I've decided to post my letters to myself here. It's kind of a big step because they invoked some very deep feelings and I cried like a baby and when I read some of the parts out loud, my voice began to shake because the declarations I was making were so forthright and powerful.
Dear Fat Jo. I understand the verbal abuse was unbearable. I know you didn’t know what to do with all of that cruel and harsh treatment. I know you stored it in your body because it was garbage that was thrown into you like you were a trash can. The human garbage can. It’s not your garbage. It doesn’t belong to you. It has never been yours. It was always their garbage and it has always belonged to them. I know it got you a little dirty. I know there are a few smears that made you smell and feel ugly for a while. But you are no longer standing in a place where anybody can throw garbage into you. You are not a bad girl. You never did anything wrong. Your intentions have always been pure in the eye’s of God. They came at you as fools with dull weapons. They came at you as thieves and murderers. They came at you blind, possessed with demons who inhabit their fears. You were never dirty or ugly or poisoned like they believed you were. You were more radiant than any of them could have comprehended, and that is why they needed to turn you into mud. They could not bear to look upon you in light of their own shortcomings. You are washed clean of the mud and dirt. You are emptied of the poison and toxic garbage that was dumped inside of you. Forced into you violently. You are made whole. You will never fit the image that they tried to stamp upon you. You are a beautiful vessel that is pure and white as snow and you stand under the protection of the Sovereign Almighty God himself who will never leave you alone. His rain falls directly on your head and face as a warm shower that encompasses you with love and cleans your heart mind body and soul forever. He will never leave your soul, and no-one will be allowed to hurt you ever again. God is love. You are free now to be the beautiful creature that you are. To live without torture and pain. To open up your heart to the world with wisdom and a capacity for love like you have never known. Nothing can hurt you ever again, you can go now and soar high in the skies of life as the eagle that you are. You can run with the passion of your burning chariot as it travels across the stars with lightning speed. You have all of this within you and much much more. You are the life you crave, you are the universe you seek to understand. You are the seed to new growth. You are the fire and passion like you’ve never felt. Take hold of the chariot and drive the fire now. Take your birth in the quiet stillness of the life-giving forest. Look up to the treetops and let the sun shine upon your face in perfect quiet surrender, this is your birthplace. It is your divine right. Take your place in the stars.
Now I will post the letter that my fat self wrote in response to this letter.
Dear thin Jo,
I feel like I have nothing to say to you. I feel like I have nothing to say at all. My opinion doesn’t matter to anybody and if I ever find an opinion and express it, I am made to feel like a fool immediately. I wonder if I am just a fool. I have tried everything in my power to disappear due to the immense inconvenience and cause of disgust I am to the people around me. I am incapable of success and therefore I am just trying to stay out of sight and stay out of everything. I am trying to be as a ghost. Unnoticed, unseen. Its not working is it? I tried so hard to stop f##king up everyone’s lives and moods and days. I tried so hard to give the one’s I loved everything I possibly could. But what they wanted was for me to disappear and never burden them with my presence. There was no place for me. I didn’t fit and I didn’t belong. I grew up without a home. I grew up as an intruder in my own house. Intruding on the other peoples lives. I was made into an empty shell, my soul and person sucked out from within me by way of violent rejection. I was forced to leave by the amount of s##t that was being shoved into me by my mother, my brother and my father, my church, the kids at school, my whole world. So being empty I had to fill myself with something else… So yes, I accepted all of their garbage because it felt better than being totally empty and totally alone. I had nothing. Nothing at all it has all been stripped from the inside out. I cling to the garbage that was given to me because I have nothing else. Where was I to go? Who was I to turn to? There was no way out. It just engulfed me like a black cloud with sharp teeth. Like a poison mist in which I disappeared like I was meant to. Now I eat garbage so that I can surround myself in fatty garbage to protect myself from emptiness. I have gone deep into a basement, a dark tunnel. Now I cant come home. I don’t know how. I don’t know the meaning of home. I feel the chance to cross-over. I feel that you are offering me freedom. I want to take it I want to come with you. I want to come back home. I just need you to love me. I need you to accept me and believe in me. I need you to come get me and carry me and show me what to do or how to do this. I am lost and alone and I have been sitting here in the dark crying since I was a toddler. I am scared. They told me I was nothing so I sit here in nothingness. The pain never goes away I’ve tried everything but all I ever do is weep and moan. I feel myself wanting to just disappear again. This is too much attention, too much sharing too much talking too much of me showing out there to the outside. I don’t want to go back to this coma of invisibility. I want to stay out. I want to stand up and start to walk with you. I want to go back to the opening where I came into this cave and step outside and experience the world and live. I realize as I am telling you these things that I have chosen this place myself. I have the power to step out it is my fear that has held me in chains. No one person has ever had the power. No world has ever had the power to stop me. I have stopped myself. I am willing to break these chains. I am ready to get up to my feet now. I will let go of my fear. I will let go of protecting myself because God is my protector and he works with thin you to keep me safe always. Is it the end of the world if someone hurts me again? No I don’t think so, not anymore. If I can climb out from this space and learn to live again… what can man do to me? I am stronger than man. Maybe I can even fly maybe there is a whole garden of Eden that I am able to explore and enjoy. Maybe the world is actually on my side now that I am sheltered. Willing to leave my own fear in the dark cave when I go outside.
Okay I am strong
I choose to live
I choose to let go of fear
I choose to have a presence
I choose to belong where I stand
I choose to have a voice
I choose to walk alongside of myself
I choose to participate and grow stronger
I choose to grow up and be loved and supported by the people around me
I choose to take my own hand and partner up within myself to take good care of myself
I choose to be under the protection of the Sovereign Almighty God and to rest in him for the rest of my life.
Amen.
I hereby open my house to life. I open my house to trust. I open my heart to freedom. I open my body to faith and love. I release my fears of being hurt and rejected. I release my fears of being verbally abused and judged by the people of this world. I know that they cannot hurt me. Please would the Sovereign Almighty God touch my hand and face and make me whole. Fill me up with your spirit and life that I may be satisfied in your love. I ask that you would inhabit all of the room inside of me with richness and nourishment for my soul. I apologize to my body for what I have done to hurt you. I have abused you and made you into a thick coat and a warm blanket which you accommodated gracefully, and for that I thank you. I honor your ability to adapt to all of my needs even if they will eventually kill you. You have been supportive to what I needed and let me have my own way. I now request that you be supportive to a new need. I need you to help me show myself to the world as I truly am. I need you to now partner with me to manifest the beauty that I have become on the inside and help me discover what it feels like to show myself as I truly am to the world. I ask for your kind partnership in a new journey. I promise I will not abuse you on this one, I will honor you for giving my soul a home and a place to express what it is that I was born to be.
Body, you have my permission now to let go of the hate and the negativity. The pain and the poison. The names that they called you and the lies they spoke about you. You have my permission to be free.
Where there is a will, there is a way!