Speaker 1: Greetings and welcome to woke f with me Danielle Moody.
Speaker 1: The last year of life amidst the coronavirus outbreak has
Speaker 1: been a life changing one for so many people. This
Speaker 1: week on woke f Daily, I held conversations with two
Speaker 1: inspiring women about the impact COVID nineteen has had on
Speaker 1: people's mental health, and I share my own experiences and
Speaker 1: changes from the last year as well. Fridays on woke
Speaker 1: f Daily are feel Good Fridays, in which I center
Speaker 1: conversations about health and well being in all aspects of
Speaker 1: our lives, whether it's physical, mental, spiritual, or otherwise. These
Speaker 1: conversations are valuable, and I use this weekly podcast as
Speaker 1: an opportunity to share important nuggets from them with you.
Speaker 1: But you can hear every Feel Good Friday show in
Speaker 1: full right now on my Patreon starting at just five
Speaker 1: dollars a month at patreon dot com, Slasha app. This Friday,
Speaker 1: I spoke with inspirational speaker kimberly Read, author of Optimists
Speaker 1: Always Win, about my own experiences with social media and
Speaker 1: gratitude during this pandemic and how we can use this
Speaker 1: time to turn our lessons into blessings. Gratitude has been
Speaker 1: something that over the past year. Over the ability and
Speaker 1: I say this from a place of privilege, being able
Speaker 1: to work from home during this time is a privilege right.
Speaker 1: Not having to put myself into harm's way in order
Speaker 1: to make a living is a privilege. And with that,
Speaker 1: with this time, with this slowdown, have really been able
Speaker 1: to focus on gratitude and how I will be honest, prepandam.
Speaker 1: When you said was twenty twenty year worst year? No
Speaker 1: it was not. And I can tell you that having
Speaker 1: gone through a divorce, my mother being diagnosed with a
Speaker 1: brain tumor, and like moving out on my own, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty for all intensive purposes should have been my worst year.
Speaker 1: But what I continue to say and offer on woke
Speaker 1: app is that it was the year of vision. It
Speaker 1: was an eye opening year for me because what I
Speaker 1: realized is that the hamster wheel that I had been
Speaker 1: living on one that was fueled with measuring myself against
Speaker 1: other people, what they had, what I wasn't doing, how
Speaker 1: I needed to do more, be more, produce more right,
Speaker 1: that my value was in my productivity rather than my personhood.
Speaker 1: Is that through the last year, really being grateful and
Speaker 1: instead of asking the question out into the universe of
Speaker 1: why is this happening to me? I have shifted and
Speaker 1: this has been a powerful shift in my own life
Speaker 1: of asking instead what is this trying to teach me?
Speaker 1: What is this trying to teach me? Because you go
Speaker 1: from a place of woe is me into a place
Speaker 1: of student right into a place of being open because
Speaker 1: you are available to receive the lessons that are being
Speaker 1: presented to you. And I realized that that could only
Speaker 1: have come from removing the blockage of being ungrateful for
Speaker 1: the life that I was living, for the opportunities that
Speaker 1: I have been given, but I couldn't see it. And
Speaker 1: I think that a large part of that, Kimberly, is
Speaker 1: because we spend so much of our lives on social media.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so much of our lives, for better or
Speaker 1: for worse, regardless of our age, whether you're a tween,
Speaker 1: a teen, you know, or in your sixties or seventies,
Speaker 1: people are on social media, and social media has drained us,
Speaker 1: I think in many ways of gratitude. How do you
Speaker 1: manage that? How do you offer both wanting to feel connected? Right,
Speaker 1: the beauty of the connection that social media allows us
Speaker 1: to have but how it also pains us of the
Speaker 1: positive energy and the optimism because they're so much bad
Speaker 1: that is out there. I love what you have just described. Wow,
Speaker 1: I was looking for a pen because you really know that,
Speaker 1: Danielle in your story, right, I've only heard a piece
Speaker 1: of that, but but I can tell your pivot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: from the inside out right. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: with social media in a minute, But you said something
Speaker 1: I think that we have to kind of highlight for
Speaker 1: the listeners here because I read a statistic in USA
Speaker 1: today doing some research for a client in writing a section.
Speaker 1: Most people are more optimistic now than ever. Most people
Speaker 1: seventy percent believe that the worst is behind us. That's
Speaker 1: seventy percent right USA today. So there's there's still thirty
Speaker 1: percent though, which is still a large number that believed
Speaker 1: the opposite of that. And one of the things when
Speaker 1: you talk about social media is that there are no
Speaker 1: greater deceivers than comfort and easy hmm okay, And the
Speaker 1: lessons to your point that you said so eloquently are
Speaker 1: our greatest blessings. There's power in our survival right as
Speaker 1: we all have a rock bottom right, pain changes who
Speaker 1: we are and it has a purpose we know that. Also,
Speaker 1: to your point, you said you're going to take the
Speaker 1: lessons and turn them into blessings. We love that, right.
