The Choice

stay in the situation, to develop the only thing I had left, to look within
for the part of me that no Nazi could ever murder. To ĕnd and hold
on to my truest self. Maybe I’m not losing skin. Maybe I am only
stretching. Stretching to encompass every aspect of who I am—and
have been—and can become.
When we heal, we embrace our real and possible selves. I had a
patient who was obese, and she was cruel to herself every time she saw
her reĘection or stepped on a scale. She called herself a cow,
disgusting. She believed her husband found her disappointing and her
children found her embarrassing, that the people who loved her
deserved better. But for her to be the person she wanted to be she ĕrst
had to love herself for who she was. We sat in my office and I would
ask her to pick a part of her body—a toe, a ĕnger, her stomach, her
neck, her chin—and talk about it in a loving way. It looks like this, it
feels like this, it is beautiful because ... It was awkward at ĕrst, even
painful. It was easier for her to bash herself than to spend time
attentively, willingly, in her own skin. We went slowly, we went
gently. I began to notice little changes. She came to see me one day
wearing a beautiful bright new scarf. Another day she had treated
herself to a pedicure. Another day she told me she had called the sister
she had grown distant from. Another time she had discovered that she
loved walking on the trail around the park where her daughter played
soccer. As she practiced loving all parts of herself, she discovered more
joy in her life, and more ease. She also began to lose weight. Release
begins with acceptance.
To heal, we embrace the dark. We walk through the shadow of the
valley on our way to the light. I worked with a Vietnam veteran who
came home desperate to resume the life he had before the war. But he
returned with physical and psychological wounds: He was impotent,
he couldn’t ĕnd a job. His wife le him. When he sought my help, he
was lost in the chaos of divorce and what felt to him like the death of