Baby Duck

I've been busy over the past week, so I still haven't updated about my mom's visit.  She was supposed to get here Thursday night, but her flight was delayed and she didn't make it in until Friday morning.  Despite that wrinkle, we had a fantastic time! The purpose of her trip was to attend an awards ceremony that afternoon, and then a dinner at the dean's house that evening.

Eating, etc were pretty awkward when I was home for Christmas break.  My mom is very careful with her diet, and I am very self-conscious about the amount I have to eat for my mealplan.  Thus, eating situations can be stressful...also, I live alone, so when someone else is in "my" space, I get really anxious.  So, I was looking forward to the visit (I truly love my mom dearly, we have a great relationship), but I was also nervous about how all the eating stuff would go.  A couple of years ago she finally decided to lose the "baby weight" that had accumulated after three children, and lost over 40 pounds.  She has stayed around the low end of normal ever since, but I do tend to be a little paranoid that she'll lose too much.  And then, of course, there are my eating issues also.

Luckily, we ate out for almost every meal when she was here.  I'm actually much more comfortable eating out with people than making meals for them at my place.  We had lunch with some of my friends at Mellow Mushroom, and that was OK.  I was worried that my mom didn't eat enough.   Later we went to a dinner at the dean's house, and the type of food (barbecue) was really not stuff that I liked, but I did get a reasonable amount.

This was where my mom really helped me out.  She set a great example of getting food that she loves (in this case it was potato salad) as part of her meal, enough to really enjoy it but not an excessive amount, without letting calorie stress hold her back.  She also got dessert.  This may seem simple and unremarkable, but it was really nice to have this model of healthy behavior to follow. (Ha, some people may not see potato salad and cake as "healthy", but I'm talking psychologically, letting yourself have things you love at an event that is meant to be a celebration).  The next day we went to Moe's for lunch, (Mexican is another of her all-time favorites), and she got a salad but also asked for tortilla chips and made awesome nachoes out of her salad + chips.  All of this is a big contrast to the way she ate when I was home for Christmas.   I don't know if she was consciously making a point to eat liberally in front of me this time around, but it did help.  I would assume that whatever body I eventually obtain as an adult will be similar to hers, and it is nice to see that someone can allow themselves to include and enjoy their favorite foods while still being fit and healthy.

I guess to some degree I will always be a little yellow duck following my momma duck around. I most definitely did not pick up ED behaviors from her (her big diet didn't occur until I'd already been dealing with AN for over five years).  Now that I'm seriously working on recovery, I'm trying to figure out what my "normal" should really be, and even though I am 22, have a fiercely independent personality, and have been living on my own for four years, it seems natural to use my mom as an example to follow.  She has taught me pretty much all of the crucial lessons about life, and since time immemorial I have paid close attention to what she does, learning everything from how to slice apples and tie shoelaces to how to apply mascara and parallel park (not simultaneously!). 

Don't get me wrong, we're not one of these hyper-entangled mother-daughter packages.  We differ in opinon on many things: politics, religion, tea vs coffee, Hugh Grant vs George Clooney, etc (although we agree on Pierce Brosnan, yum!).  But at the same time, we respect each other enough to have really great conversations about the things we disagree about the most.  She has been insightul enough to teach me how to be, not what to be. We have a hard time discussing my ED (even though it is most definitely not a secret), but I found that just being able to observe her being normal and relaxed around food really did wonders for my own outlook and anxiety about eating during her visit.  Actions really do speak louder than words sometimes.