Like most everybody, I was taught many mixed signals regarding food as a child.  I was taught food was the “cause” of my “problem” long before I personally felt I had a problem.  I was taught food was a soother, a healer and a salve.  Food was the center of family sharing, discussions, celebrations, disagreements, and announcements. 

We didn’t eat based on hunger, and the quantity we consumed and when we stopped wasn’t based on physical satiation.  We ate on a schedule determined by school bells, Daddy’s work schedule, Mom’s feelings, agenda and activity level and if nothing else, the clock.  We stopped eating when what was on the table or being discussed at the table no longer held our attention.

I come from a family that, like most families, loved food.  Mom was a housewife born in the south who baked a couple times a week and cooked an overwhelming abundance of southern, “comfort” foods daily.  Food was her way of loving her family, of providing for them, of nurturing them.  It was a big part of her identity and her purpose in life.  Food was love.

I was the only “chubby” one in the family.  When I was 10 my Mom took me to see a doctor we’d never been to before about a situation totally unrelated to my weight.  We arrived and the nurse took my temperature, and blood pressure.  I didn’t think much about the number on the scale - 131 (I was 5’ tall and that made me just over the border line between normal and overweight for a child my age.)  I jumped up on the exam table with a big smile on my face.  I was a very happy kid and especially that day because I loved missing school, meeting new people, being out and about on a school day, just me and Mom. 

Then this very old, large, white haired, man in a long white doctor coat came into the room, holding my chart and scowling.  He took one look at me and his first words to me in front of my Mother were “You’re a fat, disgusting little girl.  Why don’t you lose some weight?” 

I was shocked.  I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t cry, I just sat there with my mouth open.  I had been taught to respect and mind authorities, and I didn’t understand why he would say something so mean to a kid he didn’t know.  His words seared me. 

My Mom was as flabbergasted as I was, but back then Doctors were considered Gods.  Her indignation was mixed with shock, but we stayed for him to diagnose my rash, giving my Mom a prescription for ointment, along with a his personal healthy dose of grief for my “weight problem”. 

I don’t remember him having any good advice or solution to my “issue” only lots of blame . . . and admonitions to stop me from eating . . . as if that were possible.  Then Mom hustled me out of there as quickly as possible. 

My point in telling this memory is in what happened next.  My Mom truly was mortified, and so deeply hurt for me.  She was also filled with guilt for delivering me to such an obnoxious human being.  After all, she felt it was her job to protect me from being hurt, not deliver me personally to an abuser.

So she did the only thing she could think of on the way home to “make it all better” she stopped at a bakery and let me pick out anything I wanted in the whole fragrant, mouth watering, mind boggling store.  I don’t even remember what I bought or how it tasted.  But I remember her buying a few items, specialties she normally wouldn’t buy or bake, probably to sooth her own raw feelings. 

And I remember vividly going from feeling hurt, confused and wounded to awed (by the selection), delighted (I’d been allowed to choose anything, we children rarely got to choose) and loved by a Mother who was soothing me the only way she knew how. 

I learned food really was a soother, a healer, a salve.

Yes, I grew up with lots of mixed messages about food.  It was love.  It was my enemy.  It was comfort.  It was revenge.  It was delicious and comforting.  It made my thighs fat.  And being taught those beliefs wasn’t my parents fault.  It wasn’t anyone’s fault.  It is simply the way we’ve together created our society to believe.  All the erroneous ideas about food, eating, fitness and health have only gotten more confusing, and more complicated (and more profitable) over the last 20, 30, 40 years.

Many years later, as an Aber I started to see why I choose to come into the vibration and the circumstances of this life.  I began to see how my family, my Mom, my Dad and I co-created my weight and food confused life.  I saw generations of lackful thinking, fear based mentality, and inaccurate and conflicting information culminating in my experience.  Experienced because over time I eventually bought into the philosophies being constantly projected toward me.

I saw why I continued to be the only one to gain weight, even though I was the most active child, and we all ate the same things and in about the same amounts.  I realized I had been the only one who had been labeled with a “eating problem” from infancy.  I saw the vibration of it, the vibration of fear which had been projected into my vibration long before I even consciously knew what that involved. 

I looked back as inevitably, over the years, as eventually both my sisters and my Mother and Father dealt individually with weight issues in their own lives.  And it was clear to see how through their vibrations, their focus on me, they had attracted it to themselves too.

I realized it was no wonder when Mom was looking for a new doctor for her children, that we would all attract someone like Dr. Sour (OK, not his real name).  He was simply a reflection of exactly what my parents/families biggest worries/vibration had been about me.  He was a mirror to confirm exactly what my parents believed the world outside our home would think of me.  And vibrationally I was creating it right along with them.

In fact, their fear about my weight and health ensured that any doctor who was loving, understanding and helpful was not available to us vibrationally.

In looking back I realized that until I found Abe and LOA, I lived exactly the life that their fears . . . and my buying into them had co-created and pre-paved for me.

Luckily my Abe awareness also taught me that once I became aware of the nature of the Universe, I was given the ability to choose my beliefs and what I create with them.  I came to understand it doesn’t matter what anyone in the world thinks about food or fitness or my body, or me.  The only beliefs which create my experience now . . . are the ones I hold now.  There is such incredible creative power in that.

Now Abe says that the past doesn’t matter, all you have to do is turn your attention to a better feeling thought, and I agree with them to a degree . . . feeling good is important.  Looking for a better feeling thought has helped, but it was a stepping stone.  It hasn’t done as much toward changing my vibration about food, weight, and my body as they imply it would. 

For me, I had to go back to some of those old patterned beliefs and see them for what they were.  Walking through a day, feeling happy overall is wonderful, but it hasn’t made my weight drop off.  It hasn’t changed my food desires or made me want to get out and exercise.  It didn’t physically change my body, not as long as I was still vibrating at the same level.

I realized to release the weight, it requires never again vibrating in the way that created what I am experiencing today.  And that hasn’t been so simple for me.  I found I had a set point vibration which had become my default position, and returning to that old vibration was simply too easy for me.  I had to look at it, and take responsibility for it in order to change it for good.

I also had to take responsibility for unconsciously creating, and cocreating my experience along with the people I loved most.  I had to get to a point where I could write about Dr. Sour and not feel anger or pain or frustration, but only co-creation.  I had to get to where I could write about both him and the situation with only forgiveness, understanding, co-creational acceptance and release.

I only spent about a half hour of my life with the man and yet he had a huge impact on me.  I needed to see that as a powerful creative event.  I needed to see him not as my enemy, but as an extension of Source.  Someone creating his life just like me, who I attracted for a half hour to blend perfectly and confirm what I was vibrating at the time.

And once I learned to accept the past, to take responsibility for my creation of it, to forgive and release it, I knew for the first time, true freedom from it.

I’m still finding things to forgive, accept responsibility for and release from my past.  But I no longer think of doing that as painful burdens to be released.  I see it now as exploring wonderful aspects of my blessed life and amazing adventure.  I see it as looking back to unearth jewels from my past for my understanding and expansion now.

And nothing feels better than taking some old painful memory from the past and dragging it into the sunlight, shaking off the dust, and seeing it for its real truth.  An event that happened for a small period of time which I attracted to inspire me in different ways throughout the rest of my life.

There is nothing so empowering than seeing my part in it and forgiving myself and others involved in it.  To look at how it shaped my past and to consciously choose if it continues to shape my now . . . and my blessed tomorrow.  There is nothing like feeling the incredible transforming freedom only received from learning from it and letting it go.

Deep love,
Tigerlily