One aspect of adulthood that isn’t discussed enough is the need to remain open to growing and evolving in our thoughts and beliefs as we gain more knowledge. Instead, too often, we cling to beliefs that have long stopped serving us and can cause more harm than good.
Recently, I was confronted with the fact that some of my thoughts and beliefs on how things should be done might not be serving me well. Like many people in middle age, I am at high risk of getting stuck in my thinking—still considering myself to be the edgy, subversive know-it-all, when I am just fighting reality as it is.
Like millions of Americans, I have a weight problem. I am a good 30 pounds overweight. My weight issues started in earnest as I hit my 40s, when two life-changing events happened to me. Eleven years ago, I started my position as executive director of Community Change Inc., not realizing that what I had signed up for was more than a job, it was a way of life. A way of life that started with a 2.5-hour commute each way in my first year or so until I eventually got a series of crash pads in Boston which, while more convenient, meant spending several days a week away from Maine with a school-aged child at home.
The same year that I started that position, my then-husband and I were in serious talks about the future of our marriage, realizing that separation was a very real solution to our problems. A year or so into the job, we did separate. I moved to a barrier island, and we split custody of our daughter. For five years, until the pandemic and my dad’s death, I would essentially live out of a suitcase. One week at home, one week away.
As you can imagine, it was a hectic time and when you are spending two weeks every month not at home, your eating goes to shit. Initially the weight gain wasn’t a big deal; I suddenly had cleavage where little had been before and filled out in ways that I became a thick Black girl in the best way.
Then 2020 hit and along with a good portion of the country, I ate and drank a lot and was stuck at home a lot, and bam: the final ten pounds hit by early 2021. At which time, I realized that my weight was getting a little up there and signed up to work with a trainer, whom I worked with for several years. Three Zoom training sessions a week for a few years and I learned to like exercise. Which, for someone who failed physical education in high school, was a miracle. I developed muscles and felt better but never lost more than five pounds and pretty much have been in that place ever since.
At last year’s annual physical, I was given the goal of taking off 10 pounds, as a way to see if it would help my blood pressure. Instead, I gained three pounds when I returned back this year, but thankfully my lab work was excellent. No pre-diabetes, no cholesterol issues and, with hypertension medication, my blood pressure was far lower than it had been when I was initially put on the meds (though it still fluctuates a bit depending on my stress level). I am grateful that for the most part, none of my healthcare providers give me shit about my weight. But, as a 52-year-old Black woman whose parents both died early, I am not unaware of the long-term impact of this extra weight. However, as GLP-1 medications have become ubiquitous and many of my friends and associates have gone on them, I remained adamantly against them for myself.
To be fair, one of my healthcare providers is also against them and won’t prescribe them unless there is a medical reason, which he felt there wasn’t. Apparently, if I were pre-diabetic or diabetic and my A1C wasn’t perfect, he would prescribe it. Instead, he felt I just needed more good ole willpower which I agreed with until a few weeks ago.
A few weeks ago, I was out with a very close friend, who happens to be a physician and she recently got on a GLP-1 to address inflammation and ADHD. I will spare you the full conversation but basically she dropped some facts on me about the long-term impact of inflammation in the body and the growing knowledge that hypertension can be viewed as inflammation and how ultimately inflammation can cause greater harm. Also, that pesky fact that my well-known stress due to my work—which is believed to be a significant driver of the hypertension I have developed in recent years—is also intertwined with inflammation and my occasional bouts of anxiety.
She also dropped some facts on me that that while GLP-1s are being touted as miracle weight loss drugs, they are far more than that. I went home that night curious and did some poking around and I begrudgingly had to admit after talking with another friend who is on a GLP-1 for inflammation and who feels much better that maybe my beliefs around weight and how we lose weight were no longer serving me. Even my judgments about GLP-1 meds may not be serving me. I mean, the data is out there that GLP-1s are more than weight loss drugs and the inflammation relief as well is well-documented. Yes, there has been overuse and misuse of them but a lot of that is around intentions and dosage as well. As with so many medications, there are always people who will use them as shortcuts or quick fixes but there are also those who benefit from them, and sometimes in ways beyond just the major indication.
I have always considered myself to be a body-positive person who believes in the possibility of health at every size, but I am also a 52-year-old woman in the throes of perimenopause with a genetic inheritance that makes it more likely that I won’t live past 70. I mean, neither of my parents saw 70 and neither did most of my grandparents. Yet, instead of doing everything I can to live long enough to see my grandchildren become adults, was it possible that my beliefs and judgments were holding me back?
