Self-Care or Self-Conscious? A Necessary Conversation on Self-Censorship in Activism

Activists know the importance of self-care, but what happens when self care takes a damaging turn? When we talk about activism, any kind of activism, we warn against burn out and promote self-care, both of which are important messages. It is unrealistic to think that activists can successfully muster the empathy, emotional depth, and actionable steps required by their particular brand of activism without replenishing their own emotional stores and valuing themselves. However, as activists we want to share what happens on the opposite side of the spectrum – when self-care becomes self-censorship.

 Sometimes self-care gets too comfortable – so much, in fact, that we stop pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zones. We stop pushing ourselves to do what is difficult and eventually rewarding, and instead do what is easy and instantly gratifying. It’s like being curled up in a big blanket, in your comfiest clothes, with your favorite hot drink. Always at the right temperature, perfect position. You are content to stay that way forever. But when self-care comes to a natural end, you need to climb out of your blanket burrito and face the world again.  Not doing so results in a self-care binge, which sounds awesome, but it isn't. Sort of like spending an entire weekend marathoning Netflix.  You think it is great and sometimes it is needed, but you get so comfortable staying in that you never want to go out into the real world and do things like grocery shopping. (You know, all that adulting junk).

On occasion, staying in self-care mode becomes the default.  You get busy with work or school and self-care becomes the comfortable must-have lifestyle for when you're at home. Who wants to come home from work and force themselves to be an activist? That can be very draining. And so you carry on, stuck in self-care mode without really realizing the toll it is taking on your self-worth, because you tell yourself that you don't need to be an activist with everything else going on.

So one night of zoning-out on the couch becomes two or three, until you convince yourself that you need just a few more hours, days, or weeks of time to yourself. Eventually that comfy blanket cocoon isn’t even a treat or a necessary part of your self-care ritual; it’s a way to justify ignoring your causes and passions.

This self-care rut we’re describing isn’t just about spending too much time on the couch; it’s also about the way that we start to let certain things go, become passive in times that require action, and retreat into eventual self-doubt. It’s about keeping yourself from your passions for so long under the guise of self-care that you eventually stop standing up for others and even yourself.

If you couldn't tell, this is what happened to us. We have both been filling our lives with work and family and other things, to the point where fat-activism is at the bottom of the list. Self-censoring showed itself for the WW last week.

I was perusing my Facebook news feed (which has become filled with a new group of people in the last year - new job means new Facebook friends!) when a "let's-make-fun-of-fatties" post climbed its way to the top of my screen.  This has happened before, but for some reason, this one really did it for me.  I think it is because you could tell that the subject of the post was so self-confident in her fat body and putting it out there for everyone to see, and here were people I know making it into a joke.  It was like a personal attack on me, because I am self-confident in my fat body.  I could see a lot of similarities between myself and that woman.  And it made me feel disgusting, like a big oozing blob.  And then my confidence came in and kicked blob's ass and I became very angry.  Angry because how dare the person share this, knowing I am fat?  (I realize it was not with me specifically in mind, but logic was not present in my mind at this point).  So I started working up a comment in my mind, thinking about how I was really going to show them and make them realize what they made me feel.  But then I remembered that it wasn't even a share with me (I just saw it because a friend had been tagged in it), so I decided to do my own status about the hypocrisy of liking and respecting me, but making fun of others for looking like me.  And then I did something that made me even angrier: I deleted every carefully-thought out phrase, every angry word, and allowed self-censoring to take over.

I immediately closed my laptop and angry-cleaned for about ten minutes before texting the BB.  I was so angry with the post and with myself, but I realized that perhaps my self-care had gone on too long.  I had grown comfortable in my figurative blanket burrito.  Even when I don't allow self-care to grow over my activism, I still don't always feel safe posting about my passion for body-positivity online for fear of the response of others.

That implied or overtly manifested gaze, the response of others, is exactly what enables an unhealthy amount of self-care. Self-censoring started for me (BB here!) when I began going to the gym. This is a much-talked-about topic within the fat community, from the debate and research on Health at Every size to the tenuous relationship between exercise, eating habits, health, and self-esteem that play into body politics. I want to get back to a place where blogging, writing, and activism feel like a treat; where it isn’t stressful to stand up for what I believe in, but rather a privilege, a passion, and an impetus. The only way to do this is to move beyond that silence that began with my gym membership.

