“I did try journal writing many other times, but I was never honest enough with myself about what was really bothering me. I knew if I honestly wrote about my feelings, then I would have to have some sort of reaction to the horror on the paper. Then I would have to do something about it, which meant change, and that scared me even more”
Thus Crystal Phillips articulates our inner conflict.
In her memoir The Me I Knew I Could Be, Phillips shares her journey from the time before her weight gain, through bulimia and emotional eating, to losing 157 pounds (equivalent to 71.214 kilogram), regained her self-confidence, and a healthier life.
Throughout painful experiences including a turbulent marriage, Phillips used food as both comfort and escape. She attended various weight-loss programs, only to abandon them, overindulge again, and regain everything she had lost, and more.
Her memoir is also a reminder of how we often let our bodies carry the burden and scars of our excesses, overindulgence, and our unspoken grief and sorrow.
Isn’t that what we do, fall upon anything, no matter how bad it is for us, as long as it gives us some relief? Anything to get us through?
Only when she lost her brother to AIDs did something shift in her. Here Phillips recounts her epiphany:
“But in 1994, on New Year’s Eve, as I prayed in the safety of my pew, with my size-22 skirt cutting my waist, I knew I had to make a change. How and where would I begin to share my feelings of fear, hurt, shame, self-pity, and anger?…”
Phillips decided to return to journaling but this time, moved beyond keeping a food diary to writing about her feelings. She discovered, as we all do, when faced with the end of ourselves, that telling the truth, at least in the pages of our diaries, is where we begin to heal.
Writing helped me to become honest again.
Crystal Phillips, The Me I Knew I Could Be
The pages of her journal slowly unlocked the pain and shame she had kept locked up. And she faced them, not easily, not smoothly, but slowly, and surely.
I first read The Me I Knew I Could Be a decade ago, when I was going through my own challenges, the passing of my beloved grandmother, Tai.
Rereading the memoir again in the last few days, made me remember how I tried to force myself to face the world after Tai’s death.
I remember struggling to get out of bed in the mornings, wading through the motions of each day, home and work a blur, and crying myself to sleep at night.
I remember waiting for someone, anyone, to tell me that it was okay if I stayed in bed and stare at the ceiling all day. That it was okay if I didn’t feel like greeting people, or hear their stories about Tai because they didn’t know her like I did. That it was okay if I took the time I needed to properly grieve her death.
I remember the shame and guilt I felt at missing my grandmother so much, for wasn’t she now in a better place, free from the pain she had endured for so long?
Didn’t the Bible teach that when a believer dies, they are ‘absent from the body, present with the Lord’?
Why was I longing for her when she was finally at peace?
I remember desperately holding on to two of Jesus’ promises from the Book of Matthew: that those of us who mourn will be comforted, and anyone of us who is burdened are to come to Him, and He will give us rest.
Although I had already been keeping a diary well before then, Phillip’s account of her grief over her brother’s death, allowed me to name what I felt, and helped me to see the faithfulness of God during my sorrow.
Putting my pain into words did not remove them, nor did it erase the deep sense of abandonment that I carried. But it loosened them enough for me to breathe again.
My grandmother’s absence has left a void in my life. But whenever the ache comes, I allow it to wash through me instead of holding on to it, or worse, avoiding it.
This time I know to acknowlege the pain, and diminish its power by writing what I feel in my diary, and remind myself of Jesus’ eternal promises.
I will meet my grandmother again.