How Can I Support Hungry Molly?
Question of March
I didn’t plan to write about this topic, but it has barreled in, sat down on front stage and whispered to me, “It’s time.” I just sat in front of my wood stove, noticed my breath holding, and asked whether I was going to really go there. Where else would you go? I heard—truly— you readers calling it up and out of me. A few weeks ago, I had a massively expansive and mystical experience (these happen often but this one was special) very quickly followed by a profoundly confusing and disconnecting one. The unexpected combination lit up so many old wounds. I became a baby nervous system and stayed there for a long while. Maybe still.
It’s hard to explain what a baby nervous system means: raw, disoriented, tender, unable to do adult tasks, my hand and tongue involuntarily moving to find a new way, to re-orient. I know that last part sounds strange but, if you are in the somatics world, you get it. Walking around my house shuffling papers, organizing menus but unable to buy food, showing up for my work and then collapsing afterwards, the world of tax preparation so bizarre, loss of short-term memory, the slowest of slow. For context, I have loving parents who loved/love me and didn’t abandon me. This baby nervous system sensory reality was and is an opportunity. I don’t know if it’s Molly-baby or an ancestor or what. It doesn’t really matter. It’s happening in my body regardless. As wow as it has been, it has been deeply de-stabilizing, though I have the latitude to hold it now. Mostly. Not fully. I have a few incredible and devoted friends (thank you, thank you, you know who you are) who held me steady and helped me track it, along with other wise support people.
It feels strange to make this a “thing” given all the things the world, you and everyone is holding right now. I’m curious, though, about our individual and collective response to de-stabilizing moments: micro and macro.
‘Cause it’s life and it’s our future.
My coping response, unchecked, often involves excessive cleaning (Okay kids, it’s deep cleaning day!), organizing, getting rid of things, and either ‘rebelling’ around or controlling my food. I don’t love the term disordered eating, though I think it’s the term these days. It seems to insinuate a personal problem instead of a personal problem couched in a systemic issue. How could someone not be using food or lack of food to soothe or punish themselves these days? I mean, truly. Especially given how modern people even procure food or don't value shared meal-times. I want to put a caveat in here: I know that term and label has been helpful and life-saving for some people. I’m not diminishing or even trying to explain people’s experiences with disordered eating. I know very little about that field and psychology. If you are reading, I encourage you to feel into what resonates and what doesn’t. You don’t have to agree with me. In fact, not agreeing with me might be the most aligning response for you. Explore.
Hungry Molly has become very loud in the aftermath of this recent set of experiences. She’s a shadow me. She’s ugly. She’s desperate and sloppy and vacant and sort of pathetic and it’s my job to love her anyway and call her in. She wants nourishment and nothing is enough. She’s all about feast or famine. She is also very punitive and will withhold from me because she’s scared of what will happen if she doesn’t. Maybe I can dance with her. It helps that my husband, who no longer has the role to fix anything for me (thank you to 24 years of partnership and deep pain and growth), stood in the kitchen with me, receiving my wide eyes of disbelief and overwhelm and held my hand while saying, “It’s okay. It’ll shift. Just ride it out.” Somehow I was granted the gift of partner who rarely judges.
The context: what I eat or don’t eat has felt life or death for me these last 2 years.
Maybe that’s an illusion.
Maybe there’s some glittery future where I can transmute any food into energy and it won’t matter but I am not there yet. Blood sugar imbalance and lack of protein or iron have a big impact on me, Highly Sensing One. At least for now. Dairy makes me feel physically horrible yet it is my childhood comfort food, my go-to when I feel alone and untethered. Cheese, however, is a poor substitute for love. My point: this isn’t a body image issue (though, of course that’s there because I grew up swimming in the water of America + in an extended family that hardcore valued a pop-culture beauty). It originates elsewhere, younger, deeper. It’s about nourishment. Not food. Yet, my food choices could really make or break my health. At least that’s my truth right now. I’m willing for it to be different.
Speaking of different…
What’s different now?
For the first time, I’m not mobilizing to change anything that is happening.
I’m not sitting at my kitchen table with cookbooks and calendars and the thrust of figuring it out to make sure I don’t ruin myself.
Instead, I’m watching.
It’s scary because of the consequences above.
I’m not trying to make it sound easy or to ignore the path of disordered eating for many people or the protocols that save lives.
I paused long enough the other day to notice that what Hungry Molly actually wanted was a song, music in her ears, the deep beat of a drum and the twang of an electric guitar. One time, she wanted to lie on the ground with her dog.
I’m going step by step, impulse by impulse and trying to be with whatever surfaces.
And to meet it with compassion.
That’s my exploration this next month.
What happens if I do nothing? Will it unwind on its own terms? Will I meet some edges and allow what has been holding to complete itself?
Maybe. Maybe not.
I always want these newsletters to extend beyond me, to be helpful.
Do you have a Hungry Self?
How do you interact with that part of you?
Laid more bare,
Boredom and I have a curious relationship. When I was bored as a child it was met with “only boring people are bored” which I made mean: you don’t want to be THAT so stay away from boredom, avoid it, bypass it—don’t be IT. Some days it’s like I wake up in a boredom desert without water or a map. The landscape change is welcome but then panic tickles me like grass on my leg and I notice the no water or map status. I’ve come to see these telaportations as opportunities to be curious and notice, like you mention Molly, and have molded for years. I’m grateful for a partner who also does not judge but is a hand to hold or arms to hug. Here’s to staying curious to what’s yet to reveal itself.
I relate to so much of this, Molly. Food feels charged for me, too, interwoven with my health. And that can be a hard place to live in. After dealing with some really challenging digestive health issues last year, food felt like my enemy and my savior. If I ate the 'right' things, my body felt great - reliable, nourished, strong. If I ate the 'wrong' things, I felt so, so very sick. I spent so much of last year feeling sick. I'm feeling most better these days, but I'm still healing that part of myself that fears food. I'm learning the balance between treating food as medicine and allowing myself to just enjoy what I want to eat. It's hard. And joyful. My dietitian has helped more than anything (and it helps that they're currently in SE training!).