As this year closes and another opens, I want to share with you a story of transformation that has nothing directly to do with eating disorders and yet has everything to do with the possibilities that await us all if we just give ourselves the push and the permission to go after them. Apart from the physical damage that eating disorders can cause, the next gravest threat that they pose is the strangling of personal empowerment. In other words, they are not just physically disabling but also psychologically and spiritually disempowering. And this disempowerment deprives not only the individual but also society of creative and constructive livelihood.
There’s a lot of talk about personal reinvention in our culture, but most of us only aspire to transformation. Those of us with histories of eating disorders, in particular, tend to a) to hold ourselves back and b) to think of reinvention in our usual all-or-nothing terms. The binge/starve dichotomy applies to so many other corners of our lives besides eating! But as I’ve learned from my friends who have successfully reinvented their lives, the key is not to abandon the past but to build on selected parts of one’s history and experience.
I hold out as inspiration to us all the story of my friend Deborah Jones, who at age 50 faced divorce, a fizzling career as a television writer, and what looked to her like a pretty dismal future. But she’d become passionate about social justice issues while volunteering with the writers organization PEN USA, which is where we met. She was also a long time member of Amnesty International, so she knew the power her words had to change the world: The Power of Words One day she happened to be visiting me when a friend of my son’s stopped by. This young woman at 30 was going for a Masters degree in International Relations. “You could do that,” I said to Deborah. “Why not?”
Three years later Deborah graduated from the Fletcher School
of International Relations. She moved to
Washington DC and took a job that blended her professional experience in
Hollywood with her true passion for social justice. She began traveling around the world helping
local groups of filmmakers in conflict zones develop television and radio
programs that model cooperation and nonviolent conflict resolution. The PBS show NOW has just done a segment on
Deborah’s work with Common Ground Productions.
If you want to be inspired, please watch the whole segment here: PBS NOW
Now, you may say this is all irrelevant because Deborah never had an eating disorder. Or you may say, that’s all right for her, but you have kids and a job and can’t possibly chuck everything and chase your dream. But I’m offering you this story as evidence that opportunities come in all shapes and sizes, just like people. Transformation can begin with a smile, a single word, a chance encounter. There is no right or wrong way to reinvent yourself. But you do have to open yourself to the possibility of change. You do have to pay attention to the opportunities and cues that life unexpectedly presents. You do have to honor who you are, what you love, and all the many talents that you know you possess even if you have trained yourself to dismiss them.
So here is my New Year’s challenge to you for 2010. Give yourself credit for all that you are and all that you have accomplished, and seize every opportunity that comes your way this year to build on your life’s foundation to transform yourself and change the world for the better.
Be well! Stay healthy! Engage in life!
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