Black, Indigenous and People of Colour, Larger Bodies and Eating Disorder Recovery 8
Respectful Attention vs Intervention
I have a friend whose father has developed a lawn-perfecting hobby in his old age. He lives on the west coast of Canada in BC which, as things change, has developed a climate more akin to what Northern California was maybe in the 90s. What this means is that summers are increasingly dry, hot and lacking in rainfall. So much so that in Victoria, not so much Vancouver just yet, people now let their lawns go dormant and yellow in the summer heat rather than sprinkler them back to a zombie life. Water restrictions each summer have a lot to do with getting used to this new summer esthetic.
But water use aside, keeping a lawn with only one species of chosen grass and showing absolutely no sign of any weed requires constant intervention. Specifically, it requires those obesogens (pesticides and fertilizers) that end up in our water supply.
I use this “healthy lawn” analogy as a way to think of the pursuit of “health” for us humans as well. As humans living in our industrialized societies, we are all very like the domesticated and heavily tended lawns. We see a dandelion and we get out the herbicide. We notice a patch that is struggling and we get out the fertilizer. Our biomarkers are off and we get a new prescription. Our body shape or size is “off” and we get on the exercise bike or start living off salads.
We lurch from one intervention to the next in this binary “if this, then that,” approach to living.
Take a breath and stop intervening. Intervention is ideally for emergency only. If you are having a diabetic attack, by all means intervene or have your medical professionals intervene! I have already spoken in many other posts on this site of the benefit of watchful waiting and discussing this option with your medical professional when biomarkers seem out of whack. However, a lifetime of being a superficially “healthy” lawn means that things are brittle. The opposite of this highly managed and brittle space is not to just let go.
You cannot abandon your living self and expect the appearance of resilient health anymore than you could abandon a previously intensively-manicured lawn and expect the appearance of a vibrant food forest. What is required is respectful attention and watchful waiting. You are an ecosystem. Something appears in your ecosystem and it might signify the beginnings of increased vibrancy, whereas in another system it signifies the need not for intervention but rather mediation. It takes elapsed time to learn whether the symptoms and signals you are getting from your ecosystem are good, bad or indifferent.
Letting go of cultural dogma is hard. Having cultural dogma woven into post-hoc rationalizations for why food is such a threat for you is even harder to disentangle. Having cultural dogma seep into your space as an unrelenting colonial denial of your own cultural roots is a multi-generational burden for BIPoC. However, re-establishing a connection to your own cultural roots might connect you to a space of gentleness and transition that allows for your healing. Fariha Róisín’s book Who is Wellness For? An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind may be a place that helps you to connect with your own journey. I have also touched on an approach of gentleness, observation and transition in the series Envirakido and Terroir.
Your eating disorder may or may not have latched onto fatness as the rationale for wanting to avoid food. Perhaps it’s health, longevity, overall shape, strength, or fitness. Perhaps it’s the physical discomfort and reactivity of your gastrointestinal system to food that has you fixating on avoidance to lower discomfort.
In my estimation, healing is not beatific or transformative. It is transitional, iterative and requires excessive amounts of attention and effort. The work is very hard, but the attitude best taken is one of gentle observation and attention.
Spaces and Places for Connection
I have always lived identifying with the culture around me. About the only time I even marginally experienced being at odds was when I was laughed at by classmates in preschool because my vocabulary was British English (having just moved back to Canada from the family living in the UK). I said bonnet, instead of hood, for the front of the car. If I can remember something so insignificant, then I can only imagine real impacts of intensive levels of code switching, or set shifting, for BIPoC and those with larger bodies as well.
Everyone needs to be in spaces and places at times where they are not constantly masking, set-shifting and providing all the heavy emotional work. I cover off some information on the burden of these things in the series: Set Shifting, Masking and Emotional Work.
My whiteness, my early retirement and my general introversion mean I get to live in a very privileged space of now rarely-to-never masking, set-shifting and/or providing emotional work. I say this to emphasize that the options I’m about to list are coming from a space of not knowing on every level whether they are truly suitable or sufficient for BIPoC seeking a way forward in recovery from an eating disorder. I offer them up in the hopes they are helpful spaces and I welcome any feedback or additional options from those who really know.
BIPoC Eating Disorder Conference
Alliance for Eating Disorders BIPoC Support Group
Places like Monte Nido, Renfrew and Centre for Discovery eating disorder treatment have specific treatment services and in-person and online group support for BIPoC:
And here’s an aggregated landing page with various support options:
While I have mentioned some options for those with larger bodies dealing with eating disorders in other posts, a good place to start is Dances With Fat. Health at Every Size as promoted by the Association for Size Diversity and Health often sits a bit uncomfortably for me as health is never a foregone conclusion for any of us. You have a right to both pursue health, or not pursue it, and you have a right to exist in this world free from discrimination or oppression. Nonetheless, many excellent services and supports are available through ASDAH. As for treatment for an eating disorder in any formal setting, fatness will greatly increase the chance you will be encouraged to continue restricting food intake. Formal treatment may be required due to medical crisis, but recovery will most likely occur outside an environment that does not recognize eating disorders as eating avoidance disorders.
That you do not see yourself in the community of white women being treated for eating disorders is an undeniable fact and predominantly white spaces for treatment are, at best, tenuous and marginalizing spaces for BIPoC. If formal inpatient treatment is needed, then it’ll be worthwhile to find treatment centres where they have some explicit concepts for supporting BIPoC.
But whether or not formal inpatient treatment is required, it is your community-of-origin (or chosen community) that will offer protective grounding for your healing journey.
Image in Synopsis: Public Domain.
