A Professor, Pizza and Recovery

I recently taught a beautiful women’s retreat at the Kripalu Center in Massachusetts. At the end of one of the sessions a participant asked me, “can you tell me if there was any defining moment for you in your recovery, like any aha moment.” I stopped to consider the question as I really don’t think there was a specific aha moment when things turned around but rather let’s just say it was more like a series of fortunate events that did so and a moment in my summer class in college was one of them.

I was a counseling major in college and minored in social work and sociology. I loved my sociology classes and one summer I had the opportunity to participate in an immersion class that was a two-week intensive. If you have ever partaken in one of these you know that you are together with others, pretty intensely, day in and day out. The two professors who led the class happened to be my favorites. The class was an experiential class in systems and how systems manage power and equality. Our learning was embodied. We moved, we fought, we cooperated, we navigated and we connected all through play and playing out scenarios. At the end of this two week immersion we celebrated together. A bunch of 19 and 20 year olds along with two middle-age professors. Even though I never told them I was suffering with anorexia at the time, something deep inside told me that they knew.

Academically, I was one of their strongest students. Despite my success in their classes, I could feel their concern for me. I can remember them announcing that we would celebrate with a pizza party that Friday. I initially felt excitement, along with my peers. Then came the pit in my stomach. Pizza? I hadn’t eaten pizza, a food that used to be one of my favorites, for years now. It was one of my “forbidden foods.” One of the first foods I removed from my life when anorexia came in. A food that had such fun and connected and celebratory memories for me. Pizza was one of the foods I loved to help and watch my Father make in his Italian restaurant when I was a kid.

That last day we gathered together. I desperately wanted to be like the others. Carefree, connected, and fear-free. It could have been my imagination, my anorectic paranoia, but I felt as if my professors were watching me. Watching to see which way I would end this time together. What would I remember? Would I stay with the joy and connection I felt over those two weeks or would I curl back in and allow fear to rule, disembody and disconnect me once again? In that moment something made me “lean in.” Meaning fear was intense but so was connection and their care of me. I could feel it. These were two people who believed in me. They knew what I was capable of long before I knew. I decided at that moment that I would trust what they saw in me. I joined the line of students waiting to grab their slice or two or three. I grabbed one. Just one. I sat with the others. I saw my professors smile. I doubt their smiles were just for me but in that moment it felt as if they were.

It’s not about the slice of pizza and it is. It’s about what it represents. It represented care, connection, concern, joy, happiness, grief, sadness, and hope. On that day it represented hope. From that day on I added pizza back into my life. And it was a turnaround moment that meant I was saying yes, even a tiny yes, to stepping back into life again.