Bulimia tried to steal my voice.

I’m all in or all out. That’s kind of funny to say especially because I am about to unpack binge eating and bulimia. Also, this picture above is kind of great because it looks like I'm singing to lift this 115# barbell.

My favorite line to write in blogs: “Bear with me as I bare my soul”

I’ve been trying to get abs since I was in the 3rd grade, no lie. In the paradox of life, I was teaching 3rd grade full-time a few months ago. My niece at the time of some of this writing was also in 3rd grade and made comments regularly about her body image (You better believe I am coming in strong telling that girl that she is beautiful as is!). My brother can attest to my 3rd-grade regimen as he was my first personal trainer. Long story short, someone I looked up to poked fun when I was 7ish and said I had a pot belly and the rest has been my history, trying to make sure that I don’t. Words can seriously impact people far longer than one intended. That is why I love to use mine to affirm. I am trying to affirm myself these days. I have a little drill sergeant in my head though. Mean and tough and never good enough. Can you relate?

I would do 100 sit ups a night growing up, I would go for long runs as my brother would bike the road beside me. I was so epic I even trained in the rain. One time while in high school someone told me this guy lost a bunch of weight in the summer because he would run with a trash bag on…a trash bag. Guess what I did? I cut a trash bag to fit me like a dress and started running in the heat of the day, “perhaps a heat stroke would help me get abs” was my line of thinking. In all seriousness, I’m trying to express just how obsessed I was with getting the ‘right bod’, but when would I be satisfied? I look at pictures in hindsight and can’t believe I thought I was fat at any point in my fitness journey, which again started at like 8 or 9 years old for me. I had/ still have a weird thing called “body dysmorphia” haunting me and stealing joy. This isn’t a healthy perspective to be physically fit but more on this later.

As I aged into high school, physical training only did so much. I was overly involved in sports, clubs, and trying to make straight A’s and found myself binge eating food, to stay alive, keep up with my fast pace, and destress, I’m sure. This led to feeling like all my hard work and trash bags had gone to waste so to ‘fix’ the problem (not the root, the symptom) I would purge, but then I would feel shame. Thank God my sister heard me in the bathroom just moments after dinner was done, and asked “what are you doing?”. This kind of reminds me of how God asked Adam and Eve, “where are you?” after they hid from Him in the garden.

I was caught and my cycle of binging and purging had run its course. I think I did it consistently for a year or so, but after my sister barged in the bathroom to find our dinner in the toilet, I committed to quit. It was obviously not the way and left me feeling worst anyways, not to mention it really burned my throat*, more also on this later.

Therefore, I was determined, maybe I need more self-control. Yes, this is partly true. But it is hard to have self-control when your body is starving for needs that you are forgetting to meet, namely, your personal and distinct needs that only you and being truly self-aware can know. Isn’t that just like humans to do though; we look at our mess and come up with a plan or discipline. We get this mentality that says “I suck at …, so, I will fix me”. This is no good and I do this too frequently.

After I quit purging, I continued to be in every sport and club in the hopes of getting scholarships, keeping popular, and to not get fat. Maybe that full life worked to keep me from the root, but my friends would express to me without words just how busy I seemed to always be, and this bothered me. So I was binging life and purging happiness.

I was not happy watching them enjoy life, eating a pickle and popcorn in the bleachers while I was on the football field dancing to another random song or playing another soccer game. I was sad to be so busy. I was sad I believed I needed to be so ‘active’ to have worth and value. I am still sad because I am still doing this, even ten years after my high school graduation. Not purging food, necessarily, but needing to purge other things because I am binging too much. I need leverage because I have lost balance. I have lost the willpower; I have lost courage. But “all that is lost” can be made new, praise God. This is the message I believe as a Christian and these are the lyrics in one of my favorite songs I’ve written to date- “holding patterns”.

*compare two photos (taken ten years apart)

If you look into my deep brown eyes covered in heavy makeup, what do you see? What emotion catches your attention? I see sadness, pain, and fear.

