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Session 20240518

Mary’s Talk

“Good News: What Food Can Do”
“Surviving with PTSD”
“Pay Attention to Your Bodies”
“Reappearance of a Missing Key”

Saturday, May 18, 2024 (Group/Hinsdale, New Hampshire)

Participants: Mary (Michael), Alex (Philip), Bonnie (Lyla), Brigitt (Camile), Christina (Melian), Debbie (Tamarra), Eric (Doren), Finou (Rrussell), Lynda (Ruther), Mark (Liam), Melissa (Leah), Peter (Gaylore) and Tariq (Jessik)

MARY: So for today, my sharing of my news is that –

MARK: Skinny Minnie.

MARY: What?

MARK: Skinny Minnie.

MARY: (Laughs) I have lost… No, today I have lost sixteen pounds. (Group cheers and applause) And it’s really cool because my daughter is very into fitness and nutrition, and she’s actually really, really, really good at it and she wants to make a business being a coach, for which I think she would be awesome.

[To one of Mary’s dogs] No, don’t lick her eyes. (Laughs)

So I went to her two years ago and said, “Can I correct high cholesterol through diet?” She was like, “Absolutely!” and dah-dah-dah. And then she wanted to go through this whole thing and I wasn’t ready yet, and I dropped it. (Laughs) I dropped that like a flipping hot potato. Then a few months ago, I went to her again and I said, “Okay, now I think I’m ready.” And I said, “I really want to know how to eat correctly and be more aware of food,” because I wasn’t so concerned about exercising at the time. I was just concerned about food.

I have massive food issues, and I’m going to share with you guys, which I know is going to go out to everybody but it’s okay because I’m ready to do that. I have major, major food issues, and they come from my mother. My mother, from the time I was a baby until I was 10… Okay. She is one of these people that is Munchausen by Proxy, and if you don’t know what that is, it’s a person that poisons people so that they can take care of them. And my mother did this with me and my one sister. She never did it with my other sister, but she did this with me and my one sister probably from the time we were about 2 until I was 10.

At six years old, I had been in the hospital 52 times. There was no such thing as child abuse back then. (Chuckles) I found this out later when I was in my 20s. I didn’t know what was happening when it was happening. My sister and I just thought my mother was a horrible cook, and that she just was terrible and everything she cooked tasted like crap. And in that time, my brain kind of programed me in a direction of: “Food is not safe.” So I kind of got in the habit of only eating foods that didn’t come from my house, because it wasn’t safe to eat them. And I would eat things at my house at times, because I had to. But if any of you ever saw pictures of me when I was a kid, I looked anorexic. I was so skinny, I mean unhealthy skinny, and my sister was too.

But when I was 10 years old, my pediatrician threatened my mother and said, “I went to the trouble of finding this boarding school, and you either put her in it or I’m calling the police.” And at that time, it would have been attempted murder; it wouldn’t have been child abuse. So she was like, “Okay,” and they sent me away. Of course, nobody tells you anything when you’re a kid back then. They sent me to this school for a year, and I wasn’t sick the whole year. Then when they let me come home, the pediatrician warned her, “If this kid comes back to me again being sick, because she’s been okay for a whole year and if that doesn’t keep happening, then I will call the police.” So she stopped.

He didn’t insist that my sister go, because my sister didn’t… She was sneaky as heck (laughs), and she would sneak into the pantry and get food and hide it in her bedroom, so she wouldn’t eat the food that my mother would cook. She would eat things that she stole out of the pantry, which I didn’t know until much later also, but that was pretty smart of her. So she didn’t end up hospitalized as many times as I did, so he thought she was only doing it to me.

But because of all of that long story, I ended up with massive food issues and allergies, huge food allergies, which I know is all connected with all of that, so there’s a lot of food I won’t eat. (Laughs) (To John) Like the… whatever those were.

JOHN: Oh, those donuts.

