Deep Dark Secret

I have been playing with y’all over the past several weeks. My blog posts have been light, silly, puffy pieces about the weird turns my mind takes and the random ironies of life. They definitely reflect the quirkiness that is me.

Behind the scenes, though, I have been struggling with some darker, heavier issues. I have told you a little bit about my work with my life coach, Todd Payne (www.toddpaynelifecoach.com). I have shared some of the fruits of that work in terms of decreasing my anxiety, increasing my flexibility, and embracing more joy in my life. When I started working with Todd, I was not completely sure what I wanted to accomplish. I only knew that my brain runs in the redline area all the time. My mental “check engine” is ALWAYS lit. My brain exists in a dangerous internal world. I try to plan, prepare, avoid, and hope away all the potential perils to my psyche. This is, of course, impossible. I have always been a pretty functional individual. Many people would say, in fact, that I am highly functional. These two realities- that I am highly functional and that my emotion of choice on any given day is fear- are difficult to reconcile. Long ago, I learned that I had to manage my fears if I wanted to have any kind of life at all. I work very, very hard to overcome my anxiety. I end run my anxiety so that I can accomplish what I want to accomplish. I end run my anxiety so I don’t annoy people. I end run my anxiety so that the world won’t know how anxious I am.

All that running is exhausting. When I reached out to Todd, I wondered if it was possible to take my emotional management a few steps further. Instead of learning additional coping strategies to help overcome the fears, was there a way I could make the fears stop? In other words, was there an antibiotic that would resolve my infection of fear rather than just an aspirin that would mask the symptoms? The fear management techniques I have used most of my life were the equivalent to an emotional aspirin. If there was a way I could resolve the tendency to terror at its core, I believed I would not have to work so hard to function happily in life.

I believed this was a bit of a pipe dream, but I decide to give it a try. As I have shared with you, I have seen amazing progress. I could not be happier with the outcome.

On the other hand…

As I worked through my fears and anxiety, I realized there was something much deeper that has been eviscerating my self-worth most of my life… my perception of and relationship with my body image. I have talked a little bit about this issue in passing (retirement lifestyle blog; body image; life coaching – Terri LaBonte- Reinventing Myself in Retirement), but I have not shared much detail about it. I am not sure I can. I do not think it would be very helpful, anyway. Everybody’s story is different. My body image journey is unique to me. Most people, women especially, have challenges around the way the world sees them and how they see themselves. Physical beauty is such a high value in our society, yet its parameters are so narrow. It is hard for anyone to resist the messages the society crams down our throats about beauty.

I have always been so far outside the parameters. It is common for me to feel shameful and apologetic for simply taking up space in the world. I think even people who love me and who have some understanding of the emotional challenges of body image pain do not realize the breadth and depth of the damage in me. Writing this feels overly dramatic and I am truly not looking for anyone to pity “poor me.” I am just trying to outline a little of the effect so that maybe some of you who might have faced similar feelings will not feel so alone. And also, to offer some hope.

My work with Todd is helping. I am cautious about saying “to offer some hope” because I do not yet know where my journey will take me. I have a long way to go, but I am heartened by the success we have found with the issues that were overlaying the weight and body issues- decreasing the ever-present anxiety, freeing myself from self-imposed limitations, more confidently owning the parts of myself that I think are valuable, and compassionately embracing even the least attractive parts. I also feel some shifting when it comes to the weight and body issue. It is not yet enough to label a success, but I can label it as hope.

The other day, a group of the women from my church were discussing the benefits that the church gets from continued online streaming of services, even though congregants are now coming to church in person. Many of the ladies offered great insights. They can continue to participate in worship when they snowbird up north in the summer. They can rewatch the service to hear the sermon again. They can fast-forward to the part of the service where the children’s choir sings so they can get a better view of the kids. It occurred to me that I often rewatch the service so I can see how big my butt looks when I am standing in line for communion. Clearly, my star is not at its apex. However, I can feel the zenith getting further away.

