The One Lie My Mother Told Me (Part Two)

Ten Lies The One Lie My Mother Told Me
(Part Two)

Have you ever bribed offered a reward to your child to encour­age him/her to attain a goal?

A cou­ple of years ago, my kids wanted new com­put­ers. So I made a deal with them: I agreed to buy the new com­put­ers when the school year ended — they wanted them for their sum­mer vaca­tion when they could play a cer­tain game — if they achieved an agreed-upon grade point average.

All that semes­ter, they asked me repeat­edly, as they proudly showed me their graded tests and papers, “Mom, if we keep this up, we’re going to get our com­put­ers, right?”

“Absolutely,” I would tell them as I posted more “A” papers on the refrigerator.

“You would be so pretty if only you would lose weight.”

I remem­ber how their eyes lit up when the UPS truck stopped in front of the house and the dri­ver rang the door­bell with a big smile on his face.

“Did some­body here get good grades?” he asked as he brought in the boxes.

But have you ever bribed your child to lose weight?

The Denim Pantsuit

In the 1970’s, we all wore pantsuits. I found one I really wanted that was made of denim and had flow­ers embroi­dered on it.

Unfor­tu­nately, it was not avail­able in my size.

My mother bought it for me even though it was at least two sizes too small. I recall that I could not zip the pants and the arms of the jacket were way too tight.

She bought it “with the under­stand­ing that” I was going to lose weight so that I would be able to wear it.

You know how this story ends, don’t you?

The pantsuit hung on the out­side of my closet as inspi­ra­tion. Every time my mother came into my room and saw it, she would nag me about the fact that I was not los­ing weight, remind­ing me that she had spent “good, hard-earned money” on that outfit.

Every time I looked at those beau­ti­ful pants and the match­ing denim jacket with the col­or­ful and del­i­cate flow­ers embroi­dered on the col­lar and cuffs, I was reminded that I was a big, fat fail­ure who would never been seen in pub­lic wear­ing that lovely ensem­ble. The com­bi­na­tion of star­ing at that pantsuit every day and lis­ten­ing to my mother drone on about the fact that my goal was becom­ing increas­ingly unat­tain­able, made me eat more and gain weight.

Then I would look at it again and hate myself for hav­ing no self-control. And for not want­ing to wear it badly enough to exer­cise self-control. And won­der why I could not seem to con­quer my self-destructive ten­den­cies. And I was dis­gusted with myself for wast­ing my parent’s money because it truly was hard-earned, which she reminded me about daily, as she told me, yet again,

“You would be so pretty if only you would lose weight.”

There were other bribes, too. When I was a fresh­man in high school, I was sup­posed to lose 30 or so pounds in order to get a 10-speed Schwinn bicy­cle. Even­tu­ally, my father took pity on me and bought me the bike because all of my friends had 10-speeds and I was still rid­ing my old 3-speed that he had pur­chased for me at Sears sev­eral years earlier.

You guessed it. I gained weight that time, too.

The pantsuit remained in the closet for many years, never worn. Long after I became an adult, moved out and estab­lished my own home — and the pantsuits with bell-bottom legs had gone out of fash­ion — I came over to help my mother. She pulled it out of the closet and held it up.

“Remem­ber this?” she said, wav­ing the hanger in my face as the price tag still dan­gled from the arm of the jacket.

I hadn’t thought about that pantsuit in many years and cer­tainly had no clue that she had kept it. The moment I saw it, though, all the feel­ings of fail­ure and self-revulsion asso­ci­ated with it came flood­ing back.

“Oh, jeez, Mother. That thing is still here?” I asked incredulously.

“Yes,” she said in a dis­gusted tone. “We might as well give it to the Good Will. You’re never going to be able to wear it. You’re much big­ger now that you were when I bought it for you. You never lost the weight you said you were going to. You just wasted my good, hard-earned money.”

I offered to pay for the pantsuit, but she waved her hand and went into the other room as I packed it into the box.

For­giv­ing is Easy; For­get­ting is Not

My par­ents did the best they could. In writ­ing these arti­cles, my goal is not to crit­i­cize or dis­honor them in any way. I for­gave them many years ago for any par­ent­ing mis­takes they made.

But for­give­ness is only the first step in fully assess­ing and ana­lyz­ing mes­sages received as a child. Next comes the process of recov­er­ing from the resul­tant emo­tional damage.

As with weight loss, I’ve been down this road before, but never com­pleted the process.

I saw a coun­selor many years ago who explained that until I dealt with the emo­tional aspects of overeat­ing fully and fear­lessly, the same old “tapes” would con­tinue play­ing in my head repeat­edly and the behav­ioral pat­terns would man­i­fest them­selves over and over, too. She warned me that I would lose weight, but resume emo­tional eat­ing and regain it. She was, of course, absolutely correct.

This is the time to con­front the emo­tional issues, work through them, and break the pat­terns once and for all.

Why now? The answer to that ques­tion is decep­tively sim­ple. My life depends upon it. Literally.

As I explained when I founded this site, my health and well-being were in jeop­ardy when I deter­mined to make per­ma­nent changes to my lifestyle. I was at my heav­i­est, had devel­oped aller­gies and my asthma was com­pletely out of con­trol. Two things that many peo­ple take for granted, I was increas­ingly hav­ing trou­ble doing with­out great effort: Breath­ing and sleep­ing. I was mis­er­able. That unhap­pi­ness moti­vated me in ways that noth­ing else had or could.

A Mother Does Her Best

My mother thought that she doing what was best for me. She thought that her behav­ior and com­ments would help me, inspire me, con­vince me … She loved her chil­dren and she demon­strated that love using the life skills she pos­sessed. I know those things to be true because, as a mother, I have done my very best for my kids, but my efforts have some­times come up short.

I tell them, “Just remem­ber the five most impor­tant words when you are on the psychiatrist’s couch work­ing through your issues: ‘It’s all my mother’s fault.’”

They just look at each other, roll their eyes, groan “oh, Mooooooom,” and go back to their rooms.

My mother was not very sophis­ti­cated. She was extremely intel­li­gent and tal­ented, but lived a very shel­tered life. She did not work out­side the home, did not social­ize much. She led a very sim­ple, but pro­duc­tive life, cen­tered around her hus­band, chil­dren and home.

So she never had any idea that, by telling me that I would become pretty if I lost weight, she was tac­itly telling me that I was decid­edly not pretty just as I was. The mes­sage she com­mu­ni­cated was that I was not “good enough” and would not become “good enough” until I altered my phys­i­cal appear­ance. She did not under­stand that she was judg­ing and brand­ing me, or cement­ing for me a self-image that was com­pletely at odds with reality.

“Pretty” became a con­cept reserved for other girls who were thin. “Pretty” became a state I could never achieve because I could not get and keep the extra weight off.

The irony is, of course, that self-loathing just leads to more destruc­tive behav­ior. The cycle repeats itself day after day.

To be continued …

Tech­no­rati Tags: Fem­i­nism, Weight Issues, Weight Man­age­ment

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