Monday, June 7, 2021

Let's Get It Started

 I guess it's time I put this out there to the universe.  As with most people, my actual life may not be totally accurately represented by what I push out over social media.  There are pictures of my smiling children, and representations of that side of my persona which is the independent fitness badass.  I post workouts and motivational quotes and pictures of healthy meals I create with my own two hands.  Yep, that's me.  Only, there's two issues with this.  At times that independent badass vibe is little more than a "fake it til you make it" gesture.  In actuality I struggle just like everyone else.  COVID has made the last 12 months a complete nightmare at times.  There have been unforeseen stressors personally and for my children, professional challenges, the assignment of treatable medical diagnoses on me that don't sit all that well, and am learning to deal with a whole host of other things that go with running a charity fighting against the COVID financial smack down.  

All of these things have kept my head spinning and my nights sleepless.  I have had to prioritize what I deal with and how, but about a month ago I was hit with a harsh reality no proclaimed fitness motivator really wants to disclose, but here it is.  My youngest son is not the happy go lucky guy you see on Facebook actually he is neither happy or lucky.  The reality is, he has an eating disorder he did not ask for.  He binge eats and now is struggling with his weight.  He hides his emotion on this by cracking jokes and deflecting.  It is in really looking at his ten year old reality that I now see how it mimics my own reality at that age.  His is coming from an early life of poverty from living on the side of a mountain in Haiti.  His hard wiring says,"there's food now, but might not be tomorrow, so eat all you can."  When we adopted him at age 3 he would eat until he vomited.  It is that reflex of his childhood trauma that I had to face has now gotten to the place he is severely impacted by it.  Until a month ago I was at a loss as to what to do.  This was his hard wiring and until now he was not old enough to understand it himself.  So here I was, fitness success and motivator with a morbidly obese child under my own roof despite what my healthy meals would suggest on Facebook.

So, a few weeks ago, after he was caught hiding with food again, I made the hard choice to sit down with him and discuss my own story.  My own dark history of a childhood of closet binge eating that led me to an adult life of obesity.  Much to my surprise, he was not too young for this.  We connected on a level we had not before.  There were tears as we shared our experiences and emotions and it shocked me how much like me this non genetic obese child of mine actually was.  At the time, I didn't offer any solutions, more a motherly gesture of support for a child who's feelings only I could truly understand.  What followed in the days that followed took me by surprise.

My little big man would sit me down and ask if he changed the way he ate and began to exercise for a month would I get him a phone.  Big stakes for a big man.  I told him yes but no.  Yes to a phone, but not in a month.  If he was interested, we could work to change his lifestyle from now to the end of summer with Labor Day being the coveted phone goal.  I only had two rules.  He was not getting on the scale, and he was not on a "diet," rather he was merely making simple life changes.  Since that time, he has been learning to meal plan and cook with me, how to make healthy food choices, and has decided shooting hoops is his exercise of choice.   As he enters his third week, morning after morning I hear the basketball bouncing on the driveway as he waits for the bus.  The swoosh sound as he sinks another one with a resounding,"two points!"  He now is setting the goal to be fit enough to play basketball on a team next winter.  Something he would not have considered before.  I see an actual smile, a head just a wee bit higher, and a gradual freeing of the very demons that held me down for four decades of my life.  Having a front row seat to this has suddenly made my struggles as of late  just a little bit easier.  

"And the base keeps runnin', runnin' and runnin'.....

Let's get it started, in here....."

-Black Eyed Peas

Alex now greets the day with a dance party, today the Black Eyed Peas, fitting as he has truly gotten it started in here.  This experience was a good reminder that what you see in social media does not always give a nod to the tough stuff in life, and that our demons can serve a valuable purpose when we can use them to pour into others and watch them grow just as we have.  In my case, I see a new, deeper relationship with a son I love more than anything.  This is going to be an epic summer for my big man and I am excited for him to come to the full realization that the best is yet to come.



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