The FastDay Forum

I have just read this thread from start to finish and I just don't know what to say because there is a huge lump in my throat. I admire the fact that you can all recall the root of your problems/stress/angst/self loathing etc and share it with us. Forgive me for not joining you all, I just cannot, still too painful to go completely public even though I have shared some snippets with a very few on the forum via PMs.

My thoughts and love are with you all,

Ballerina x

I've popped in and out this tent and and read with interest and empathy, and commented occasionally, but haven't told any of my story.
Think my food problems stem from not enough food as a kid. My mother suffered for years from untreated and severe depression.
At eighteen,she married a much older man as she was pregnant,lost that baby at three days old then lost her second baby at three months. Two brothers died,one from leukaemia and her youngest and gentlest brother was killed in the war.Her parents both died suddenly and unexpectedly. All these bereavements by the time she was in her early twenties,plus trapped in an unhappy marriage.
No therapy then,just expected to get on with it,and she did..but didnt cook for us much or very well. Also,married to a good hardworking and thrifty man,who insisted on turning the cooker off before meals had finished cooking ( He believed the residual heat was enough to finish the job off!) Result was,many fairly inedible dinners.
She did a great job considering.
When i left home,it was very liberating to be in charge of my own housekeeping and buy what i wanted to eat. Literally,like a kid in a sweetshop,and any other kind of food shop!Weight stayed down coz i smoked but started to put it on when i gave up the fags.
Never ever really lost that " well i want it, and i can have it" mentality ....which has sabotaged many dieting efforts and led me to see myself as a greedy pig.
At least,having spent the last six months fasting twice a week, am beginning to realise i am not as greedy as i thought after all!

Oh @CandiceMarie hugs

My childhood was far for perfect but I survived it and am glad to be an adult with more choices and freedoms. These were not available to my parents who did the best they could, I always think with the resources available to them. I have to forgive as I can't see any other way as bearing grudges doesn't harm them and would be like a cancer in me. They too were the product of their childhoods.

I just hope I have not done too much damage to my DS. The remnants of the damage from the childhood I survived I see reverberating amongst my siblings, we all handle it differently but I do think I have used food as a way to nourish myself when there has not been enough love coming my way. I also eat much more when I am in the midst of emotional upheavals. Mind you I have been very hurt at family comments about my weight gain and just had to grin and bear thoughtless remarks. I don't do family get togethers that is when the dysfunction of our childhood surfaces.

Wow, so many deeply touching stories here, no wonder we all had to have a bit of a breather! Just wanted to say, I'm still here and I'm listening to anybody who feels moved to post any part of their story that they feel would help them. What an amazing history of storylines we are all building up here. Good for you, @Ballerina, for knowing your limits! I think that's really cool. So sorry that you've had such difficult times, but I love the way you take care of yourself by not being too unconsidered with your writing of things, if that makes any sense - good for you! Writing is good, and not writing is also good! Hugs to you, Ballerina, also to you @CandiceMarie and @gillymary, you have all not only survived but also I hope, thrived, and long may it continue. Life, families and history are all such complicated things!

I have been having a bit if a complex family time myself recently, up & down to Sydney during my dear Aunt Gloria's last illness and passing, not surprising that it should bring up lots of stuff. She was a very gentle and uncomplaining soul, bless her! My grandmother, her mother, was a complete judgemental & controlling b, by at least 3 different accounts, and made sure that my 2 aunts never married so they would take care of her. As a result, my 2 aunts shared a bedroom for 70 years of their lives, and were really soulmates, I think you could say, even though they didn't have an easy life. My surviving aunt Dorothy is very sad, as you would imagine, but at least is well-cared for and has lots to occupy her. And again I have had to really stand my ground with my sister and 2 brothers - I was always the baby, and my mother kept me very dependent on her (and particularly so around not allowing me to feed myself - literally at times!!) so she could hang onto her role of "good mother" - as a result, my siblings tend to maintain the same dynamic and tend to decide things "above my head" and don't consult me. But I am learning to stand my ground for my own experiences in my family, with politeness but also conviction.

Anyway, hugs & strength to all who are dealing with difficult dynamics around food and families! The two do seem inextricably entangled! Long may we survive & thrive in our journeys as we continue to climb our mountains!