When I look at the other photo taken while doing a photoshoot (with the gifted, ever encouraging, and down-to-earth Jacie Atabay) for my upcoming album “Let Go”, I see growth. I did not intentionally pose this way to get a good comparison photo. No, I naturally took to redeeming this glare into the camera. This time, with more confidence, looking a bit more weathered, but fierce, nonetheless. Though it is not my album cover photo, I wanted to share it on this platform to speak into something very vulnerable. Perhaps you think blogs are obsolete, I agree. I hardly read any. The point of this blog and every other blog I ever wrote was/is more for me and less for anyone else. Writing is therapeutic for me, and being in my last semester of University, why not write more? So, what I can’t promise you is that this read will be easy to read or necessarily encouraging. God gets glory in our weakness, so with that in mind, I’d hope to encourage you. But I am not writing to entertain you in as much as I am writing to share the struggle.

As I already mentioned, since around the 3rd grade, I developed a poor body image or view of myself. Since that age, I began noticing my size and particularly the fact that I did not have abs. This was a time I should have been learning about plants and how to tell time but instead I was pre-occupied with learning how to cope. Everyone creates coping mechanisms and I turned to food and then to working out.

Look again at that first photo. I was unsure of who I was and was sad. What caused this sad? So much.

What was I coping from you may ask? This is trauma too personal to share on a platform like this, but there was trauma, for sure. It is not entirely fair for me to unpack it without the consent of many others, but let’s just say, there was a big hurt in a family. Instead of healing together, there was a great dispersal and a removal from one’s pain-causing environment. To this day, I still try to cope in this way, fleeing or completely starting over, (PURGING) but it is not the way and so I am learning how to face things, head on, eyes fierce, and with vulnerability at the forefront.

I am athletic and if purging brought shame perhaps working out was a healthy way to make me more desirable (to myself and others). There were many things about me that I could not change that I did not appreciate growing up besides my weight, like being tan. In high school as girls got tanning bed memberships I began to laugh and appreciate how easily I bronzed in the summer. There is a key point in what I shared, the words compare and control. I could not control certain things so what I could, I would. I could control my schedule to help me feel important, desired, needed, responsible, etc. I could control how much I ate even over my growing pain in my stomach from having too much. I could control purging when I felt like I had too much. There was a sense of power from building a full life and completely ‘managing’ it by not allowing certain consequences to settle, so I thought. There was also a comparison aspect that helped me feel better than others. I’ve heard that comparison robs joy, and it is true.

But sin and covering up shame and trying to fix yourself have a funny way of producing ugly (like comparison and a need for control) and shows back up. My senior year, mostly, I believe, I was hoarse, for around a year, on and off.

I was so ‘starving’ for love or acceptance, or protection so I ate to compensate. Then, I would overeat ‘my full’ and so with remorse, I would purge myself of my own ‘sin’, my over-eating, over-achieving, over-performing. What I did not realize is that I was throwing tons of acid towards my vocal folds and cords that I have now come to deeply appreciate.

I never did drugs in high school. I felt my body was too important to treat it in that way (there was a good dose of ‘fear of the Lord matched with fear of my parents’ in my heart). I did not understand that binging and purging were harmful to not only my heart (self-confidence) but also to my actual body, and it was my drug of choices. As is true of any drug, they give us a false reality and we must still wake up to the music of our choices.

I think it is fitting to share this side of my story because my 10-song album is being released little by little these days and I was also hoarse as I began to write this blog. Today I am writing and editing it just a few hours before I sing four of my original songs from the album to a live audience in Shreveport-random, I know but I am a sucker for a full life. Perhaps that is why I am writing it today. Because my days don’t look that much different to back then and just when I thought I had a handle on the whole health and wellness aspect of my life, my old coping patterns have returned, almost with a vengeance to taunt me. Perhaps it’s the pressure I feel from releasing songs that took me some long hard and dark nights to write and sing through. As much of the songs were inspired by the happenings of 2020, 2020 only exposed how much other deep-seated hurts and hang-ups from my past were truly robbing my present. So, the songs are a look into my past year of counseling and unpacking my childhood, my teenage years, my missionary experience, my love life, though I am more private about that. I am being vulnerable through song and since I recorded them back in February, I have been running around life like a chicken with her head cut off, trying to ease the tension that is being exposed and sharing my life with others on a larger less controlled scale.

Also, there are other pressures I feel because of a lingering reminder of how I messed things up.

