Hawking’s assertion makes sense to me. The concept of Heaven and Hell is not one that’s ever given me peace to consider: be a good person, and you’ll go to Heaven, but if you don’t, you won’t? It sounds like a miserable life, to be terrified of ever being human and screwing up, for fear of losing out on the reward of a peaceful afterlife. Or better yet, as in the faith in which I was raised, my family would have to pray (and buy) my way out of Purgatory with the eventual hope I end up in Heaven. And when exactly would they know they’ve prayed/paid enough to get me there?

The idea of Heaven and Hell seems like an excellent way to keep folks in line, and to create a steady income for and reliance on the Church, at least in the case of Catholicism (and I wouldn’t even try to speak for any of the other Christian faiths). But does it seem … good? Welcome? Comforting? No, it really never has, to me. Death is not something I want sugar-coated anymore than birth. They are the bookends of a life, and while I agree that both should be treated with reverence and respect, that doesn’t mean resorting to an afterlife mythology to make me feel better about it.

So, does my distaste for the Heaven of my youth mean that I wholeheartedly agree with Hawking’s assertion that we are all computers, and when we break down, that’s it, that’s all? Mostly, yeah. I do think that death is the end, that the afterlife is more or less a time for decomposition. But I also believe that energy can’t be created or destroyed – so where does the energy that keeps us alive go? I don’t know.

I believe in the Big Bang theory of creation. AND I believe that there is something greater than just gas and rock colliding and exploding, that there is purpose and reason and … something.

Judaism’s take on the afterlife depends on who you ask (you may be familiar with the expression 2 Jews, 3 opinions?). In Ecclesiastes, however, it’s pretty clear that there is space for a dismissal of notions of the afterlife from a religious perspective:

For the same fate is in store for all: For the righteous and for the wicked, for the good and pure and for the impure, for him who sacrifices and for him who does not… That is the sad thing about all that goes on under the sun; that the same fate is in store for all.

Living a good life, therefore, isn’t about reward in the afterlife. It’s about making our world a decent place to live in while we live in it. I consider myself a person of faith because of this tenet of Judaism: fixing what’s broken with the earth (Tikkun Olam) plays a huge role in the choices I make, in how I live my life. I know many non-religious people who hold very similar viewpoints. One does not have to have faith in anything other than science or humanity or the flying spaghetti monster to make good choices that benefit our world.

For those of us who continue to have faith in something else besides science, sometimes we need more. We need a conscious expression of the rhythms of the calendar. We need a concrete set of rituals that are shared among other believers. We need community in times of celebration, and in times of crisis. It doesn’t make us delusional. It doesn’t make us anti-science. It doesn’t make us any worse or better than those who don’t share our world view. It’s just … different.

And not incompatible in the least, as evidenced by my almost 11-year-old atheist child, who believes that science is entirely the way to go, but has decided he’s Jewish “for the food.”

And it is, pretty much, what I heard this morning. But.

Suddenly, this child can no longer be accommodated in the mainstream classroom full-time. This child, this amazing, intelligent, engaged-in-this-child’s-own way kid of mine, is sinking. And fast. This child needs more help than can be provided in the split grade classroom filled with other children with exceptionalities, by one teacher. The times this child has been most engaged were the times when the teacher had a student teacher in the classroom. Even then, keeping this child on task was a two-teacher job. This child of mine needs smaller group or even one-on-one instruction to succeed. And the closest this child can get to that is the program that’s been recommended for the child’s placement: The Home School Program. The program is part of the school board’s Community Based Resource Model, which strives to keep students as integrated as possible.

The Home School Program is one of the components of the CBRM. It is a special education class in which a student is placed for at least 50 percent of the school day. Exceptional students are placed into the program through an IPRC. Sometimes non-identified students are placed into the program on the recommendation of the School Support Team. The Home School Teacher receives regular, ongoing professional development.*

My child, pending another full meeting of the IPRC in the fall, has been recommended for this placement, because a fully-integrated classroom with the realities of too many kids and not enough support has made it impossible for this child to succeed with the status quo. My child’s struggling has been recognized, and I really am so thankful that everyone on the team is trying to find the best way to help this child reach full potential.

And yet, here I sit, grieving this news as if it’s a loss.