MARY: Yeah. I was like, “Yeah, no. Nah. No, I can’t even look at that.” (Laughs) That just happens. I don’t even want to try things. So my daughter this time, she really listened to me. She knows the story, so she was like, “Okay. What I want you to do is I want you to make a list of all the vegetables that you will eat that don’t gross you out, that you’ll just eat. And I want you to make a list of all the meats or fish that you will eat, and a list of all the fruits that you will eat.” (Laughs.) Fruit, yeah, that’s… (Laughs) Yeah. I will eat grapes and pears. That’s it. I hate fruit.

Anyway, so I did, and she came over and spent about three hours with me going through things. And she’s like, “Okay. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to 86 the fruit altogether and you don’t have to eat that.” She was like, “We’ll just work with the veggies and the meats and the fish.” So she made a menu for me for two weeks, for every day, what to eat.

She also told me that I was not eating enough food and that’s why I couldn’t lose weight, and that I needed to eat more food and that I would lose weight, which sounded ridiculous to me but I was like, “Okay.” And she said, “You need to eat a little lunch in the middle of the day,” because I wasn’t. I was eating breakfast at 6:30 and then I was eating dinner at 4:30, and that was it. She was like, “No, that’s not enough food.”

So we started on this new menu, which I still have to have an alarm on my phone to remind me to eat lunch because if I get distracted and doing something, I will forget. And for about three and a half or four weeks it was really rough, because I wasn’t hungry for dinner so I had to force myself to eat dinner, and nothing tasted good because it was just… But it was all in my brain. It wasn’t as though my body was reacting to anything – except I also became allergic to another thing, which made me very sad because I really love salmon and now I can’t eat salmon because now I’m allergic to that. Add it to the list. (Laughs)

But anyway, it was really interesting. I stuck to it, and it was amazing. I have so much more energy. My mood is so good all the time. I’m actually really happy, and I didn’t even know that I wasn’t happy. And I sleep better, I’m more balanced in everything. It’s crazy, just from food! It’s like, “What?” And I’m eating more food and she’s right, losing weight. I’m like, “That’s insane!” I’m losing weight, and I’m steadily losing weight. As I said, I’ve lost 17 pounds, which is insane. It’s just nuts. So I’m like, “Okay.” Actually it’s funny, because I (laughs)… I’m still wearing my pants that I was wearing before and they keep falling down. (Laughs) I’m like, “Uh-oh!” (Laughs) “I’m going to have to go and buy some new pants.”

But it’s just been such an experience, and I super wanted to share it with everybody because it’s amazing what food can do. And my daughter even said that there are a lot of people that you can throw all this information at them and say, “Okay, well you should eat this and this and this and this and this, and I mean as for me, I’m just like, “Okay, what am I supposed to do with it?” The doctor gave me a list of all these foods that I should be eating. Just an example, one of the foods was beans. I’m like, “Okay. What, am supposed to go get a can of beans and just eat ‘em?” (Laughs) I’m like, “What am I supposed to do with beans? I don’t know what to do with beans.” And I’m like, “And I hope they don’t mean beans that you’ve got to do things with, such as soak ‘em and stuff. I don’t know how to do that at all.” And I mean, it’s what are you going to DO with this stuff? I don’t know.

And that’s what my daughter was telling me. She was like, “I get it.” She was like, “Yeah. That’s what they do. They just throw all this information at you and you’re like, ‘Okay, where do I go with this? I don’t know what to do with it all.’” And she was like, “So I’m going to tell you. I’m going to write it on your menu, and I’m going to tell you.” She was like, “What you do with beans, you make chili.” She was like, “And then you freeze it.” I was like, “Oh!”

She was insistent that I stop eating Quaker oatmeal and that I start eating steel-cut organic oats. And I have to tell you, this was funny. She brought over to my house a little bit of her steel-cut oats. Then she took a little bit of Quaker oats, rolled oats, and then she took a little bit of instant oatmeal, and she dumped it on my table. And she was like, “Okay, this is how oats start.” I was like, “Okay.” And she goes, “And this doesn’t look anything like this.” She was like, “This is called rolled oats. Do you want to know what they do? They smash ‘em, and then they roll ‘em. That’s why they don’t look anything (laughs) like this.” She was like, “Then this is instant, and what they do is they take those rolled oats and they chop ‘em all up, so they’re just little bits and pieces.” She was like, “And each step that they do that, you’re losing all the nutritional value of what you should be eating.”

