kitchen in our getaway home on the ocean, she realized for the very first time that it was that voice in her head that was holding her back, and that that she had been worth the effort all along.
At that moment, the realization of all she denied herself crashed down upon her.
I think a little back story here will help. Holly was raised in what I’m going to politely call a ‘high demand religion’. While her home was loving and safe, and her parents are wonderful people, from the moment of her birth her life plan was essentially mapped out for her. There were instructions on what she could and could not wear, what she could and could not consume.
Entertainment was along a strictly proscribed route, dating activities were expressly controlled, and she was subconsciously taught that her value as a human being was tightly bound to her thoughts, and her behaviors/worthiness. It was also taught to her in actions by the leaders of that faith (although not directly expressed in words) that she, as a woman, was always going to be a second class citizen, and that no matter how hard she tried, she was never going to be enough.
Although she has left behind the faith she was born into, that teaching had stuck with her, so that even the idea of taking the time to make her own meal was wrong, because she wasn’t worth the effort.
I always knew that self worth was an issue for her, but I had never put it all together.
So as she stood there in that kitchen, tears pouring out of her eyes, and even stamping her foot a little, she laid it out for me. All the years that she had stopped cooking, and defaulted to ‘whatever is easiest’, was never about her frustration over my way of eating, but rather the culmination of 50+ years of being made to feel like she was not worth the effort of herself, or anyone else.
And the realization of that was incredibly painful for both of us.
It would have been easy for me to have taken what she was saying personally, because like all of us during a moment of emotional pain, Holly wasn’t exactly at her most eloquent and careful with her choice of words. Even her body language could have been misinterpreted as an expression of frustration with me, but thankfully, I know that she is way too kind to feel that way.
I could feel the intention of her expression, and knew that right then was a time for me to allow her the space to have this experience. That’s actually hard for me, because whenever she is hurting, my instinct is always to try to comfort her, and ease her pain. But in that moment, any attempt by me, however well intentioned, would have been insulting.
I needed to allow her own experience, and to support her how she wanted, rather than how I wanted.
The rest of the afternoon was spent going shopping for something she wanted to eat (lobster Ravioli in Alfredo sauce), holding hands, gently talking and sharing a very special moment together. Like all of us, Holly has her own pathway to walk, and I’m learning to let her walk it in her own way.
Because no matter how good my intentions may be, I need to let her have her own experience, and support her where I can, but only at her request.
Needless to say, we will be going back to the ocean again. I think with enough time and space there, the both of us can heal together.
May you find you healing space, and time enough to be there.
So that we may all find out road to peace.
Together, always.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings