The Rose Garden, Chapter 16 – The Weight of Sorrow

Clothing rack of women’s jeans, Source https://www.publicdomainpictures.net, Author Peter Griffin, (CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)

“…Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4: 4).

It is late in the season.  I wander from one clothing rack to another, searching for my size.  The coats have been picked through.  There are few remaining.  It is unlikely I will be able to find a coat that fits, let alone flatters, me.

Please, God, I pray.  Please, let me find something.  I promise to lose weight.  I promise to try harder.

One scar of the incest has been of such magnitude in my life that it warrants separate discussion.  This is weight control.  I have prayed as fervently in the Women’s Department as in any cathedral.

For an abuse victim, the difference between size 8 and size 18 is no mere matter of discipline.  A child who is molested feels like offal.  Whatever impulses drive her abuser, she is less than nothing in his eyes, and — despite his soothing words to the contrary — she knows it.

Against this backdrop, weight often becomes a problem.  Eating disorders are common — anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, etc. [1][2][3][4].  In this, I am typical.

Distress, Defense, Punishment, and Shame

Food is a natural source of comfort for the sexually abused child, maladaptive when weight becomes an issue.

Weight serves many purposes.  It is a distress signal:  silent evidence of the molestation, the secret exposed.  It is a defense, the child’s feeble attempt to create a physical barrier against the predator; later, an emotional barrier to adult relationships.

Increased weight is a psychological way of hiding from rejection.  Failed relationships can be blamed on weight.  However painful this approach may be, it is less painful than rejection of the “true self.”

Weight is punishment for misplaced guilt.  The little girl cannot be forgiven for having engendered the violation (as if she did), and cannot forgive herself for being “unlovable.”  So her anger turns inward, with depression the result.

The cycle repeats itself — over and over — as weight is gained, lost, and regained.   In the process, weight becomes an alternate focus for the shame of the abuse.

All this is unconscious.

A Symbol of Rage and A Test

As the child grows into a woman, weight takes on even more shades of meaning.  It embodies rage at men; shouts, in effect, “Damn them all!  They’re vapid and shallow, anyway — unable to recognize real worth.”

It serves as a test for the woman.  It serves as a test for the man she hopes will love her.  It serves as punishment for the woman’s failure to be lovable, yet again.

Food as Love – An Analgesic and An Anesthetic

Food offers instant gratification while love, in her experience, does not.

Food is, of course, nourishment.  As the body requires food, so the soul requires love.  Love is vital.  The soul craves it.  Deprived of love, the soul starves.  Food becomes the unsatisfactory substitute for love denied, an analgesic against the pain.

In terms of our anger at having been abused, food is more like an anesthetic.  Unable to express that anger appropriately at the time, we forced it down with food, then “forgot” why we were eating (or denying ourselves food) so compulsively.  Attempts to diet are futile because they do not address the underlying rage.

Distrust of God

While we may not think in such terms, at a deeper level, a disordered relationship with food by abuse victims reflects a distrust of God.

Since our needs were not met as children by those who stood in God’s shoes, we have little reason to believe that God will meet them now.  So we try to meet them ourselves, try to assure that we will at least have as much (or little) food as we want.

But we cannot satisfy our hunger — our desire not only for love and justice, but for control over our own lives — since that hunger is emotional rather than physical.

God is capable of filling our needs.  However, we must first put our trust in Him.  For abuse victims, that can be a lifelong challenge.

All this applied to me; took me decades to decipher. 

I recall, on one of the rare occasions my mother was home with us as children, voraciously downing slice after slice of the toast she had made for me.  By age ten, powdered sugar all over my face, I was gagging down at a single sitting each week the entire box of jelly donuts my grandmother would purchase.

My weight shot up sharply during my teens, and has been a problem ever since. Whenever I do manage to lose weight, I feel almost immediately compelled to regain it.  A half century of dieting has not changed this.  If I go back up a size, I relive the agonizing years during my teens when I possessed no clothes.

I have had my share of silk blouses, used to relish red “power suits,” and once owned a white bikini.  Yet, it is in sweats or dark and frumpy clothing that I feel safest.

Sadly, we cling to our chains.

Add to this confusion, prescription steroids and other necessary medications impacting appetite and metabolism, along with the complication of a codependent mother.

