Finding Our Value

The mistake we make is to turn upon our past with angry wholesale negation… The way of wisdom is to treat it airily, lightly, wantonly, and in a spirit of poetry; and above all to use its symbols, which are its spiritual essence, giving them a new connotation, a fresh meaning.

John Cowper Powys

There is this tipping point that we come to when it becomes more painful to ignore our past than the fear we feel when we think of facing it. When I was waking up from my eating-disordered ways I needed support to help me learn how to eat again. This was way back in the 70’s and these issues were not being addressed particularly effectively back then. I had to take principles from one “ism” and apply it to my own.

Part of that work involved self-reflection and surrender to wisdom beyond my brain’s capacity to understand. I learned what experts said was a healthy weight for my age and height and I chose to believe them instead of my screaming brain that demanded that I weigh less each day.

One “symbol” that helped me tremendously was an insight that I was granted early on in the process. I “saw” how my body’s attempt to lose weight was a strategy to lose myself - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I considered all the thoughts, traumas and tragedies that taught me that less of me was more. I chose through gritted teeth to see this way of thinking as unwell. Less of me was not more! I had value. I had worth. I could be a person who took up space on planet earth without fear or condemnation.

Only as I read John Cowper Powys’ quote do I see it even more clearly today. This was the gentle whispering of a God who loves me and challenged me to respect and love myself. I had made a mistake believing that my presence was a bother, or too much, or defective. I needed to not only retrace my steps and denounce this error I had to learn to walk in the world in such a way that I was not apologizing for the depth of my footprint on the surface of the planet.