Speaker 1: We do that because our future cells deserve more, no
Speaker 1: question about it. Right. Because we have to stop delaying
Speaker 1: our joy. We do that. We do that a lot,
Speaker 1: right because to your point about social media, the impact
Speaker 1: of that, we delay our joy because we feel like
Speaker 1: we're not good enough because we see this person person
Speaker 1: and then we look inward and we're not there yet.
Speaker 1: We're not worthy, we're not right. And we have to
Speaker 1: understand that people often project their hurt yea, who's their
Speaker 1: self esteem? That's where those filters, that's where all that
Speaker 1: stuff comes from. Right, And so you always have to
Speaker 1: remember that you're bigger than the situation that you're facing.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that I really got when
Speaker 1: you said about this, you know you ask yourself why me?
Speaker 1: Because I will tell you I kept saying to myself
Speaker 1: when the lights were off of my soul, life was dark,
Speaker 1: my mother and me, everything I remember like it was yesterday,
Speaker 1: and I get terry I think about it is that
Speaker 1: I asked myself, when will I be this woman who
Speaker 1: went through life at one hundred and twenty miles per
Speaker 1: hour in the snow and live life with zest again.
Speaker 1: Why is all this happening to me? Right? I felt
Speaker 1: this like indescribable pain, like I you know, I didn't
Speaker 1: even know how to walk again? Right, And I know
Speaker 1: that some people, most people have experienced experienced that, right,
Speaker 1: whatever it was, or if it felt like life defeated
Speaker 1: you and the pain that held you at its tightest grip,
Speaker 1: right far longer than you could have imagined. Right. But
Speaker 1: it's the here's the thing about resilience and what I
Speaker 1: also talk about in the book, Everyone's season is different.
Speaker 1: You described your season to be my sson was different. Right.
Speaker 1: It is true that people with resilience tend to have
Speaker 1: a higher tolerance for a kind of emotional distress that
Speaker 1: we go through, right generally that that comes from just
Speaker 1: difficult times of valleys in our life, but the more resilient.
Speaker 1: And that's why it's important that you know when we
Speaker 1: walk through the valleys, when we go through tough times
Speaker 1: in our lives, that we that we have that stituitiveness
Speaker 1: now that we all of us survive, right, Because the
Speaker 1: better you are able to tolerate the feelings of the
Speaker 1: dress of scadness, of pain that kind of go hand
Speaker 1: in hand with adversity, and find a way to rebound
Speaker 1: from those setbacks. That's power. Yeah, that truly is that's power.
Speaker 1: We haven't talked enough about the mental health impact of
Speaker 1: this pandemic. It has not been easy to endure the
Speaker 1: last year of changes, restrictions, and pressure from so many
Speaker 1: different places. My friend, freelance journalist Danielle Campamore bravely shared
Speaker 1: her experiences in recovery for an eating disorder and being
Speaker 1: triggered into a relapse by this long turbulent year. I
Speaker 1: had invited Danielle on to discuss toxic masculinity as it
Speaker 1: relates to the racist violence around the country, and you
Speaker 1: can hear that full conversation now on patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash wokeaf But I think it's important that everyone here's
Speaker 1: Danielle courageously share her journey with an eating disorder relapse
Speaker 1: and her continued recovery, especially if you or someone you
Speaker 1: know is going through the same thing. Please share this
Speaker 1: conversation and spread the word with your loved ones that
Speaker 1: help is out there and recovery is possible. And listen
Speaker 1: in to hear how you can support those in your
Speaker 1: life who might be struggling. As we're getting ready to
Speaker 1: I don't even want to call it moving into post pandemic,
Speaker 1: because we still have a pandemic, but how we are
Speaker 1: living in the midst of this pandemic now is changing
Speaker 1: because of vaccination. But a lot has happened over the
Speaker 1: past year. And one of the pieces that you wrote
Speaker 1: for insider dot com was about eating disorders and relapsing
Speaker 1: during this time of quarantine. And you know, there has
Speaker 1: been so much pressure on people to either you know,
Speaker 1: you should come out of quarantine with a new hobby,
Speaker 1: a new job, a new project, a new business, a
Speaker 1: new body, all of these things. And it was an
Speaker 1: added pressure on just trying to survive living in the
Speaker 1: midst of a health pandemic and multiple uprisings and all
Speaker 1: of this angst. Right And you know, for me, the
Speaker 1: folks that listen to me know that I have been
Speaker 1: on my own personal journey over the past year, and
Speaker 1: it has been in and around just my mental health
Speaker 1: and how that was showing up with my weight and overeating.
