There are strong similarities between Diane B. Forman’s “Holding My Breath” (Spring 2020 Intima), and my essay “Weight/Loss” (Fall 2021 Intima). Forman’s beautiful, insightful essay in part details her daughter’s near fatal struggle with anorexia and her own coming to terms with the limits of her deep maternal love: She could watch and support, but she could not directly affect a cure.
Disordered eating occupies a spectrum—anorexia nervosa at one end, morbid obesity at the other. Attempting rigid control of the body and its appetites, anorexics are unable to see themselves and their bodies accurately. Compulsive overeaters—often obese—similarly might not see themselves accurately. In both disorders, controlling food is the aim, a genuine addiction, a strategy through which addicts deal with the world and their own circumstances—a necessary coping skill, even though it is risky to health in both cases.
A compulsive overeater myself, recovering through Overeaters Anonymous, I knew about using food to cope; though my struggle continued, through OA I found alternatives. I married a fellow member of OA who could not manage the program. I thought my example of abstinent eating and support for my husband’s efforts might help. But I could not help enough. Through all his attempts at abstinent eating, through the inevitable rapid regaining of weight, I could do nothing but wait, watch and help only when asked to do so. Spousal devotion, like maternal love, has limits.
Like Forman, I struggled with accepting my own limits. Those whose loved ones have various addictions grapple with powerlessness. We ache to help, having to bite back judgement, direction, suggestion. Eventually, we have to understand the true wisdom of the serenity prayer, accepting the things we cannot change, courageously changing whatever we can (most often ourselves), and the deep wisdom of truly knowing the difference. We learn our love is not all-powerful. We cannot save our loved ones—we can only love them. Forman’s daughter recovered; my husband did not. His suffering led to his suicide, the only path open to him, so he thought. Terrible as it was, I understood my love for him had not failed.
Carmela McIntire lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she moved after a long teaching career at Florida International University, the state university in Miami, Florida. She is getting to know her new city through helping establish a grassroots community organizing effort focused on local needs. She is at work on a memoir about her family life in Miami, from which “Weight / Loss” is adapted; shorter pieces have appeared on Herstry and thegriefdialogues.com. An excerpt from her work in progress, “Prelude: Weight” has appeared in the anthology Crone Rising (JazzHouse Publications 2021), edited by T. Curry and Seamus King.