My partner and I decided to start going to the gym because we both wanted to feel better. We work office jobs so extensive physical activity does not happen on most days. However, I would be lying to myself if I didn’t say that there were other reasons that I wanted to go to the gym. My wedding photos were a deciding factor as well. We had a simple, intimate ceremony and celebration with photos taken by family members. When the time came to get the pictures back and look over them, both my partner and I were upset about how we looked. At that moment I should have re-evaluated my perspective. This was a beautiful day that celebrated us – I should be able to look back at the memories positively. Instead, I let myself be critical and gave in to how traditional wedding photos should look, resulting in this unhealthy view becoming part of my rollercoaster relationship with the gym.

I tried to justify to myself that feeling better was the only reason I wanted to start working out again, but it really wasn’t. I couldn’t get this plan of redemption out of my head. Look better than wedding photo = justify my existence and previous lapse of sanity that led to me being fat. Instead of reaching out to someone about my feelings or talking myself out of it, I stayed silent. I stopped writing. I ceased standing up for myself and others when I witnessed body shaming, and instead told myself that the only road to recovery was self-care.

That self-care (shutting out others under the guise of taking me time) became extremely destructive for me. I felt guilt over being a bad activist, but at the same time felt I couldn’t go back to my writing efforts because I would be hypocritical. What kind of bopo activist hates her own body?  These feelings were reinforced when others found out I was going to the gym and praised my efforts. I felt a sense of happiness at being recognized for my effort (attagirl, fattie!) but at the same time felt hurt that the same people commenting on my time at the gym had never once said anything positive about my blogging or activism. I also felt outrage that I was receiving praise for something that wasn’t anyone’s business, yet I was a hypocrite for putting it out there for people to comment in the first place. This one event became the catalyst for months of silence.    

In typical Gribbski fashion, we want to give you some actionable steps to go along with the empathetic oohs and ahhs and awesome sense of validation you’ve been feeling while reading this. (That’s right, we’re awesome! And so are you!)

1. Recognize when self-care becomes damaging: Look for signs of this like those we have described. If you feel yourself slipping away from your passions or notice that your retreat into Netflix and blanket land starts happening more than usual, try to be pro-active and remind yourself of the reasons why you’re a bad ass activist.

2. You CAN repair your self-worth: Reach out to a friend, do some credible internet research, or do a stream of consciousness writing exercise where you get all your feelings out. Acknowledge your negative feelings, but make sure that you look for resources to rekindle your passion. Self-affirmations are really effective as well. You and your message are worth it!

3. Use self-care missteps to your advantage: Knowing the warning signs of burn out is just as important as knowing the warning signs of destructive self-care. The journey to body positivity, and the journey of any activist, really, is an imperfect one. Never feel ashamed of these missteps, but instead learn from them and unapologetically share how the experiences have influenced your journey. You never know how much your words may help another person. Follow your voice instead of the silence. 

The Language of (Weight) Loss

Hello, all!  This is a piece I wrote a couple months ago and submitted to a website.  I was waiting to see if they'd publish it before I posted it here, but sadly, I received no response.  But no biggie!  It just means you're reading my revelation a little late.  Enjoy!

Today I did something huge: I went to the gym.

For a lot of people, this is not a big deal.  Going to the gym is a regular sweaty part of the week.  But I have never had that healthy relationship with exercise simply for the sake of exercise; it has always been this bizarre and alien concept whenever I’ve put it into practice.  I’ve always known and accepted that it works for other people, but for me, exercise has always been accompanied with a mantra of self-loathing so deep that it is like an infection of the soul.  Dramatic, I know, but that’s honestly how it feels.  

And of course, as a lover of written expression, I needed to write about this.  But it isn’t just for me.  I know what society I’ve grown up in, and I know that I am not alone in this struggle.  I can’t be.  So as a lover of education and validation, I needed to write this for you - anyone who needs to know that there is no shame in shying away from the gym, even if you are body-positive.  We have long been faced with a number of obstacles on the way, from paradoxical social attitudes reaching out from the eyes of fellow gym-goers to the deeply rooted self-hatred that comes with having an othered body.  And I say othered rather than fat because while my only experiences come from my perspective as a fat woman, I know that my struggle is not restricted to larger proportions.  But I don’t have the authority or the experience or the voice to pretend to know what any other-bodied person goes through, so please bear in mind that this is simply a perspective from my own experience.

