What measurements are you using to compute your worth? Are they fair? Do they tell the whole story?
Read moreWhat Exactly Is Diet Culture?
Diets do not bring us relief, rather they often prolong and perpetuate shame.
Read moreFinding Your Honest Voice
The endless pursuit of smallness is the pursuit of slowly disappearing. When we work to disappear within our physical bodies, we disappear within our relationships and within our very own sense of ourselves.
Read moreTaking Up Space
As an avid sports fan and former athlete, I love sports, especially the thrill of athletic tournaments. I love the drama, the passion, the hard work on display, the agony of defeat, and the celebration of victory. However, this year as I watched the 2021 NCAA Women’s Basketball tournament, I was thrilled for reasons having nothing to do with the actual sport being played. I was elated to see women being celebrated not only as incredible athletes, but also as complex, feeling, demanding, powerful human beings.
Early in the tournament, University of Oregon’s Sedona Prince took to Twitter to blast the NCAA organizers for the shocking disparity between the NCAA’s men’s and women’s weight rooms. The backlash was swift and powerful. Celebrities, WNBA players, and NBA players all publicly called out the NCAA and demanded immediate changes. Overnight, the measly weight room was transformed into something much more in line with what the women’s players deserved. Sedona Prince was rewarded and exalted for using her voice to call out these gross inequities. She was not small, nor was she gentle.
The Arizona women's basketball team, coached by Adia Barnes, was my tournament favorite. This team was not expected to shine as they did. They were underdogs. A scrappy defensive team, led by point guard Aari McDonald, the Arizona Wildcats stunned number one seed Connecticut 69-59 in the semi-finals to advance to its first NCAA Women’s Basketball championship game. This was a huge upset. Even the NCAA video staff didn’t believe Arizona could win, and so didn’t include them at all in the video highlight reels leading up to the Final Four.
After their victory, Coach Barnes huddled with her exuberant team at half court and gave an impassioned speech. ESPN cameras captured Barnes, surrounded by her beaming players, raising her two middle fingers and using expletives to tell the team to “F” everyone who didn’t believe in them. It was a moment of passion. It was a moment of joy and of great pride in a hard-fought victory. The celebration was not tiny, it was not controlled. It was not modest, and it was awesome.
The next day, Coach Barnes was interviewed and asked about the post-game celebration. She said, “I honestly had a moment with my team, and I thought it was a more intimate huddle. I said to my team something that I truly felt and I know they felt, and it just appeared different on TV, but I'm not apologizing for it because I don't feel like I need to apologize. It's what I felt with my team at the moment. I wouldn't take it back. We've gone to war together. We believe in each other. So I'm in those moments, and that's how I am, so I don't apologize for doing that. I'm just me, and I have to just be me.” (1)
Adia Barnes is not apologizing for having big feelings nor for simply being herself. And neither should any of us.
Prior to coaching, Adia Barnes played basketball at the collegiate level for the University of Arizona, spent seven seasons in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) and also played internationally in Ukraine. Her husband is her assistant coach at Arizona. She is also a mother and gave birth to her 2nd child in September of 2020, right at the start of the college basketball season. (2) Because she was pumping breast milk for her infant daughter, Coach Barnes was a few minutes late coming out of the locker room after halftime during the championship game. It is a pretty safe bet that parenting duties have never (or very rarely) delayed a male NCAA coach from returning to the court after halftime. It is also safe to say that ESPN commentators have never discussed breast milk during an NCAA championship game before.
Watching Adia Barnes coach, it is clear she is the kind of coach all coaches should aspire to. She is smart, fierce, powerful, loud, and an aggressively demanding leader. She is also a kind, compassionate, cooperative leader, who uses appropriate gentleness when it is needed. In the summer of 2020, days after George Floyd was murdered Adia Barnes released the following statement: “In this program we will be the CHANGE! We will stand up for what is right, we will listen with open hearts, and support one another wherever they are. Our team has a lot of love and a lot of sisterhood.” She goes on to say, “We are very accepting. I think we have a space of love, acceptance and understanding. It’s OK not to be OK. It’s OK not to know what to say. It’s all OK. We accept all those emotions.” (3)
By giving her players permission to be fully human and to have and to express big emotions like fear, sadness, and anxiety, Coach Barnes helps her players maintain their full humanity. This is good coaching.
Critics tend to view the women’s game as less exciting compared to the men’s game, but this year that was furthest from the truth. The teams competing relentlessly attacked the basket, giving and taking hard, tough fouls. There was no holding back. They brought pure aggression, graceful skill, and so much heart to the court. But a key difference from the men’s game, is that women players also brought their humanity to the court. If a player was harshly fouled by the opposing team, it was common to see a member of that opposing team offering that player a hand to stand back up. It was not an apology for the hit, but rather an acknowledgment of the pain. That is not something you will often see in the men’s game. Sure, there was the standard verbal sparring and some vicious fouls, common in high-level athletics. However, after an anxiety-fueled and uncertain season due to Covid 19, as well as the traumatic and painful rising tide of racial injustice, the players seemed mindfully grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with each other and play the game they love. They remained connected to their humanity through their compassion for one other. This is the opposite of weakness.
