Featured Story: Healing thyself-Breaking the cycle of self abuse - Words by Alana Mountain

Healing trauma and finding reverence for one’s self is a continuous journey. Within the last few years, I have come to learn so much more about myself and the aspects of my being that I was not listening to or honouring, and through this sharing, I hope to offer insight into how we, as humans, with a focus on women (as this is my lived experience as a woman), can take steps towards positive body image growth and spiritual nourishment, breaking through the cycles and patterns of self abuse. 

I am now 29 years old, and I have lived with body dysmorphia and an eating disorder for more than half of my life, which I have rarely spoken about honestly and openly up until a few years ago. Through my vulnerability, I desire to empower people, especially women/ non-binary and trans women, to rise into themselves and come into a space of love and compassion for their bodies and to understand that there are forces in this world, entrenched in ideology and toxic media which keep us stagnated to the beauty that is our bodies and the many forms they come in.  

Our bodies are containers. Containers of our mind, soul and spirit. When I was a young girl, I was not aware of these things to the depths of which I am now. I did not hold space for my body or create rituals around honouring myself, more so I worshipped that which was external of my being, in nature, and pertained to be like others I deemed ‘perfect’. 

In the beginning

I so easily remember the first time I became aware that there were certain societal expectations surrounding how a woman should ‘be’. I was in grade 6, and a girl laughed at me at school, pointing out that I had underarm hair. The entire day I felt so much shame for the first time in my life towards my body. I went home and asked my mother for a razor and she laughed and said I was too young. I cried and I ended up stealing one from her bathroom when she wasn’t home. I began to shave not only my armpits, but my arms and legs as well. Hair seemed to be bad, undesirable and a source of great shame and embarrassment. “Women should be smooth and hairless” was the belief I adopted, something dictated to us by mainstream advertising and the fashion world up until the fierce underarm hair revolution (right now my armpits are hairy, but sometimes they are not, I am grateful to feel that I can comfortably make that choice!). 

From this single experience, my awareness of self and presentation expanded to my body’s form. I noticed girls beginning to wear bras, developing in ways I was not. Up until the age of about 17 I was pretty much ‘flat chested’. I asked my mother for a Bonds bralette in year 7 when we had to change for sports and I wasn’t wearing anything under my dress so I would change in the toilet to avoid commentary. She again said no and that I didn’t need one. My mother seemed to be resistant to these changes, to accepting that I was beginning to experience a different reality as a young woman….that I even was a young woman and just because I didn’t need a cup bra that I should be denied the right to wear certain garments that made me feel ‘womanly’ and safer in a young adolescent world. I also accept that these clothing items are not what makes me a woman, but at the time it was an aspect of maturation I was being denied. We need to healthily support young women in their explorations of their bodies, identity and womanhood. 

Disappearing into dysmorphia

Body dysmorphia creeped into my life alike all my other negative body image beliefs quite early. It feels horrible to say this, yet it is the truth, that my mother is extremely vain, and the first thing, till this day she asks me before “how are you” is “do you think I look old? Am I still beautiful”. I watched her diet, take pills to lose weight and put herself through similar patterns of self abuse such as starvation and incessant devotion to perfecting her physical form. I believe this to be the most influential factor of how I came to think of myself as a woman and how my expectations of how a woman should present herself within society stemmed from, right down to the clothes I wore at times.

In year 7, I asked a friend at a sleepover for a bra she didn’t fit into anymore lingering on an op shop donations pile, and I began to wear it, stuffing tissues in the cups, giving the illusion that I was developing. After a few months I would make my fake breasts grow, by placing more tissues in the soft cups….I did this for years. I finally began to feel safer and happier with myself, but this didn’t stop the comments. One which stuck with me was the term ‘surfboard’ and in year 10, when I was trying on a dress I had made for my textiles teacher to assess, this one particularly well known nasty girl called out in front of the class “not packing much Alana”. I felt complete mortification and grew further resentful towards my unwomanly form. I was convinced up until the age of 19 that I was going to get a ‘boob job’ and end this pain, suffering and shame related to my tiny breasts. My mother would refer to them as ‘bee-stings’ for many years, further fuelling this embarrassment.

