Turning Lessons into Blessings

our lives, whether it's physical, mental, spiritual, or otherwise. These conversations are valuable, and I use this weekly podcast as an opportunity to share important nuggets from them with you. But you can hear every Feel Good Friday show in full right now on my Patreon starting at just five

dollars a month at patreon dot com, Slasha app. This Friday, I spoke with inspirational speaker kimberly Read, author of Optimists Always Win, about my own experiences with social media and gratitude during this pandemic and how we can use this time to turn our lessons into blessings. Gratitude has been something that over the past year. Over the ability and I say this from a place of privilege, being able to work from home during this time is a privilege right.

Not having to put myself into harm's way in order to make a living is a privilege. And with that, with this time, with this slowdown, have really been able to focus on gratitude and how I will be honest, prepandam. When you said was twenty twenty year worst year? No it was not. And I can tell you that having gone through a divorce, my mother being diagnosed with a brain tumor, and like moving out on my own, twenty twenty for all intensive purposes should have been my worst year.

But what I continue to say and offer on woke app is that it was the year of vision. It was an eye opening year for me because what I realized is that the hamster wheel that I had been living on one that was fueled with measuring myself against other people, what they had, what I wasn't doing, how I needed to do more, be more, produce more right, that my value was in my productivity rather than my personhood.

Is that through the last year, really being grateful and instead of asking the question out into the universe of why is this happening to me? I have shifted and this has been a powerful shift in my own life of asking instead what is this trying to teach me? What is this trying to teach me? Because you go from a place of woe is me into a place of student right into a place of being open because you are available to receive the lessons that are being

presented to you. And I realized that that could only have come from removing the blockage of being ungrateful for the life that I was living, for the opportunities that I have been given, but I couldn't see it. And I think that a large part of that, Kimberly, is because we spend so much of our lives on social media.

Oh that's so much of our lives, for better or for worse, regardless of our age, whether you're a tween, a teen, you know, or in your sixties or seventies, people are on social media, and social media has drained us, I think in many ways of gratitude. How do you manage that? How do you offer both wanting to feel connected? Right, the beauty of the connection that social media allows us to have but how it also pains us of the positive energy and the optimism because they're so much bad

that is out there. I love what you have just described. Wow, I was looking for a pen because you really know that, Danielle in your story, right, I've only heard a piece of that, but but I can tell your pivot. Yeah, from the inside out right. I want to talk about with social media in a minute, But you said something I think that we have to kind of highlight for the listeners here because I read a statistic in USA today doing some research for a client in writing a section.

Most people are more optimistic now than ever. Most people seventy percent believe that the worst is behind us. That's seventy percent right USA today. So there's there's still thirty percent though, which is still a large number that believed the opposite of that. And one of the things when you talk about social media is that there are no greater deceivers than comfort and easy hmm okay, And the lessons to your point that you said so eloquently are

our greatest blessings. There's power in our survival right as we all have a rock bottom right, pain changes who we are and it has a purpose we know that. Also, to your point, you said you're going to take the lessons and turn them into blessings. We love that, right. We do that because our future cells deserve more, no question about it. Right. Because we have to stop delaying

our joy. We do that. We do that a lot, right because to your point about social media, the impact of that, we delay our joy because we feel like we're not good enough because we see this person person and then we look inward and we're not there yet. We're not worthy, we're not right. And we have to understand that people often project their hurt yea, who's their self esteem? That's where those filters, that's where all that

stuff comes from. Right, And so you always have to remember that you're bigger than the situation that you're facing. But one of the things that I really got when you said about this, you know you ask yourself why me?

Because I will tell you I kept saying to myself when the lights were off of my soul, life was dark, my mother and me, everything I remember like it was yesterday, and I get terry I think about it is that I asked myself, when will I be this woman who went through life at one hundred and twenty miles per hour in the snow and live life with zest again. Why is all this happening to me? Right? I felt this like indescribable pain, like I you know, I didn't

even know how to walk again? Right, And I know that some people, most people have experienced experienced that, right, whatever it was, or if it felt like life defeated you and the pain that held you at its tightest grip, right far longer than you could have imagined. Right. But it's the here's the thing about resilience and what I also talk about in the book, Everyone's season is different. You described your season to be my sson was different. Right.