Look, change is hard and changing my mind about these medications was hard because I was caught up in the judgments without considering all the other possibilities for wellness beyond just weight. Which for someone who has studied yoga for almost 20 years and still practices almost daily and is always focused on wellness and mindfulness is hypocritical. That’s the irrationality of fixed beliefs; we get locked into what we think is true without the willingness to dive deeper. Or do more.
Which brings me to an observation I have of white-bodied folks who are left of center in this current political moment. Your inability to recognize the need to change and pivot and move from your fixed beliefs may be causing all of us harm.
Since the first Trump presidency, I have worked with and talked to numerous white folks who walked away from Trump-supporting friends and family. While it no doubt felt good, your actions—whether you realize it or not—played a role in creating the conditions for those people to get further ensconced in the madness and rhetoric. Say what you will, part of the success of the MAGA movement is and was rooted in creating a community where people felt accepted. Despite your assumptions after Trump lost in 2020, that sense of community allowed the movement to gain even more steam. You wouldn’t talk to Uncle Rusty the Racist anymore, but he found plenty of people who would talk to him and allow his asinine thoughts to become more entrenched.
Sure, talking to people in a cult isn’t comfortable and it’s annoying, but if more well-meaning white folks had made it their work to speak deeply and earnestly with white people who weren’t in their echo chambers, we might not be sitting in this burning building called the United States. Even now, too many white people don’t want to talk to or work with the Trump folks who might be turning sour on the MAGA movement as they realize their guru is full of shit.
Here’s the thing: It isn’t the work of marginalized people who are feeling the full brunt of this second term of Trump to go anywhere near those people. In fact, marginalized people are absolutely justified in feeling a sense of FAFO when it comes to those white people. But you? Those are your people, and your whiteness has the possibility to offer a place for those people to land and integrate into resistance efforts. I mean shit, in another few months, those farmers in Arkansas might be down to resist as they inch closer to losing the family farms and not having their prayers answered.
Yes, not all will be saved but some just might and the thing about community organizing is we don’t all have to be friends in order to work together. Common goals help. In this case, stop the madness and make sure this administration leaves and that the fascism goes away with it.
The thing that stops the white wing of the resistance efforts from truly working is fixed beliefs that these people are beyond saving—being stuck in judgment of the people who fell for MAGA. The problem is that judgment and fixed beliefs aren’t helping any of us.
Our survival at this point will require a broad coalition of people and it isn’t going to be people just like us. More people than not just didn’t vote in the last election. We need those people as well as some of the disillusioned Trump supporters. There is power in numbers; there are survival skills in those numbers.
I mean, if shit gets batshit crazy, I personally want a few farmers in my coalition. For all the good that I do, my skills aren’t going to get us fed if food gets scarce.
Collective survival means a willingness to move beyond what is comfortable and what we think we know and embracing the possibility that we must become more expansive in thoughts and actions.
It means letting go of things like the assumption that someone is coming to save us. Right now, Congress has all but abdicated its power and while the judiciary (minus the Supreme Court) is doing its best, the uncomfortable truth is that nothing is going to change until we move beyond our current efforts. To do that starts with inquiry and questioning our assumptions and a willingness to move beyond our comfort zone.
Growing older isn’t just about the numbers going up, it is about growing and realizing when certain attitudes and beliefs no longer serve us. It’s the willingness to try and do different things and to expand our lens. To not accept that all is lost but instead to know that hope still exists—and that reaching it requires more of us. It also requires and brings with it patience, if we allow ourselves to accept that gift instead of leaning into frustration that does nothing but upset and inflame ourselves.
A few days ago, someone left a comment on one of my social media pages stating it is exhausting being this angry all the time and asking how do people of color do it for their whole lives?
I can’t answer for the totality of all POC but answering for myself and the Black people I have known, for starters: We aren’t angry all the time. Love, care, and joy have always been a part of resistance. More importantly, an understanding that one can never lose hope; without a spirit of hope and the willingness to work towards a better tomorrow, you have nothing. Community is also a part of this—maintaining and building it, as well as not allowing oneself to get stuck but instead embracing a willingness to expand, even when everything says it is impossible.
I leave with you this: How can you expand your lens and be willing to move beyond fixed beliefs and thoughts that aren’t serving you or our resistance? How can you become more expansive and patient? How can you continue to grow even as fascism grows more entrenched into our daily fabric? Lastly, grace: Can you extend it to yourself and others? Grace doesn’t mean acceptance of what harms but rather understanding the structures that allow others to be misguided in their thoughts.
It’s not easy, but growth rarely is.
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