I have lost nothing. My child has lost nothing. Arguably, we’ve gained something in the recognition that the child’s current placement isn’t a good fit. We’ve gained something in the understanding that the child has ties to this school, and this supportive environment will take place in the current school. I have gained a great deal of relief in knowing that these are the people who will help me help this child with the upcoming harder transition years to middle and high school, that these people genuinely want my child to thrive. All of that is of the good. And yet I grieve.

I grieve the fact that absolutely nothing will be easy for this child. The acknowledgement that this child cannot cope well in a mainstream environment without more intensive supports – what does that mean for this child in high school? In a post-secondary environment? In the work world? In relationships with others? And yes, selfishly, what does it mean for me, this child’s mother? I accepted years ago that at least one of my children would find it a significant struggle to live independently, and I have been trying to future plan with that in mind. But I still feel grief.

And I’m not grieving the fact that my kid sucks at math, and struggles with written expression. That’s not where this grief lives. This grief lives in the big picture, in the wide world that still doesn’t get autism/Asperger’s. The world that will see my withdrawn kid who doesn’t know where to start, and will think “lazy,” “stupid,” “unmotivated.” Just like everyone else on this planet, it’s true, my kid can sometimes be lazy and unmotivated, and this kid is capable of making incredibly stupid choices. But most of us can get away with this on occasion. This child of mine will have to work so much harder to not be seen that way as the default. You bet your ass I grieve that.

I’ll be better tomorrow. As I said, nothing’s really changed at all. I still have this complicated, hilarious kid who’ll have the same teacher and the same peers in the fall. But today, I’m giving myself permission to feel the grief. I need to honour where this grief is coming from, so it doesn’t get in my way when this child needs me to be strong. I need to work my way through it, get to the other side, and put my big-girl mama bear panties on when I get there.

* I should also mention that it’s entirely possible that this child will not get this placement, because of the child’s asynchronous abilities. Despite the fact that we all agree that this current placement isn’t working, this child may not be affected *enough* to qualify for the additional support. Then what?

The article addresses that those who have never had children and those under 30 are most likely to experience resistance to their choice of permanent contraception. The theory is that if you’ve never had a child, you may just not realize YET that you want one. And if you’re under 30, and already have children, well, what if you decide you wish to have another when you’re a bit older, or Gd forbid, one of your children dies? I only wish I were making that up. I know several women who sought sterilization and were given that argument as a reason why it wasn’t an acceptable choice. Because getting pregnant again and having a new baby will TOTALLY replace the dead child. Like a kitten.

As a friend of mine brought up on my Facebook page this weekend, it’s important to acknowledge the many people (women and men) who have been sterilized without their consent in Canada in both distant and recent history: Aboriginal people, people of colour, women who gave birth to babies via c-section who were considered too high a risk to get pregnant again, people with disabilities (physical, developmental, and psychiatric), and women who’d had “too many” children outside of marriage. The motivation is the same for refusing the procedure and for enforcing it: some people just aren’t perceived as capable of making smart choices about their fertility, and it is the role of physicians/the State to make that choice for them.

I have friends who, both childless and who had their children young, be turned down flat more times than they can count, first by family physicians, then by gynaecologists. They can make all kinds of health care choices for themselves that may or may not be permanent: tooth removal rather than repair (because it’s cheaper) is one that comes to mind. Donating a kidney is another. Both may have serious long term health repercussions for the person involved, but if you’ve got rotten teeth and no money, no physician or dentist is going to step up and say, “But you can’t! Think about the years of headaches you’re going to have because your bite’s going to be completely screwed!” Likewise, no one is going to stop you from giving a loved one or even a stranger a kidney, even if you have no guarantee that you’re not going to need it yourself one day.

While the risks of general anaesthetic are not negligible, the risk of pregnancy after the procedure is roughly 1 in 200, and 6% of sterilization failures lead to ectopic pregnancy, generally, it is a safe and effective procedure for the vast majority of people who have fallopian tubes. The risk of post-procedure regret exists, I agree. I know women who have had tubal reversals in attempts to get pregnant later in life. We all make choices we regret. But they should be *our* choices to make, our regrets to have, if we have them. The fact that one of the women in the article had to have her partner’s consent before the doctor found her argument legitimate is horrifying to me.