These were just a few instances which created a sense of unworthiness and made me feel unwomanly. I would look in the mirror and not understand how I came to be in this body. Throw in the mix the Dolly magazines with models and media you are exposed to at every turn portraying the so called perfect body type, as well as a mother who was not fulfilling the nurturing, guiding mother archetype a young woman needs to grow up resistant to toxic body image beliefs, and we have a child rejecting, loathing and punishing her body.

“I must stay tiny, I must stay the same”

There is one thing I felt I had going for me, and it made me feel safe, and that is how skinny I was. As other girls put on weight around me as a result of puberty and lifestyle choices, I remained the same. A tiny size 6. I also loved my hair and my skin, and I always came into a space of peace and love for my body when I nourished my skin with scrubs and creams, when I blow dried my hair and it was glossy, shiny, soft...it seemed to soften me. However, my expectation to remain the same weight and retain my tiny slender form became a prison I built and existed within my mind. 

I built years of toxic eating patterns, starving myself, binging, purging, excessively exercising. I lied to friends, boyfriends, my parents to find excuses to go to the bathroom and vomit. I have stopped on the side of highways and roads and vomited. I have vomited in bathroom sinks, in the bushes of parks at picnics with friends where there has been so much food to indulge in…. I would pinch myself several times a day, after each meal to see if I had put on weight. I threw away food, precious, nourishing food in a world that is starving, against all my values. I would wake up, grab my skin, feel my stomach, look at myself in the mirror at different angles. I would ask myself superficial questions. Am I changing? Am I beautiful? Am I the same? What can I do to myself to make myself more perfect? What products can I buy? Do I still fit in that skirt? How do I make myself more desirable? More loveable? How do I gain mother’s approval? I would vomit and afterwards look in the mirror and I would see myself thinner than I had been before I purged…..I felt so trapped, so lost, but also in control when I was able to remain thin.

I have on-off experienced bulimia for many years. It began after my obsession with Amy Winehouse at around 15, where I learnt about her troubles with bulimia which ‘inspired’ me to purge too. I all of a sudden could eat anything I wanted knowing I could just bring it straight back up. The height of my bulimia and weight obsession kicked in by 22. I gained weight between the ages of 22 and 25 and I had become curvier than I remembered being. My mother also commented on my weight, my thighs and ass and has laughed at my body many times throughout my life, bringing shame and judgement upon myself.

When I was 16, she came into the bathroom, looked at me naked in the shower and I dropped to the floor covering my body. She laughed and said that I still had bee-stings but my ass was growing bigger. This kind of incessant commentary by her damaged me in ways I couldn’t begin to understand until recently when I started to do some serious work to self heal and shift this life long perspective of myself. I have come to realise and now believe that my experience living with body dysmorphia and bulimia has been a result of me operating under a series of toxic self beliefs I am sure many people experience but we aren’t necessarily talking enough about. To bring order and control into my life, and to also gain self confidence, I needed to control what food did to my body and begin to exercise like a machine and remain thin. I lost 7.5kgs in 4 weeks through an extreme exercise regime. It gave me a sense of accomplishment, and the acknowledgement from others of my drastically changed form drove me to continue with this regime. “I am attractive when I am thin, I am worthy and disciplined when I have achieved a certain level of fitness” became the self belief. This was not sustainable. 

What you see is not what you get

On the exterior, I was fit and healthy. I was eating super clean and I was strong, I have always remained a very positive, fierce and passionate person, achieving wonderful things and I have honestly made the most of my life, but deep down, in my shadow realm, I was also a slave to bulimia and body dysmorphia. I was denying myself beautiful foods and experiences. Mentally I was very unwell, obsessed with my physical form and whether or not others had noticed if I put on or lost weight. The more people told me I was so skinny, the more I wanted to remain that tiny because I felt untouchable and I felt worthy of love and attention from my mother and others. I also felt that I looked like certain models body types I was used to seeing on instagram with millions of likes, who were clearly worthy of love and recognition to my deluded mind. Who were attractive. I even normalised these patterns of self abuse and was so oblivious to how badly they were impacting my health, happiness and relationships because that is the sickness of having an eating disorder and developing severe bulimia, it is your best kept secret you need to maintain in order to remain thin, to remain sane and loveable. 

