Sue

“Loving yourself is the greatest revolution.”

-Author Unknown

When I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about for this project, I reflected on my history. I have this background as a ballet dancer, I struggled with an eating disorder, and it really wasn’t until six years ago that I started actually acknowledging my self-worth. I think for the first time, I started loving myself. And it’s not an all-or-nothing thing; it’s not like I woke up one day and thought, “I’m amazing! I’m going to love myself forever!” I think sometimes people feel like that should happen, so they’re waiting for this moment. It’s similar to a wellness journey; I think sometimes people are waiting for a moment where it’s just easy. Where they just choose the healthiest foods all the time and there are no temptations. But I always say, life is a series of valleys and hills. Just because you get up a higher hill, it doesn’t mean that your next valley isn’t going to be as low, you know? But you might be more equipped to get back up the next time. Dips are a part of life. If we are trying to make a life that is only up here, we are doing damage to ourselves mentally. There’s no perfect life. There’s no perfect body. There’s no perfect anything, because we are humans.

I’ve been through a lot of therapy in my life, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what triggered my eating disorder. I think many people assume, “Oh, well, she was a dancer, of course she had an eating disorder.” But in my opinion, dance didn’t trigger it, it actually saved me from it. Maybe not saved me, but it kept me from getting too bad. I was a depriver, and I really believe my eating disorder was all about control. When life was out of control, I would control my body and my food. But I also had to be strong enough to dance. Any time my disorder would start to get really severe, I would be able to tell I wasn’t strong enough in class, and I would have to adjust what I was doing to be able to be a great dancer again. I would have to dial back on the restriction and put weight on. Of course, I was also trying to be thin enough to be acceptable. I was always walking this line. But I think had I not been dancing, it actually would have gotten worse.

Of course, there are aspects of dance that did not help. We were standing in front of a mirror all the time. There’s no getting around that. All these years later, I have my pilates studio, and there is not a single mirror in it. People ask me all the time, “Why don’t you put a mirror in here?” But when there is a mirror inside of a pilates studio, I find that people are not feeling what’s happening with their bodies; they are always way too busy looking at what they see. You don’t need to look perfect to be really great at pilates. But for dance, you do need to know what you look like. It’s a visual art form. That’s what it is. You can’t take the mirrors away there. But I can take them away here.

There were many things naturally about my body that made me a great dancer. My joints are hyperextended. I have amazing feet, beautiful lines… but my body doesn’t really want to be that thin. It can be, but it doesn’t want to be. I think I only really grasped later in life that there are components of our bodies that are all different. Some people are naturally thin. Some people are not. And because a component of it is naturally gifted to us, it all has to be beautiful.

There are different events in my life that have probably contributed to my desire for control. I’m definitely a people pleaser; I think I’ve been that way since I was born. My dad has always said, “You were such a good kid! You never gave us any trouble.” Looking back at that now as an adult I’m going, “I’m pretty sure that’s because I was afraid to do anything wrong, but ok!” I don’t think that was healthy. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have done a good job of raising kids who can speak up for themselves. It’s interesting watching my dad now interact with his grandkids after raising someone who never spoke up for herself. He’s like, “Why are they doing that?” And I’m like, “Because they have an opinion!” 

My parents divorced when I was three, but they were really great about it. They never bad-mouthed each other in front of me. If my mom had plans one night, she would call my dad to watch me before she got a babysitter. It was a very good situation. But even so, I had this feeling that I wanted to keep them both happy. I wanted them to know that I equally loved them and wanted to make sure that they both got the same amount of attention. I was parentified, and a people-pleaser. I did have a lot of anxiety over the years, which I’ve worked really hard on, and it has improved.

Another event from my childhood that I’ve carried with me was that my house burned down when I was eight years old. My puppy was left in the kitchen, and the puppy died. I block this memory out a lot. It was a crazy story. At the time, I was living with my mom in a house that had this big, deep backyard that went into the woods, and we had a shed in the woods. A 17-year-old senior in high school had been kicked out of his house, and as it turned out, he lived in our shed for two weeks. Right before Christmas, he broke into our house. My mom didn’t have a lot of money; there wasn’t anything good in the house for him to take. But he set our couch on fire. It was made of foam and it just went up. The puppy was blocked in the kitchen and died of asphyxia. We lost pretty much all of our things; the smoke was so thick that there wasn’t much that was salvageable. We had to move into my aunt’s house for Christmas, and then we temporarily lived in a retired school teacher’s home for a few months while she was in Florida. Eventually my mom found a rental and then a townhouse for us to move into.

