PRECIOUS THINGS

I’m a grandma. How incredibly fucking cool is that?!

I’M NOT SURE IF YOU CAN TELL, BUT I’M A BIT EXCITED

Becoming a grandma brings back all those beautiful memories of becoming a mum. Being a new mum brought me – without a doubt – the happiest times of my life. I love newborn babies. They smell amazing.

I know people who think I’m a little bit odd – not everyone enjoys the helpless, screaming, sleepy, poopy, all-consuming part. But I love it. And it has been so many years since I held my own newborn babies. Holding my new granddaughter last week – when she was just 12 hours old – is a precious memory that is indelibly stamped onto my soul. And I got to hold her for hours and hours every single day.

I’m now trying to give the new little family some space. Which is hard but this is now their journey. And I feel so incredibly blessed to be a part of it. I’ll be back there looking for hugs on Sunday though.

TO WATCH YOUR OWN CHILD PARENTING IS A BEAUTIFUL THING

Babies grow into adults but it is a long, slow, sometimes exhausting path. When I watched my son holding his newborn daughter and bathing his family in a radiant nurturing glow, it was such a heartwarming moment. Surely, I’ve done something right if my own child can be so precious with his daughter. I feel she is in safe hands with her loving parents. Not all children are so lucky.

I have been told so often that grandparenting is its own special heavenly treat. That it is special in a way that can only be understood by others who are already in the club. I am so thrilled to finally have admission to the exclusive club and I can’t wait to see what’s in store.

Parenting has been a key identity for me and losing that identity was one of the myriad contributors to my mental health collapse. Being a grandparent will be a different but equally precious road – of that I have no doubt.

Two years ago I tried to end my life. No matter how hard I tried I could not see a way into the light. With a lot of support, therapy and a whole new drug regime I have found good mental health. For more than 12 months I have been free from eating disorder hell and despite some really major challenges coming my way I have navigated through my natural tendency towards anxiety and depression. I am, in essence, doing really well.

WHEN IMPOSSIBLE THINGS HAPPEN, ALL IMPOSSIBLE THINGS BECOME POSSIBLE

Sometimes impossible things are heart-wrenchingly painful. And sometimes they’re glorious. My granddaughter is quite simply, glorious. Despite me nagging my children to have children (mostly in jest) never did I expect to be a grandma so soon. As we hear so flippantly so often, good things come to those who wait. Waiting is not always my superpower, but here we are. Good things have happened. Really good things.

I am deeply conscious that this too shall pass – everything does. But something new will come along. And after that, something new again. Every single day, life is new again. The good passes. The bad passes. And in the meantime, we’re living.

When I heard that labour had started and my granddaughter was almost here I had a burning desire to tell my parents. They would both be so incredibly proud to be great grandparents. They would love her as much as I do. I really missed that I could not tell them about such a momentous event in our family. The first of the next generation. Life carrying on.

I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE THAT SOMEWHERE, THEY ARE WATCHING AND SMILING

For fellow fans of newborn babies, here’s a precious snapshot of little Sofia on the day she was born. Enjoy – a gift from me to you.

ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FEARFUL

My mother swore by the old adage that absence makes the heart grow fonder. I’ve found for many things, absence makes the heart grow fearful.

When I’m away from loved ones for any length of time I miss them and feel an even stronger sense of love and longing when we’re reunited (usually). But when I let go of the daily routines of my life, it’s much harder to reestablish habits.

I DEVELOP A CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE

I’ve barely written for 13 weeks, despite writing being a key recovery tool for me. I’ve written some highly emotive private journal entries. And I’ve white-knuckled my way through a dozen insomnia articles. But regular musings on mental health and life as an over-50-year-old have dried up. Along with my creative juices.

I’m trying to promote my book but there’s a sense of falsehood in claiming the title ‘author’ if I’m not actually writing.

The biggest thing holding me back is fear. Fear that my ease with words has gone. That expectations upon me are now unyieldingly high. That habits once lost, can’t be regained. And the biggest fear of all is that I can no longer think of anything that is interesting. At all. That I am in fact, very, very dull.

IT’S NOT JUST WORDS I’VE LOST

I no longer attend the gym, a place that was an outlet for so much excess physical and psychological energy. A place where I found a community of women who supported me through the darkest days of my life. I became – for the first time in half a century – a little bit fit and vaguely strong.

