Binaries are never the Truth
I talk about this a lot in my work, that binaries are never the truth. They never allow for the context, complexity, and nuance of the experience in life. Because of these lessons I’ve learned from my brilliant genderqueer teachers and community, I understand that it is never clearly either this or that.
What myself and so many of my clients struggle with, as a person who recovered from an eating disorder and an eating disorder dietitian, is the idea that there is a “solution” or a “way forward” that can be mapped out in categories and boxes. And if we just do “the correct” thing then we will have relief, that we too will be “correct”.
This is the same mentality that the diet trap promotes, which is why it’s so damn frustrating that so many in the recovery world promote this same model just with a different direction, from restriction to fed (but not “too fed”, a narrative that comes from the vitriol of anti-fat bias still widely accepted and promoted in the ED field). But these too, are binaries, and just don’t make any damn sense.
When we allow ourselves to be lowered into the gray, murky, swamp of complexity, Actual Humanity, it’s never as simple as this or that. For myself, I’ve found this place to be both overwhelming and liberating. And it is difficult to hold this paradox in my body, but I’ve found it’s more suitable than being confused and continually grappling with the shame narrative of failure, when I don’t fit neatly into the boxes created by people outside of me that say “this is the (only) way!” Here, I’ve learned to recognize the eerie saviorism that exists in these spaces, because of the familiar chaos it stirs in my body.
As a white person of western european ancestry, with neurodivergence, I’ve come to understand that both I have a great deal to learn, because of the ways in which I have had only one side of many stories constructed for me, and also that my learning process does not thrive in an environment of hustle culture, perfectionism, and scarcity linear ideas around time. In the face of all that our planet is facing, this can and has felt very uncomfortable, and I have come to understand that I can’t perform deep knowing, that I must stay true to my process, which is slow and depends on community, connection, my teachers, and a rudder steering me towards justice, love, and peace for all bodies. I have, and will continue to cause harm, because of my privileges, because of my humanity, and because of the ways in which my brain works related to my human suffering. And I have also committed to my own healing, my own embodied action, and my commitment to my values and ethics both as a human and as a clinician. These are difficult things to share on the internet, and I believe that it is important to be publicly human in this time. Messy and complex, flawed and working on it, with a humbleness which exists alongside the fumbling (@erikahines).
I have a small group of healthcare professionals I am mentoring (Hoping to grow this part of my work- if you are interested (Healthcare professionals)). As a provider who lives with CPTSD and has been dismayed and harmed at the lack of trauma informed care within the medical field and within the eating disorder field I work within, alongside the lack of providers that are safer options for fat folx in eating disorder recovery, it is satisfying to support newer providers who desperately need guidance (we didn’t get it in school that’s for sure). I often lean on this quote, for myself and for my mentees: “You are enough, and you are not enough”.
We are all enough, just as we are, always. You are enough because you are here, a living, and breathing, human. So many of us struggle with the deeply rooted shame narrative that comes from white supremacy and the systems of oppression it manufactures, and so it is so very hard to not hold on to this core truth. Big Capital T Truth. And we are not enough, because despite what individualism boot strap narratives have conditioned us to think, we cannot do this alone. We need support. We need community.
In the presence of the atrocities facing our planet and the humans that inhabit it today, we are enough and we are not enough. Your healing matters, so that your voice can join the embodied voices across the globe that say no to injustice and terror. That say NO to systems of oppression that harm our fellow humans, our animal friends and family, and the living and breathing planet on which we all reside.
When we come home to our bodies, we understand that the violence perpetuated onto bodies is not the way forward, that change can and must come.