This was a really big event in my life, and I think I probably still need to deal with it. My safety and trust in the world was broken. I think the fact that it was started intentionally by a person who was living near me really shook me. I don’t remember this, but my mom has told me that for an entire year after the fire, I would just follow her around the house with my hand in her back pocket. I would just follow her around. I don’t remember that. I’m an empath, and I think I felt my mom’s emotional struggle with this all very strongly. I think I felt a loss of control in being able to help her emotionally.

I first began struggling with my body between 10 and 12 years old. For the next few years, I would go through cycles of mental health treatment. I would see a therapist, and we would talk, but it wouldn’t really work. And then I went to college. I was a dance major, and I decided to double major in nutrition. My actual thought process in studying nutrition at the time was that I was going to learn how to starve myself better. Instead, I learned about what I was actually doing to my body. It changed things for me. It didn’t fix my desire to control, but it started to change the way I was thinking. It planted the seeds of… “Wait a second, we are nourishing our bodies with food. What you are choosing to give your body is what you’re sowing the seeds of your health with.” It opened the door for me to see things differently. 

I also found my own therapist on campus. It was different than meeting with the mental health providers I had seen before. Number one, I made the decision to seek help on my own this time. I didn’t tell anyone else I was doing it. And number two, this therapist really focused on giving me tools to handle my thoughts and feelings. For example, when I would sit in the car and drive, it would be hard for me to concentrate on driving, because I would see how my thighs looked as I sat on the car seat. My therapist had me memorize a poem that I would say in my head every time I had those thoughts, and slowly we started to retrain my brain off of my body-focused obsessions. It really changed my stream of consciousness.

A lot of the therapists I saw when I was young wanted to only focus on the “why” behind my eating disorder. “What did your mom do? What did your dad do?” I think what I really needed were tools to help me get out of what I would call “the hole.” And the beauty of that now for me is that there are always going to be holes in my life. There are always going to be stressful times. And during those times, it’s easy for my mind to go back to, “I don’t look good enough, I need to…” I don’t know if those thoughts will ever entirely go away for me. But I know enough now to push them away with my tools so they don’t turn into anything more.

I remember having a big realization about women and body image in fall of 2020. I was sitting in church for my son’s communion. There weren’t that many people there because of COVID. We were sitting in the back, so I could see everyone in attendance. And every single woman, when she stood up, fixed her clothes. And it wasn’t the kind of fixing clothes like adjusting something that wasn’t meant to be sat in, it was like, I’m fixing my clothes because I feel self-conscious about my body. And then as I’m watching, not a single man touched his outfit. Not a single man. And I remember it made me so mad. It made me mad that our culture has created this for women.

I used to lead retreats as a health coach with a friend who was a life coach, and a wide variety of women would attend. One of the exercises we would do was a mirror execise, where you had to hold a mirror up and compliment yourself. There were women at these retreats who, if you looked at them, appeared to have a totally perfect life. But every single woman had a hard time with that exercise.

I went through a two-year infertility journey before conceiving my twins via IVF. There was never a diagnosed reason why we struggled, but I wonder if it was related to my lack of healthy eating for years and years. It was a very challenging time for me, because I really didn’t have any control. And if I turned to my usual ways of handling control, I was actually going to make it worse. So that was really interesting. And then I gave birth to these twins whom I loved so much, whom I was dying to have, whom I had done so much to get pregnant with, but it was two babies at once, and I was drowning.

Despite our infertility journey, when the twins were still young, I got pregnant again with my third son, Declan; he was a surprise. And when he was born, my husband was working really long hours. He’s always been a very hard worker, and at that time, he would leave at 7 or 8 in the morning, stop home for 20 minutes or so at 5:00, and then go back to work until 10 pm. So it was really just me.

When my twins were two and a half, and my younger son was essentially a newborn, we lived in Philly. I remember I would strap Declan to my chest, put the twins in a big double stroller, and I would walk from Northern Liberties to Race Street Pier. When we got to the pier, I would do a workout, then I would walk up to the Franklin Square Playground, which is on this mountain of a hill. I would let the twins run around on the playground, and then I would walk all the way home. That was my whole morning. And then at some point when Declan was 6 months old, I was like, “I think I’m going to have a heart attack… I need a new plan.” I didn’t want a triple stroller, and so I then had the twins scootering and the baby in the stroller, which complicated things even more.