The flow-on effect was meeting souls who loved the great outdoors as much (so it turns out) as I do. And I’ve hiked mountains, swum in freezing rivers and kayaked around beautiful shorelines. I gotta confess, some of the happiest moments of my life have been found when I’ve pushed myself up a mountain and inhaled the breathtaking views found up in the heavens.

But all good things come to an end and for numerous reasons that can’t be ignored, my time in gyms is done. My body isn’t as fit and strong as it was and I’m afraid I’ll lose the ability to trek through the bush.

Like so many before me, I’m filled with good intentions. At 56, I can’t afford to sit on my arse all day long. My body gets stiff and sore and my butt is getting flat. I don’t want to become a 60-year-old who never goes anywhere because it’s all too hard. When it comes to the physical body, you’ve got to use it or lose it. I’m so afraid I’ve already lost it.

BIGGER THAN WORDS AND WORKOUTS, IS WORK

I left my career as a musician at the end of 2016. I exited the paid workforce at the start of 2018. I’ve wondered what to do with myself in the intervening four years. Who am I if I don’t work? What is the point of me? Big philosophical life questions.

Now I’ve been offered a job. It’s the perfect number of hours, will bring much-needed cash flow and is so close I can walk to work. I’ve started the training but having been out of the workforce for so long I’ve developed an abject fear of my ability to function professionally. What if forget something? Or make a mistake? What if I fuck everything up and reflect badly on the business? During training, I’ve learned I don’t learn as quickly as I once did. I need to be shown more than once. I don’t have the confidence to just press buttons and hope for the best.

In the past, I was efficient, quick, knowledgable and effective. I contributed. I helped. Can I do it now? Absence from the workplace has made me terrified to return but now the opportunity has arisen and I must grab it with both hands and hold on for dear life. It feels like my last chance.

WHEN I LOST THE ABILITY TO EAT INTUITIVELY, FOOD WAS TERRIFYING

With much support and perseverance, I’ve relearned how to eat. I’m not sure if I’ve ever eaten naturally, given that I was put on a diet as a baby. But now I have virtually no fear around food. So I’ve learned that habits can be rewritten and fears can be overcome.

I’ve been absent from my life for quite a few years. With a little pre-planning and a whole lot of courage, I can reestablish writing as my recovery tool, stay fit and healthy, and return to the workforce to feel a little sense of purpose in my life. Absence has made me fearful, but recovery has taught me to face the fears and keep going anyway.

ADVENTURES IN BOOKLAND

I wrote a book.

Have I mentioned that enough times yet?! And more importantly, have you read it yet?

YOU CAN PURCHASE A COPY HERE

I’m not terribly comfortable beating my own drum, but if I don’t give it a little tap every now and then you won’t even know I have a drum.

So far, I have had nothing but really amazing feedback. People feel touched and moved and say they love the insights. I worry that all those people already know me – I need to get my story out to a wider audience. Because I believe wholeheartedly that the story I have to tell is valuable.

It is not a story for those who are actively unwell and engaged in eating disorder behaviours. I don’t think memoirs are ever helpful to those who are ill. Memoirs are not self-help books. I have been triggered quite badly by eating disorder memoirs in the past and I know it is possible for the same to happen when my story is read.

It is a story for those who are long-recovered or want to understand more about the origins of eating disorders. For family members of those suffering. For women who have ever been worried about their appearance and how they fit into society. The unpleasant sexual experiences almost universally experienced by women. And the ongoing impact of childhood emotional neglect by parents who hoped to do their best but severely lacked the skills to raise happy children.

And I hope it is a story that offers us all a little insight into the way we speak and behave around everyone.

BECAUSE YOU CAN NEVER KNOW FOR SURE WHAT KIND OF BATTLE SOMEONE IS FIGHTING

So, if you don’t have a copy yet can I recommend you take a leap of faith and grab one? You can find it at Amazon or Booktopia or the Bookdepository or practically any online book retailer. You can also contact your local bookstore and ask them to order it in. Just ask them to look up Stalked by Demons, Guarded by Angels: The Girl with the Eating Disorder – by Simone Yemm. That’s me!

If you want to hear what people are saying you can have a look at the Goodreads Reviews. And if you’ve read it but haven’t yet left a review, can I put on my begging face and ask you to please leave a few thoughts? I’d also be very grateful for Amazon reviews – although you need to have spent $50 on Amazon in the last 12 months to be eligible to leave reviews. But if that’s you, then please share your thoughts!

