What's More Painful? Writing A Memoir or Sharing It?
A preview of my long-term WIP about faith, pain, and mental health.
In the month of March I joined a writing class called Memoir in a Month with
and had the fantastic opportunity to spend one-on-one time with her via Zoom. The biggest takeaway: get in and out of a scene!With great trepidation, I’ve decided to take her other advice and share small bits of my memoir-in-progress. Do with it what you will.
If you scroll below you’ll also see links on what you may have missed at Motherhood Minute, including an announcement!
I keep waiting for the weight to drop, or in this case, waiting for the jean sizes to stop creeping up in number. The pants went from 12 to 16 and I have increased by 15 pounds after they put me on Pregabalin. I thought removing myself from the nerve-pain prescription and cutting calorie intake would even things back out, but it’s been consistent.
A scale isn’t needed to feel the tightness of waistlines so I packed it out of sight. I have lived the past year in a constant state of pain mirrored by constant feelings of discomfort with a constant list of items crowning my thoughts.
Cut sugar.
Cut dairy.
Cut gluten.
Cut calories.
Increase water.
Increase exercise.
Increase therapy.
I’m not actively doing these things to lose weight, I tell my husband, doctor, friends, but I am expecting it. This food was good. This food choice was bad. Too much fat, cholesterol, etc.
I teach my daughter about foods that are neither good nor bad because I want her to love her body differently than I do. By the time she turned three she knew turkey, peanut butter, and hummus were proteins. Proteins make us strong (tiny arms are held up in bicep curls anytime we say this.) We can make “super” snacks when we eat proteins with other things like crackers or in sandwiches for energy. We can make meals when we add fruits and veggies too.
We have fun combining new things together like an experiment. Her small fingers burrow into strawberries and stain her cheeks. We laugh at how bad foods sometimes taste when they go together and “mmmm” at new things she likes to try.
Meanwhile, I pack my meager lunches and prebiotic drinks with sadness. I’m not counting calories every meal, but I am constantly conscious of how much is going in and how little is coming out. When I get the itch to count my calories with exact detail, the swelling of shame and body dysmorphia grows like a giant's shadow looming over me. I feel watched and scared with every food I choose to consume.
I do not recognize the body I embody.
I don’t recognize the weight of it as I stumble down the stairs or heave it back up them. I don’t remember the stomach or breast my husband reaches for nor do I care for him to know them as parts of myself.
Let’s play monkey! I pick up my daughter before she jumps on my back and feel her growing body climb mine. I worry that her carelessness will mean I unintentionally drop her on the ground. Ultimately, her fall would be fine; a toddler usually recovers from a fall every hour, but would my heart not break at the evidence that I can no longer hold her?
I pack my bag for yoga and then sit on the bed for twenty minutes half dressed to cool down; any increased body heat causes my pain to escalate. How much will I be able to do in the hot summer months ahead?
Later, with the compounding ache for my old normal and the unseen flexibility of the morning’s calendar, I find myself slathering strawberry jam on a slice of buttered rye toast like a drug addict dives for the offering of a fellow addict.
I know the accuracy of this because I am that addict in every way.
Temptation swells like a wave and crashes me forward into what I desire. Gravy over roasted potatoes. Gobs of cheddar cheese over scrambled eggs, peppers, and onions. Cream in my coffee. I am carried forward by the momentum of the diner’s music and revolving doors as guests pile in and out for their meals.
I am willfully ignorant of the sure-to-come migraines and rolling nausea that will result from my recklessness.
I open my book. I close my book. I scroll 20-second video after 20-second video with wild abandon on my quest for dopamine. The dinner I chose to indulge my addictive behavior in plays 1960s music and is styled as such, as if I had the ability to remove myself from 2024 and hide away my grotesque behavior in the decades before my very existence.
Boogaloo music from Pete Rodriguez chants to my eating. The Latin song’s beat releases a long voice of celebration.
Yeeeeeah, baby!
I like it like that!
Two weeks later, I am retching over the toilet bowl on the Saturday morning of my daughter’s birthday party in ways I hadn’t since getting clean and sober five years earlier.
We slept in and were running behind but I am sugar sick.
The morning before I had called off work to spend the day with my parents, who were visiting from out of state, and I decided to indulge in three shortbread cookies, one peanut butter cookie, and a giant bowl of takeout spaghetti. With the mental recounting, I pictured myself as the Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar from Eliza’s book. My pitiful indulgence ended up creating a migraine and severe gut reaction that would have lasting effects for a whole week.
As I hovered over the freshly cleaned bowl (thanks to my husband for his help there), I wondered what my stopping point would ever be for reckless behavior. I was five years clean without using drug or drink and I was still coping with my stress the same way I always had: denial, self-destruction, and burning out.
Two days later (Monday), I left work after two hours of masking pain that refused to leave. When I got in my car and shut the door, I burst into tears and, unfortunately, I had my manager’s boss tap on the window. He hadn’t expected to see me sobbing, and I didn’t have it in me to pretend I’d be ok.
“I thought we were improving? I thought you were getting better?”
Yeah, I thought the same, but there’s nothing guaranteed in this pain management.
He asked to pray over me and I felt a calming presence allowing me to stop crying and start breathing again. In his prayer, I hear the pausing, the familiar not-knowing that I had been confronted with in my own prayers.
“Father God,” followed multiple long pauses before he found the words of gratitude and faithfulness I often reach out for like one reaches for a faraway branch before climbing down a tree. In his lack of words, I found comfort. In another person’s willingness to pray without answers, I found my momentary isolation had been met with fellowship.
James 5:16 says,
“Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”
I spent two days in bed feeling disabled. The pain wasn’t a squadron of pins and needles anymore. It was bone-deep aching and misery. I burrowed myself under quilts, shivered for three hours, and then battled a 100-degree Fahrenheit fever for the next three hours.
My daughter would come home and ask if I was happy. When I said, I was happy but sick, she cried. She wanted to play downstairs and the stairs were a battleground I declined to pursue.
Happy, but sick.
Thank you for all the support and prayers my readers email me in every season of my life!
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This is so vulnerable and raw like all your writings, and whilst I couldn't relate to everything, I found solace in being able to relate to pieces and feel less alone
Chanel, I appreciate your raw honesty here. So much of your story I can relate to. I have 5 kids, and pregnancy has been hard on both my body and my brain. My youngest is 4 (I am 43) and I'm still not totally through the postpartum fog that almost took my life.
My faith has changed, too. It's a funny thing when you find yourself in an uncertain place - or, as my spiritual director puts it, "walking on the uncertain surfaces" - and you just have to start at the beginning of it all. That's pretty much my story of motherhood and identity.
Thank you again for sharing yours.