It was really hard. I really wanted to watch them all, so I had to leave the part-time work I was doing, which I loved doing, to be mostly by myself. Looking back, if I were to do it all again, I would have gotten help. That was the bottom line. I needed help, but I had all of these excuses. “We can’t afford it… nobody wants to do this…” But I think really the problem was that I didn’t feel strongly enough about what I deserved. I didn’t have that feeling of, “No, this is unacceptable. I deserve help, I deserve an hour to go do something by myself.” I didn’t have a strong sense of self-worth yet.

In life I have learned that any time I’m not listening to my body, it ends up forcing me to listen. Here’s a very basic example: One time, while in the middle of our infertility journey, I was super stressed, and I was not resting. I’m not a rester in general. And I ended up breaking my metatarsal by accidentally walking into a sewing table. I didn’t realize the leg of the table was sticking out, and I walked right into it. And so then I had to rest, right?

For the first 9 months of Declan’s life, when I had 3 kids under 3, when the twins were 2, something internal was constantly telling me, “This is too much. You can’t do this.” And I was like, “Aaand, we’re going to put that voice down.” Finally, my body was like, “Ok, you don’t want to listen to us? We tried to be gentle, so now we’re going to give you this.”

It was quite dramatic how it happened. I was judging a dance competition. It was the first time I was ever away from 9-month-old Declan and my twins. It was my first work weekend. I had really wanted to do the weekend, because I felt like I needed to regain some of my identity, you know? But it was stressful. Declan didn’t take a bottle well, and the whole thing was challenging. 

I was judging the competition, and all of a sudden, I had this weird sensation. Something was wrong with one side of my face. And dance competitions don’t stop; I couldn’t just leave. So I had to write this note: “Something’s wrong with me…” And they passed it back, and then they asked me, “Can you wait to go to the bathroom?” They didn’t understand. So then I said, “I think I’m having a stroke…” 

They called an ambulance, and of course it was this big embarrassing moment walking out, but it was very scary. I went to the hospital, and I was diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy.

Bell’s Palsy affects your 7th cranial nerve - your facial nerve - which controls movement of your facial muscles. It’s not entirely understood, but the Western medicine explanation of it is that a virus attacks your 7th cranial nerve which basically controls one side of your face. They know there’s a stress component to it - that it comes out more during stressful times - though they don’t entirely understand it. Interestingly, it can control the closing of your eye, but not the opening of it, so initially I had to tape my eye shut at night. I didn’t know what to do - I couldn’t put contacts in, because my eye was not blinking. I’d be sitting here needing to hold my eye shut to try to get it to moisten up. The hospital didn’t really give me anything for that.

For some people, the symptoms of Bell’s Palsy go away completely - you can’t even tell they had it. Some people end up with a few remaining effects, and for some people, their facial control never comes back. For me, if you look at my smile, it’s a little lopsided. Part of my lip didn’t gain quite as much strength back. Those are the lasting effects of it for me.

I remember it was such a challenge at the time. I was given steroids and antivirals, but the antivirals made me so ill that I couldn’t function, so I wasn’t able to take the whole dose. It was so difficult. I had these three kids who needed to be taken care of. It happened during a time of my life where there wasn’t a lot of space to be down and out, you know? It’s very interesting to think about why it happened when it did. I never really thought about the fact that it happened the first moment I was away from them. The first moment I had a break.

I’m a health coach, and I have my bachelors in nutrition, so I do talk about food with the women I coach, but we also talk about stress. We talk about work, money, all sorts of things that make up the big picture. I always tell people I coach, “You can change your life one choice at a time.” I say that because that’s how I did it for myself. A lot of little building blocks helped me change my mindset for the better. My therapist in college was one of my first building blocks. Another building block was deciding I was going to pursue something I really wanted to do for me. I started my pilates certification when my twins were one, and I had to put it on hold for a bit when I got surprise pregnant. But I finished it after I had Declan. It was hard to make it happen, but I did it.

One of the beautiful things I love about pilates is that it focuses on what your body can do, not what it looks like. At least, that’s what it is supposed to be like. In the commercial world, it doesn’t always go that way, but really if you’re doing true pilates, it’s about how your body feels. I do have clients who experience a whole body transformation. Usually they combine pilates with healthy diet changes as well. But when you talk to them about how pilates has impacted their life, they don’t talk about how they look. They say, “My back doesn’t hurt anymore… I’m strong enough to do xyz…” It is those kinds of things that are most impactful to them. It can help you go out into the world and do everything that you want to do with strength and grace and ease.