@jools7 families ... We grow up despite them really. Operating off a phone here will be back when I wrest the iPad off DH

Just reread my earlier post about dysfunction in families when growing up and the other major thing is we are a product of history, social mores and the times we live in. For my parents they were dealing with the results of dad returning from 4 years of war service over in England. Those days post traumatic stress was not recognised and you came home and didn't talk about the war and got on with your life. Post war years, the early fifties were very conservative times and I felt straightjacketed. Roles were so stereotyped and confining for women who had to get back to traditional roles after the freedoms and jobs in the war years when a big chunk of our menfolk were away on active service.

When the sixties came I thought yippee and though I was not a fully fledged hippie I sure embraced the women's movement and feminism and the unshackling of women from those traditional suffocating roles. Too late for my mum as by the 1970s she didn't have many more years of life sadly she died too young. But her gift was to deeply instil in me the necessity as a girl to get an education and have the capacity to be financially independent and support myself and my kids if need ever arose. Forever grateful to my amazing mum, who was determined her daughters would not have a similar life she endured. That said I loved my dad too though he was to me cold and strict. I was glad to leave home at 17 and make a life of my own

@jools7 sometimes what we experience in our childhoods makes us more resilient determined and stronger. So glad you could be there for your aunts, pretty tragic as above women's lives in those times were pretty constrained. Your aunts were of my mums era. Am sure you can manage to not be controlled by your siblings. Families and the dynamics ...so complex. I like my freedom and hope I accord same rights to others.

The older I get, the more I come to realise that we are all a product of our childhoods.

I have what I describe as a "difficult" relationship with my mother. She is critical & highly judgemental towards me. It seems that she dislikes most of what I stand for & is always ready to put me down. She appears to really dislike the fact that I have friends who care about me.

As a child, I was never allowed or encouraged to have an opinion. So as I grew up, I had no idea how to express myself - good or bad. The resulting anger got turned inwards....and became depression.

Recently, I was discussing with a very clever lady how cross my Mother makes me with her outrageous comments, snappiness, & constant demands. I often despise myself for not standing up to her & telling her how rude or out of order she is. Even I know that she is never going to change, so I usually say nothing rather than have a showdown....thereby limping from one crisis to another without resolution. Very unsatisfactory.....

Instead of railing against my Mother, it was suggested that whenever she is outrageous or critical....I should visualise a stuffed-to-bursting suitcase pinging open with excessive force.....& all the clothes flying out. The general idea is to anticipate each of her "shots" whilst acknowledging that they aren't going to stop....and not to let her vitriol hurt me. I should start to see her as a stuffed suitcase & therefore not be surprised when she does what an over-stuffed suitcase would do!

Boy, can I tell you how much that image has amused me! Can't wait to start visualising....
The reason I have written all this is just to highlight that it is probably our reactions to people or events that needs working on. As in, taking away their power to hurt us (whether they actually mean to or not)...would restore our balance.

Interesting thought....

Hi @hazelnut20, I do identify with what you're saying about anger turned inward becoming depression - a well-known pattern for me. And also how hurt can precede anger. And how chronic emotions need expression in some form. And how I try to manage my emotions by eating instead of expressing. Writing about this gives me some compassion for myself.

I love your friend's suggestion - that allows you some detachment and humour, both wonderful skills that can be practised. It reminds me of one of my favourite scenes in Harry potter,(I think I've mentioned it in the forum somewhere) where they've got the Boggart in a cupboard, which will transform when they open the door, into the thing they most fear. Then it's their job to transform it into something humourous with the incantation "ridicoolous!". I think I need more practice at that!

So sorry to hear about your difficult relationship with your mother, my goodness how toxic it sounds - why do you still see her, btw? I guess that's a complex question! My relationship with my mother was difficult until a year to the day before she died, when she had a major stroke, and was bed bound in a nursing home. But she finally found some empathy & wisdom in that final year. She said things to me in that year that I absolutely treasure - on some level I think she was hanging around in order to seek my forgiveness. And I do forgive her. Even though I am still healing the wounds I sustained from her (s)mothering. Everything she did to me was done under the guise of love, which had the dual effect of both making it hard to hold her to account for, and making me mistrust "love". Took me quite a few years in therapy to work all that out!