This is hitting close to home for me, because I have a referral next month for a tubal. I have 2 kids, and I’m in my late 30s. I’ve also had some ongoing chronic illness. My family doc didn’t blink an eyelash when I asked for the gyn referral. She said, “You have nothing to justify to me. You’ve got big kids. I trust you know you’re done.” I love how matter of fact she was with me, though I did wonder if she’d have had the same reaction if I’d gone in at 28, with an infant and a toddler, and asked for the same referral. Or if I’d gone in at 25, before getting pregnant in the first place (which I wouldn’t have, because I’ve always wanted children, but play along with me in the hypothetical space for just a sec). I am thankful that she didn’t go through other options in an effort to dissuade me, like other people in my situation have had to deal with.

Many are offered an IUD. Its effectiveness rate is almost equal to (and the Mirena is actually slightly higher than) sterilization. So why wouldn’t I consider one? I’ve got a few reasons, actually: I do *not* do well with hormones. The Mirena excretes a small amount of progesterone into the uterus as part of its way of making it an inhospitable place for fertilization. It’s entirely possible that hormones that far away from my brain wouldn’t make me crazier, but I’m not willing to spend $300+ to test the theory. As for the less expensive copper model, it’s associated with increased bleeding. My hemoglobin and iron stores are traditionally low. My periods are currently manageable. It seems like a bad idea to introduce something into my body that could lead to me getting much sicker.

And other forms of contraception? Can’t take the pill, Nuva Ring or the Patch (see above for hormones = CRAZY PANTS OF CRAZINESS more than usual crazy for me). Depo Provera? Crazy + significant risk of bone density loss. Barrier methods? Diaphragms and cervical caps are significantly less effective without spermicide (to which I react rather violently, and avoid like the plague for fear of a fire being lit inside my vagina). I use condoms, but I have to find unlubed ones because the lube on condoms (even the silicone ones) also leaves me with flaming cooch of doom. You know what? As effective as they can be, condoms sometimes break.

I am DONE with worrying that I’m going to get pregnant if my contraception (always condoms + fertility awareness, combined with periodic abstinence and withdrawal when fertile) fails. Also? Seriously? FOUR methods of contraception, and it’s still not as effective as two clean snips, some cauterization, and a couple of stitches. I look forward to my consult next month, and hope the surgery is scheduled quickly and goes smoothly.

I also hope that more women and others with fallopian tubes are someday seen as capable of making their own choices about their bodies, whether or not those choices are popular.

You see, I’ve been under the mistaken assumption that my children’s ongoing inability to process questions, manage emotional responses, and be in any way organized was due to the different way in which their brains are wired. Their total meltdowns over unanticipated transitions (and their extreme discomfort even when they know what’s coming)? A quirk. One’s inability to plan ahead well enough to handwrite a sentence without herculean effort? Obviously just a lack of practice. Their inability to look me in the eye? I’m obviously just not pushing them hard enough.

That’s what Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam Conservative Member of Parliament James Moore would have me believe, anyway. When Moore was asked at an all-candidates meeting whether he would publicly commit to support legislation which will amend the Canada Health Act to include autism treatment under Medicare, he said no. And not only did he refuse, but he took it one step further: autism is not a disability, and the Canada Health Act is not for special interest groups.

I’ve been called out for being part of special interest groups my whole life. It’s dismissive, and it’s a weapon most often used by the Right to discredit the valid concerns of people on the margins.

Families affected by autism are on the margin. In spite of affecting 1 in 165 individuals (over 204 000 across Canada), families of children with autism are unable to access treatment universally. Faced with waiting lists of a minimum of 18 months for provincially covered care, parents have turned to private care providers for Intensive Behavioural Intervention for their children. Families are expected to pay, out of pocket and without any hope of reimbursement, $60 000-$100 000 per year for therapy that is covered by provincial and territorial health care plans – as long as you’re willing to wait, have it delivered in the wrong language (English/French), or deal with half a program because it’s got to be better than nothing.

If you choose to wait (or, like many people, can’t afford the options that come from not waiting), if your child with autism turns six before getting treatment, you’re out of luck with the health care system. School-aged children access their treatment through the education system. School boards have had to contract out Occupational Therapy services and have children with all communication disorders relying on the same speech-language pathologists. Teachers get educational assistants part-time (if at all) in mainstream classrooms, and their classes are filled with children who have several different exceptionalities. These teachers are expected and required to accommodate, modify, or create alternate curriculum models for students with not only autism, but learning special interests, medically fragile special interests, developmentally specially interested, and children with behavioural special interests.

