I apologize for the hiatus in posts - life happens and family emergencies along with a crazy schedule and a bad tooth infection/root canal prevented me from devoting my usual energy to the site. I did make a video 2 weeks ago for Wednesday Warriors, which YouTube refused to allow me to upload due to technological errors. The following Wednesday (last Wednesday) I was able to get it up for all to see, but didn't have the time to post it here. The topic was Identity & Sexuality, and my take is quite different from what you may be used to hearing.
The video is below.
The following Wednesday Warrior video was on Emotional Abuse, Identity, & Validation. Again, I filmed the video but was unable to upload it to the internet. It's still waiting to be shared with you and as soon as I can figure out how to do that, you'll have it.
I guess you could say I'm behind a week in Wednesday videos, but only in the sharing aspect. Thanks for being patient with me. :-)
I love this video!
ReplyDeleteI spend a lot of my time working with the eating disorder recovery community because of my mom. Her work as a therapist, specializing in helping people recover from eating disorders, her work with other healing professionals, the ed organizations she has founded, the eating disorder recovery support conferences she has put on - all of my life I have been surrounded by this community of amazing people, in particular women, who are very passionate about helping people heal, love themselves and recover.
Growing up I have been blessed to gain a view of the world through her eyes and the recovery community, which is strongly based in self-love and an awareness, self-awareness and a larger awareness.
I'm very passionate about self-love and acceptance and as I get older and more involved with my mom's work, I become more and more passionate about helping the eating disorder recovery community.
I love that you made this video as a straight ally. Some people who are not LGBT may think, "What do I have to offer?" And although you are not LGBT, your video was very touching, was spot on and is a great resource for someone who is LGBT. You made the video personal by relating it to the human experience.
Occasionally I feel out of place being a vocal advocate for eating disorder education, awareness and recovery because I never had an eating disorder, so I can't speak specifically or personally to that experience.
But when I talk about my passion for eating disorder recovery and relate it to my personal experience, I relate it to my sexuality and my personal self-love and acceptance journey.
I didn't recover from an eating disorder, but since I was 5, when I knew I was attracted to women, I've been on this long journey towards self-love and acceptance. I worked through my fears, insecurities, self-doubts and faulty beliefs that I was unworthy of happiness or love. I was afraid to open my self up to others in fear of being harmed, disowned and rejected and it took me 14 years to gain the courage to begin that process of self-acceptance and to realize that I was worthy of the pursuit of happiness, and that who I was, exactly as I was, was already beautiful. I didn't have to fit in with heteronormative society, be straight or look and act feminine to be deemed "acceptable". Like you said, our identity and who we are isn't wrong, and it took me a while to come to terms with that.
6 years later, since I've come out, I'm proud of myself, my identity and my sexual orientation. Occasionally, fears, insecurities and frustrations will pop up relating to my sexual orientation, but I can handle them because I love myself and am happy with the life that I have created for myself.
When I relate my story to eating disorder recovery, I talk about my sexual orientation, and the journey I went through to love myself, accept myself and to heal myself from 14 + years of embedded faulty beliefs.
I think it's powerful when people outside of a community are supporters — because although we all have unique experiences, we are also all connected by core human experiences. And I think love is one of the main core human experiences, wanting to be loved, wanting to love ourselves and wanting to find someone to share that love with in a healthy relationship.
Emelina,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your support of the topic and your kind words. I can completely understand where you are coming from with your personal experience of sexual identity impacting how you can relate to the eating disorder community. I think it's so important to find parallels and see that we are really all so much more alike than we are different. :) Thanks again.
Arielle
Thank you for your passion. :) I agree with you completely, that it's very important to find parallels and to see that we are all a lot more alike than we are different.
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