You can see me using skills from both backgrounds here...
In all seriousness this transition had a huge impact on me. Below I recall the importance of that change...
I had a low-grade eating disorder from age 12 to age 18. This disorder was best defined by a cycle of varying degrees of restricted eating and times of bulimia. This disorder was deeply entwined with my passion and commitment to ballet. I had been dancing at least 25 hours a week since fifth grade. I was very tight with my ballet friends and longed to be seen as successful and talented within the group. I am naturally a very small boned person, but during those years I was straight up tiny. However I had a very distorted view of myself. I can remember spending time in front of the full-length mirror in my room, pulling on “extra” skin and feeling extremely disgusted by the size and shape of my body. As I began to grow out of clothes I had worn in my prepubescent years I started to feel like my body was huge.
At this time in my life my mother was also trying very hard to loose weight. She went on 3 different diets that seriously effected what kind of food she ate. I started sneakily going on different diets that my mom was also on. Atkins, South Beach, and Jenny Craig were specific diets that I remember dabbling in. This started my obsession with controlling and restricting what kind of and how much food I ate. These diets would be mixed in with times where I would restrict my food intake to under 500 calories a day. I would only eat a nutrition bar for lunch and then have a sandwich or carrot stick packed dinner in between school and ballet. It’s amazing looking back how easy it was for me to limit my food so extremely without having anyone notice. When I wasn’t dieting or restricting my food I was also regularly binging and purging food. Often when I would sleep over at someone’s house, or be involved in a social situation I would make a really big deal about “how much food I could eat”. It was with delight that mothers of my friends would comment about my “hollow leg” and that it was amazing I never gained any weight! I would eat many plates full of food at dinner, enjoy two servings of dessert, and run off to play with my friends. Little did anyone know I was also regularly becoming disgusted with myself and within a few hours I would quietly sneak into a far bathroom and force myself to vomit all the food back up. I think nobody ever suspected anything because of a combination of my happy and energetic exterior, the fact that all my friends had houses large enough that there were bathrooms out of the way, and my utter silence around this behavior due to my shame.
When I was 18, I decided to take a year off between high school and college. I had decided not to pursue ballet as a career because I realized how unhealthy the culture of ballet was. I spent the year living in England and working at a college for young adults with developmental disabilities. One month of that year I went and took a yoga teacher training in the Bahamas. Part of this yoga teacher training was learning ancient Indian “purifying” rituals that were meant to cleans the body. There were 80 people in my class and we all went through the bizarre acts of pouring salt water in one of our nostrils and watching it dribble out the other. We swallowed a piece of soft cloth soaked in salt water and pulled it slowly back up our throats. The final exercise was to swallow about 8 cups of salt water and then consciously vomit up this water as a way of cleansing the body. I remember standing on the picturesque platform we all used to do yoga everyday and feeling waves of shame and panic wash over my body as I prepared for this “cleansing” activity. After swallowing the water I felt naked as I prepared to force myself to throw up. I had never had anyone watch me force myself to vomit. As I joined the other people who had moved to the edge of the ocean and started throwing up the excess water I could not break the feeling of being seen at my worst. Even though there were 80 of us, and nobody knew that I had a history of bulimia, I couldn’t help but feel like everyone was aware of my shame. I finished the ritual and fell on the beach crying. A friend of mine stayed with me and held me as I rocked back forth and admitted my past and gave voice to my shame and self-hatred. I remember finally coming to place of calm sitting on the beach, now deserted. I promised myself I would never force myself to throw up because of a desire to control my food intake ever again.
I finished the retreat and returned to England. I continued to feel shame and disgust towards my body, but kept my promise to myself. Even when I ate more than was within the bounds of “ok” I never attempted to correct the situation by throwing up. A kind of pride about making that change was deeply ingrained in me at that point. I left England and came home and started college that fall. I immediately signed up to play rugby.
In rugby there was a huge shift in how bodies were valued. Coming in as a tiny and thin woman many people immediately began joking around with me. I was going to have to put on weight, and fast, if I wanted to be successful in this new and exciting group of women. Instead of competing against each other for a small number of spots like we had in ballet, this team needed everyone to push each other and work hard together for the success of the team as a whole. Within a very short period of time my self-image began to shift. Instead of looking in the mirror and seeing a huge, fat, and disgusting body I started to work out and eat massive amounts of food with the goal of gaining weight and muscle. I still had a dysmorphic view of my own body. I still believed that I was bigger than I was, but in the rugby community this was seen as “spunk”, “drive”, and “determination”. Nobody could tell me I was little because I no longer wanted to hear that. I played second row, which is a position that traditionally goes to the larger bodied players on the team. They have to hold up the weight of the scrum and are the work horses on the field. I was proud of the fact that I was as strong and as effective at the position despite the fact that other second rows in our league out-weighed me by at least 50 lbs. People would laugh and tell me how little I was. I would smile and say, “No, this is just a disguise, inside I’m really huge”. The idea of being big was not disgusting or horrible anymore; it was a sign of strength and pride.