Todd tells me that I will always have to struggle with loving myself, accepting that I am beautiful, and doing what is healthy for me. It is not that one day, I am magically going to lose fifty pounds, feel great about how I look, and become a militant advocate for the body positive movement. It took me 62 years to get to this place. I do not think I have 62 more years to reclaim my beauty and sense of value. It is not realistic to believe that I am ever going to be the most beautifully and naturally confident person in the world. At this point, my goal is to feel “not unfortunate looking.”

The work I am doing is about health- physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health. I am trying to learn how to believe that I deserve to do the things that make me healthy- whether it be a choice to have a chocolate bar because chocolate is sweet, creamy, and delicious or a choice to eat a turkey sandwich because it is fresh, crunchy, and nutritious. Neither choice is morally wrong. It is good for my overall health to sometimes choose the chocolate bar and sometimes choose the turkey sandwich.

The next step is for me to figure out how to be more intentional with those choices… to understand them for what they are and what they are not. If I am making choices that do not strengthen my health in some way, why am I making them? Is there a need I have that I am using my food to address when whatever I am missing has nothing to do with food? I wish I knew the answers to these questions. The work I am doing now will help me answer them. The thing is… finding those answers is apt to be pretty uncomfortable.

So, why am I doing this? Why now, when I have spent 62 years living in this body and coping as I have? The truth is, I should have dealt with this long ago, but I was too scared and did not have support I trusted enough to storm this particular castle. Now, at this late date, I still believe I have something to gain. As I said, all the end running I have been doing to avoid this issue has become exhausting after all this time. Also, health is a lifelong pursuit. As we age, many of us find that we are compelled to take better care of our physical health. The goal is to be physically active and live a long life. As we get older, most people need to be more intentional about their health to meet that goal. For me, I do not know that I necessarily need to live longer, but I do know that I want the remaining years God gives me to be joyful, productive, and satisfying.

So, what advice do you have for me as I open the door to the dragons? Please leave a comment to share your perspective. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a beautiful day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

The Wild Woman Of Charleston

I mentioned a few months ago that I was working with a life coach (Todd Payne, Life Coach (toddpaynelifecoach.com) to help me deal with some of the issues in my life that limit the joy I could be experiencing. Todd bases his coaching on the enneagram, a system of navigating life by understanding the basic needs and tendencies of various personality types. I am a type six. One of the biggest hallmarks of a type 6 is the need for certainty. We expend ridiculous amounts of energy preparing and planning for any eventuality that is likely to threaten our personal safety, especially our social and emotional safety. Even with all that preparation, we tend to doubt ourselves and our ability to handle even the most routine ups and downs of life.

For anyone who knows me, even a little, it would require neither an enneagram nor a life coach to reach this conclusion. I am about as six-ish as a six can be. The fact that I had trouble identifying that I was a six is probably part of the six-ishness. I even doubted my ability to understand myself.

Recently, Max and I planned a trip to Charleston, South Carolina. We invited our friends Kathy and Charlie to go with us. Neither Max nor I had been to Charleston. I, of course, experienced a fair degree of anxiety about the whole thing. The six in me cried “eeek!!!” at the thought of going somewhere unfamiliar. The six in me cried “eeek!!!” at the responsibility of planning accommodations, activities, and meals for the enjoyment of some of my nearest and dearest peeps. I also pushed my own envelope to insist on driving. Max was all for flying, but I thought it made more sense to drive. This meant that I would be driving further than I’ve ever driven before- almost seven hours each way. Eeek!!! again.