Years later, I have come to realise why this was the case, and what was driving these patterns of abuse and self loathing as well as unrealistic expectations. It wasn’t until I listened to my inner self, contracted an injury and went on some big soul searching adventures that I began to dismantle these self beliefs and the grasp my eating disorder has had upon me. *I would like to note that I am still not completely healed, and I suffer from patterns of binging and purging still, but I have developed tools to cope with this as well as sourcing support and understanding my triggers.

Waking up, time to bloom

Last year, I made some big changes in my life, beginning with a spiritually enriching journey where I completed an ancient pilgrimage, El Camino De Santiago in my mother's bloodland, Spain, a place I connect to deeply, ancestrally. I finally felt something was very wrong within myself. 

In my 27th year, I lost several friends to drug overdoses and suicide. I was partying a lot myself, pushing my body with training and feeling lost and disheartened with the state of the planet as well as so much grief and despair for the loss of my friends. I was also using drugs to lose weight as well as to numb the pain. I felt suicidal myself and in a call to lifeline (I hold the deepest gratitude for services like this), the person I spoke to expressed to me that all my feelings were so valid and she asked me what I truly valued. I said the forest, nature, sustainability and adventure. She urged me to make a return to the things I loved and I did….I found the strength and returned quite swiftly to forest activism as well as making plans to walk roughly 600kms across the top of Spain as I knew it would not only test me, but give me my freedom and a sense of independence. 

I came back with a fresh perspective, detoxed from drugs, detoxed from a city life, advertising, instagram, models, the pressures you feel to create yourself, to be interesting and wear cool clothes (fashion doesn’t matter but more so utility when you walk 30k’s everyday!), beauty products and familiarity….I began to set in motion an exit from city living which was stagnating my soul and exposing me to a lifestyle which was keeping me from finding peace within myself. On this trip, I also connected to my family once again, and spent time with my angel cousin, a young mother of a 1 year old, who opened up a whole new realm of womanhood.

All of a sudden I was beginning to have reverence. My body led me across mountains, through forests, through rolling hills and ancient towns. I asked it to move each day and it did. My tiny baby cousin taught me that my body is meant to develop! It is meant to change! Because one day it could be a home for a child of my own. And the injury I sustained, which slowed me down, taught me patience and forced me to stop and listen to what my body needed, finally. I also began to talk and express these shadows of mine..

Every day, you can be an alchemist

It is no surprise to me that in my 28th year of life, my Saturn return, that I began to rise from the ashes of the fires I created and bloom. Entering a new realm of my life, I have shed so much and dropped into a deeper space of intimacy with the cells of my body. I stopped placing insane expectations on myself to remain the same weight; the same form. The female body is an incredible thing! It is all adaptive and when I finally learnt this, I allowed my curves to come back and show, no longer malnourishing myself to the point where I could see my chest ribs poking through my starved breasts, demanding my teenage body back. Nowadays, as much as I still love to test my strength, I am choosing to go slow with myself as I am still healing from some of the damage I have done over the years. I practise solitary yoga, dance and light movement. I also love to climb over 30metres up giant eucalyptus trees! Thank you body!  I love to hike, explore and swim. I am moving more gently rather than regimentally and going with the flow of what my body needs. I also now know, and more importantly believe that my self worth and attractiveness is not defined or determined by my weight. 

Here are some self practices I have applied in my life which I feel anyone can connect to, to bring themselves back into their body with love, compassion and absolute reverence for how unique and magical it is that you simply exist and house a mind, a soul, a heart. 

1. Intentional eating

   Being half Spanish, I love food. I love vegetables, I love beautiful artisan cheeses and pickles and I love things that have been made with love. Eat ethically and locally if you can and those foods would have typically been made with love so will in turn take love into yourself. I like to say “Itadakimasu” before each meal, which in Japanese, is a beautiful saying that means “thank you and I humbly receive this food”. It allows me to be present and give thanks to all the life and processes that allowed me to have this food arrive in front of me and bring it into myself in a mindful and present way.

