Day 1. Humility

 Humility is the ability to give up your pride and still retain your dignity-Vanna Bonta

    Yesterday, I needed to change things up.  I had done workouts in my TAM cave for almost a week straight.  I had to get out and do something different.  I miss my yoga so much.  I wish they didn't close my yoga studio.  I was a regular member and went 5/6 days a week.  I joined a different studio that does not offer Bikram.  They have yoga sculpt classes, vinyasa flows, hot pilates, yoga fusion.  It fills the void.  It is not a 90 minute 26 & 2 class that I started out with and helped me in my recovery from alcohol.  My choices are to drive an hour into the City, or 50 minutes to a bordering town, do it at home.  It is just not the same.  

    Getting back to yesterday.  I went to a yoga sculpt class.  I guess it is similar to a Barre class, from what I have read.  Anyway, it was new music Monday.  The studio owner chose songs from popular '80's movies.  Songs I haven't heard in years.  When I heard the songs, I got so amped up that I wasn't paying attention to my heart rate.  The class was packed and it probably was about 90* with humidity.  I felt my heart beating faster than normal, I couldn't catch my breath and I got very dizzy and light headed.  I tried to modify the moves as best I could, but ultimately had to lie down on my mat and put my hand towel over my eyes.  I was mortified.  That just doesn't happen to me.  I felt all the eyes in the room on me.  My first reaction is to get defensive and think people are judging me as a failure.  Instead, they may have been worried.  But, hey, I scared the shit out of myself and told a woman who I was making small talk with that I almost went to get an EKG.  She was comforting me and kept telling me it was a tough class.

    I woke up this morning ready to perform Primal 98 again.  My husband woke up my son when he left for work at 6 a.m. to get him ready for when he starts high school in two days.  No more going to bed at 4 and sleeping until 3 for this boy.  He has his computers and games set up in the basement where my workout space is so I got kicked out.  I had to go to another sculpt class and redeem myself from yesterday.  I had to prove it to myself that I am resilient.  The class started promptly at 930 a.m.   Sweat started dripping in the first few minutes which eventually turned into a puddle that I had to wipe up so I wouldn't slip on my mat. There was country music playing which I was so grateful for.  I'm not a fan of country music.  So, it didn't get me pumped up.  I took everything that I learned from the TAM and Heartstone and totally incorporated it into this class.  I stayed present with my breath, focused on each individual feeling of the movements. I modified moves when I needed to and didn't feel embarrassed about it.  It is so humbling to be 51 standing next to a woman in her early 20's getting ready to go back to college.  I am not that age anymore.  I need to give myself some grace.  I have earned every wrinkle on my face, every aching joint.  I can be okay with dialing it down now a little bit.

    I walked out of the class feeling so proud.  I had a yoga sculpt high and I felt elated.  I don't workout anymore to look good in a bikini, but to feel good in my body.  I workout to move feelings through and out of my cells, organs and psyche.  The same reason that I started writing this blog.  It helps me process.  I've got a lot going on with me.  Entering mid-life, perimenopause, physical changes in the body, face. Both of my boys are at the age where they want nothing to do with me.  I just took my youngest to his locker move in at his middle school and he didn't want me to embarrass him.  My oldest had his freshman orientation the other day and he walked 10 feet in front of me.  It's a lonely stage.  A lot of changes to adjust to.

    It's all about the journey, not the destination.

    

Day 0-The Struggle Is Real

 I've been listening to an audiobook called "We Are The Luckiest" by Laura McKowan.  I saw it recommended in the Bright Line Eating Facebook page.  It's a heartwarming and captivating story of a woman's journey to a sober life.  I've been sober for 15 years.  I don't talk about it.  In my story, it was something to be shamed for instead of celebrated.  I prefer to keep it on the down low.  

I never really got any formal recovery for my drinking.  I did go to an outpatient treatment program in 2005.  I never went through all of the 12 steps or had proper healing from my childhood trauma.  I'm working on it now with an exceptional therapist, by the way.  I met my husband in 2007.  He is also a sober person.  He actually did an inpatient stay at a facility at the age of 25.  He was my inspiration.  Two years later, my first son was born.  My life changed dramatically.  Between the pregnancy, birth, caring for an newborn, being a newlywed, I felt kind of shell-shocked.  I didn't really want to drink.  I knew in my soul one or two would do nothing for me, so it wasn't worth it.  

Fast forward 15 years to where I am now.  The in between I will write in later blog posts.  Now my addiction has taken the form of the cross addiction of Binge Eating Disorder.  What the actual fuck.  This is the most mind boggling, baffling, frustrating thing to have to recover from.  I would classify it worse than alcohol.  At least with alcohol, I was having a good time.  Until, I wasn't.  Not waking up with terrorizing anxiety from being in a blackout is a plus, or crushing hangovers.  I could go on and on.  My worst drinking was when I lived in the city of Chicago.  I moved to Lincoln Park with my sister in '97.  Then moved to a studio apartment by myself a couple of years after that.  I worked as a paralegal for a lawfirm.  I didn't make any money.  I worked to pay my rent, bills and to drink and go out and get wasted every weekend.  Towards the end of that addiction, I was drinking almost daily, by myself.  Through the grace of God, I am still alive.

Got off course a little.  I like to write. It's cathartic for me.  I started a blog in 2010.  I deleted it all, though.  It was mostly about my experiences being a new mom.  The joys, the sleepless nights, etc.  I wish I didn't delete it.  Anyway, now I am in the throws of food addiction.  My therapist said I need a higher level of care.  I thought about going inpatient.  Not going to fucking happen.  I thought about an intensive outpatient program.  That's not going to happen, either.  I already see a Registered Dietitian every two weeks.  The problem is I'm a very hard headed and headstrong person.  I'm in a program called Bright Line Eating.  It's for food addiction and recovery.  I don't follow it much, though.  I workout every day.  I'm pretty sure that is why I am not obese.  I have weight to lose.  I could be much smaller.  

I come from a long line of addicted brain people.  My biological father died of alcoholism in 2000.  I hadn't spoken to him since I was 12 when my parents divorced.  We were estranged due to his alcoholism.  I grew up in a highly dysfunctional childhood.  I've been seeing therapists and been on and off antidepressants since I was 25.  Bikram Yoga saved my life.  My husband saved my life.   My kids proved to me that love does exist in this world.  

Tomorrow will be my Day 1 attempt with this food recovery thing.  Addiction sucks.