Image credit: KarinaYana by @cryptoshots.nft
I liked the Ladies of Hive question for this week, and wanted to take a moment to answer it. The question is:
If you had the opportunity to offer guidance and wisdom to your younger self, what insights or recommendations would you share?
I'm going to stick to things that you don't generally find in advice columns or online articles, because why cover the same stuff everyone else does? I honestly don't know if my answers would provide any value to anyone else, but I'm hopeful that at least one of them will speak to someone. 💜
Trigger warning: This post contains frank discussion of eating disorders and suicide.
How to know what you should be when you grow up.
I recently discovered some wisdom that I wish I'd received at a much, much younger age. It's about turning your natural talent into a vocation. I'll be 50 in a few months, and it wasn't until just a couple years ago that I finally realized what I should be when I grew up. I guess I'm fortunate that I did finally discover it; but here's something to help you if you're still searching. It comes from Sasha Chapin's wonderful list, 50 Things I Know.
"Talent doesn’t feel like you’re amazing. It feels like the difficulties that trouble others are mysteriously absent in your case. Don’t ask yourself where your true gifts lie. Ask what other people seem weirdly bad at."
If there's something that just comes easily to you, see if there isn't a way to make a living from it. And if it seems that there isn't, look again, harder this time. I knew I had the talent to be an editor & proofreader; mistakes on printed pages have always just jumped out at me, and I learned the intricacies of the English language seemingly by osmosis. I still often can't tell you why something is wrong. I just know it is. But I also know where to look to find the grammar or style rule, so that I can cite it to the author I'm editing and help them learn and grow as well.
BUT I thought the only jobs offering that type of work were at a newspaper, magazine, or book publisher, and those jobs are relatively few and far between. Turns out, there's a whole universe of business publications that need to be edited for internal consistency, specialized knowledge, flow, and so on. I just had to find my way into one of those niches, and my new career opened up before me.
I wish I'd done the research to learn this sooner, though to be fair, the Internet wasn't even a thing when I was pondering potential college majors. And the books I read when I was seeking guidance, like What Color is Your Parachute, weren't in-depth enough to teach me this either.
And if you don't have a natural talent? He still has advice for you: "I know that if you are not unusually hard-working or competitive or smart, you can still distinguish yourself. Be unusual in some other noticeable, likable way—unusually honest, brave, generous, curious, or pleasant. All of these attributes are composed of discrete behaviors that can be learned through practice."
He's right - you can learn damn near anything, if you really want to. I've also learned to be more honest as I've aged; to drop many of my filters and masks. While there are folks who don't care for that trait, there are others who value me highly for it. Don't try to be someone else. Try to be the best possible version of yourself.
Learn what it means to have a disordered relationship with food, and AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS.
I have come to realize that my mother (and likely her mother before her) had a very disordered relationship with food. But the thing about being a kid is, you don't know what you don't know. You just accept things as they are, and go out into life believing that whatever your childhood taught you, is the way things should be (this is why we have therapy 😆).
I spent the majority of my adult life believing a couple of things that were just dead wrong: 1.) that if a food gives you any kind of symptom, you should cut it out of your diet and 2.) 1200 calories per day is an acceptable amount of energy for an adult woman to live on.
These are very, VERY incorrect ideas, and eventually led me to an incredibly dark place in my life - one where I was planning my suicide. I ruined my body, my metabolism, and even my brain, by accepting these notions as true, and it nearly cost me my life. I wish I'd realized the error of my ways much, much sooner.
Now, this is not what all disordered eating looks like - not even close! There are dozens if not hundreds of disordered eating habits, and they're so incredibly common now, mostly thanks to the internet, it's difficult to know what "normal" eating even is.
A decent definition of normal eating habits, though, is eating in a way that meets your body's needs without dedicating excessive time to thinking, obsessing, or stressing about food. "Normal" eating habits vary from person to person but generally are flexible and attuned to hunger cues, pleasure, and social situations.
A much simpler (and therefore, I think, better) definition came to me the morning after I originally posted this: Don't buy into food rules. The more food rules you have, the more likely it is that you will fall into (or may already be practicing) disordered eating. Notice how it only took me TWO food rules to nearly starve myself to death? Make it your goal to have ZERO food rules, or if you must have food rules (e.g., if you have diabetes, celiac, or some other diagnosed illness), ensure the rest of your eating stays flexible.
Additionally, something everyone should realize is that you don't have to have a full-blown eating disorder, in ordered to have disordered eating habits. Here's a good, physician-reviewed article on understanding the differences.
If you get really sick, or suffer some other setback that requires you to file for bankruptcy, DON'T DRAIN YOUR RETIREMENT FINANCES before doing so.
Man I wish I'd known this one before I had my battle with my eating disorder! I got very, very sick (see above re: planning suicide), and spent a very long time there because doctors who were steeped in the mindset that thin = healthy just kept cheering me on as I lost more weight and became sicker. So sick that my brain stopped working right, and I could no longer even do the proofreading work that I was so innately good at.