After Arizona lost Stanford in the championship game, Coach Barnes immediately wrapped her 21-year-old star player up in a long hug and told her, “It is okay”. In this hug I saw a complex and supportive message to her young players. We can feel disappointed and devastated, and still can be fierce. We can be demanding and yet still compassionate. We can be kind and also angry. We can feel scared. We never need to choose to be small or apologize for our honesty. We can allow ourselves to be loud and unapologetic in our humanity. Coach Barnes likes to say that she and her players are “built different.” May we all recognize our own unique build and embrace the space we deserve. May we all allow ourselves to be big in whatever manner fits.
Coming Out of Isolation With Compassion
The last year of quarantine and isolation has impacted each and every one of us in profound ways. Everything we knew to be normal was suddenly ripped away. We have faced intense prolonged and persistent fears regarding safety for ourselves and our families. We have struggled with isolation from the people we love. Our children have been forced to adapt to online school, facing confusion and longing for their friends and teachers. We have navigated working from home despite our brains diminished capacity for productivity, while at the same time being forced to adapt to an exhausting professional virtual landscape. Many more of us were forced to go to work outside the home, thus facing the increased risk of contracting the virus out of the necessity to earn an income. We adapted to all of these changes while also doing our best to care for ourselves and the people we lived with.
We faced death after death, with the numbers of the human beings dying exceeding our capacity to conceptualize what these deaths actually meant. For some, these deaths were distant, painful and traumatic stories told by friends or heard on the news. However, for far too many of us, we were thrust into grieving the death of someone we deeply loved.
We have coped the best we could. Early on we obsessed with baking bread, making jokes about this and posting on social media about our efforts to get the perfect crust on a sourdough loaf. Our bodies become stagnant due to the lack of movement accessible to us. We saw gyms closing, exercise options limited. Our bodies were, and likely still are, in a trauma state. Our wise body kicked into self-preservation mode. We limited movement because we felt frozen or dissociated. We increase food intake in an effort to soothe our traumatized body. Our sleep was disrupted due to profound and persistent anxiety. When human beings don’t sleep well our hunger patterns are impacted. Our brains are tired, this fatigue creates an increase in hunger craving for more calories. And so we eat more. Eating more during a pandemic is a good survival strategy.
All of these factors led to changing bodies. Many bodies became larger during this past year. This weight gain is simply one possible outcome of living in a trauma state for a prolonged period of time. Some bodies became smaller. Appetite loss is also simply one possible outcome of trauma. The changes that may have happened are a direct result of the wise body keeping us alive during a pandemic.
And now we are in the Spring of our recovery. Vaccination rates are rising daily. Our kids have plans to return to school. We see a future when we may be able to physically embrace the people we love once again. And we are aware that our bodies may look and feel different. Because we have all been socialized to unconsciously accept diet culture as our norm, we are worried about this re-entry. We may be worried to see people we haven’t seen for along time. Will they judge me? Will they see that I have changed? We may find our clothing doesn’t fit as it once did. We may feel fearful of venturing out again because we remain unsure about safety related to Covid.
And because of the very specific and collective fear of weight gain, now we begin to experience the bombardment of relentless advertising for weight loss products, diets and exercise plans. We are being told that we must get back into “control” of our bodies. We are being told the weight gain of the past year should be something to feel ashamed about. Now this isn’t because the diet industry cares about your health as they'd like you to believe. What they care about is getting your money. And the diet industry is set to experience an unprecedented financial gain, directly off the shame of the collective pandemic weight gain. Pandemic weight gain or loss should never be condemned, ridiculed or shamed. It is not something to be ashamed of or to“fix”.
Your body doesn’t need a diet. Your body doesn’t need any more shame. Your body needs your compassion. Your mind/body needs to be allowed to feel, move and be lovingly supported through the trauma you have survived. Your body needs your gratitude for keeping you alive. If we do not address the mental health impact and trauma faced during the last year we will suffer lasting consequences. If we move back into “normal life” by mindlessly and obsessively resuming rigid diets and engaging in exercise regimes our bodies are not ready for, we run the risk of being stuck in our trauma for years to come.
I offer you another option. Place your hands on your heart. Simply breathe. Thank your body for surviving this year. Allow compassion be felt with the gentle placement of your hands. If emotion comes, allow it with tenderness. Be curious about what your body may need. Is it rest? It is it nurturing food? Is it movement? Is it release? Is it joyful play? Is it allowing for sadness, grief? Hold yourself with curiosity and with compassion. All you have to do is notice and respond with love. Trust yourself to be able to listen.
And above all else, thank your wise body for keeping you safe.
Welcome
Welcome, I am glad you are here. My name is Megan Lammers and I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a private mental health therapy practice in Portland, Oregon. I am also a lover of movement, food, nature, laughter, pets and healing. This space is a place to share what I currently believe to be true about health, wellness and healing as related to the mind, body and spirit. As with all things, what I know to be true today is likely to change and thus information will be updated accordingly.
I am passionate about supporting folks through trauma recovery, grief, reclaiming of the intuitive and compassionate connection to our bodies and liberation from diet culture. I believe in the power of stories to heal and to help others.
I hope you find this space to be inspiring and informative, yet also challenging. Embracing pain and discomfort is how we heal. I truly hope my words help in some way. We are all interconnected and in this life together. Thank you for being here.