As I said before I was hoarse for a year in high school. It was so weird to have to stop talking because I literally had pain from the purging. When I went to music college one vocal teacher specifically was concerned for the damage I did. Many people say they like my singing rasp, since I never smoked anything, be sure, it is still unnatural and kind of a miracle to still be ‘kicking’.

I still get hoarse, and I have to be really careful with my voice. I just finished a batch of 5-week music lessons and to many of my vocal adult students I started our first lesson telling them to protect their instrument and I went on to tell them my flaw. I am a vocal teacher that has lost her voice. I can still sing but I am always a few short days or songs away from being hoarse and ‘out for the count’. This is so deep to me because as I think of the trauma I survived, the main message that enemy has tried to cycle through my life is that I have no voice, no control, and therefore, no hope.

My songs are testimonies that I do have a voice. Writing this blog is a way to say I do have courage. But I need to strop trying to prove this to myself, others, or the darkness. I need to just be and let courage and my voice come from a place of overflow, rather starvation/lack.

In Montana, this past February as we were recording those 10 songs, it put a great strain on my voice and my final recorded song, titled “Outro” was the hardest to get through because of voice fatigue. I have this whole process documented and will release it as I feel led, but I ‘figured’ out a way with the producer to cover my weakness. We invited others in to sing this outro with me, because sometimes in our struggles and weakness, we need to let others help us. Getting hoarse or having other undesirable attributes has led to creativity and some of my more unique features, like the raspy-ness. Though it is a reminder of pain and shame, God still gets glory because I can still sing! God still gets glory because He can help me process the hurt, pain, and trauma and encourage me to ‘get the final say’ with Him, with forgiveness, with hope, and with fearlessness.

I hate to let others help me because I hate to feel weak. At this point in my album release journey, I don’t know if the others made it on that last song yet. But I do know I would not have been able to even record all 10 in less than a week anyways without the help of others who don’t want to take anything from me but want to love me.

I write about love a lot because I do not believe it sometimes. My writing is to remind me that God is the source, and it is possible. But before I can love others or receive their love to me, I must learn to really love myself, hoarse-ness and all.

My brother trained me in the rain because he loves/d me and wanted to help me with my fitness goals (though he did not know they were low-key for the wrong reasons).

My sister barged in the bathroom because she heard me harming myself and loved my body more than I knew how to at the time.

I hate to embrace my weakness or sadness because I think it will overwhelm me. I hate to really let others in because I fear I will lose control. The truth is, I am already overwhelmed, never had control, and am weak. Not dealing with “it” means I let it loose to run the show or deal with me.

To the individual reader and the audience

I want to clarify, when I said “my* sadness” I meant that it is easier for me to see and hear your pain and empathize without realizing I am using your method of dealing with suffering to give me permission to deal with mine. It is a twisted way, I know. But I am confessing to it so I can change. I do not need your permission and you do not need mine. God says that He gets glory in our weakness. Therefore, I believe, this means, He gives us permission.

You have permission to tell God you feel out of control and that you would like to re-gain a sense of control. Confessing does not mean that He will advise you to do things that make you feel like you are in control. Quite opposite, it seems He wants us to start with telling Him the truth (“our truth”) but then wants us to start believing His.

I was bulimic for a season. It has been years since this resurfaced in my life. What has lingered however is something I believe to be just as bad, perfectionism and performance.

An honest look into health and wellness

I just did a CrossFit competition on my 28th birthday. I am goal driven for sure and hard core. Though I did not train in the rain this time, I did spend up to four hours 4-5x a week in the gym to prepare. As much as I loved this, I binge worked out because I took over a retired teacher’s classroom. This stressed me out because I came mid-year, with no lesson plans, and didn’t make extra pay to pace the kids back on schedule. I needed a buffer or a counterbalance to my off-kiltered life. As much as I love to help people and do jobs and career paths that lend itself over to good works, like teaching or being a missionary, they really take a toll on one’s body (mind, soul, and spirit). This competition took a toll on my body. As I’ve alluded to before subtly and not so subtly, being a fulltime missionary took a toll on my body (I hade dengue at one point to back in Cambodia, so that didn’t help either). I share this to say I just returned from another mission, another big burst of adrenaline and frijoles (see my latest blog). But something happened while there that I am embarrassed to share- I binge ate.