What does it mean to love yourself? If I boil it down, I think loving yourself means knowing yourself. Have you heard of the concept of bioindividuality? I use it all the time with the people I coach. It means that not one person who comes to me is going to end up walking away with the same information as the next person. It’s my job to help people figure out what they need. If you don’t have the opportunity to work with a health coach, you certainly can work on these things on your own, it just takes reflection to figure out what makes you feel happy. What makes you feel strong? What makes you feel good about yourself? What makes you feel confident? What makes you feel powerful? And what makes you feel peace? You need to take those things and make sure they are interspersed in your life. It doesn’t have to be every day; you decide how often you need to do those things, but the key is, life will always try to get in the way of them. It’s up to you to put up a boundary around them. That doesn’t mean that there will never be an emergency that comes up and interrupts you. But you need to make sure that you get right back to it next time. It’s about knowing yourself, learning about what YOU need, and then being able to say, nothing else can touch this. I need these things for my sanity, and they are non-negotiable.

For me, I know I need time away to be ok. You may not need time away; you might actually need to go out with your girlfriends, and that’s what’s going to make you feel better. I can totally be social, but I know I need time to refuel. Once I started making the decision to take that time for myself, it really started to help the climb. I went on a couple of awesome retreats. There are moments when I’m in an airport by myself, and I just feel really good, like a real adult human. It’s so hard to get that feeling sometimes. If it works for you to go away for a couple of days, do it. But if you can’t, try to find the little breaks. I love to walk, for instance. I always tell people, if you see me walking, you know I’m ok. I love getting in the sauna at the studio. It can look like a lot of different things, but in the end, it’s something you have to learn about and do for yourself.

I know it can be really hard to get to a place where you feel like, “I deserve this.” It’s something that has to come from deep inside. Our culture really values women putting themselves on the backburner. Something that really helped me start prioritizing myself was, as my boys have gotten older, wanting them to know that their future partners deserve just as much as they do. I don’t want to teach them that their partners should sacrifice themselves. My boys have a lot of privilege, you know? It’s important that they understand that whomever they’re with deserves an equal amount of energy, attention, time… They need to see it.

For a long time, everyone came before me, but that’s not the way it is anymore. I know my limitations better now. I do more to prioritize my wellness. My kids are older now, and there are times when they don’t love these changes. For instance, my phone is always on silent now. I can’t stand when it’s going off and beeping constantly. But this drives them crazy, because when they want to reach me, it might take me 15 minutes to look over at my phone and see “Mom… mom… mommy… mama…” All of their texts to me.

There have been changes in the dynamic at home with my husband as well. For a long time, my kids would come to me for everything. They would call me on the phone to ask me for something while my husband was standing in the kitchen with them. I’d say, “Where’s daddy?” And they would say, “Oh, he’s right here!” We had to go through a period of time where I sort of had to retrain them. I had to say, “Did you ask daddy? Where’s daddy?” a lot more. But now I feel like they equally come to both of us.

This has also meant that I have to be ok with the way my husband does things. We try to follow the idea that if you take a task on, it is your responsibility to handle all of the logistics. But I also struggle with this, because I am a do-everything-immediately person, and he is not, so it’s hard on my end to be like, “Ok, this is your thing… but it’s getting way too close for me!” It’s hard. But it’s important in helping us create a more equal household.

The quote I chose is, “Loving yourself is the greatest revolution.” I think the reason I wanted to choose that quote was because for me, loving myself was my greatest revolution. I want all women to be able to love themselves. I think that would be such an incredible revolution. I talk about women a lot, not because I don’t want men to feel this way too, and I know this is a generalization, but I think sometimes it’s easier for men to feel that high self-esteem. I think women loving themselves, taking care of themselves, feeling happier, would be a positive for everyone. I think these things are also key for women’s health - you can come to me, I can tell you exactly what to eat, I can give you meal plans, but if you don’t love yourself, it’s never going to stick.

There are still many things I’m working on in my own life. I have a growing young business, and I have to constantly try not to let work take over. I am always trying to balance spending time with my family. I’m still working on my anxiousness - that’s my mental health hill that I have to climb all the time. And I’m working on speaking up more. Speaking out - speaking my feelings. Which is funny, because I have a podcast. But in moments where I feel something isn’t cool, I’ll speak up more than I used to, though I haven’t gotten rid of that hesitation that comes first. It doesn’t come easily and naturally yet. It’s just like the eating disorder - I still haven’t gotten rid of that feeling, like, oh, I need to get control of things, you know? But I can take the next step. I’ve grown enough that I know what I need to do. I look at myself and really appreciate myself in a different way now. It’s been an evolution.