Autism has a clock associated with it. The sooner a child is diagnosed and a treatment plan is developed, the better chance that child will learn to communicate effectively and successfully. I’m not talking about a cure. Folks with autism will have it forever, in varying intensities, but early intervention offers an opportunity for children to develop better adaptive skills and allows parents to feel supported in their journey.

I’m not convinced that the limited IBI programs offered by our health care system are the answer for every family. But even if the treatment helps half of the children diagnosed with autism grow up to be adults with autism who can be confident and happy and successful (in whatever way one wishes to define that success), it should be a treatment covered by Medicare, enshrined in the Canada Health Act.

The kids and I were sitting in a restaurant this morning, finishing up a breakfast treat, when one of my children showed me the other child’s arm. It was covered in self-inflicted bite marks.

Shit. Shit. Shit. NO. This cannot be happening, I thought to myself.

Out loud, I asked, “Why are you doing this?” The response was simply “It’s one of the things I do.” I explained as calmly as I could that the child needed to stop this behaviour, if for no other reason than the possibility of infection. The child hadn’t thought of that as a possibility, and offered to do it in a cleaner way.

No. Not what I meant.

Deep breath.

I pushed up my sleeves, held out both arms in front of both of my children and I said, “What do you see?”

They looked closely, and commented first only on the freckles. Then the biter noticed. Thin-faded crisscrosses on both arms. Some thicker marks here and there, all old and camouflaged by over a decade’s worth of time.

That child’s eyes grew wide, and the questions began. I talked about depression, I talked about how this wasn’t because people were mean to me, but that my brain just isn’t wired like a lot of other people’s, and just like both of them have autism, my depression and anxiety mean my brain doesn’t always let me respond to situations the way other people might.

I talked about how when I saw my child’s wounds, I was worried about that child coming to rely on the endorphins that come from inflicting pain as a way of making everything else feel just a little bit less shitty, because that’s how it started for me. And I told them that even though I haven’t cut myself since a few years before they were born, I started my self-injurious behaviour when i was younger than they are now.

I never intended to keep my mental health history a secret from my children, but I wasn’t expecting to have the conversation over brunch when they were tweens. I think my own experience has made it in some ways easier for me to see red flags in my own kids, but at the same time, maybe it’s also made me too sensitive to what might just be “normal” kid behaviour.

My kids have a a somewhat better understanding of depression as “disease,” and not just the simplistic idea that people have mental health crises solely due to external factors, and that “cheering up” can be about as effective as encouraging a diabetic to grow a new pancreas. But it also means I’ve given them one more thing to worry about, and their anxieties about their mother’s vulnerability are so high already.

Right choice? I have no idea if there was a right choice in this situation.

I was asked again today, jokingly, by a stranger, for the same reasons. My lunch of a plate of kosher dills and fries was suspect, and the man who asked likely meant nothing by it. It’s one of those things, after all, that a lot of people joke about or make assumptions about without a second thought.

Last night, my partner joked that maybe the tests run on the ridiculous number of vials of blood taken this week would indicate a pregnancy. Knowing I would more than likely wake up with my period this morning, I could laugh with him this time, but memories of the terror that comes with the idea of me being pregnant were very close to the surface.

Then there was the time I had a condom failure the night before, and was sitting quietly in my office, debating whether to take Plan B. My co-worker threw me a pregnancy calculator wheel, joking, “Hey, maybe you can use this!” (I used to work in women’s reproductive health care policy. it’s not like she had a bunch of them for no reason.)

Yeah, the joke fell a little flat that time.

It falls flat a lot. When we choose to joke about something as personal as a woman’s fertility, we are insinuating ourselves into a part of her life where we are not likely welcome. We have no way of knowing her history with infertility, or whether she is actually pregnant right now, and not sure she wants to be (or KNOWS she doesn’t want to be, and is stuck waiting for her appointment to terminate). She could carry fat around her middle, and have been mistaken for pregnant repeatedly, having to respond, “Nope, just fat” to people for whom that information is none of their business.

It would never occur to most of us to ask casual acquaintances or even strangers when their last dental check-up was, if they’d had a recent prostate exam, or if they needed orthotics in their shoes. Why is it that our teeth, men’s butts and our feet warrant more privacy than the content (or lack thereof) of our uteri?

If there is a pregnancy and you have any right to that information, she will tell you. Otherwise? It might be wise to focus on accepting that some of us just like pickles.

