Aspire Magazine: Inspiration for a Woman's Soul.(TM) Aug/Sept 2016 Aspire Mag Full Issue | Page 69

Fast forward 9 years. When I was 35, my father was diagnosed with cancer. He quickly deteriorated and I made the decision to spend the summer helping my mother take care of him. Two things happened that summer that forever changed my life. First, I had the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of a dying man. I began to understand that all the things that I stressed over were really insignificant. Life is precious and we should be grateful for each day. cycle for the gift it is – my body’s ability to renew itself each month, my ability to create and give birth to life. Second, after being in menopause for 9 years, I got my period. My doctors told me it was impossible, a fluke. You can’t cure yourself of menopause, they told me. 28 days later, it happened again. I’d love to be able to tell you that healing myself out of menopause was the catalyst I needed to heal my relationship with my body. But, I am a nothing if not a slow learner. I BEGAN TO SEE MY MENSTRUAL CYCLE FOR THE GIFT IT IS – MY BODY’S ABILITY TO RENEW ITSELF EACH MONTH, MY ABILITY TO CREATE AND GIVE BIRTH TO LIFE. That summer my mindset began to shift. As I watched my father die, my own body came back to life. And I was grateful. Having been raised to think my menstrual cycle was “The Curse,” I never dreamed I would be so happy to have it back. I began to see my menstrual After my father died, my husband and I decided to try to have a child. After 3 rounds of in vitro fertilization, I realized that while my menstrual cycles might have come back on line, my endometriosis was still preventing pregnancy from happening. Feeling betrayed by my body once again, I gave up, gave in, and let my eating disorder take over – punishing myself and my body for my inability to bear a child once again. Yet, I still had learned something from my father’s death. I was still grateful – maybe not for my body at that time, but for other things. I was still grateful my menstrual cycles had come back; still grateful for things I loved, and still kept my nightly gratitude practice. And the day my 69 HEALTH & WELLNESS That’s when I began to hate my body. I felt that my body was a traitor, a betrayer, that it had unfairly taken my God-given right to bear children away from me. So I began to punish it – subconsciously, but punish it the same. I became the epitome of good health by exercising regularly and eating healthily. I was on a mission to prove to my doctors – and my body – that I could be ‘normal’ and ‘healthy.’ Unfortunately, my Inner Mean Girl is a perfectionist and my “health kick” soon turned into an eating disorder; my exercise routine became a minimum two-hour-a-day obsession and my list of ‘bad foods’ became so restrictive that I was barely eating enough to keep a bird alive.