Codependence

Without question, the intensity of my personality is, in large measure, the product of an absolute inability on either parent’s part to recognize the word “no.”  Adult child of an alcoholic that she was, my dear mother was unrelenting in offering what she perceived as assistance, no matter how unwelcome.

Among other things, she pressed food unceasingly on us.  “No thanks, Ma.  No, really, Ma.  No, I’m not hungry, Ma.  No, Ma, please.  I’m trying to diet.  Nooo.  For God’s sake, no!”  All went unheard.  I more than once left my mother’s house after a visit, laden with enough victuals to support a trek across country by covered wagon.

Food was the concrete expression of love to my mother.  It could not be refused without jeopardizing the value of her existence.

In these misguided efforts to assist, my mother was dogged beyond belief — this, despite the fact that, in other situations, she could be so shy that not even the gentlest encouragement would prompt her to speak.  My own efforts to be seen/heard are the reverse of that shyness on her part.

“May I ask von kveschan?” was the preface my mother interposed to any question she raised.  “Ve’ll see,” was my mother’s meek way of indicating disinterest in (or disagreement with) a proposed activity or course of action.

“Everything’s un’ control,” was her usual response to an inquiry about the status of things.  The irony was not lost on me that this sounded like the more accurate description, “Everything is uncontrolled.”

“Now, vhich vay?  I follow you,” was my mother’s touching declaration of dependence.  “Slow down!  Vill you?” was her frustrated protest when we spoke too rapidly for her to comprehend.

What was perhaps Ma’s signature phrase has been an inspiration to me.  “I do it mein vay.”

The efforts to assist; constant apologies, reflecting a vastly exaggerated sense of responsibility; a childlike neediness and, at times, cloying affection.  All of these qualities on my mother’s part have alternately called up compassion and rage from me.

The compassion is self-explanatory.  The rage — today greatly diminished — stems from the fact I was required to play the role of mother to her child; was not adequately protected against my father.  That dual betrayal is the tragedy of incest.

Enough time has passed that I can let go of anger.  My mother was emotionally fragile.  Molestation was not, during my childhood, as well-publicized a problem as it is today.  My father was careful to hide it, certainly while my grandmother was alive.

My mother saw and heard only what she was able to process.

Still, I cannot fully overcome my mother’s habits of living.  Regrettably, codependence is a communicable disease.  As with issues of weight, certain habits I have resisted — indeed, deplored — since childhood, characterize my own behavior today.  I can apologize for the rain.

My heart though remains my best feature.

—

[1]  McLean Hospital, “Understanding Child Abuse and Its Effects on Mental Health”, 8/18/23, https://www.mcleanhospital.org/essential/effects-child-abuse.

[2]  National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information, “Exploring the Link between Emotional Child Abuse and Anorexia Nervosa:  A Psychopathological Correlation” by Tehrima Rai, et al, August 2019, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6777933/.

[3]  CloudFront.net, “Sexual Abuse and Eating Disorders” by Stephen Wonderlich, PhD et al, 1/28/97, https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/45033407/Relationship_of_Childhood_Sexual_Abuse_a20160423-27161-1h3fvzj-libre.pdf?1461475897=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DRelationship_of_Childhood_Sexual_Abuse_a.pdf&Expires=1732602144&Signature=Fv1y0Y7q8btYL9Ax~pj4EnRxpdgtDUrctXRif7qMpfPof17oLtc6uHNLgYrW2ZQ8rqBU1NTAADRAIQhfUt3ELvqyQoKyjrLV1ifQsZz8JaoCIHw46u~UzKLWrQDXdu~y2E0sIFZ9KQVoCISVQVgyP8NsVsPcpi7ZSh~8jPe1LpsSAVp0-mdSYA-xJw9HE-r5RYddkFkgA6FTKwIiEqJaeSl0aqGEeH4Fgbfo3FSBzA5etZAWCLyNnd9GusRmmxOI9dsUYHoDim57mm7jM~s78RHj-OuRv4LIA8r7Vs~s47m0B3DSk7lozJFDphB0A9oXQW3EfwWWBAlLSDwlmhUCBg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA.

[4]  National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information, “The association between and overweight and obesity in young adults:  the mediating role of food addiction” by Samuel Offer, Elise Alexander, et al, 7/30/22, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9803752/.

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