Okay. Well, I was not really keen on this whole steel-cut oats thing. I tried them once, and it was no. I didn’t want to –

ALEX: Butter.

MARY: Yeah, well what is also really good is milk.

ALEX: Yeah, that’s okay.

MARY: Instead of water. It makes a whole different ballgame. So I did the directions, I made (laughs)… I had made one cup of oats, which made an entire potful (laughs), which I didn’t expect. But I ran to Google, which is my favorite thing to do, and said, “Can you freeze cooked oatmeal?” Absolutely you can. So I just portioned it out. I make it once a week, and I portion it out in little baggies and I put it in the freezer. And I take one out each night before I go to bed, put it in the refrigerator, have it for the morning ready to go. Put a little butter, a little maple syrup, it’s perfect. (Group laughter) It’s so delicious.

ALEX: You health it right up, huh? (Group laughter)

MARY: Well, actually she said that butter and maple syrup is not bad for you, that maple syrup has— I don’t remember what she said, because I was only half listening because she gets really technical about things and then I kind of phase out. But she was –

PETER: I know what you mean.

MARY: Yeah. She was telling me all the things that are in maple syrup that are good for you, and I was like, “Oh, okay. Great! I’m all about it.” So I just put that on my oatmeal and it’s really good.

JOHN: Are you particular about how you eat? Some people will eat standing up or sit down and be very particular about taking time out, and they say that impacts how you…

MARY: Yes. I always eat at the table, but I think that’s habit. I don’t think it’s a conscious choice that I’m making. I think that it’s just my whole life was…

I mean, what is somewhat significant to understand with me is that the abuse that happened in my home when I was growing up didn’t stop when I became an adult. It didn’t stop until I was in my early 30s. They kept it up. I mean, they did it differently, they weren’t beating us or throwing us in a toybox and locking us in there, but they did other things. They just got creative in how they were abusive. I mean, they evolved as we got older.

So I think that, you know, there are some things that are just so conditioned in me, and I know that there are some things that are just never going to be dealt with. I went to a PTSD counselor for two and a half years, and there are some things that are just never going to be resolved. And she explained that to me too.

Okay, that just of made me a little bit… um… whatever. But yeah. So there are some things that you just can’t fix, no matter how old you are. You just learn how to manage them, and I do that so that’s been good. But anyway, the GOOD part is that this is working really good, and I’m super happy about it.

[To one of Mary’s dogs] Mimi! Yeah, that’s my puppy. She’s doing great, now that she’s on a good food and she’s gained back all her weight. I thought we were going to lose her there for a while, but she’s doing great too.

And I’m expanding my skills. I’m so excited. I’m going to be doing these quilting classes every other week throughout the whole summer, and I’m so excited about it. It’s similar to a new skill that I have not tried before and that I’m kind of a little intimated by, but I’m really excited to do it and to figure it out. It’s going to be great. The woman that’s teaching the class is a fabric designer and a pattern designer, and she now works for a company that only makes patterns – and they only make this particular type of patterns with this particular method. She’s really good at it, and (chuckles) I’m really excited about it. I was riveted when we went to see her (chuckles). Debbie and I went to see her and I was so focused, it was (chuckles) “Aw, this is amazing!” So I’m going to be doing THAT this summer and increasing my skills, which will be really fun because this is something that is such a huge passion of mine, I absolutely love it.

Which you know, all of you that have been up to my studio can tell that (chuckles) this is the absolute passion of mine. You guys should stop by the house, definitely, and that way I can take you up and show you my studio. My carpenter did an AMAZING job building it. He is an artist. He is really, really good at what he does.

LYNDA: He really is. Yeah.

MARY: Yeah. He is very good at what he does.

LYNDA: And he loves Mimi.