I wondered if it was because I had stopped Crossfitting for a week, my schedule was off, I was off, I gave myself permission to eat, and eat, and eat and eat. Obviously, I was starving but not for frijoles. The scary part is I would talk to God while doing it and tell Him, “But I can’t stop, that’s what is scary”. All I heard back from Him was words of love, kindness, and grace. While I was sinning “ “ more against my own body and conscious than anything else, God was whispering that He was there for me.

In 2021, not so much 2020, I binge ate. Throughout this year. As I trained for the competition. As I taught 3rd grade. As I was in Honduras. These huge moments of life, while goals are great, were becoming my worth, value, what made me desirable, or popular, in my opinion, and this pedestal I created, I tried to keep. But this started way before 2021. This was significance resting in me alone, trusting in myself alone, relying on my strength alone, that reared its ugly head. This was once how I copped and learned to live apart from for so many years but the hype surrounding an adrenaline filled ministry life had tried to come back and make me busy.

I know how to juggle and operate at a high speed but that does not mean that this is what I was created for or the rhythm I should create/continue. In the fashion of an artist, I must purge, to clear my head and with the hopes that my next canvas will be better.

In CrossFit they would call this ‘attempts’. For example, in the competition I had to do a 135# power clean lift. I hit it on my 2nd attempt but failed it on my 3rd attempt.

This blog is a confession of “hitting and failing” it.

(quick media break-enjoy from the comp which I did enjoy a ton/maybe I liked the training the most though! Photo Credit: Bown Media, Anthony Tom Media, Jay Knickerbocker, Bennet Looper, and or Daily Comp media)

My tell-tale signs from failing it: insomnia, binge eating, acne, being pissy (which is where I have been since I returned from the mission field, still lingering PTSD in there and compassion fatigue)

My triggers: stress (schedule, physical, off balanced with ministry, receiving, family, friends, school load, etc.)

Before I went on the mission field in 2017, I was at my best mindset regarding my body, mind, and spirit. I was physically active and at my ideal weight (not that I am too big or too small now, but I do know what clean living feels like and living at my optimal speed). I was less focused on pleasing people and more focused on walking with and pleasing God. Those were good times. I stopped having acne, I was vegan, I was balanced, I was not stressed.

Now, I write this to confess of an upcoming purge. Its coming. I am too stressed for it not to. I overate and now I cannot ‘digest’ it all. There are things that remain and will remain, I will live with the ‘yes’ choices I have made thus far, but I am not adding much more to my plate. As I mentioned before, I’ve been going through counseling for the past year. I have also been simultaneously finishing my Bachelor’s degree. With a little under two months left to go, I am hitting a focus button and listening to my body more than the ebbs and flow of control or popular opinion.

One of my songs is titled “Reckoning”. It’s a song about finally realizing that I love who I am, how God made me, and I know what I need to do to steward me well- I need to return to Him and trust that He has given me wisdom regarding health and wellness.

I learned that my blood-type is A in 2017 and I started to follow the diet and lifestyle best for blood-type A’s. It is not HIIT workouts like CrossFit, unfortunately (this does not mean that I won’t do CrossFit movements or join a community day, but it does mean that I went too hard and need to dial it way back).

Next, I learned that I am an Enneagram 4. I took the test while on the mission field in 2018/2019 and scored as a Two wing 3 which meant I am a hostess type. This is true, in a ministry setting, where the need to save the world from pain, lost, suffering, death, and hopelessness is high-namely a stress filled ER for the spiritual person, I operate as a Two Wing 3. If you strip the needs and ego to save the world from me, I scored a few months ago, as a 4- the individualist.

If you read up on the Enneagram, enneagram 4s become 2s in stress. I’m learning how to not be in shame to say I have been living most of my life in stress.

The first book my therapist gave me to read last July was “Adrenaline and Stress” by Dr. Archibald Halt. It really freaked me out. I know what it is like to live under stress, and I know that my symptoms are always binge eating.

I’ve been unpacking my 4-ness more often these days, especially because I am writing more music and playing more live shows (to share the album and wear my heart on my sleeve, because that is just who I am), 4’s are noted with various trouble spots, one being bulimia, of all things. Now my voice serves as too big a deal to just give it away and harm it like purging but even teaching 3rd grade made me hoarse, but so did the CrossFit competition and so has other endeavors I’ve tried to do. But I can’t do it all. I need to stop having such a fear of death that pushes me to live life so to the full that I must binge it because it might not last. This world and life as we know it won’t last. That is just it. Jesus never said earth was our home but that it would pass away. What remains constant is Jesus and His Word.

