Dear Tracy,

One statement from one person got to you when you were more vulnerable and unprotected than you knew. 

You've been doing very well in your recovery and your life.  You know this.  At the same you you also know where you've been, what your challenges were and are and where you need to take particular care of yourself.

The outside world hasn't changed as much as you have in your recovery.  People have their perceptions, insensitivities, prejudices and poor vocabulary skills.  If you let yourself be defined by how others see you, you would have to be changing your self of sense constantly.

Others will see you as old, young, sexy, boring, fat, thin, normal, blonde, black, white, asian, latina, tall, short, shapely, deformed, pretty, plain, gorgeous, wrinkled, straight, crooked, and on and on.  People see you not as you are but as their own psyche and mental state influences their perceptions.  

At the time of your writing your post you found yourself slipping into an old self criticcal inner world.  When you slip and fall you hurt, look around and see how to climb up and right yourself.

That is not about being a certain weight.  That's about finding your own authentic self again. You lost it for a moment.

Go back to your self building routines. Journal. Write down your dreams. Do the exercises in Healing Your Hungry Heart.  Start from the beginning of the book and go through it again.  It's a different experience every time you do it.  Find exercises in the Appendix you haven't tried yet.

Don't let someone else's perceptions trip you so you fall and stay down.  Reach for the tools you already have and come back to your true place in the world as the woman you are.

You can do it. I know you can.  You've shown your authentic self on these pages. I know you are there. Come on back, Tracy.  Give yourself a refresher course in recovery work and let those comments blow in the wind.  You don't have to take them in.  You have better things to think about and your own life to live.  

Do you feel me supporting you and cheering you on?  I know you can rise from this.

Joanna