As I racked my nervous brain for any excuse to skip (did i forget my headphones or my socks or my water bottle?), I started building up this list of all the bad things that could happen as a result of going to the gym.  While I’ve been body-positive for about four years now, I know I’m still fragile.  I know that there are things lurking in the back of my mind, waiting for a weakness to appear.  I am in control of my disordered eating.  I am in control of my obsessive need to control something (haha!).  But I am not foolish enough to have hubris - there’s always a possibility that somewhere along the line, something will happen, and I will slip back into old habits.  I always tell my students that slipping back into old habits is not a reason to hate yourself - in fact, it makes sense that if you’re in a difficult place, it is easy to go back to whatever you used to rely on to make you feel safe.  That's why learning new coping skills is so difficult, and why even when you think you have it down, you sometimes slip up.  What matters is how you feel about it - reflect on why the coping skill didn't work this time, and how to make it work next time.  

One of my biggest triggers that sends me into the zone of NEEDING obsessive control: weighing myself at home.  Sure, it sounds simple and it starts out that way.  I could weigh myself once a week to track progress.  But then it turns into twice a week because I need to track my progress on my way to tracking my progress.  Then it turns into a daily occurrence, and the balance of my whole day hangs on the line; if I’ve lost weight, it will be a good day, if I’ve gained, it will be awful.  But when it is really bad, it is damaging.  Regardless of what the scale says, I start counting calories and slashing here and there where I can.  Then, when I can’t stand it anymore, I eat anything in sight at my house.  As soon as the hunger is sated, that’s when shame takes its usual seat behind the wheel and settles in comfortably.  It is an endless vicious cycle of compensating for that binge.  Not by purging, though.  I did that as a teenager, but as an adult, I simply wouldn’t eat the next day.  

So why would I voluntarily throw my still-fragile self into this world?  A week ago, I went to see my doctor for some potentially thyroid-related issues (I have hypothyroidism), and I came away with the difficult knowledge that weight loss would help my issues. I have always been a supporter of the idea of Health at Every Size, so the idea that my fat body, which had been fairly healthy until now, was now needing to become less fat in order to remain healthy, was very difficult for me to wrap my head around in a positive way. It took several days for me to accept it.

So I went to the gym. I joined a planet fitness two months ago in a funk about my body, but I never worked up the courage to go. I chose planet fitness solely for the way they handled a trans* issue, because that is also important to me. When I pulled up, my heart was racing and I had even started to sweat. I was so nervous that I sat in the parking lot for five minutes, hosting an internal battle of "go home!" "stay!" and it didn't help when the only people I saw entering and exiting the gym were very fit individuals. I had my key in the ignition, ready to go, when she changed my mind. All it took was this one woman, a woman with a body that looked like mine, coming out of the gym after a,work out, looking sweaty and big, but owning it with a radiance of satisfaction. Immediately the go-homes vanished and were replaced with we've-got-its. I went in and sheepishly explained to the desk lady that I joined two months ago, but had never been there before. Without any inkling of judgment, she got me a t-shirt and a card and gave me a quick rundown. 

As I worked out, instead of repeating my old mantra of self-hate, I tried a new one under my breath: you're okay this is okay you're okay this is okay. And it worked. I don't know if you've ever been to Planet Fitness, but they have the most encouraging messages inside about no judgment. And the fit people I saw going in and out? They were there, in the sea of all bodies of all ages and types and sizes. And everyone minded their own business. It was like my own personal gym heaven.

My understanding, my narrative, my language of weight loss has always been negative. It has always centered around the idea of perfecting an endlessly flawed vessel. So now I am trying to recenter my language around a loss of self-hate instead, and move to a language of love about my body and my health, no matter what that means for me. I am once again reminded of how lucky I am to be aware of my body and my love for it, when so many others are not. 

-WW-

Thoughts on Family

I have a lot of thoughts about Family today, and how fitting it is on this day; a day when, seventeen years ago, I symbolically became a part of the family I lived with.  It was also a day spent with the families of my students, and a day spent with another kind of family I never expected to find – my work family.

The day began like every other day should begin – in a blanket cave, which had been painstakingly built the night before by one of my closest friends and myself.  I firmly believe that when one encounters a room with an excessive amount of both bunk beds and blankets, one must answer the call of the blanket cave, and it does not matter how old one is when the call comes.