So in order to steward my temple and worship Him, I am taking a break from many things and reintroducing only that which serves me. I can’t help but think of what Simone Biles did at the height of her career as an encouragement to say ‘screw image and trying to be the best’ let’s take care of the gifts we’ve been given.

I want to sing. I want to have peace.

I can’t keep saying yes or my body will start saying no. I don’t want to wreck.

That is what happened to me literally speaking my Sr. year of high school, all of my striving to not even earn scholarships.

You know what, 10 years later, with 2 more months in, the main commitment I owe it to myself and God to focus in on is finishing my degree. This degree from Life Pacific University truly is a degree on “life” and you know what, without trying, I earned a lot of scholarships and grants to complete this one. In an effort to keep first things first, I am stepping back from a ministry role I have, I am going to postpone promoting my album for a hot minute, I am going to take in a select amount of music clients and will be less and less in my CrossFit box. I am going to relax and enjoy the fruit of my labor. I am going to sabbath and live from a place of rest rather than restlessness.

I have been restless.

(photo credit @gulfstreamchris) Recent ministry in NOLA with FaithRx- which I loved but still, I need to sit at the foot of the cross and let Jesus minister to me.

I have been pacing around because of the anxiety associated with releasing one’s heart through song. I have done hard things in 2021 to prove to myself that “I still got it”. Well, I don’t, and I just proved the opposite. I don’t still have it. But I do still know who does and who’s got me and who loves me whether I am working or resting, Jesus.

And He loves you too.

So, screw the pressure and performance, let it all flow from a place of rest. If not, you’ll find yourself in stress. In this course of LIFE, we get it wrong more than we get it right, but we can let our scars teach us and learn from our mistakes. God can also get glory as we don’t cover it up but let others in on it.

I am letting you guys in on it. Sure, go look at my highlight reels and my accomplishments, but at what cost to achieve those things? At what cost to ‘gain control’ and cover up fear, sadness, or what have you? At my own expense and so now things are feeling more out of control than before.

I am going to chill out now, probably get off socials for a while too.

Nothing is particularly wrong as much as I need to reset as I am sure you do too. Take care of yourself, your family, and do what God called you to do. I will do the same. I will take care of my garden. I will, like Noah, keep building, but less loud and more inside.

Since I give myself permission, I give you permission too-you don’t have to prove your worth to me, and I will stop trying to prove mine to you. We are already loved by God, worthy, chosen, and set free. It is simply up to us to believe it, for what we believe we become.

Matthew 6:20-22

store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.…

PS. Especially after Cross Fitting for a little over a year now (started the same time I started finishing my degree), I got abs (at the expense of back-acne, mind you). But as a singer, we are supposed to look ‘fat’ as we open our diaphragm and breathe…guess it was never really meant to be.

For those of you that only read the end of books, a synopsis of this blog:

photo 1, wooden backdrop. 2011 me sad. photo 2, brick backdrop. 2021 me strong. photo 3, lightbulb in Cambodia. 2019 me hiding.

photo 4, city lights in Montana. 2021 me here.

To be clear, for my own sake, I realize that I am purging, which isn’t always the answer. But I am not running. I am purging to a degree but not from all things, from that which is unnecessary in this season of finishing some things well to then move on to the next chapter (life after Life, lol). Though this helps me think and gain a grip, my ultimate reality and test of growth will be in who’s voice I listen to in the future- the sergeant that tells me my cup is to drink of adrenaline and always live life on edge (“to the full dammit”), mine, which tries to hide under makeup, packing on more problems than solving the root, or God’s (the sweet and tender one that I heard as I ate, painfully, a whole pizza the other day), …well I’d hope it’s the latter, so if you see me in the upcoming weeks, days, months, or years, and if I am hustle and bustling, just look at me and remind me in ever so kind words, “slow down”. I need to take this journey, especially the journey of health and ultimate wellness, one day at a time.

Lol- this song appropriately titled "In My Head" was released yesterday, but not entirely. Distribution peeps didn't process or send it to iTunes yet. Sounds about right. In process, but not there yet. It's coming. I'm coming & We are all becoming.