Embracing your body.
I
was 4.2 Kgs when I was born. Yep! That’s how I landed in this world. All fat
and screaming. I know that that isn’t a big deal now, but this was in the late ‘80s
and 4.2 Kg baby, that was news!
My
mother, Mary, was in Form Four then and being pregnant at that time carried
with it a sense of shame, to herself and her family.
If
this same fate befell you, your life would never be the same. You would be the
talk of the village and Daughters were told not to hang out with you because you
had performed a sinful act of getting pregnant (having sex) before marriage.
Your parents would be seen as failures and your father would not talk amongst
the “wazee” and his dreams of you becoming a pilot would have “drank water”
****
She
was just about to sit for her exams when she went into labour. However, she still
did her exams in that condition because her mother, at that moment, was a
single mother who couldn’t take any excuse.
Whenever
my mom narrates this story to me, she reminds me that it’s still the single
most courageous thing she has ever had to do; after all, she had the option to
abort.
Her entire class, the entire village as well,
came to see me on the day I was brought home from the hospital. Let us say, I
was already famous: a 4.2 Kg baby! All these redmeat and mukimo…lifestyle concerns were a scam back then.
And,
thus, my struggle with weight started as soon as I was born.
Throughout
early primary, I had a name in reference to my body; Esther Kanono, as if fat was my second
name. When I was in class three, I
changed school. Because my parents
thought a girls’ only school was more appropriate for me. My new school was the
best girls’ school around but it was almost three kilometers away which meant I
had to walk each day to and fro. There was no other option back then, school
buses were an unheard of luxury. Weight issues and I parted ways at that point because
I had to walk six kilometers each day and handle school work too on githeri for
lunch only. So weight and I ended up separating. We walked on different lanes.
The
issues with weight re-emerged when I got to high school. I wasn’t in the “fat”
category, per se, but I had gained some weight and, so, I struggled to get back
to where I previously was. There was one time when, after we closed school, I came
home having gained so much weight. In four weeks, I didn’t eat, only tasting
food as I cooked it because I really wanted to bring down my weight (The
struggle was real!). That’s how I achieved losing more than five Kgs in four
weeks.
Then
I joined university. Again, I was a bit overweight according to my own
measures. Here, too, I had to find a way to handle, to tackle, this “problem”. By
the time I got to second year, I had lost much weight through exercising in the
morning. On most days, 6 am would find me on the school track: that way I got
to 50 Kgs – the weight I desired.
But
I wasn’t happy. Not at all. Though my outside was what I could have termed as
the “right” size and body weight, I was, nevertheless, unhappy. I had changed
the outside but the inside remained the same.
Truth
is, I have never been overweight in the real sense of it in my adulthood. This
I can only speak boldly about years later and in retrospect. Even with my pregnancy,
the highest I attained was 80 Kgs, a weight which, thereafter, I managed to
bring down to my current weight: 65 Kgs.
My
issues with weight were conditioned from childhood. The negative sentiments
that followed the name Kanono were
deeply embedded into my subconscious. The child in me, then, was bothered, and,
as an adult, the sentiments still stand. This is because who we are taught to
be, and who we are, in the first three years of life acts as a control center
to our lives thereafter.
Scientists
are now proving that negative experiences encountered within the first five
years of life do cause more damage than those in subsequent years; because
these years are crucial in the formation of the sense of self for the
individual child.
Rarely,
do we take into account the effects that words have on us, or the consequence
of the names we give ourselves and our children. We forget that naming
something also empowers it. A name creates. We forget that God spoke this world
into existence, and thereafter man was requested to name the things in the
world.
And,
so, when I started studying myself as an adult, I started, for the first time,
noticing how these subconscious beliefs controlled my life. I understood that
for every effect there must be a cause and, when I finally found the cause, I
was able to fix myself.
Until you make
the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate
-Carl
Jung.
I
no longer obsess over my body. When I work out, it’s without a certain goal in
mind. I simply shifted my focus from that “idea of perfection” in my head, to
who I am right now. I decided to focus on who I am in the present moment, not
what I believed was the “perfect me”. This change in perspective has brought
such a huge sense of relief in my life. I no longer struggle with my body, it
is what it is. I am who I am. After all the body yields to the vagaries of time
and nature in spite of our costly care for it. Why then should I waste my
energies disciplining and shaping it into a perfect figure instead of enjoying
the time I have with and in it? The body is what it is, even against our wills
and desires.
When
you take a moment and sit, all by yourself, and contemplate long enough, enough
to shed light in into the dark corners of your mind, you will notice the things
that control you without your own awareness. Truth is, you are always
controlled by your strongest emotions.
You
just don’t wake up and find yourself in a place of acceptance: you have to work
yourself through it. You get to a place
of total love and acceptance by accepting your flaws, one by one and
understanding that you are not in competition with anyone but yourself, and
that you are not, and can’t be, anyone else other than you – and your body is
no one’s but your own. When you get to a point where you love yourself whole,
you rest easy; you stop struggling with yourself and enjoy each moment of you,
each moment with you.
Everyone
is judging you, but of all people you yourself are the harshest. You suffer
most in your own hands. You can begin, now, to treat yourself with the kindness
you would accord a child because deep inside you are still a child, it is not
too late. It never is. We give to others freely the love and affection that we
don’t give ourselves. It’s about time, to create a new way of life by loving
ourselves whole.
You
are whole with your imperfections, in spite of the imperfections.
Breathe.
