I sent this message today to a popular clothing company that one of my daughters loves. “Here’s some feedback after seeing today’s text. I hope it’s welcome. Could you please bring in some more models that aren't so painfully thin-looking? It's particularly good for young people to see body diversity. And it may even help your sales, as young people are starting to understand the value of this. Thank you.”
Imagine if we all did this?
Let’s!
My young adult daughters will cringe if they read this. They grew up with a mom who approached people in dressing rooms who were loudly hating on their bodies and asked if they were in a place to receive a “teaching moment” about body kindness.
Their eyes rolled with a big, “Mmmoooommmm.” But they both knew how I stood about respecting our diverse bodies, and they both comforted friends who were caught up in some body loathing later on. So, I feel I did my little part to make the world a bit more body-inclusive in those moments.
That said, we need to be in a pretty solid place with our own recovery and feelings about our bodies in order to call out the clothing companies on their lack of body diversity or soothe a friend (or stranger) who is hating on herself.
The most important thing is to take care of YOU and your own recovery before you dive into any activism. That said, doing eating disorders or fat liberation activism has helped clients I’ve worked with to continue their healing journey, but they did so better when they were also taking good care of themselves and had enough in their own buckets before offering service and help to others.
I know it well. Giving from a dry well leaves us parched.
Think about whether you have the capacity to call out images that promote eating disorders or the objectification of women’s bodies on social media with a brief message like the one I sent above. If not, that’s completely okay, too. I do believe that we shape our world by not turning a blind eye to concerns that we care about. (And there are a lot of things to be concerned about in the world today.) But I also believe that we only have so much energy to expend, and we can’t offer it to everyone and every cause without replenishing ourselves.
Consider your position from both a “capacity” standpoint and a “concerns that I care about” standpoint. Both of those concepts, in my mind, are significant parts of recovery, and it is the food that we put into our bodies that gives us the capacity and energy to care and act. I’ve told many a client that we won’t have the energy to be change-agents in the world if we’re starving.
If you’ve been following along with the humorous videos that my brother and I are producing, here’s the latest. While getting my first professional headshot, Tammy Hanley and I decided to let the camera roll to see if we could capture some video for social media. (You can see my beautiful new website designed by Jordin Brinn at Unica Formo at https://anourishingword.com. If you reach out to Jordin to have her give your own site a glow-up, and I highly recommend her, please let her know that I sent you.)
As per usual, I regret letting my millennial influencer brother, John Schauster, edit my video footage. He always makes me look dorkier than I already am. :-)
The work I do on helping people heal from disordered eating, particularly disordered eating and body loathing as a result of trauma, is a very serious matter. I balance that with a little sibling humor in this video series. I shared in my last post about the strategic reasons I’m posting social videos, as I’m working to build up my platform to interest a publisher in my next book. I hope it makes you chuckle today. Sometimes we need to balance the very hard work of life with a little lightness and laughter.
Other Nourishing Nuggets:
I have space available for one more clinician in my monthly Embodied ED Professionals Supervision Group. It's a fantastic group of eating disorders clinicians who are interested in incorporating more trauma-informed somatic and nervous system regulation orientation into their work. I'm a teaching assistant for Somatic Experiencing International and an SEP, so I facilitate with this lens. We meet monthly, starting October 3. Contact me by email at heidi@anourishingword.com if you’re interested.
If the legal part of running the online part of your business makes you glaze over, Amy from Artful Contracts can help. She provided the legal and privacy forms that I attached to my updated website. Things that say, “If you follow any advice on this website or blog and it doesn’t work for you, you can’t sue me” and other stuff like that. I was naive about these sorts of things, but my young website designer set me straight. I recommend the services that Amy provides, whether you are new to legalese or you already have an LLC. I joined her affiliate program because I appreciate the easy legal support she provides business owners, so please tell Amy I sent you, and download her useful and free 9-step checklist.
My colleague Corinne Crossley has some wonderful group offerings in Massachusetts or via telehealth: one for parents recovering from eating disorders who could use support and one for reclaiming body image in menopause and perimenopause. See her flyers and QR codes to sign up below.
While I’m mentioning menopause… My friend and colleague Deb Benfield has a new book coming out: Unapologetic Aging. Yep. No apologies or need to restrict food. Who actually coined the term “meno-belly?” If you’re still working on six-pack abs in your later decades, then Deb has some advice about how to love yourself better. We sure need this book to balance the anti-aging advice out there.
If you appreciated this post, please “like” it via the heart below and/or restack it on Substack Notes. It’s a great way to help others find my work and support my writing. Thank you for reading and viewing, regardless. Have a wonderful week of honoring your very own capacity and not doing more than your energy allows (which is a hard one in our “grindy” culture, I know.)