I’m at the stage where I need to really market my book and I tell you what – it’s really fucking hard. I have no idea what I’m doing. It’s not easy to trot out into the real world and tell people you’ve done something really awesome. Self-doubt always twitters around and I would rather the product speak for itself. But unfortunately it can’t do any speaking until a few people find out about it.

I’m canvassing bookstores around the country and contacting podcasters and asking for reviews and entering into competitions. It’s all a bit daunting if I’m being totally honest.

SO, I’M ASKING FOR YOUR HELP

Please consider buying a copy and then telling all your friends about it. And please leave a review at one of the places I begged about a moment ago.

If you’re not sure it’s for you, there’s a sample chapter here that you can read and see what you think. I’m confident that once you start you’ll feel compelled to keep going. At least that’s my hope!

And in the meantime, while you’re busy reading and reviewing, I’m going to put my writing cap back on and start meandering around book two, Poles Apart.

RELAPSE

Living with mental illness is a shit. Whether that illness comes from nature or nurture is neither here nor there. Through the course of the illness, you learn ways to manage distress and those ways are frequently unproductive. Often numbing.

I have found that a lot of people with psychologically poor health are highly sensitive. Acutely aware of others’ emotions and all emotions run deep. They cut into the flesh of the soul and the wounds bleed freely.

It is no wonder that those of us with the deep wounds and the high sensitivity seek ways to make life more emotionally comfortable. Drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, work, food, self-harm, starvation. All these things can be used and abused to distract from the onslaught of distress that comes with the gaping wounds.

I think those of you born with the tough flesh that doesn’t easily scratch, struggle to understand what it is to bleed so freely. Something has to happen to staunch the flow of emotions.

WHAT THAT SOMETHING IS, BECOMES THE CHOICE WE HAVE

I have learned to binge, purge, starve, self-harm, abuse prescription drugs, obsessively play games on my phone or hideaway in books. I even dabble in mindless shopping and excessive Netflix binging. Anything to stop the leakage of emotional pain.

I have mood stabilising drugs now. They’re like magical pixie dust. And through Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) I have also learned distress tolerance and emotional regulation skills. Lots of mnemonics like TIPP, STOP, DEARMAN. Simple skills like deep breathing and muscle relaxation. Difficult skills (for me) like mindfulness and meditation, and riding the waves of emotional pain. Really difficult skills like talking. Distraction skills like walking, journaling and music.

ALL THESE THINGS ARE WONDERFUL

Combined with a determination and willingness to change old habits I have made significant recovery over the past two years.

I no longer self-harm or purge – two behaviours people found particularly distressing. And, most surprisingly for me, I no longer think about those things or miss them.

I confess I can still become obsessed with phone games, books and Netflix. Sometimes they are little periods of emotional numbing and sometimes a compulsive insistence that comes with bipolar hypomania to just push through and do something to the exclusion of all else.

Disordered eating – binging and starving – is my oldest and most ingrained habit. I have worked so hard on these in the past two years and it has not been a flawless process. Regardless, I have learned to eat really regularly – even when I don’t want to – and as a consequence of reliably predictable eating my binging behaviours have almost disappeared.

And then this week happened, which demonstrates that the evidence of true recovery is best gauged when life’s curveballs come and slap you around the head.

IT TURNS OUT MY RECOVERY IS NOT FULLY THERE YET

I can’t face food anymore. I have crashed headfirst into restriction even while knowing the logical outcome.

I feel confident I can get my feet back on the ground quickly and I am busy gathering tools and support structures. But right now the psychological and the physiological have merged and I feel sick – physically and mentally. And my temporary Band-Aid is restriction.

I feel like a disappointment to be honest. Nobody wants me to relapse. I don’t want to relapse. While on the one hand, I have full control over the situation, on the other hand, I feel out of control in this situation.

I know the best thing I can do at this point is to seek professional support and to never hide in silence. The level of shame I naturally feel all the time just exponentially increases when I stay silent.

SO HERE I AM – YET AGAIN – CONFESSING TO A RELAPSE

I want to leave you with hope though. I know that every time I fall down I always get up. I have a one hundred per cent track record of standing back up. Sometimes more quickly than others, but I’m confident nonetheless. All I need is patience and understanding and with time I will once again find the willingness to commit. That time has just not yet come.

