A 6 minute read unpacking the link between #MeToo and Mojo and Fat

 

Yesterday I began to notice many of the people I know were posting the #MeToo.  So being the curious girl that I am I read what that was all about.  Briefly it was a call to identify if you had ever been the victim of sexual abuse, assault, or an unwanted threatening sexual advance. It came about after the fall out of the Weinstein group of offenses against women became so incredibly real.

This got me thinking about my friends who have suffered, my clients who have shared these stories and what I have noticed.  The fact is sexual abuse, rape and harrassment can seriously impact your Mojo both physically and creatively.  That is what I am on this planet to help people with so after seeing so many #Metoos popping up all over my feed I thought it was important to weigh in on something I have noticed.

So I thought about it and well…  I’m a #MeToo.   Happened in the Navy.  I didn’t report it except to my group of beautiful male sailors who had my back.  My abuser was taught a serious lesson by a group of real men who understood the responsibility they had to be protectors.  I think the chance of him ever repeating that stunt on any woman is very very very low.   No courts, no fear or humiliation for me…heaps for him., vigilante justice.   And to be fair, I am completely down with that.   It happened, It was traumatic, and I sorted it with a little help from my friends who also in that move helped to redeem their gender in my eyes.  Am I advocating violence?  No  but I am advocating men hold each other accountable.  Feel free to pull up your mates whenever you see them even beginning to show disrespect.  Men get to chose on having a backbone or not and real men always do.    Joffrey or Jon Snow.  Ever male gets to choose.

Did I still carry shame around the event?  Yup.  Did I still blame myself and second guess myself.  Yep.  It happens.  But eventually I realized that I needed to shed that shit so that I could get on with doing the stuff that really mattered to me.  That is when you start touching the realm of Mojo.  This is when you stand up in your own shield maiden power.

So #MeToo and Mojo and Fat.  How are they related?  Directly in so many woman I know.  #MeToo can be one incident or it can be years of repeated abuse.  Each women will respond differently to it but I have seen some patterns in my years of working with women.  And for the record, I am not a psychologist. I am a nurse although when I picked up my camera I laid down my stethoscope.   What I am primarily is an empath with the ability to sometimes see around corners in people and my own experience and curiosity.  

When things hurt you have two choices.  Feel it or run from it.   When you run from it you tend to  use a hit of dopamine to do this.  It feels good but it quickly saturates your brain so you need another hit then another. The risk is that in your effort not to feel your scary feelings you can come out the otherside of it addicted to something.   Somethings are more socially appropriate than others.  Drug, Alcohol, Gambling, Cutting,  Shoplifting,  not so socially accepted.  However there is another area of addiction that  can be just as damaging…Exercise, shopping, Cellphone/ Internet, Food addiction.   

Food was my out from my difficult feelings.  Which resulted in an outer layer of fat protecting the precious insides.  It is metaphorical and very real as well. Besides storing energy to be called on in the event of a zombie apocalypse.  Fat is also used to wrap toxins in to keep them from damaging the vital organs.  I have seen a repeated pattern of fat greater than a natural resting point of fat in my friends and clients who have been sexually abused.  I personally think it is a complex way of dealing with the emotional toxins through addictive eating to numb the pain as well as a pretty clever attempt in this day and age to become invisible to sexual predators who often go for the ones close to the ones featured in the mainstream media…or at least that is the perception.   When I see someone with weight outside of what their body is naturally designed to hold I often wonder.  

I wonder because I know that was the case for me.   Eating to dull the feelings.  Eating to calm the nerves.  It is a self medication with sugar.  And as with any addiction it never really ends well.   But obviously every #metoo isn’t going to be over weight…It is just one of the ways we try to avoid the pain. 

So where does mojo come into this.    Anything that feels like an escape from feeling the feels ultimately becomes  a way to revictimize yourself.   The only path out of it is to work on the addiction.  Because you and only you get to make this call it will never be made for you.  And if you are so tangled up in anger about what happened to you…it will continue to give power to the perpetrator.  You will stay a victim.

So choose you.  Choose your Mojo.  Choose a path that is never ever a straight one…but one where you relearn how to be present and fully there.

 If you don’t know what that looks like any more go find a tween girl who hasn’t been abused and repressed and watch them.   Watch how they are fully and 100% present in their space.  How they are not afraid to be who they are quirks and all.  They in fact will rock their quirky.  They have rough edges that haven’t been sawn off by society and it is those edges that make them…well edgy…interesting…passionate.  See when you lose your mojo what you have really lost is your unique edges. Your passion for life your uniqueness is buried deep within layers of sometimes subtle some times not so subtle subconscious addictive choices.  But the mojo never leaves you it is just covered in guff.  The trick is to find the edges of you again.  Your adventure is to begin to uncover it and bring it to the world.  That is the only way into your awesome.

The Creative Mojo series of emails I am writing will take you on the seven stage adventure I went on to rediscover my mojo.  It is the how to this what and why.   So if you haven’t signed up for my mailing list you can do that here to get those insights into your mailbox.
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