It is true that people with resilience tend to have a higher tolerance for a kind of emotional distress that we go through, right generally that that comes from just difficult times of valleys in our life, but the more resilient.

And that's why it's important that you know when we walk through the valleys, when we go through tough times in our lives, that we that we have that stituitiveness now that we all of us survive, right, Because the better you are able to tolerate the feelings of the dress of scadness, of pain that kind of go hand in hand with adversity, and find a way to rebound from those setbacks. That's power. Yeah, that truly is that's power. We haven't talked enough about the mental health impact of

this pandemic. It has not been easy to endure the last year of changes, restrictions, and pressure from so many different places. My friend, freelance journalist Danielle Campamore bravely shared her experiences in recovery for an eating disorder and being

triggered into a relapse by this long turbulent year. I had invited Danielle on to discuss toxic masculinity as it relates to the racist violence around the country, and you can hear that full conversation now on patreon dot com slash wokeaf But I think it's important that everyone here's Danielle courageously share her journey with an eating disorder relapse and her continued recovery, especially if you or someone you

know is going through the same thing. Please share this conversation and spread the word with your loved ones that help is out there and recovery is possible. And listen in to hear how you can support those in your life who might be struggling. As we're getting ready to I don't even want to call it moving into post pandemic, because we still have a pandemic, but how we are living in the midst of this pandemic now is changing because of vaccination. But a lot has happened over the

past year. And one of the pieces that you wrote for insider dot com was about eating disorders and relapsing during this time of quarantine. And you know, there has been so much pressure on people to either you know, you should come out of quarantine with a new hobby, a new job, a new project, a new business, a new body, all of these things. And it was an added pressure on just trying to survive living in the midst of a health pandemic and multiple uprisings and all

of this angst. Right And you know, for me, the folks that listen to me know that I have been on my own personal journey over the past year, and it has been in and around just my mental health and how that was showing up with my weight and overeating. And this time, this privileged time that I had was the ability to slow down, focus on my health and well being and shed like so much, so much baggage, so much weight, so much trauma over the past year.

After I read your piece, I was thinking to myself, you know, that was my way of coping. But the way in which like social media through memes and videos have pressured people into something is wrong with you if you're not using this time when for some people just curling up on the cow is their useful time, right, So talk to us about the ways in which you're eating disorder presented itself, but in general, how this moment has really affected folks that do suffer and live with ED. Absolutely.

I'll start and preface it by saying that in this country we have a very large misunderstanding of eating disorders and why they present themselves. It is not about vanity. It's not about making it to a certain size, although for some people it is. Mostly it's a trauma response and an attempt to try and control one aspect of your life when other aspects are outside of your control. And that's how mine presented itself, probably around twelve years ago.

I grew up in an abusive household. My father was physically abusive, and so I turned to eating disorder to try and have something that I can control. It was also response to believing a lot of the things that my father told me that I wasn't worthy, that I wasn't good enough, and so you start to think that I'm not worthy of nourishment as well. So there's a lot of different factors that play into it. But for me, the biggest trigger for my eating disorder is when things

get out of control. I need something that I can control, and that is food and how I put food into my body and how I take that food out of my body. And so when the pandemic hit, my partner is an essential worker at Amazon, he was working for twelve hours shifts. They weren't providing adequate protection, they weren't giving anyone paid time off. We were very scared that he was going to bring the literal plague into our

home and that our two children might get sick. On top of that, there was at home e learning for my then five year old, now six year old. I had a one year old now two year old, and so I was also working from home. Everything felt chaotic. I was also isolated from my friends and isolated from my family, which isolation definitely makes it easier for you to engage in disordered eating because no one really can

pay attention, no one can really spot the signs. And I relapsed very quickly, and I'm still dealing with the aftermath of that. I'm not in recovery right now. I'm trying to be. But so all of these factors, from isolation to the loss of control, additional stress, anxiety, depression, all of these things really puts people who are in recovery or at risk for developing disordered eating habits at

a higher risk. And we've seen that play out. There's been studies that shown that eating disorders have increased during the pandemic and are likely to increase once, as you said, the nation starts to open up again and people finally feel like they can try and get help. And there's a worry that mental health experts will become overwhelmed and unable to actually provide adequate care to those people who are going to need help. And so it was very sorry.

