Whether it be weight stigma, health issues, or dysregulated eating, grief and loss can often be centered around the relationships we have with ourselves. “If My Plate Could Talk” explores the connections between food, weight, health, and trauma and frameworks for understanding the conversations we have with ourselves, thus begging the question: “If my plate could talk, what would it say to me?”
Doctor Charryse Johnson is a licensed clinical mental health therapist, mindfulness practitioner and author. We discuss the intersection of all things grief, loss, trauma, or unresolved areas of pain. If this is your first time here, I'm so glad you came.
This week has been crazy. Tomorrow, my son graduates. And where it made a personal connection to me is my body. We've been talking the last several weeks about kind of overlooked types of grief. Here are four different types of shadow grief.
LZ: I want you to consider where in your life right now do you feel like a dream that you had for yourself or for your family or the expectations that you have out of yourself or others feels like it's been shattered. There's a lot of layers there.
LZ: Name whatever dream or expectation you are experiencing. Let whatever feelings it brings, anger, frustration, denial, uncertainty, let that emotion come to the surface. Be honest with yourself about how what you're grieving is impacting you. redefine your dream and your expectations.
What's most important is how we show up for ourselves. Even through the hard days, you might need to show up differently. Figure out what you need today and you go get it and you give it to yourself. Have an amazing rest of the week.
Hello, conscious fear. It's Friday and our opportunity to get together and discuss if my plate could talk, the intersection of all things grief, loss, trauma, or unresolved areas of pain. If the word trauma is too much for you and how that may be impacting the way we nourish ourselves and the way we view ourselves. If this is your first time here, I'm so glad you came. I'm Doctor Charryse Johnson, a licensed clinical mental health therapist, mindfulness practitioner and author, and I am sweating profusely.
I just got off the treadmill. It was great workout. Let me out myself. As a neurodivergent. I was, you know, I had a really tight window this morning and could not downstairs find my socks. So I had a barefoot workout, which is actually good for your feet and your ankles. But it was just funny. I'm going to post a picture on social media later just to say, you know, do whatever it takes as you're coming in. I love those of you who are saying good morning. If you're here watching on replay, say good afternoon, good evening, and as always, let me know where you are in the world so that I can feel like we are connected in that way.
And for our kind of anchoring question this morning, I want you to consider, what do you need today? It's a question that I have been dwelling on this week, because it has been a week. I was talking to a friend of mine and I was like, this week? And she was like, girl, what's up, Buffalo? And she went and checked and she said, oh, indeed. Hello, Charleston. Mercury is in retrograde. I said, oh, well, that makes sense. What's up, Springfield, NJ. I was like, that. That makes all the sense. And so now I feel a little better, but it has been crazy.
Hello, Fayetteville. So we've been talking the last several weeks about kind of overlooked types of grief and in particular four different types of shadow grief. And I'm going to slightly go off the beaten path and then kind of get us back on because I want to share something with you. Hello, Burlington, Wisconsin. Tomorrow, my son graduates. And I thought I could get through this story without crying. And I already feel the tears coming up. And he said yesterday, hello, Maryland. Hello, Michigan.
Hello, Queen City. I'm just so glad that you and dad are still here. And that just wrecked me. The reason why it wrecked me is when I graduated from my undergraduate program, my mom was dying. She did. She was able to attend my graduation. She was probably on her fourth round of several rounds of chemo. Like, this was the fourth time she had chemo, her skin was dark. She had no hair other than the hair on her head. And that just wrecked my soul. And where it made a personal connection to me is my body.
Right now is in a season that is hard. And I don't always welcome these moments, these experiences, because that's the reality of things, right? And so what had been going through my mind was, I'm gonna show up to his graduation, and I don't look the way I want to look in pictures. And in that moment when he made that statement, it made me go, what? I have some perspective. Charryse, you don't have cancer. You're not going through chemo. You can go to your son's graduation and sit there and to. As much as I know you'll continue to be a part of his life, you are winning.
Nobody cares about the picture the way you care about the picture. And I thought that fit so well with our focus of today around our loss of dreams and expectations. There's. There's a lot of layers there. You know, when I was a little girl, my dream was that my kids would have grandparents at their special moments. And because of my age and because of different things and because they're both gone, they don't. All they have is us. My expectation is always that I am going to do my best to present a certain way.
And yet there will always be factors that are outside of my control that take those expectations that I have of myself and say, no, girl, you can't focus on that right now. So I want to share that. To say, it does not matter how long the loss has been. It does not matter what the layers of loss are that you grieve. There are also moments where even a beautiful and great situation can be layered with, I thought it was going to look this way and it's different and you can't do anything about it. So I want you to take a moment.
Your story may not be as intense as mine, but I want you to consider where in your life right now do you feel like a dream that you had for yourself or for your family or the expectations that you have out of yourself or others feels like it's been shattered. Because I can also be honest and say that my plate has wanted to show all of the layers of what I have grieved this week. And that is just one story out of many. I could keep you here all day with the layers of grief and loss and expectations that weren't met just this week and recognizing where my mouth wanted to go in order to try and soothe those losses.
But I'm also thankful because I have amazing community that allowed me to share in real time, that encouraged me, and that the anchors of discipline towards movement are a part of my life. So I could wake up and go to the treadmill instead of waking up and going to the refrigerator or waking up and going to the donut store. Not big on donuts, but you know, just as the analogy, I'm so grateful for that. If you are in a season where you can acknowledge, yeah, there are some dreams that really hurt because they're not possible anymore.