But maybe I should rewind a bit for those of you who don’t know me, because while blanket cave is a good starting point for just about anything, it may not be the best starting point for this slightly more serious piece of writing.  Let’s go back to one of my earliest memories…

I remember being in a bright room, and I was walking.  Though hobbling may be a better word as I probably had just learned to walk not long before this memory.  Anyway, I remember walking towards a man and a woman, both of whom I recognized and wanted to be with, and they were smiling and laughing.  I know these people were my biological mom and my biological dad, though I probably wasn’t using words like that at the time.  This is the only memory I have of them together.  Beyond that, my earliest memories are of an apartment complex I lived in with my mom, and I remember a lot of couch cushion forts and a really cool bed that had a house on it. 

I know a lot of children of divorced parents have this fantasy where their parents eventually get back together, and for some people, this fantasy persists well into adulthood.  I have never, to my knowledge, wanted my parents back together.  Every memory I have beyond that bright, happy room is of them separately, and I have always known (to some extent) that it was better that way.  Now, knowing them both as an adult, I am very happy that they divorced, because they are both very happy with their current spouses.  But I also think that perhaps I was not a typical child of divorce.  Both of my parents had large families, and when they each remarried other people, I essentially had at my disposal (as much as a child can have at their disposal) four separate families.  And as the first baby, grandbaby, great-niece, you-name-it in ALL of them, I had all of my needs met and more.  In fact, I think that this is perhaps why I turned out to be such a social person; I was always surrounded by people.

Each of my biological parents met and married new people, and I gained a new brother (biological dad’s wife’s son) and eventually, a new sister (biological mom and husband’s daughter).  Siblings were weird and awesome and exciting all at the same time, but my sister in particular meant something significant at the time: my primary family (biological mom, husband, new baby) would all have the same name, and I would be the only one on the other side of that invisible name barrier.  I shared the name of my biological father and his wife, but at this point in my life, I didn’t have a lot of contact with them.

So, seventeen years ago on April 28^th, we piled into the local courthouse and in front of a room full of people and very tall seats, my mom’s husband swore that he would take care of me as if I were his own.  See picture below (featuring Brandon Bunny).

Let’s take a moment for me to say something else that is very important.  This is perhaps the first time I have discussed in so much detail the dynamics of my family and how it all fits in my head and life and memories, and I know that members of all of my families read this blog, so I want to make sure that I say this.  I know, and I have always known, that when I talk about something good with one family, it can unintentionally hurt another.  My life was confusing and big and loud with all of these relatives (often people I couldn’t remember) and although there were some dark times where I never felt like I fit anywhere because I was stuck in between, I would not change this dynamic for anything.  I love how all of the pieces of my life and my family fit together, even when they don’t.  I could go on and on here, but I want to get to some other stuff too.

Anyway, I was reminded of a lot of these feelings last night as I listened to the parents of my students tell their stories and support one another.  Some of the things that were said really hit home for me, because it made me realize some of the motivations that my parents might have had for some of the things they did.  As I listened to the parents discuss their daughters, the good times and the bad and the scary and the wordlessly beautiful, I cried.  In fact, I’ve been crying for two days now, and I don’t see it ending any time this week because we are going back and doing the same thing all over again with our boys and their families.  (For those of you who don’t know, I work in a residential treatment center and our kids are separated by sex for good reason.) 

But the perfect thing is this: I’m not the only crier.  In fact, dry eyes were a rare sight.  And this is where I get to brag about the biggest family I’ve ever had.  Listening to the parents discuss their lives before their family found us made me realize just how awesome it is to be a part of that change in their lives (and I’m not making this up – I seriously had a mom tell me that this was a life-changing experience…how mind-boggling amazingly BEAUTIFUL is it to be a part of that?).  And I get to do this with the best group of people.  Working closely with almost 200 other people who feel with their whole hearts and souls and give everything they have while caring for kids who can’t always give back is better than anything I could have expected for my life, and COME ON I used to want to run a zoo!  My heart was overflowing today as I listened and watched as families hugged and carried on with normal conversations, because that may not have been possible before.

So from waking up in a blanket fort to a text from my mom this morning that says, “Happy Family Day!  I love you!” to the email from dad with picture of me at the courthouse attached this afternoon, to the sweet thinking of you text message from Poppa this evening, to the greeting from my new family (fiancé, future-father-in-law, and animals) when I got home, to all of the countless supportive messages, emails, phone calls, bear hugs, and letters from all of my families over the years, know that I have listened to everything you said, even when you didn’t say it, and I am helping to teach other people with big, loud, jumbled families how to navigate the stormy waters, even when I’m just teaching English class.  I am so full of love and gratitude today, and I hope that I will always feel this way, because it is hands-down the best feeling I’ve ever had in my life.

-WW