The drive home with my husband we talked about the things I learned in therapy and how we can apply that to raising our girl and eventually, our little boy once he develops more. I see little girl is quite emotionally and socially aware (read: sensitive) at age five. I was explaining how my upbringing really impacted me and how now we can see so clearly the pivotal times that shaped me and how I developed my eating disorder.
Husband said that having this eating disorder can even be seen as a good thing, because otherwise how would I come to learn these things and really know the impact of wrong parenting? But from really living it.
I said, But it is such a painful price to pay.
He said, Nothing that is worth having will come easy. It will be painful.
I told him that he is so lucky to have been raised in the way he has. Because parenting to him is just a matter of copying or remembering, what he received from his own parents. For me, that is something I have to learn to get better at. That's even why I always watch carefully how he speaks to and treats our children, with so much patience, playfulness, kindness. There's a ceiling to where my displays of affection can go, and only now am I learning to surpass that. I aim to be more positive in my parenting.
I was even saying, that, on a spectrum where you actively do the right thing, my parents not only did not do what you are supposed to do because they were absent, they even actively went against it. Because when they finally were physically around for me, they invalidated me constantly. Case in point when I reached out for help, they told me my eating disorder was not real and only something that white people had. So I was making it up. It was my fault.
Knowing what I know now, it was not my fault. My eating disorder was/ is not my fault. None of my childhood experiences and trauma were my fault. But I believed that and punished myself for it, for many many years. I carry that self-punitive thinking even now, but I am trying to undo it.
I am glad when husband and I have those kinds of conversations. As I mentioned before he isn't so emotionally adept, and our conversations now have become more surface level. So when we talk like that on a deeper level, I feel more connected to him. I feel that he is trying to get to know me even better. As I said to G before, this whole intervention really is an opportunity for me and the husband to bond in a way that we never really have before. I am so blessed to have him.
2021-10-29.7:21 p.m.
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