It was very difficult, I think, to see people joking about the pants like COVID fifteen or gaining ebomic weights, because for a lot of people it's far more than a joke. And make no mistake, an eating disorder is the deadliest mental health issue out there. More people die from eating disorders than any other mental health problem, and so it's life or death for a lot of people. And that doesn't elude me also that it is a

severe health issue. And it just goes back to our inability to talk about weight, weight gain, weight law different types of bodies. When we're seeing now fat phobia playing out in people gaining weights. People would look at me and assume that I'm healthy. I am not healthy, but just because at a certain weight, they assume that I am. So again, it's a lot of misconceptions. It's baked into the fabric of this society that's so obsessed with women

or female presenting bodies, and it's exhausting. It really is just another source of total exhaustion. What do you recommend, you know, what are what have you been doing? And what do you recommend that people do that are struggling. I know that, you know from my therapist when online. She actually just recently got rid of both of her offices. She's like, this is just kind of gonna be the way.

I don't foresee me sitting down across from anybody, you know, again, in a closed space, like there's just no reason we've been doing fine on FaceTime. UM. I know that there are lots of virtual you know, UM therapy groups. UM, but what what what can people do who who are in the midst of struggle, who are not at the recovery stage but are very aware of what is happening and want to do something but don't know what to do right. I think that's the key point, and it's

wonderful that you pointed it out. Is first of just doing the work to be aware of it. Sometimes even that step is very difficult, But if you are at that step and you are aware and want to try and make it steps to get into recovery. I think a very key component, at least for myself as being honest with the people around me and be honest with

my partner and asking him to hold me accountable. It means being honest with my friends in the group chat and saying, hey, you know, I haven't had any food and X number of days, or I've been purging X number of days. I just need to talk about it openly and giving and empowering your support system to to be there for you and to hold you accountable. This can be difficult. A lot of times people don't know how to speak about eating disorders in a way that

isn't triggering. Buys and ask that people who are in that support support system and that's a support space, to do some research on how you can best approach someone or talk to them about it, because discussing their weight, discussing how they look, that ain't it. That won't help. Yeah, so I think that that's a big step. Another one is go online. There are plenty of mental health care

professionals who are doing visits, you know, virtually. There is even tech support groups, any of those things where you can just text somebody, you know. It's a lot of it is just talking and being willing to be vulnerable about this specific part of your health and wellness. I think is a very big one. And then the hardest part for me, but when I think is pivotal is to also give yourself some grace and everything that we do, especially now, but when it comes to this, I felt

so much shame when I relapsed. I'd worked so hard to have gotten to that place of recovery, and that place was imperfect, but it took a lot of work, and so I was very hard on myself. I still am, and that all that does is just feed that issue. It just makes it that much more harder to get back on that road to recovery. So give yourself grace, give yourself love. It's okay if you aren't where you wanted to be. It's okay if you took some steps backwards,

because you're still here and you're still ending. And that's something that I have to tell myself every day, and I would encourage people to tell themselves that too. It's okay, you haven't failed, You're You're just still walking and moving forward. As I often say, the problems that existed before COVID nineteen were only exacerbated by the outbreak of this global health pandemic, and that includes fat phobia, which was already rampant in our society, especially with the expectations placed on

women from a very young age. There is no vaccine for our various social ills. As we fight through our days and hopefully strive to make this country better for all Americans, know that there are methods and techniques to help you make it through whatever it is that you were dealing with. And I hope that this podcast has been able to help you in some way on your journey. Once again, please share this with your loved ones and use whatever insight you may have gained to help yourself

and those around you. To hear more from me and my fabulous gas five days a week, every single week, do check me out on patreon dot com slash wokef and to the entire Woke a F Nation. Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.