SHAME

I feel ashamed.

I always feel ashamed. Of something or other. I have come to the realisation that not everybody feels this overwhelming and constant level of shame.

I am ashamed of the way I look. My body, my face, my fingernails, my skin, my height, my eyes. Name a body bit and I’m probably pretty ashamed of the way it looks.

I am ashamed of my body itself. Going to the toilet. When it used to menstruate. Farting. Crying. Sunburn. Orgasms. Shitty metabolism. Most of the things my body does just make me feel embarrassed.

I am ashamed of the things I’ve done. Taking an overdose. Hurting people I love. Estrangement. Binging, purging, restricting, self-harming. Eating.

I am ashamed of the person I’ve been – or not been. A failed musician. An inadequate mother. An inattentive wife. An absent friend. A half-arsed writer. A useless social media marketer.

I AM JUST ASHAMED OF EVERYTHING

It is at about this point in time that I need to mention Brené Brown. The world-famous researcher who specialises in shame – and other things.

Shame is that warm feeling that washes over us, making us feel small, flawed, and never good enough.

Brené Brown

I feel small, flawed and never good enough. And that feeling came when I was a child. I was small. I was flawed. And I was made to feel not good enough.

My caregivers didn’t set out to make me become intensely ashamed of myself at the very core of my being. On the contrary, their goal was to make me the best version of myself by helping me get better at all the things I wasn’t good at. And even the things I was good at could be just a little bit better, “Because you’re not perfect you know.”

OLD THOUGHTS DIE HARD

Shame and humiliation have been constant companions my entire life. Walking by my side and casting shadows over all the good bits of my life and highlighting the bad. It hasn’t been helpful.

We all make mistakes. We’re all flawed. But it is very hard to learn and improve in an environment of shame.

Guilt can be a useful emotion. If I do something wrong or hurt someone and I have guilt then I have an opportunity to repair the wrong or apologise. Guilt that hasn’t turned to shame is often proactive. It doesn’t hide in silence like shame.

If you put shame in a petri dish, it needs three ingredients to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in the petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive.

Brené Brown

Empathy can coexist with guilt – accepting situations while holding space for the inevitability of the human experience being wholly imperfect.

EMPATHY DOES NOT COEXIST WITH SHAME

Never feeling good enough is more than just an unpleasant way to lead your life. It leads to poor mental health with depression and anxiety. It makes decision making extremely problematic. There is an incessant fear that is wrapped around every human interaction, causing a desire to avoid humans altogether. And everything is felt in silence. Alone.

As I navigate the recovery waters – trying to improve my mental health after the long decline – I need to come to terms with shame. It is most singularly unhelpful. There is nothing to be gained from shame.

We desperately don’t want to experience shame, and we’re not willing to talk about it. Yet the only way to resolve shame is to talk about it. Maybe we’re afraid of topics like love and shame. Most of us like safety, certainty, and clarity. Shame and love are grounded in vulnerability and tenderness.

Brené Brown

Speaking out about my feelings and fears is part of my way of combating shame. Becoming vulnerable to the possibility of change. Bringing light to the darkness within me. And acceptance is a concept I have long struggled hard with but it is essential to healing.

Acceptance of my body – the way it looks, the way it behaves. Size, shape, age, unique attributes. It is what it is and fighting reality is pointless and exhausting.

Acceptance of the things I have done because they cannot be changed. All I can do is look back and learn and hope to do better next time. Apologise where appropriate. Bring empathy to situations that require understanding and compassion. Even acknowledge the possibility that sometimes things have gone well – I do good sometimes.

THAT IS VERY DIFFICULT FOR ME TO WRITE. BUT HERE WE ARE

We all experience shame – I am no Robinson Crusoe here. But like a great many things, some of us have more than others. As part of my recovery journey, I’m trying to practice acceptance of the woman I am and shower her with the empathy that I so easily dish out to everyone else. It is a solitary journey – nobody can change me, but me.

DIET CULTURE

I’ve been on holiday. It’s nice to go away, but it’s even nicer to get home. The older I get, the more I appreciate the unique comforts of my own house.