2. Be naked

   Nudity is beautiful. I often swim nude in nature and I love cheekily taking naked photos in natural places. The rawness of it makes me feel connected to the earth where I came from and reminds me that I am a reflection of nature and it’s miraculousness.

3. Ritual

   When I am desiring to manifest certain energy into my life or I am not holding space for myself, I perform rituals. This may be in the form of a bath, where I fill it with flower petals to remind me to soften, to be gentle, to be fluid like water. That my body is mostly water and water transforms and so shall I as I age and perhaps grow a child one day. I also like to write that which does not serve me anymore on a piece of paper, honour it for the lessons it has brought me and release it into the flame, calling forth and alchemising the new self belief I would rather believe.

4. Yoga and light movement

   It took me a long time to learn that I may not be able to run all the time because sometimes my body doesn’t want to and it also needs to heal. Instead of punishing myself, I remind myself that my body may be capable of other things such as yoga and dancing to music in my bedroom and to listen to this. Any movement is good movement! Yoga brings you back to your breath and your heartspace. We can all find 10 minutes in our day to sit, stretch and breathe. Do what feels good for you, but this has honestly helped me to heal and come into a deeper space of connectedness to my body through this act of being present with my presence. 

5. Writing and reflecting

   I have always had books and journals to write in. I love to write down my thoughts, my feelings, my growth and express my life journey through prose and poetry. I believe it is such a powerful marker to come back to past reflections and see how far you have come. It is an amazing outlet and allows us to externalise what we are internalising. 

6. Healthy social media habits

   This was a hard lesson for me...to stop following pages and people who generate toxic self beliefs and unrealistic expectations of how my body should be. I unfollowed so many instagram models and began following things that are actually interesting and nourish my soul. Spiritual poverty is real, and following accounts of people who impoverish your spirit and self worth are not worth following! You do not need it, what you need is self love, acceptance and gratitude for the amazing vessel you exist within! Find strength and unfollow! You can do it!

7. Support/mentorships

   I personally have not had a lot of luck with psychologists etc. over the years, but that is not to say you won’t! But I have recently undertaken a mentorship with an amazing woman Anna-Maria, instagram @inner.unravellings, who has been helping me to holistically move through my deep seeded traumas and do some serious shadow work, starting with healing my mother wound. Her wisdom is medicine. We all connect to different forms of help and support, and I urge you not to give up hope as there is someone out there for you who you will resonate with and who will receive you as you deserve to be received.

8. Flowers and gifting

   I love to pick flowers, frolic in flowers and practise plant spirit medicine. Plants are all healing and possess wisdom. There is a world of knowledge out there for you to dive into, but firstly, listen to your intuition. Nature is my greatest teacher. Also, if you feel called to, give yourself things that you value, whether that is a new beautiful blanket to wrap yourself in or candles or chocolate. You are worthy and so much more than just what you can see! You are like flowers, you are of nature, you are of beauty and creation. 

To leave you, with love

Sharing this and being vulnerable with my story to help others has in turn helped me with my process of healing because some of the darkest parts of myself are no longer a secret. I know that I still have work to do, and that I may have work to do every day for the rest of my life, and that is the truth of life, but when I think of the girl I was, confused, ashamed and trapped in what felt like an endless cycle, which I accepted may be just a part of me, I know that I have alchemised my pain, suffering and patterns of abuse and have turned it into strength and enlightenment of myself and what constitutes true and sacred self worth. I believe we all possess the ability to do this. 

If you struggle with an eating disorder or your body in general, firstly, forgive yourself. It is ok, we have been set up for failure in so many ways and it is not your fault! Remember that we also have the power to shift our awareness of self and create new belief systems through wisdom, community and supporting one another. I leave you with love and send strength to everyone who has ever not been kind to their body. And to my own body, I say “I am sorry, please forgive me for what I have done to you, for you hold my soul and I love you.”

Words by Alana Mountain - 14.10.20