Friday, February 11, 2011

The Art of Surrender

My only goal this year is to make peace with my body. Not write a novel, or even a blog post. Not to paint a picture every day. Not to run a mile, or lose fifty pounds. I didn't vow to read a book a week for a year. I didn't promise to quit drinking. I didn't make resolutions about eating no meat, or dairy. Just to make peace. Just to come to accept.


This path has been more complicated and intense than I ever imagined. I realize that the body I inhabit is built of shame and anger and self-loathing. My daughter died in me. My. Daughter. Died. IN. Me. In my fat belly. The first thing I did when I got home from the hospital is google stillbirth. And there in the first list of things that are correlated to stillbirth is weight. Obesity causes stillbirth, it said. I killed my daughter with fat? I finally built up the courage to ask my midwife about it a few weeks later, because it became this festering nugget in the back of my brain. I would say, "We don't know what killed her." And I would think, "But I know, it was my fat." Deep down, I started integrating the blame into my being without really realizing it. When I did finally ask my midwife, she laid her hands on my shoulders and said, "Fatness did not kill your daughter. You did not kill your daughter." She explained that it was just a correlation, like being Latino or African-American. I cried and told her I gained so much in my pregnancy and maybe that killed her, maybe. She could tell me, I begged, the truth. I can handle it, I promised. She promised me she wasn't just being nice. But I didn't believe her.

Making peace with my body means I need to start believing her, or even if I don't believe her, to forgive myself for killing her. Forgiveness has always seemed like a powerful process  to me. I have gotten to places where I have forgiven people for breaking my heart, stealing all my things, for hitting me, for cheating on me, for stealing my identity and for betraying me. To be honest, I don't really know how to forgive myself. Somehow, there is a sense that this forgiveness is wrapped up in changing my body image and relationship and so I am starting there.

Part of this process is quitting drinking, mindful and moral eating and learning to integrate my body, mind and soul again. I know it sounds weird, but I feel like each part has been a separate entity. I have made a commitment to try to pray and meditate every day. To bend on my knees and give it up to the universe. To ask for help. I have a problem asking for help from people and even more so from God, or the universe. Mainly because I don't know how I feel about those things. God? Creator? I don't know. I think I have always been the quintessential definition of a deist. But maybe the kind of God I am praying to isn't the point, even if it is just asking for help in the dark, in the abyss. Maybe it is the art of surrender. I cannot rationalize my way out of this cycle of suffering. I cannot write it out. I cannot starve it out. I cannot drink it out. I cannot. And so, that is part of this year.

Praying and meditating every day is not something overdone or elaborate. I read a prayer, I ask for help and inspiration and specifically name something I want to do better today. When I meditate, I listen, instead of the Buddhist emptiness that has always accompanied my meditation. I am listening for my own voice. It is a strange thing to have to relearn how to trust yourself. To refind intuition. This process has given me focus and the quality of not having to reinvent the wheel. I just do it, and then it is over. I always imagine these things impossible to integrate into my life. But when I do it, it is simple.

So far, 2011 has been really amazing. Hard and scary, but also amazing and insightful. I miss having meditation and prayer as part of my ritual. I have drifted a long way from my spiritual center. Anxiety and grief like an winding, dark path off the road. Meditation and prayer and peace of mind felt too much like making peace with Lucy's death, when really that are simply making peace with myself.

15 comments:

  1. I struggle with forgiveness too. I heard the other day that 'Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different.'

    Say it over and over. It begins to resonate.

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  2. Lady mama - I really like your quote and if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to build on it. I think I might say that forgiveness is accepting the past could have been different, but it wasn't. It's the learning to live with how things could have been better or easier or kinder, but they weren't.

    Angie - this was strong and powerful. There's something profound that happens to me when I give up my delusions of power and accept my small place in the universe.

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  3. Prayer, for me, has lately been something I crave. Yet, as a humanist, I have a difficult time directing these words. To the Universe? I guess. But sometimes it's helpful to just put the energy out there and hope someone, something, somewhere, receives it and delivers on the request.

    Making peace with things does not come easily for me, either. Thank you for sharing this part of your journey. You inspire me.

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  4. I think this is a really great goal for the year. And I know you can do it.

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  5. One goal. That is a good idea. And you've chosen a good goal.

    I like what Lady Mama and Mrs Spit had to say. Wise women. And I think I am there with Serenity's death. I accept my present life, dead baby and all. She is part of me, and helps to inform my decisions, and I feel love and, not pride but something, when I think of her and our time together.

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  6. I appreciate so much the distinction you make between making peace with yourself and making peace with Lucy's death. I know I get the two things mixed up sometimes in dealing with my own grief.

    I'm still in awe of your goal and am wishing you luck and strength and clarity as you work toward it.

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  7. What an amazing goal... I've always thought that it's my body that let my little one down - despite all the reassurance I got that it wasn't weight etc. Great to have such a beautiful goal xo

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  8. You inspire me and so many others. I really hope 2011 is gentle and kind to you.
    xo

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  9. Brilliant Angie. You are an inspiration.

    I started thinking towards the end of last year that I have been punishing my body for two years now and it's time to stop and be nicer to myself. Maybe even forgive myself too. It is a struggle.
    xxx
    xxx

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  10. "Meditation and prayer and peace of mind felt too much like making peace with Lucy's death, when really they are simply making peace with myself."

    Boy, did that make me think about all those conversations I have had with you about how I want to meditate. Reading that made me conceptualize the wanting in a whole new way- as sort of wanting to want,but resisting the idea of being peaceful.

    You nailed it,hon, as always. And I am proud of you. As always.

    And,if I may go back to your post about the Thornado, the fact that he makes you laugh so hard you cannot breathe was not lost on me- I know almost every word of the football and cartwheels post by heart. I love that there is that kind of laughter in your life now.

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  11. Beautiful, thoughtful and as always honest. I hope you can find forgiveness.

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  12. lovely, angie. i so appreciate what you write about prayer and meditation. i am not ready to return to prayer myself, but i like how you think about it. i may have to chew on that for a while. xo

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  13. What a beautiful goal and one I know you can do. xoxo

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  14. This is inspiring. Making peace with myself is a constant struggle. But I think it's a worthy goal, which is why I keep trying. : )

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  15. As always, Angie, you inspire me. Thank you.

    love,
    sarah

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