The weather was hot and sticky, a climate I’m not terribly fond of, and a tropical cyclone was annoying the coastline so aside from the occasional frolic in the ocean, we spent a lot of time inside. We watched a lot of television. As we did not have access to the normal array of subscription television services we are spoiled with at home, we spent a fair bit of time watching free-to-air television.

I’M SHOCKED AT THE INCESSANT BOMBARDMENT OF WEIGHT LOSS PRODUCTS

I mean, we all know it’s out there. I experience plenty of diet culture messaging in everyday life. But free-to-air television feels like one big weight loss commercial interspersed with the occasional over of cricket. And it’s triggering.

The marketing gurus are good at their job because despite spending five years of my life actively teaching myself to fight the diet mentality, after two weeks of advertisements for weight loss and “health” promotion products I feel like I have to submit.

Diet culture espouses thinness as a ticket to beauty and happiness. As someone who has lived in almost every sized body, I can assure you that my happiness was not impacted by a number on a scale. Something I need to remind myself of when I’m fighting the urge to skip breakfast.

After three weeks of insidious messaging, I want to count things and buy shakes and get a fancy app that’s going to magically transform me from an overweight middle-aged woman into a slender 20-something nymph. Because that’s what the ads claim.

THE SHADOWS OF EATING DISORDER VOICES WANT TO STARVE MY BODY INTO SUBMISSION

To punish it for being the fattest, whitest, oldest body wandering around Byron Bay – a town that seems to singularly cater for those wanting to splash semi-naked nubile bodies across their Instagram feed.

We are surrounded by messages of the absolute necessity to be young, slim, tanned and beautiful. Whatever beautiful actually means. A message that says body size is inversely proportional to a level of happiness. Less body equals more joy.

My Instagram feed is all body positivity, eating disorder recovery and general mental health accounts. Still – there is no avoiding the before and after pictures. The proud and joyful faces of men and women who have lost enough weight to fit into sexy clothes. Thereby associating health and happiness with a waist measurement. The endless photos of “what-I-eat-in-a-day” that range from beaming pride at the consumption of a doughnut, to a sense of superiority for living solely on fresh mangoes and quinoa. As though I’m somehow meant to be impressed with someone else’s food choices.

Facebook and Instagram target me with ads for weight loss products and exercise regimes – all of which are promoted by sculpted visions of perfection.

I constantly hear messages – in real life, in books, on television, in podcasts – that glorify beauty. Where the first compliment a woman is paid is about her looks – “She’s very pretty!” “What a gorgeous girl!” “They’ll make beautiful babies together!”

The food we buy is judged harshly based on its perceived health benefits. Carrots are good. Cheese is bad. Apparently. By today’s standards at any rate.

WHO KNOWS WHAT TOMORROW WILL HOLD?

Every diet fad is regularly rebranded – count things, eliminate things, eat at prescribed times, fast, fast, fast. Anything except following your body’s natural hunger cues.

Diet culture is insidious and we all play a part. I play a part in it because, despite all the therapy and all the public declarations of a willingness to accept myself in a larger body, I still desire a smaller one. I still fight a daily desire to both binge and restrict. Because my ticket to happiness is still associated with my body.

I know it is irrational, but we live in a society that worships slim, young bodies and discards the rest of us. It is all fine and dandy to theoretically believe every body is beautiful and health at any size, but our media is bursting at the seams with an association between beauty and happiness and that kind of messaging sinks deep.

As a society, we need to fight diet culture – to stop subscribing to weight loss programmes and whatever fad comes along in 2022 to replace intermittent fasting. Food is food and is not inherently good or bad. Restricting foods (carbs, fat, sugar, whatever) creates a psychological obsession and most of us become more likely to want to binge in response. Counting things (calories, points, macros, etc) makes us acutely aware of every mouthful of food consumed and creates a deprivation mentality. Consciously skipping meals or fasting for periods of time overrides natural hunger signals and increases the chances of binging when you finally do eat.

Binging and restricting are not limited to those of us with eating disorders. We are all subject to the endless barrage of “lose weight now” messaging and weight loss promotion always endorses dietary modification.

IMAGINE A WORLD FREE FROM DIET CULTURE

Where bodies are accepted in every shape, size, colour and age. And beauty is defined by words and actions and the lovingness of our heart. Where we eat because we’re hungry, stop when we’re not and food is eaten for pleasure. Where we move our bodies because it feels good. Imagine a world where diet and exercise are not associated with guilt and shame. I want to live in that world.