Meeting Myself-Snippets from a Binging and Bulging Mind

By Brenda J Wood

brenda shares her struggles with bulimia, and lets us into her life in a way that not many people could do. sShe tells her story with strength and humour. meeting myself is the story of brenda's journey through bulimia, doubt and unbelief into healing and wholeness in Christ.

One minute you will be giggling at her wonderful sense of humour; the next, you will wipe tears from your eyes.

brenda really and truly gets it! you are not alone.you won't be able to put this book down.
take a glimpse into the dark world of addictions, abuse and eating disorders, and laugh at the same time. your addiction might not be bulimia but if negative thinking, lack of self esteem, self destructive behaviour, the need to hide it, guilt, shame, embarrassment, fear of others finding out; haunt you or someone you love, you will want to read this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brenda J Wood
• Release date: Jun 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476304137

Brenda J Wood

I call myself the ABC girl’ because I’ve survived the alphabet biggies of abuse, bulimia, and cancer.Right now I am working my way through the D’s that is recovering from the loss of my husband a few months ago.I expect to conquer the entire alphabet in my life time with the help of my Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.I am a somewhat average gal, not too tall, not too round, not too old or too young. I am not too outgoing, yet I am definitely not an introvert.I started to write seriously when I learned that journaling could help a person overcome sexual abuse. I thought that is for me! Eventually I started publishing the devotions that fill my journals.Some of those devotionals became the book, Heartfelt Devotionals-366 devotions for common sense living.My devotionals appear regularly at http://everydaychristian.com / and http://daily.presbycan.ca /I tend to write about what is happening in my life. Constant dieting produced the Bible Study, God, Gluttony & You, as well as several health related cookbooks.When Ron passed, I wrote a picture/story book for grieving children, called The Big Red Chair (2011).Meeting Myself-Snippets from a Binging and Bulging Mind (Word Alive Press) is the newest release. As you might expect from the title, it’s the painful, though often funny story of my recovery from abuse and bulimia. I’m honoured that both Michael Bull Roberts and Nikki Rosen read and endorsed it.You might have guessed by now that my next book will be about losing my Honey. I guess you could say that writing saved my life. Oh, I know that without Jesus and my husband Ron, (who was my ‘Jesus with skin’) I’d have sunk. But writing gives me a place to look at my life and recognize how far I’ve come.

Book preview

MYSELF MEETING

Snippets from a Binging and Bulging Mind

Brenda J. Wood

Smashwords Edition

MYSELF MEETING - Copyright 2012 by Brenda J. Wood

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations taken from the Amplified Bible, Copyright 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. Scripture quotations marked (RSV) are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All medical information is drawn only from the author’s personal experience.

For Ron, who walked with me every step of the way.

Chapter One

"Half of life is simply accepting what is."

I didn't know I wasn’t me. How could I? As long as I could remember, I’d never been anyone else. That’s what abuse did to me. Parts of me lay buried so deep that at first glance they seemed not to be there at all.

Feelings? I don’t have any. My life happens in the third person while I watch from afar. Experience teaches me that my feelings aren’t safe. They repeatedly get me into trouble. Self-preservation stands between me and them. For safety’s sake, they are sectioned off and twisted into plaits tighter than a seven-year-old child’s pigtails. I want it to stay that way.

I met these startling words from my journal with shocked surprise. Where did they come from? Apparently, somewhere deep in my being lived a part of me I’d never confronted, let alone embraced. Long-buried memories lived a life sentence there with no parole. I’d seldom visited, but when this journal entry surfaced, it demanded dominance in my mind.

I didn’t want to look that locked place in the face. It was too big to handle. It tripped me up, threw me down, and made me powerless. It turned my short-fused temper into a chocolate frenzy, a gluttonous binge or a bulimic episode.

I know friends and family didn’t understand me or my attitudes, or even my actions. Why, I didn’t even understand them myself. I’d come home from a function wondering why I’d said or done a certain thing. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew I flew on a different wavelength than the rest of the world. How is it that so many people lived inside my brain? Why did I see funny things as tragic and tragic things as laughable? Why on earth would I eat a full course meal, plus dessert, and then come home and eat a loaf of bread? Why was full never enough for me?

My problems looked a little different each time, but to me they could all be solved if I lost some weight. I consistently blamed everything on my eating habits, and the inevitable outcome. Fat. Forget the niceties of calling it overweight. Fat is where it’s at for me.

Have a bout of cancer, or even two? No doubt they stemmed from my bad eating habits.

The first one took me by surprise. An innocent mole on my hand turned out to be stage-two melanoma. Two surgeries later, I found myself joining the sunless generation. No more sitting out with the family on pleasant days. No more picnics in the park. No more traipsing to Florida for a few weeks. No, now I clung to the inside of the house between

10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. and wore sunscreen, sun-repellent hats, and suffocatingly hot clothing the rest of the time. Fun. The next year, I developed a tumour in my parotid gland. The parotid glands are the largest of all the salivary glands. They secrete saliva into the mouth. Saliva helps us chew, swallow, and digest starches. Apparently, mumps actually happen in the parotids.

This second cancer surprised me, but it terrified me, too. Who am I kidding? It terrified me a lot. The diagnosis included warnings that I’d be disfigured, lose my ability to speak clearly, and perhaps even be paralyzed on my left side. The word cancer is scary enough, but I was a motivational speaker with her own company and TV show. What on earth would I do?

As it turned out, after surgery I had only two residuals. The first is a great profile which lets me look ten years younger on my left. This is the side I like to present to the camera!

The second is Frey’s’ Syndrome. I spell it Fry’s Syn-drome. Only a foodaholic like me deserved something with a fat name. My symptoms include redness and sweating near the ear. Here’s how it works. When I eat something really tasty—or even dream, think, or talk about it—my face leaks. I try to be discreet. I really do. However, if you see me swabbing at my dripping face, you can tell the meal was re-ally great. The family loves to tease me with comments like, So, I guess today’s meal was superb. Mom is leaking. Or worse, Gee Mom, if I’d known you hated my cooking that much I’d have ordered pizza.

The correct name for all that wetness is gustatory sweating. As it was explained to me, the parotid nerves have to go somewhere, so they heal to the outside of the face. Just when you thought that was too much information, here’s another tidbit for you: sometimes just smelling a particular food makes your nose run!

Can you follow my thinking? Fat person gets cancer on the hand that feeds her. Fat person gets cancer in the mouth area. Fat person gets Frey’s Syndrome, a fat