All these potential perils did scare me. I will not deny it. However, after all my work with Todd, I genuinely wanted to practice ignoring irrational anxiety that keeps me from doing things I want to do. After all, tons of tourists visit Charleston every day. People I know snowbird in Florida by driving much further distances twice a year. Truthfully, it was a fallacy to believe that it was my responsibility to guarantee that everyone had an enjoyable time; my traveling companions could certainly adjust my plans to meet their own needs and preferences. The internet boasted excellent reviews of the hotel I booked. I also checked MapQuest to get a feel for how far away we would be from things we wanted to do. There were plenty of activities and dining options from which to choose in Charleston and the odds are that most people do not book every minute of every day before ever crossing the South Carolina border. It was almost painful for me to embrace the unknown and just wait until we got to Charleston to reserve activities. However, logic told me that it was safe to wait and see what made sense based on our exact location, the weather, and our own biorhythms.

A couple of weeks before the trip, I began to feel the anxiety building. On the other hand, the delight and excitement about the vacation also increased. I found that I could manage the anxiety quite easily by concentrating on how much fun we could have if I did not ruin it for myself by overthinking. I felt pretty good about myself. Yes, I was checking the weather in Charleston compulsively every few hours, but I was also not despondent over the ever-increasing chance that we would be washed away in a typhoon. It seemed that the only three days in the entire forecast that would have weather issues were the three full days we would be in Charleston. However, I have now lived in the south long enough to know that you cannot rely on the forecast until the day before, if then. Weather below the Mason-Dixon line is nothing if not changeable. I just rode my little “the weather will probably change by the time we get there” horse until that horse was dead tired.

Two days before we were supposed to leave, Kathy called me to ask what I wanted to do about the weather in Charleston. Since I did not now it was an option for me to do ANYTHING about the weather, I was a bit confused. She sounded dejected and implied we should consider cancelling or postponing the trip. This bummed me right out.

Before we go any further, let me give you some context. I am the original “or” girl. I often say, “we can do this OR that.” Kathy resists my “or”ientation. She is the original “and” girl. She persists in believing that there is no reason we can’t do this AND that, even when my understanding of the space-time continuum would suggest otherwise. I usually rely on her to free me from my self-imposed limitations.

So, if Kathy was capitulating because of the weather, disaster must be looming. On the other hand, when she suggested postponing the trip by a week or two, my brain immediately went to that six-y planning place. What do you mean, CHANGE THE PLAN? cried my poor little six-ish sensibility. I am embarrassed to say that I immediately dismissed the suggestion without even really considering its merit. The idea of juggling months of scheduling, reservations, and preparations just did not compute. The only outcome of that conversation was to thrust my carefully managed anxiety into overdrive. The carefully cultivated optimism disappeared. I was bummed. Still, I gathered my pluck and insisted that we would have a fun time whatever the weather.

As the day wore on, I did think about the possibility of postponing. Even for a normal person who is not obsessed with sticking to a plan no matter what, it would have been a lot of trouble to change hotel accommodations, to say nothing of rearranging my schedule that I had specifically cleared for the week of our trip. Also, I know that changing plans because of weather often backfires. I have changed many a plan because of a rain forecast only to find the original day shines clearly with no precipitation while there is a deluge on the rescheduled day. I spent the day distinctly out of sorts.

Later, Kathy texted that she and Charlie had found that we should be able to do many of the things on our Charleston list even if the weather was challenging, so she was happy. I wish I could have changed gears so quickly. I still had an anxiety hangover. The good news is, though, that I was able to keep the negative thoughts at bay. I was proud of myself for regaining my optimism and excitement about the trip, despite being aware that I had to make a conscious effort to do so. I never could have done that before my work with Todd. I can remember one night on our first trip to Disney World when I did not sleep all night because I was too busy obsessing about what to do because it was supposed to rain the next day.

When we got to Charleston, we did run into a problem with our room. I began to feel despondent, ashamed, and awful… but prepared to live with it. Then, it hit me that I had some options. I thought about several possible courses of action and was just about ready to choose the one that would be the most expensive and inconvenient to me, when I stopped myself. Instead of just feeling whiny and bad about the room or martyred because I was the one who would be sacrificing, I could ask for help. I talked to the concierge at the front desk. As we talked things through, he was able to supply an option that was far better than anything I thought possible.