I spoke with my kids about the event on the streetcar home from school yesterday. The girl, whose wardrobe is about 80% pink anyway, decided she would go top to toe in pink this morning. The boy, however, adamantly refused. I asked if he could explain his reasons, and initially he just said that he hated the colour. After a bit more prodding, he opened up:

He is tired of people thinking he’s a girl.

He’s dealt with this his whole life: he prefers his hair long, and it’s big and curly. In spite of his dark, understated “masculine” wardrobe choices, the hair signals to others that he is female. Combine the hair with the delicate facial features he inherited from me, and strangers just don’t know how to process him.

Initially, I would correct people’s assumptions only by referring to him in masculine pronouns (only after he started referring to himself as male, to avoid placing expectations on his gender identity). If people apologized for their error, I was quick to say that there is no shame in either being a girl or assuming someone is a girl, and mistakes happen.

For a while, he actually enjoyed people’s assumptions about his gender, because he felt like a bit of a spy, always in disguise. If people were going to think he was a girl, he was more or less okay with that, because as far as he was concerned, the joke was on them.

The last year or so has been hard for him, though. At almost 11, he is extremely invested in his boy identity, and finds it frustrating when people don’t take a second look. Streetcar drivers. Restaurant servers. Older kids at school. All refer to the three of us as “ladies” when we’re together. At last week’s SlutWalk, representatives from Plan Canada’s Because I Am a Girl campaign offered him a “Because I Am a Girl” temporary tattoo. If there were a last straw for him, I think that was it.

He can take no more.

He knows that if he cuts his hair short again, people will take in the whole picture, but he’s not interested in fitting others’ ideas of what “boy” is supposed to look like. That said, there is no way he’s going to make it any easier for people to see “girl” when they see him. So, in spite of the fact that he thinks it’s ridiculous that people can’t look like and wear what makes them comfortable, he will not be wearing pink today (or likely any other).

I can’t really say I blame him. Gender performance is hard enough when we meet expectations.

Having spent more than half of the last decade identifying as the parent of a (and then two) child(ren) with autism, I can say that the majority of parents I know with kids on the spectrum would not dream of taking their child to a protest.

1) It’s LOUD, with drums and whistles, and sirens, and chants. The ambient noise is overwhelming for some folks who don’t generally have sensory overload issues, but it can be that much harder for those whose perception of sound is magnified.

2) It’s CROWDED. There is no such thing as personal space when you’re in the middle of a wave of hundreds of people walking down the middle of a closed-off street.

3) It’s UNPREDICTABLE. Sure, the path is set, and the chants don’t change a lot from year to year, cause to cause, but no one knows *when* someone will screech into a megaphone. No one knows when the crowd will stop, then start walking again.

A lot of other parents would see this as too much. For their kids, for them, period. If they wanted to attend, they’d arrange for one parent to stay at home with the child or arrange childcare. Or they just wouldn’t come, “sacrificing” one more part of their identity outside of being an autism parent.

Many parents choose structured social skills classes/groups for their kids. Some groups are just kids on the autism spectrum (generally “high functioning”), while others are half spectrum, half “typical” children. The intention is to teach kids with autism how to fit in with prescribed societal notions of normal.

I get that. I desperately want nothing more than for my kids to feel like they have a place in this world. Where I differ from a lot of folks is that I want them to have that place on their terms, just as they would if their brains were more commonly wired. So I show them my world. I bring them with me to events that matter to me, and explain why they matter. I encourage them to share their opinions, even (and especially) when they disagree with me. I model respectful communication with them, and expect them to mirror back the same.

So. SlutWalk.

The kids commented on the crowd, and were surprised when I saw someone I knew within seconds of hitting the grass at Queen’s Park. The boy was entranced by the signage, the girl by the puppies. They both wanted to know if the police officer who had recommended that women not dress like sluts was going to be in attendance, because they had a bone to pick with him. The boy read a sign aloud at one point: “‘How to prevent rape: Stop raping.’ Well, duh. Of course people are still going to get raped if the people raping don’t stop.” He commented on a lot of the signs, asked questions, and loved the energy the written words brought to the event. I explained patriarchy to them as we walked down College Street, and then explained my explanation. They asked questions about sexual violence, police treatment of survivors, and why so many people care so much about this issue.