Speaker 1: And this time, this privileged time that I had was
Speaker 1: the ability to slow down, focus on my health and
Speaker 1: well being and shed like so much, so much baggage,
Speaker 1: so much weight, so much trauma over the past year.
Speaker 1: After I read your piece, I was thinking to myself,
Speaker 1: you know, that was my way of coping. But the
Speaker 1: way in which like social media through memes and videos
Speaker 1: have pressured people into something is wrong with you if
Speaker 1: you're not using this time when for some people just
Speaker 1: curling up on the cow is their useful time, right,
Speaker 1: So talk to us about the ways in which you're
Speaker 1: eating disorder presented itself, but in general, how this moment
Speaker 1: has really affected folks that do suffer and live with ED. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I'll start and preface it by saying that in this
Speaker 1: country we have a very large misunderstanding of eating disorders
Speaker 1: and why they present themselves. It is not about vanity.
Speaker 1: It's not about making it to a certain size, although
Speaker 1: for some people it is. Mostly it's a trauma response
Speaker 1: and an attempt to try and control one aspect of
Speaker 1: your life when other aspects are outside of your control.
Speaker 1: And that's how mine presented itself, probably around twelve years ago.
Speaker 1: I grew up in an abusive household. My father was
Speaker 1: physically abusive, and so I turned to eating disorder to
Speaker 1: try and have something that I can control. It was
Speaker 1: also response to believing a lot of the things that
Speaker 1: my father told me that I wasn't worthy, that I
Speaker 1: wasn't good enough, and so you start to think that
Speaker 1: I'm not worthy of nourishment as well. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of different factors that play into it. But for me,
Speaker 1: the biggest trigger for my eating disorder is when things
Speaker 1: get out of control. I need something that I can control,
Speaker 1: and that is food and how I put food into
Speaker 1: my body and how I take that food out of
Speaker 1: my body. And so when the pandemic hit, my partner
Speaker 1: is an essential worker at Amazon, he was working for
Speaker 1: twelve hours shifts. They weren't providing adequate protection, they weren't
Speaker 1: giving anyone paid time off. We were very scared that
Speaker 1: he was going to bring the literal plague into our
Speaker 1: home and that our two children might get sick. On
Speaker 1: top of that, there was at home e learning for
Speaker 1: my then five year old, now six year old. I
Speaker 1: had a one year old now two year old, and
Speaker 1: so I was also working from home. Everything felt chaotic.
Speaker 1: I was also isolated from my friends and isolated from
Speaker 1: my family, which isolation definitely makes it easier for you
Speaker 1: to engage in disordered eating because no one really can
Speaker 1: pay attention, no one can really spot the signs. And
Speaker 1: I relapsed very quickly, and I'm still dealing with the
Speaker 1: aftermath of that. I'm not in recovery right now. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to be. But so all of these factors, from
Speaker 1: isolation to the loss of control, additional stress, anxiety, depression,
Speaker 1: all of these things really puts people who are in
Speaker 1: recovery or at risk for developing disordered eating habits at
Speaker 1: a higher risk. And we've seen that play out. There's
Speaker 1: been studies that shown that eating disorders have increased during
Speaker 1: the pandemic and are likely to increase once, as you said,
Speaker 1: the nation starts to open up again and people finally
Speaker 1: feel like they can try and get help. And there's
Speaker 1: a worry that mental health experts will become overwhelmed and
Speaker 1: unable to actually provide adequate care to those people who
Speaker 1: are going to need help. And so it was very sorry.
Speaker 1: It was very difficult, I think, to see people joking
Speaker 1: about the pants like COVID fifteen or gaining ebomic weights,
Speaker 1: because for a lot of people it's far more than
Speaker 1: a joke. And make no mistake, an eating disorder is
Speaker 1: the deadliest mental health issue out there. More people die
Speaker 1: from eating disorders than any other mental health problem, and
Speaker 1: so it's life or death for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't elude me also that it is a
Speaker 1: severe health issue. And it just goes back to our
Speaker 1: inability to talk about weight, weight gain, weight law different
Speaker 1: types of bodies. When we're seeing now fat phobia playing
Speaker 1: out in people gaining weights. People would look at me
Speaker 1: and assume that I'm healthy. I am not healthy, but
Speaker 1: just because at a certain weight, they assume that I am.
