Dragging My Feet

Originally Posted: Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2010 01:59:44 -0500

Originally posted at my Cleft Lip/Palate blog, the mission of that
blog is to shed light on my surgical & cleft experiences in general to
help those with cleft lips/palates or families/friends of those who
have cleft lips/palates.
Hello everyone!!,
So this blog has been here for over a month, I stated it's purpose,
mission, whatever you want to call it. Then I dropped the ball.
I'm prone to doing this when I'm either avoiding something, or I feel
like there aren't 'that many people' paying attention so why bother?
In this case, it was mostly avoidance.
I started working with what we call a Body-Centric coach in the past
couple of weeks. I've been working with a Life Coach for a couple of
months now & that's been going great! I've cleaned out alot of
negative thoughts & come a looooong way from where I was! Being down
on myself, hating myself, believing that my life would never get
better, you get the idea. So my explanation of Life Coaching is that
it helps a person to 'retrain their brain' to focus on the positive.
We aren't talking Polyanna, I'd shoot her if I saw her! Lol. But we
are talking improvement in the quality of my life. By believing that
things will get better, they are getting better. So why did I start
looking for a Body-Centric coach? Because, despite the life side
coming along well enough, the 'body side' well, not so much. I swear
this all ties in, promise! Lol. Anyway, I've found one & have started
working with her.
In dealing with cleft lip/palate, or a Tessier cleft in my case, I've
undergone 66 surgeries thus far. That's a huge amount of surgeries,
for anyone to undergo, for any reason.
I lost my modesty & my childhood, at a super young age because of that
*partially because of that*, & it has played with my mind ever since.
So, at age 24, I take showers & baths, because that's how I get clean.
I don't luxuriate in them, ever. I just 'go through the motions'. When
it comes to taking care of any part of my body, I take care of it
because it's what a proper person, in a proper society does, but I
don't get any joy out of it. I've let my body go *I weigh over 200
pounds right now* because I just simply don't care. So here my doctor
has done all these repairs to make me better, to allow me to live on
*without my face caving in on me* & now I'm looking at getting
diabetes or heart disease or cancer or whatever else because I overeat
& struggle to take care of myself the way I should.
So when it actually came time for me to start sharing this with you
all, it got 'superdifficult!' I think they should be doing long-term
studies on the effects of having all these operations & what it does
to one's mind & body, but that's for another post.
Since it became 'superdifficult' I did what I tend to do when things
get difficult, I ran!
On Thursday night, my Body Coach asked me to give her a list of things
that I thought would help me care for my body. I had almost nothing so
instead, I went for the interconnected rout. If I can learn to love my
body just a bit, then I'll want to take care of it just a bit, if I
take care of it just a bit then I'll learn to love it a little more,
even with the extra pounds. If I can love it with the extra pounds,
then I'll want to take care of it, which will involve working to lose
said extra pounds, but in a gentle manner, not one where I either
starve myself then overeat when I smell chocolate in the house, or
just give up the whole thing because 'it's to hard!'
After that, I was supposed to list any experience that had occured in
the past, that might help her gain insight into
1. How to help me overcome my body numbness *as I call it* & 2. Shed a
little more light on my life for her.
Well, I shared my experience, one that's considerably more vivid then
most of my experiences have been, & afterward was left feeling like
crying or throwing up, only I couldn't decide which one to choose, or
rather, my body couldn't decide.
We've been talking a bit about education in the FB group though & I
realized that painful or not, I needed to also share this experience
with all of you, so you can talk to your kids & most certainly talk
with their doctors. I think sometimes doctors *no matter how wonderful
they are* forget that we aren't just patients, we're people to.
This is already long, so I'll post about the aforementioned experience
in my next post.
Love,
Chelle