roots all the way down

a friend of mine remarked how resilient and confident i appear-- the Leo rising roared it’s beautiful head as a colourful persona. their comments made me realise that it’s been a long time since i truly considered what others think of me. and that in the process of coming to terms with who i am, how i also learned how to be my own advocate.

this is super fucking literal when it comes to my life. i live with (manageable, at this point) chronic illness, and after the last month, am learning that I’m also holding stress and tension in my back. I snapped it in an odd fashion after healing it in hawaii, but carried my dog and the aches were back! it reminded me of how I learned to advocate for myself.

as someone who lives life in a fat, queer, disabled, cishet-female passing body of global majority, i both hold privilege and am denied it in one fell swoop. but i learned very quickly on that healthcare is full of biased practitioners: ones who stick to the BMI as religion, others who throw nutritionists at you or suggest weight loss surgery. i think these tools are useful in conjunction with a person’s lived experience, but unfortunately, many providers tend to stick to lab results and quantitative measures rather than utilise them in conjunction with listening to a patient and the phenomenology of their disease(s) or ailment(s.) it took me years to learn that my voice actually made a difference in how a provider treated me-- and if i didn’t feel like that person gave enough fucks about me, i could see someone else who was more up my speed.

in my 30 years of living, i can count the number of practitioners i respect and would highly recommend on one hand. i tend to pick younger professionals, hopefully who are also queer and a person of colour. someone who understands health at every size as a movement. i’ve only had one primary care doctor who understood and fully agreed with my requests of not looking at the scale as a full measure of my health, but rather, as a compliment to the work i’ve already done on myself. it’s funny because i think the American healthcare system is a massive failure-- we focus on profits and not the patient. medical insurers are for profit institutions, and so are hospitals (god-- what a fucking travesty.) i’m not an expert, but having to navigate medical insurance on your own, questioning charges, wondering wtf they ordered that test for-- you start to see patterns and learn about your conditions more closely. you learn what works for you and if you’re forced to change providers, you’re able to replicate it as closely as possible.

advocating for myself in the realm of healthcare also taught me how to stand up for myself *literally everywhere else in my life.* one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve learned as I age is that somewhere along the way, the people that were meant to advocate for me were also the same people causing harm and disenfranchisement. i am forced to participate and live in a world that does not want to see me alive. my parents, as immigrants, were profoundly aware of it and through their sheltering and best attempts at child-rearing, reflected their insecurities and flaws back on their children (my brother and myself.) society conditions us to look at a fat body and back away in disgust. the people I’ve dated, or encountered when i was single, made me shrink myself down so that their whims were the only priority. feeling my soul wither into a former shell of itself was enough of a reason for me to bite back. my therapist likes to tell me, often and unprompted, that “no one leaves childhood unscathed.” makes sense. we enter adulthood with our baggage pulled tight behind us, and we have to make the choice to fight or flee. i choose to fight.

my relationship with my body is complex. i’m sure yours is too. but it is mine, and it’s big and beautiful. when people tell me I’m brave for celebrating my body, I have to laugh because it is an act of resistance. society views fat folx as subhuman, most likely because of racism (when I’m on my computer I’ll link fearing the black body by Sabrina Strings in this newsletter) but also because people are just fucking gross. nutrition class taught me that fat is a necessity. our body uses it for so many different functions. also someone’s weight does not correlate to their health at all. we look at fatness as the ultimate insult, when really, it’s part of *us.* just because i have more of it doesn’t mean i’m a monster. it means you’re fat phobic and need to examine the roots of it.

i talk about roots because most of these issues are grounded in ancestral lines and family trees. intergenerational trauma is real, and it’s alive and well. cultural norms (in my filipinx upbringing) insist we ignore that which is too difficult to talk about. but that doesn’t break or help heal, it only furthers a divide. asking my parents difficult questions, only to receive roundabout answers (none at all-- if I’m honest) meant that the onus was on *me* to do the work. sometimes people are too old to change. they don’t want to listen. when i was younger, i thought that if i could just appeal to people’s baser instincts, that they COULD change. but after a particular incident with my immediate family-- I couldn’t bear to witness their poor behaviour, and had to stand up for myself. my dear Saturn, my strongest planet, empowered me into setting boundaries.

the thing about setting boundaries is that it is still a reciprocal relationship. you can set expectations, but be realistic because people will tend to test them to see how far you’ll go before you break. that’s been my experience so far. it was more successful to utilise laying down my hard boundaries to my folks as a way to help myself grieve and heal parts of me that hurt and felt vulnerable. for my situation, naming and setting boundaries and also letting them know the reality of their actions would result in consequences. (and if there’s one thing Saturn Daddy loves, it’s doling out lessons and punishment 😂)

I think one of the hardest things for people to learn is how to take up space. it’s why I say existence is resistance. people do not want to see me alive and thriving. strangers actively root against my demise for whatever reason. i learned to not take it to heart because ultimately those people haven’t earned the distinct pleasure of knowing me, and they probably never will. I don’t think much of others who can just throw and bat insults across time and space without suffering the consequences.

you have to live with yourself. make sure that you is someone you can be proud of and fight for. i’m always rooting for myself, and you too! I hope you can treat yourself with the same compassion and care, even if it takes some time

xo- 💖