MARY: Oh, he was there when I first got Mimi when she was a little tiny puppy. Oh my god, and she was so cute. Everybody thought she was a stuffed animal. (Group laughter) She was so adorable. [To Mimi] Hi! You’re so pretty. And he was in love with her when she was this little tiny baby, so he still comes by to say hi.

LYNDA: Just to see Mimi.

MARY: To say hi and to see Mimi and yeah, he was… He just came by just recently and was very chatty, which he usually isn’t, being very chatty about all these political things going on. Which I was like, “Okay!” I just listen.

[Mary’s phone alarm goes off] Oh, there it is. Okay. That’s my alarm for my lunch, which I already did. (Laughs) But yeah, I have to still have that alarm on there because otherwise I will forget, especially if I’m upstairs sewing. Nothing stops me. (Laughs) I’m just “in the zone” or whatever.

But anyway, I wanted to share that with you guys and hope that you get maybe inspired to pay attention to what you’re doing with your bodies and stuff, because it’s important. And you know, it’s never too late to start.

I mean you know, I’m going to be the big 7-0 next month. (Group cheering and applause) I can’t believe it! I don’t feel like a little old lady. (Group laughter)

LYNDA: And you never will.

MARY: I know!

LYNDA: I never will.

MARY: I don’t feel like a little old lady. I mean you know, I go out hiking on the mountain with the dogs almost every day – I mean unless it’s raining I don’t. But I go two and a half, three miles every day… on the mountain. I went on the retreat trails the other day because there was a big accident on the entrance to Wantastiquet, which is over here In New Hampshire, and that was not so good because the retreat trails are straight up. It’s like, “Okay, I’m going to die.” I’m like, “I am seriously going to die, going up this hill.” I’m like, “Oh my god. Okay. No. We’re turning around, guys. I can’t do it. I can’t do it.”

LYNDA: Could you just mention the key? I think it’s worth mentioning.

MARY: Oh! Last November we went to see Celtic Thunder, which is a group of Irish singers that I am in love with and have been for a while, and we went to Boston, or right outside Boston, to see them. And the next day, I took the dogs walking on the mountain, and I put my key in my back pocket, my key to my car. I locked the car, and I put my key in my pocket and walked and lost the key. And yeah, this was a bad situation, because there was… I didn’t have a backup key, because the backup key was dead. The Mini has a key that is a round key and it plugs in, and then you push a button to start the car. The car charges the battery in the key. The key is sealed; the battery is sealed inside the key. You can’t replace it.

So one of the keys was completely dead. The other key was good, but now I lost it. And I lost it in November, okay? There’s a bazillion leaves here in November, okay? All the trees have dropped their leaves, and the leaves are this thick. There’s no way I was going to find that key. I tried. I went up and down and up and down and up and down the trail, I can’t count how many times. I bought a –

BRIGITT: Metal detector?

MARY: I did! (Group laughter) But I bought a magnet bar on wheels, trying to go through all these leaves. Forget about it. It wasn’t going through all those leaves, and so there it was. I thought, “Okay, I’m not finding this thing until the spring, and then it’ll be dead.” Because it’ll be in the rain, in the snow, everything; it’ll be dead. And in the meantime, I called the Mini dealer in New Hampshire and ordered two new keys so I would have a backup. So I had two brand new keys, and that’s fine. And I kept even still looking, thinking maybe I’ll come across it, you know? Maybe a miracle will happen.

A few weeks ago, somebody found it. There’s a cement pillar at the entrance of the trails and people, when they find things, they put them up on the top of that pillar. And somebody (chuckles) put my key up on the top of the pillar. I was like, “No way! This is my key.” I’m like, “Oh my god!” And I went over to the car and pushed the button and it opened! I was like, “Holy crap! It still works! This is amazing!”

The thing had been in the snow and the rain for five months, and it still worked. (Group chatter) Yeah! So now I have three sets of keys. (Laughs) So there you go. (Laughs)

All right. We are going to just let the dead guy take over now.

LYNDA: Thank you. Awesome.

(Mary’s talk ends after 32 minutes)

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