During our visit, we juggled our plans to try to outwit the weather. I could feel my body reacting a little unpleasantly to the changes, but I was able to rely on the wisdom of the decisions to overcome my discomfort with changing the plan. We ended up being able to do virtually everything on our list of “must-dos.” We only had two incidents of truly limiting weather- a hailstorm while we were at the City Market and a tornado-like weather event as we left a restaurant one evening. Together, these events probably lasted less than 45 minutes. The City Market had a cover over it, so we just waited for the hailstones to stop falling. The wackadoodle weather at the restaurant did turn Kathy and I into mermaids without benefit of ocean. We made it to the car in a considerable state of disarray- cold, wet, and untidy. My hair was wetter than it typically is when I shampoo it… and I was wearing a rain jacket with a hood. Still, it was the end of our day, and the damage was not anything that the car heater and a hairdryer back at the hotel could not cure. Overall, not much of a sacrifice for a wonderful trip.

I also committed to eating at whatever restaurants my companions chose. We each got to pick a place for dinner over our four-night stay. On my night, I picked a pizza place. It was wonderful. Okay, yes, I know I was in a city famous for its cuisine. Okay, yes, I know that pizza is not the cuisine for which it is known. Okay, yes, I know I eat like a four-year-old. The other nights, I did not state preferences or worry about whether I would find anything on the menu that a four-year-old would eat. I never whined or even mentioned my absurd eating practices. I just went along for the ride. I did not eat anything super exotic, but I did try things that would not normally be my first choice. Each meal was delicious!

On the last night, we hoped to do a ghost tour of the city. I talked to the concierge guy at the hotel, and he recommended the “Dark Side of Charleston” tour. I looked at the brochure, saw it listed under “ghost tours,” and made us a reservation. The first thing out of the guide’s mouth was “as ‘they’ probably told you, this is not a ghost tour.” I had a moment of panic because I was the one who selected this tour, and I knew Kathy and Charlie really liked ghost tours. I overcame it and decided to enjoy whatever this “non ghost tour” was. It ended up being a tour that told Charleston’s scandalous, criminal, and juicy history. We all ended up loving this ghostless ghost tour.

The Charleston trip was wonderful. It was everything I could have hoped for and more. I loved the city. I loved the churches. I loved our trip to the Magnolia Plantation and Gardens. I loved visiting Fort Sumter and the USS Yorktown. I loved shopping and eating and walking. I loved the horse and carriage tour, the bus tour, and the non-ghost tour. What I loved more than anything, though, was the way I lived in the moment and enjoyed what was in front of me instead of forcing a round plan into a square hole. I loved being the Wild Woman of Charleston for a few days!

It occurs to me, as I read this, that some of you may feel a bit cheated. After all, for most people, my Charleston experience probably would not qualify as “wild.” Let me try to compensate by telling you something we learned on the non-ghost tour. The first rector of the oldest congregation in Charleston was fired because he got drunk and baptized a baby bear cub. How’s that for wild?

Have a wild day!!!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Where Am I, Anyway?

I am away on an adventure this week. Let’s see if you can guess where in the world I have gone. Here are five clues.

The city is named for an English king.

The hottest temperature recorded in this city was 104 degrees. The lowest was 7 degrees.

You would not have wanted to be here in 1698, 1699, or 1700. There was a smallpox outbreak, a fire that destroyed about a third of the town, and then a yellow fever epidemic.

In 2016, Travel and Leisure magazine called it the best city in the world.

Rhett Butler was born here (no, NOT Ocala, Cammarano family… I am not talking about that Rhett Butler!)

All guesses welcome. This is just for fun. Be accurate, if you insist. But be creative if you prefer!

Please leave a comment to share your perspective. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.  See you next week!!!

Bye, y’all… and bless your heart!

Terri/Dorry 😊