Speaker 1: So again, it's a lot of misconceptions. It's baked into
Speaker 1: the fabric of this society that's so obsessed with women
Speaker 1: or female presenting bodies, and it's exhausting. It really is
Speaker 1: just another source of total exhaustion. What do you recommend,
Speaker 1: you know, what are what have you been doing? And
Speaker 1: what do you recommend that people do that are struggling.
Speaker 1: I know that, you know from my therapist when online.
Speaker 1: She actually just recently got rid of both of her offices.
Speaker 1: She's like, this is just kind of gonna be the way.
Speaker 1: I don't foresee me sitting down across from anybody, you know, again,
Speaker 1: in a closed space, like there's just no reason we've
Speaker 1: been doing fine on FaceTime. UM. I know that there
Speaker 1: are lots of virtual you know, UM therapy groups. UM,
Speaker 1: but what what what can people do who who are
Speaker 1: in the midst of struggle, who are not at the
Speaker 1: recovery stage but are very aware of what is happening
Speaker 1: and want to do something but don't know what to
Speaker 1: do right. I think that's the key point, and it's
Speaker 1: wonderful that you pointed it out. Is first of just
Speaker 1: doing the work to be aware of it. Sometimes even
Speaker 1: that step is very difficult, But if you are at
Speaker 1: that step and you are aware and want to try
Speaker 1: and make it steps to get into recovery. I think
Speaker 1: a very key component, at least for myself as being
Speaker 1: honest with the people around me and be honest with
Speaker 1: my partner and asking him to hold me accountable. It
Speaker 1: means being honest with my friends in the group chat
Speaker 1: and saying, hey, you know, I haven't had any food
Speaker 1: and X number of days, or I've been purging X
Speaker 1: number of days. I just need to talk about it
Speaker 1: openly and giving and empowering your support system to to
Speaker 1: be there for you and to hold you accountable. This
Speaker 1: can be difficult. A lot of times people don't know
Speaker 1: how to speak about eating disorders in a way that
Speaker 1: isn't triggering. Buys and ask that people who are in
Speaker 1: that support support system and that's a support space, to
Speaker 1: do some research on how you can best approach someone
Speaker 1: or talk to them about it, because discussing their weight,
Speaker 1: discussing how they look, that ain't it. That won't help. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think that that's a big step. Another one
Speaker 1: is go online. There are plenty of mental health care
Speaker 1: professionals who are doing visits, you know, virtually. There is
Speaker 1: even tech support groups, any of those things where you
Speaker 1: can just text somebody, you know. It's a lot of
Speaker 1: it is just talking and being willing to be vulnerable
Speaker 1: about this specific part of your health and wellness. I
Speaker 1: think is a very big one. And then the hardest
Speaker 1: part for me, but when I think is pivotal is
Speaker 1: to also give yourself some grace and everything that we do,
Speaker 1: especially now, but when it comes to this, I felt
Speaker 1: so much shame when I relapsed. I'd worked so hard
Speaker 1: to have gotten to that place of recovery, and that
Speaker 1: place was imperfect, but it took a lot of work,
Speaker 1: and so I was very hard on myself. I still am,
Speaker 1: and that all that does is just feed that issue.
Speaker 1: It just makes it that much more harder to get
Speaker 1: back on that road to recovery. So give yourself grace,
Speaker 1: give yourself love. It's okay if you aren't where you
Speaker 1: wanted to be. It's okay if you took some steps backwards,
Speaker 1: because you're still here and you're still ending. And that's
Speaker 1: something that I have to tell myself every day, and
Speaker 1: I would encourage people to tell themselves that too. It's okay,
Speaker 1: you haven't failed, You're You're just still walking and moving forward.
Speaker 1: As I often say, the problems that existed before COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen were only exacerbated by the outbreak of this global
Speaker 1: health pandemic, and that includes fat phobia, which was already
Speaker 1: rampant in our society, especially with the expectations placed on
Speaker 1: women from a very young age. There is no vaccine
Speaker 1: for our various social ills. As we fight through our
Speaker 1: days and hopefully strive to make this country better for
Speaker 1: all Americans, know that there are methods and techniques to
Speaker 1: help you make it through whatever it is that you
Speaker 1: were dealing with. And I hope that this podcast has
Speaker 1: been able to help you in some way on your journey.
Speaker 1: Once again, please share this with your loved ones and
Speaker 1: use whatever insight you may have gained to help yourself
Speaker 1: and those around you. To hear more from me and
Speaker 1: my fabulous gas five days a week, every single week,
Speaker 1: do check me out on patreon dot com slash wokef
Speaker 1: and to the entire Woke a F Nation. Power to
Speaker 1: the people and to all the people. Power, get woke
Speaker 1: and stay woke as fuck.