How do we make the important changes in life?
First, I believe that I needed to have the experience of deep and shattering shame as I was first actually seen performing the activity that represented my hatred of my body. The emotional reaction that I had that day on the beach is like very few other moments in my life. I remember being panicked and scared and not realizing why. I had never before been hit by the force of feelings pushed down for so long. At the same time that it was terrifying, I have never been so relieved to let something out and finally be seen. This event was not only emotionally charged but was also set in a space that lent it to being memorable. The view of the beach and being surrounded by people throwing up is not ever going to leave my mind. I also had support immediately in that moment so that I could continue processing what was happening for me. Also the fact that I was involved in a deeply reflective process of yoga training also opened me up to be hit as hard as I was by this situation.
I do not know if I would have been able to keep my promise to change my behavior if I had not joined the rugby team so soon after that life-changing event. The rugby team had totally different values than I had grown up with as a ballerina. Also, I had moved into a brand new circle of friends who had never known me before. I had the ability to shape the person I could become based on new information and desires. I no longer had to be accountable to the values and pressures of the ballet community. The rugby team was an environment that encouraged feminist values and body positivity. I happily jumped on board and starting going with this new flow. It helped me so much to re-envision my body and work hard to become healthy and proud of myself. I got a lot of positive attention as someone who was talented and skilled despite my small size. In a way I wonder if I took all the force of will I had been using to hate and control myself, and instead used that energy fully on becoming a good rugby player. I cannot imagine my life carrying around as much hatred and self-loathing as I used to. It took so much energy to keep up, and in the end it was just hurting me. I know for myself the importance of being in a community of caring, healthy, and positive people is huge when I assess my ability to make positive and lasting changes in my own life.
To the ruggers in my life- I love you for so many reasons. Not only for the laughter we've shared, the times you've been there when shit gets hard, but also because now every time I look in the mirror I actually like the person looking back. Thanks guys...
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 12:04PM 
Juan Epstein, my first hispanic jewWhen I accepted the offer to present at a radical Chicano conference this past week, my first thought was: oh crap, now everyone there will know I'm not Dominican enough. I don't speak Spanish, my Jewish nose makes my olive skin look more Ashkenazi than Latina and most importantly, I have never felt totally at home when I visit Santo Domingo. This is less about the fact that no one there seems to look like me, but also, because when I'm down there (ha), I feel just how American-brand a queer I am. I didn't know if it was right for me to go and present for students about sexuality when I am so often at odds with my own Hispanic experience. So, selfishly, I decided to go for myself.
Sin Cadena's (Without Chains) was a conference on sexuality and identity put together by MEChA, a radical chicana/o student organization. The day was a collection of workshops and panels kicked off with a commencement speech by Philadelphia's LGBT liaison Gloria Casarez. Students came from all over America to discuss what is was to be young, sexual, thinking folks. I was excited to see what would come of the hour we were given to present.
It was a staggering moment. After I crapped my pants, I remembered the lesson I keep having to learn over and over again: everyone struggles with feeling like not enough. For those of us who have strong cultures pulling us in different directions, it’s hard to sometimes feel the smooth blend that all those cooking/culture metaphors refer to. Sometimes you’re less a melting pot than a rock sitting in a bowl of porridge… sometimes the rock is porous, sometimes it is a porridge rock, sometimes the rock is a guy named sue. Wait, sorry, I was taking life seriously again. But suffice to say, sometimes a mixed experience is merely a fractured one that, in turn, becomes it’s own whole experience.
During the fishbowl, I awkwardly acknowledged not feeling like enough. And I didn’t disappear into a puff of smoke and shame. In fact, I stayed in the fishbowl speaking to these bold and articulate students. I was struck by what one person said after he tagged in on the question “what does queer mean to you?” I had discussed ScrewSmart’s blog uproar around the idea that someone straight could be queer. This guy agreed with the sentiment and went on to liken it to his own understanding of what it was to be Chicano. He said that at a certain point it stopped being about where you were from and became how you politically aligned yourself. My mind was officially blown. Maybe this was a new umbrella term that I could actually begin to own as my own. One that was malleable as, well, as porridge. A global word that could encompass as my own experience as a true whole as opposed to a part of a fractured sum. And so this is me, Juan Pumpernickel Epstein, chicana-at-large, saying thank you to all the brave young thinkers who present us with the words that get closer to being seen.