I freely admit to having bribed them with a reward trip to the candy store at the end of the route if they chose to stay with the walk, and when they hit their limit of loud, we took our leave.

One other thing I should mention about today: over brunch, the girl talked about an issue at school that she identified as unfair to an entire group of students. Several of them have complained to their teachers about the issue, but have been brushed off. She was feeling unheard, and without power. I asked her how many kids felt the same way as she did. She gave me a pretty significant number. I talked about how other people have addressed inequities that might be effective for this situation: talking to the teachers again, talking with the vice/principal, petitions, organizing classmates to work collectively to create the change they want to see. She now has a concrete plan to approach the problem, and a concrete example of how to bring peaceful attention to an unjust situation.

I don’t want typical kids. I want the extraordinary ones I’ve got.

But.

I really seem to sleep well when I’m not by myself in the bed.

When my babies were tiny, they slept in my bed beside me. With the first, we had a crib, set up right beside the bed in our tiny one-bedroom apartment. I tried to put him in it for the first two, maybe three nights after he was born. He was actually totally fine with it. I couldn’t sleep. I stayed up all night, listening for him, worried that something would happen to him with him so far away. He also nursed for short periods very frequently in those first … well, forever, so even if I could fall asleep, I’d be awake again in a half-hour. But that was honestly the secondary reason for taking him into bed with us.

Sharing sleep with my partner was a given, so why wouldn’t the same be true for sharing sleep with my tiny child?

Things got a little more complicated when the girl was born. The boy had night-weaned at that point, but would wake up every time the baby nursed, which just made all of us chaotic and non-functional. He wasn’t ready to sleep alone at 20 months, so his dad and I decided that for the transition to 4, he and I would each sleep with a child, in different rooms. This eventually led to my sharing a twin bed with an infant for 5 months, but it was what she (and really, what I) needed. Having her in a separate bed would have led to no sleep for either of us.

When the kids’ dad and I split up, I slept with both kids in my bed for months. The boy eventually chose his own bed at about 3.5, and the girl was regularly in my bed for most nights until that age as well. At that point, I was tired of the frequent waking, early-rising sleep-talking little people who kept me from my precious precious sleep. I convinced myself with their eventual departure that I preferred to sleep alone, and that I wasn’t interested in sharing sleep with anyone.

You know what? Total lie. Over the last couple of years, I’ve realized just how much of a lie I was telling myself. The first time I slept over at a date’s house (kids were at my parents’ place), the SLEEP was actually the best part (and really, that’s sayin’ something, given how well the date went).

I rarely get full nights of shared sleep with my current partner, as he generally cannot stay the full night, but once or twice a week, I get to fall asleep with him in my bed. Most of the time, those nights lead to my most restful sleeps.

I don’t know if it’s the breath regulation, listening to someone else’s heartbeat, if it’s an emotional connection to the person beside me, or if it’s simply because my bed gets warm faster, but there are some days I look forward to sleeping more than anything else.

When life gets unpredictable, I slow down. If more than one thing at a time is out of balance, it can start to feel like everything is spinning out of control. I’m on black ice, and I’m headed off the highway. Do I do the right thing – aim towards the spin and trust that things will balance out in time and I’ll be safe?

Of course not.

I frantically try to regain control of something – anything – so I have
something to reassure myself that everything’s okay. The tools have changed over time, and I’ve been able to overcome most of the less positive ones. I no longer hurt myself to make everything slow down. I have more than enough scars from the scratches, cuts, and burns I’ve inflicted to want to add any more. (shameful secret: even though I don’t cut, I can’t say I don’t want to)

For the last decade or so, my go-to has been food. If I ate enough, and fast enough, the panic would be buried. If I could do it without losing any of the food, so much the better (I have never been a purger — ahem, as you can tell from the photos in the last post). Lately, though, things have changed.

In the last year, almost every single food that was on my binge list has become off-limits to me because of my body’s reaction to gluten. When things are totally out of control now, I. Can’t. Eat. Putting food in my mouth disgusts me. Chewing is a horror.

Thankfully, it’s not incessant. I have a realistic view of my body, and value my health. I know, when I’m not feeling out of control, that I need to eat well to maintain my health. I am also very aware of the example I’m setting for my children. If I’m in this zone, I try to ensure that whatever I do eat is in their company, to avoid normalizing my behaviour to them.

I know it’s not okay. I just have to figure out how the hell to accept that going into the spin really is the answer.