So what did I do, as I paid physician after physician for everything from cheerleading to outright snake oil? I drained my retirement accounts in order to keep from having to file bankruptcy due to medical bills. BIG MISTAKE. I would've been better off if I'd just declared the bankruptcy in the first place, and moved on. Reason being, bankruptcy courts can't touch your retirement savings. But I didn't know this at the time.
Learn from my lesson, and just do the bankruptcy. Yes, it'll suck, but there IS life after bankruptcy. Your credit rating WILL recover, and you'll be much better off in your later years if you have that nest egg you worked so hard to build. Incidentally, I also learned that the bankruptcy courts can't take away your primary residence or vehicle, either. So don't assume you'll lose absolutely everything. The laws (at least here in the US) are structured such that you have a fighting chance to get back on your feet after your bankruptcy is discharged.
I really wish I'd known these things when I was younger, and I hope they can help someone avoid making some of the larger life mistakes that I've had to live through!
Have a great day, y'all!
Proud Member of Hive's Best Family!
You've had some financial fun over the years it sounds like. Bankruptcy really can be a godsend to those deep in debt, it's wrong that they won't discharge student loans though...
There are many things I would tell the younger me, like don't get married... You've had a hard go with some tough problems. I'm glad you're still above the grass, that's always a good thing. Body perception and eating disorders are hard to overcome, I'm glad you pulled through. It's a shame you can't get back the retirement funds though!
Indeed. And the whole student debt situation is just messed up, to my mind. I got lucky and didn't accumulate any of that, but many younger folks will be saddled with ridiculous amounts for the better part of their lives.
I hear you on the marriage thing as well. Never gonna make that mistake again. 😅
Sounds like you had the same luck I did with marriage. I should have listened to Al Bundy from Married with Children, his advice to his son was "never marry"!
Not just once, but twice! 😅
Me too! !LOL
Thank you for sharing usch a vulnerable part of you. It is appreciated and I plan to share these lessons with my youngest who is just getting ready to move out.
I'm so glad to hear that, thank you for letting me know! Hopefully it will help them dodge a few bullets. 💜
I also updated the bit about what it means to eat normally. A much simpler & more easily remembered definition of normal eating came to me as I was waking up this morning. The previous definition was good, but very hard to remember. I think the new one brings it down to something everyone can easily understand and shoot for: having NO food rules. 😄
I hope it does help. He is hardheaded like his dad.
Thank you so much!
Excellent lessons, all of them! I wish I'd known these, too, in my younger years! 😜
Right? The problem with wisdom is it only comes after making the errors. Or to quote Bucky Fuller, "The reason I know so much is because I have made so many mistakes." 😄
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Wow. Thank you so much for sharing this vulnerable part of yourself on chain! I think that when we talk about these difficult things, we extend a hand to those who are still drowning in depression.
A bad relationship with food can definitely break your heart over and over again. We should not have so much pressure and negativity surrounding the nourishment of our bodies. I'm so grateful that you fought, that you won, that you are here to share these things with us today. 💗
I'm sorry to hear what it cost you to get through the debt though, that's another thing that just shouldn't be... Why do we make people pay out of the nose just to get help? It makes me furious.
The wisdom you shared on bankruptcy and following yourself to right path are stunning. There is so much in this post that I believe a lot of younger women could learn from! If we can't talk to our younger selves, at least we can talk to the young folks.
You're brilliant 💗🤗
!PIMP
Thank you, dear lady! 🤗💜 I agree wholeheartedly about the power of sharing. I was actually very fortunate to stumble onto the right post at the right time to make me realize that I had an eating disorder, and that what I'd been doing was slowly killing me.
One of the nice things about Hive is that it is a community. So I feel like there may be an actual chance that my tale reaches the right person in time to prevent them from making a similar mistake to any of these. 🤞
You must be killin' it out here!
@grindan just slapped you with 1.000 PIMP, @willendorfia.
You earned 1.000 PIMP for the strong hand.
They're getting a workout and slapped 1/2 possible people today.
Read about some PIMP Shit or Look for the PIMP District
I like how you have written it directly from your heart. ♥️ the way I see it. I’m glad that you could discover a path for yourself, even though it was a little late. That’s okay. I bet you doing well now.
I have never read someone put their thoughts so directly yet make me realise how much has gone through your life. The decisions you take truly make who you are at the end or at least what you have to deal with. Those are some excellent tips that you gave, cannot believe food rules could take you down in such a massive way.
Thank you so much for your kind words! Yes, it is difficult to believe that just a couple of little food rules could be so destructive. And yet their effects, compounded over years of repetition, were indeed massive.
I recently read a book, The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. It talks about this very thing - how small actions, repeated daily, make an enormous the difference. Of course, the catch is to make those small actions things that will create an enormously GOOD difference. But being able to do that requires knowing what to avoid, so that is why I openly share my mistakes - in the hopes that others can avoid them. 💜
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