And I agree that we are to some extent shaped by our first relationships,but I rebel at the idea that that's ALL that shapes us!

Happy Tuesday to you, @gillymary. I love hearing your story of how world events & "time spirits" can have such an effect on our personal & family lives. I'm so sorry you lost your mum too soon, she sounds like an amazing spirit! Yes, the previous generation was badly affected by the sexism of the times, bizarre how that's actually not all that long ago, I don't know whether many of our younger friends on the forum would believe how tenuous "equal rights" actually are.

Good for you for loving your dad from his self-imposed distance. I think that would be very healing for everyone. I am going to a conference in Poland in 3 weeks, called Worldwork, where world issues are worked on in a group of 500 or so people - I can anticipate world war 2 events in Poland will be a big part of that interaction. Scary! But also potentially transformative! I'll let you know how it goes!

@Hazelnut20 - your post made me teary - thank you for sharing. My parents and I are estranged and I find this very hard going - life wasn't meant to be like this, not when I am an only child!

Nothing I have ever done has been good enough for my parents and it's been this way for 61 years of my life - from childhood and to adulthood and I have allowed criticism and judgemental behavior by them get to me.

I wish I had your power to forgive [tag]jools7/tag] - and you are right, anger does turn to anxiety and depression something I have had since I can remember.

I take it day by day, and together with the counselor, try and work through it all - some days it's just so exhausting and other days I can find my smile.

Over the last several weeks I have read all the posts on this tent, so many stories and comments, I am forever thankful for the support and encouragement on here, we are certainly not alone.

Maggie

"Friends are the family you would choose for yourself"

How true.

This tent is so helpful. Before you come in it, you almost feel like you are the only one with problems. No-one can tell what baggage we all carry around with us from reading our other posts. But this is a safe place to offload....& isn't it amazing when you find things in common?

I am so sorry for your pain @maggiee. Our parents are not supposed to be like that, are they? But many are....Sending you a big hug.

I am estranged from my father....and have been for many years. I wrote to him once, pouring out my heart and saying how I wished we could be closer. What did he do? Sent me my letter back, with a note saying he was sure I would be ashamed of what I had written one day, so he thought it best he returned it to me so I could destroy it.

So, that was that. No contact since & I am very confident that when he dies, I will not be moved enough to attend his funeral...because we are total strangers.....

I just want to say, surround yourself with good friends. If it wasn't for my friends, I wouldn't get any hugs....except from my autistic son, bless him. The world would be a very lonely place if you couldn't even have a hug......

[Debs]

Hazelnut, don't start me snivelling at work! You are so right about friends, they are the first ones I go to in a crisis and I knwo they would be there for me. I sounds as though a few of us have 'divorced' our parents for our own well being. I had a similar experience to you hazelnut where I wrote a letter, ther difference being was that he couldn't accept that he may have made any mistakes and that anything he had done was wrong. He is expecting me to apologise, I am not sure what for, but that will be a long time coming. Like you my feelings now are completely neutral, I don't have to apologise for not liking/getting on with my relatives just because they are related. I also acknowledge that he a rough upbringing.

LOL, jools, the Boggarts were the first thing that came to mind for me too!!!

hello again, @hazelnut20 and @debs, well I have tears from reading stories atm too! Luckily I am at home so the only thing that is witnessing them is my tax papers!!! That and the kids next door are bouncing on their trampoline - so that makes me paradoxically want to bounce on my fitball while writing to you! So I can cry and bounce at the same time if that doesn't sound too bizarre!. Life is so complex and non-sensical at times! Gotta love it!!

@Maggiee, forgiveness is absolutely not everyone's cup of tea, and not even something everyone should strive for! You just need to be where you're at with your situation, not anywhere else - which doesn't mean you can't have hope of having something different, just that shouldn't let that future hope colour where you are at too much, imho.

And debs, how strange that hugs are coming up!! It just so happens I'm an expert hugger (some people tell me!!) and I'm so looking forward to seeing whether you agree with that next Monday - you too Maggie, although you've already had a couple:)

Look out @Debs

I can confirm that @jools7 does give the best hugs - ever!! {{{++}}}

Looking forward to the next one on Monday!

Maggie

thanks, @Maggiee, you're not such a bad hugger yourself!! xx