I was desperate to weight 111 pounds

I chuckled and just felt so grateful when I got onto the scales at the gym this morning, and saw that magic dream number looking up at me. “111 pounds.”

I desperately wanted to weigh 111 pounds for most of my life and now that I do, it’s really a non-event to me. And I always giggle with the synchronicity whenever EXACTLY 111 pounds is looking up at me.

I want to share a little about my incredibly rich adventure with an eating disorder, and how this emotional healing work helped me find what I was REALLY looking for … which serendipitously also released the weight was no longer serving me.

I started my pattern of turning to food for comfort and numbing when my Mum got ovarian cancer when I was 12. And it got much worse after she died when I was 14.

I used food as my way to cope.

And overeating, morphed into bulimia… and into a long dynamic adventure with trying to get my love, and my escape… from food.

I believe, that when we are able to have complete compassion for a pattern, it dissolves and is released.

That has been true for me, and I am observing it now in hundreds of clients over the last 10 years.

But compassion isn’t a function of the mind. So just being intellectually aware or even agreeing to compassion for a pattern isn’t enough.

Compassion is a process of the heart. And while some patterns can be released instantly. Others, in my experience, take time. They may take months, or years, of loving, compassionate experience to clear.

The process however is always one from feeling and experiencing the pattern as negative… to feeling and experiencing it as loving, as supportive, as one to celebrate and be grateful for.

For example for years I hated my overeating. I hated being bulimic. I felt that it was wrong. That I was wrong. That it was the darkest and most terrible thing about me and my life.

But in allowing myself to feel the pain that was underneath my eating disorder, I had the most exquisite and expansive experience of the Little Zoë that endured much trauma and suffering in her early years.

Through her eyes, and her heart, and her innocent experience… I got to see and feel that she wasn’t able to deal with the full extent of the pain and grief at that young age. She used food as a way to escape, a way to cope, and a way to feel in control in some small way. In some way, it served as a crutch. And I needed some crutch when I was little, because there wasn’t any other support available to me.

But later as a thirty-something year old human, I realized I was now able to deal with the pain and the grief of losing my mum, of being sexually abused, and of being left with my abuser.

And so little by little, I was able to feel that. And let it go.

And in doing so… yes I got to release and heal the pain of the past, so that I no longer needed to escape my feelings with food… but more importantly I found perhaps the real reason we go through suffering as human beings. I found myself. And I found what it means to Love Myself. I found a relationship between the soft, strong Divine Mothering part of me, and the small, sensitive inner child in me.

Eckhart is right.

We are given hurt feelings and pain, so that we might have compassion and experience, both as the healer and the healed. For in Self-Healing we ARE both.

I now spend my life walking clients, both 1on1 and in groups, through the Self-Healing Transformative Self-Compassion process.

I have created the following guide as a simple reference to support your greater understanding and experience of how this might work for you.

Of course it is not a replacement for seeking the love, counsel and support of other qualified humans. But it can support and be profoundly transformative.

I do also have space for 2 new 1on1 clients in October. Please contact my assistant if you’d like more information – Email Berna.

We’re doing another Self-Compassion Event on October 13th – Sign Up Here.

And we’ll be deeply diving into this work in the Immersion starting Feburary 2023 – Join the Waitlist Here

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