You don't feel like they're possible. There are some expectations that you feel like have not been met and you don't understand why. Or maybe you do and it doesn't make it any better. As I compose myself, let's talk about how you move through them. One, name them. It was important for me to come and name it to you because we're community. And for those of you that are sharing, this is a safe space to do so. That's why this is created. You don't have to share, but there is something about being able to name whatever dream or expectation, whether current, past, or constant, you are experiencing.
Maybe you dreamed of a particular job that you didn't get. Maybe you dreamed of a particular relationship that didn't come together the way that you thought. Maybe you dreamed that your kids honestly would turn out a certain way and you can't understand how they got here. Maybe you had expectations of a friend or loved one and they continue to disappoint you. Maybe you thought this season of your life would be a certain way right now, and you're looking at it and you're like, how did I get here and how do I get out?
Name it. Because you can't work through it until you give it voice. And whether you give that voice in this space, whether you give that voice on paper, or just whether you whisper it out loud to yourself, name it. Number two, feel it. Let whatever feelings it brings, anger, frustration, denial, resistance, uncertainty, let that emotion come to the surface so that it doesn't stay underneath and eat at you and become something that you stuff through compensatory behavior, such as working, such as not eating, such as eating, such as pretending that you're more happy than you really are, such as pushing other people away.
Isolating can even be a compensatory behavior, such as believing that you need to show up and be perfect in a certain way. Over exercising. It could be a number of different things. As a side piece of reflection, you may even ask yourself, well, what are the things that I notice that I do when I don't want to feel an underlying emotion or experience? When something comes up that I am not ready to accept, what do I notice I do instead of feeling it? That's important work number three, accept it. I am sitting here in truth and having to accept that this is the body that I have today and I have to be okay with it.
And I have to quiet the parts of my mind that want to make it bigger than it needs to be. And that's work and that's effort. Some days are easier than others. Most days I'm pretty good. But we're all human, and I think it's important for you to recognize that. I think sometimes we see people and we think, oh, I bet they never have issue with that. We are all human. We all hurt. We all have hard days, and we all have chatter that we sometimes have to work hard to quiet. You name it, you feel it, you accept it.
And then be honest with yourself. Be honest with yourself about how what you're grieving in terms of dreams and expectations is impacting you in subtle or significant ways. I'll tell you something that the rest of the world doesn't know yet. There's nothing in this world like having a tough body image season and then being asked next week to go to Lululemon to be an ambassador and try on an outfit and have a photo shoot. Lord, you're funny. I wanted to say no, but I knew it was important to say yes for multiple reasons.
And I had to be honest with myself about that conflict and make a choice. Be kind to yourself through the process of managing, naming, and feeling that loss, that dream deferred, or that dream that feels denied. And then my favorite part, redefine your dream and your expectations. And that doesn't mean that you're settling. It doesn't mean that you weren't worthy of the dream and the expectation that you had of yourself or others. But redefining it is a way that we reclaim our harmony around the situation.
Oh, this person didn't meet my expectations. I'm going to have to redefine what I expect out of them, or I'm going to continue to be disappointed and hurt. Oh, this is a season where X and X and Y and Z are going on with my body. So I'm going to have to redefine my dream and my expectation based on what's truly possible and based on the current context. Of things. I'll go through those again. Name it, feel it, accept it. Be honest with yourself, be kind to yourself and redefine the dream or expectation.
And I will say this, regardless of what it is for you know that you are always worthy to be seen, to be loved, and to have your needs met. And when you're with the right people, that will happen. Here's the good news in my story. My son, he could care less what I look like. My husband loves me through all my waves of change. It's in my head, and that's true for a lot of us. Maybe that's true for you, that we hold ourselves through different standards and expectations and there are moments where we have to work through that and keep showing up.
I will do the photo shoot next week proudly. Will there be a loud or soft voice at the time? Who knows? But I'm still showing up. I'm still showing up for those that don't have the perfect body. I'm still showing up for myself. Because we can be grieving and working and healing and operating and fighting and being seen all at the same time. So I always leave you with this question as you think about your weekly and any parts of you that resonate in your own way with what I've shared today. If your plate could talk, and we mean plate metaphorically in terms of what you're carrying and plate tangibly in terms of what you have been eating.
What is it trying to tell you? My plate has been, ooh, chatting it up this week, metaphorically. And I'm listening and I'm adjusting and I'm loving and I'm fighting and I'm naming and I'm feeling. And it's also quite possible that I'll wake up tomorrow and it doesn't feel so heavy. It will. Because it would have been amazing to have my mother at my son's graduation and at my daughter's graduation. But I know that she's looking down and she is excited. And as long as I'm here, she and her love continues to live on.
People are going to let us down. Situations are going to be challenging. But what's most important is how we show up for ourselves. So my encouragement to you is to show up for yourself. Even through the hard days, you might need to show up differently. So going back to that original question, what do you need today? Maybe different tomorrow. Maybe you even need to say, what do you need this morning? Because it may change as you go throughout the day, but figure out what you need today and you go get it and you give it to yourself.
And remember that there is no amount of food that you can put on your plate that will ever truly bring you the peace that comes through the healing work that we do when we sit with ourselves, when we name, when we feel and when we're honest. As you go throughout the day, if this is a hard day, if this is a day where you feel like you are really experiencing a lot of grief, come back. There will continue to be various providers that are here today that are talking through different areas or you can look into other days.
Type in the words for what you're feeling and naming and a plethora of opportunities are going to come up for you to watch lives and replays to nourish your soul. So as you go throughout the day, don't just stuff your belly, nourish your body. And I look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for being my safe space and letting me come to you and my truth and my honesty and us reflect together. Have an amazing rest of the week. Bye.
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