If you, like so many of us have experienced rejection from the religious tradition of your youth, this conversation with Reverence Catherine will touch your heart.
Rev. Catharine Clarenbach self-identifies as a white, fat, queer cis femme with physical disabilities and managed mental illness. All these identities inform her spiritual work and passion for intersectional justice.
This episode we discuss
🌈Recovering from rejection from your religious community
🌈The difference between Fat Liberation and Body Positivity
🌈Sizeism in spiritual communities
🌈The importance of joy in liberation
Episode Resources
Decolonizing Wellness: A QTBIPOC-Centered Guide to Escape the Diet Trap, Heal Your Self-Image, and Achieve Body Liberation
Connect with Catharine
Hello and welcome to Body Liberation for All, I'm your host Dalia Kinsey. I want to give you some expectations for the podcast. This is episode one every month at the top of the month, first Monday of the month, you can expect an interview with either a creative, a healer, a business person, or just someone living their best gay or BIPOC life who is going to be sharing some wisdom and some tips with us so that we can live the healthiest and most.
Vibrant version of our lives. And in between occasionally there will be bonus episodes where either I come to you with things that are more centered on getting comfortable in your body, body neutrality, or other obstacles to us being the freest version and the happiest version of ourselves.
This show is all about empowering you to step into your truth and to live from a place that really isn't alignment with who, you know yourself to be a big part of that is about. Being less invested in what other people think about you. And there are just so many practices that you can take on to help you learn how to prioritize your, your intuition, your guidance, your desires, and what your higher self is telling you above all others.
This interview with our first guest, Catherine, I swore would be less than an hour. We were aiming for 30 minutes, but the truth of the matter is I love talking to interesting people. So of course it ended up being more of a long form type of situation, which honestly, if I'm being real with myself, that's right.
Probably what we can expect to see in the future as well. But please reach out to me, give me feedback and let me know what you would like to hear more of. If you have guests that you want to recommend, if you yourself would love to come on the show and share your story with the audience and share your insights with the audience that would be fantastic as well.
You can reach me on Instagram @daliakinseyrd
Hi, Catherine. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
It's so nice to see you.
I'm excited about this whole project and I was super hyped when you reached out to me because I thought it might take a while to get around to the topic of some of the trauma that a lot of us have around the church and our identities.
And then you came like to be out of nowhere. I thought perfect, because this is a topic that's near and dear to my heart. And I think our relationship to faith as. Queer people, gender nonconforming, people, people of color, everybody who's outside of like the main group that gets the goodies. It can be really difficult to work through that.
And it can be just one more thing that adds to all of the stress that you have in life and stops you from being as happy and healthy as possible. So, yeah, in fact, people too, we can't forget us. Absolutely. Thanks for that. That's exactly why I want to have lots of diversity on the show because they're so many different ways to be marginalized.
So for people who can't see you, even though I planned to have a visual component to this, a lot of people are just listening to the podcast. Can you share what are your marginalized identities?
Sure. I describe myself as really most sincerely fat. And I'm also bisexual, pansexual, whichever one prefers.
I'm married to a cisgender white woman as I am also a cisgender white woman. Not as because, but I just am. I also have multiple disabilities and traumas from various, experiences in my life, including bipolar one disorder.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
Is there something I'm forgetting?
I know, right? Cause people have so many layers and sometimes you're just dealing with what's thrown at you and you forget like all the different ways where you're given extra crap for being yourself.
So absolutely.
There may be others. So, what do you do these days? What is your focus or your passion?
I am the creator and curator of the way of the river, which is found at www.thewayoftheriver.com and I offer spiritual accompaniment and guidance to folks who are interested in deepening their spiritual journeys often after been alienated from their original religious or spiritual tradition.
And so I see a lot of LGBTQIA folks, a lot of non-binary folks and gender fluid folks. And, as I'm white, I have a smaller population of people of color who work with me, but where that intersection of the rainbow family and people of color, black and indigenous folks come into, where those intersections are.
Those are the folks who often work with me. And I also offer classes in discernment, making good choices, and I run a winter solstice retreat, actually, which is super awesome and fun. That's a day long. And I've done it for years, but now it seems like the thing I've done this in on zoom. Okay. The last four years, this will be the fifth year.
And, that's okay. It's a really meditative time. It's a really gentle time for folks in the middle of winter in the Northern hemisphere.
What is the significance of the winter solstice?
Oh yeah. Well, for me, Americans are the winners of those deaths is that it is a time to really, as the earth in the Northern hemisphere, kind of rest for a while.
It's ideally a time for us to rest too. Until that our own deepest wisest subconscious selves come to the forefront while we restaurant mine's a little bit, the front member of minds, the conscious daylight minds, you know, its dark outside. And my wife and I have a tradition every year of turning out.
For the solstice, we turn off all electric lights in the house and we liked the house only with candles for the duration or the solstice. And, we make cookies and it's hilarious because the next day the kitchen floor. Oh my God. Because of course you can't see so much by candle light. What a mess you're making.
Oh, that sounds like such a sweet tradition though.
Yeah, it really is.
You have an interesting blend of Christianity. And what is the other word is paganism the right word,
That is the right word, my particular tradition in paganism is stone circle Wicca USA. that's our particular, path and I don't identify as Christian, but, some people come in Christian adjacent and they always smile and laugh a little bit when they do it, just because the rhythms of Christianity, as.
As you said, I grew up Roman Catholic, the rhythms of Christianity of the liturgical year of, saints and prayers and, ritual all really speak to me. So yeah. I ended, my father was a professor of the Bible as literature. So I have I'm steeped in sprit in Christianity. Like I can't take it out. Right, right, right.
And that's how I think a lot of people feel like depending on how you were raised, it's something that is always going to inform how you move through life as an adult. But that may need to evolve over time, like how it informs your experience. Oh, did you grow up with that sort of religious upbringing and then come to terms with your identity as a bisexual or pansexual person, and how has your religious experience.
Evolved or how did it need evolve?
Aha. Well, what happened is unfortunately pretty simple. I was super, super, and super-duper involved in the music program at my church. I led the music for mass. Sometimes I sang in choirs. I directed choir. I played handbells. I played the organ, played the harpsichord. And so on both Christmas and Easter, I went to church four times each because I had to do some kind of musical something.
Yeah. And then near the end of my 17th year of life, I came out. And my university had non-discrimination what was discussing whether or not to put sexual orientation into their nondiscrimination policy. And so right around the time, my 18th birthday, I wrote a letter to the editor and I was out in the letter to the editor and pretty much overnight I lost my Catholic community.
That had been my real home. I was really bullied in school and. Kirk had been a real Haven for me. And so it was a crushing blow to lose that community. And then, you know, the late in my late teens, early twenties, and I just got really angry. Right. I was really furious with what had happened. And then I met some people.
Through the LGBSA, which was, which is what it was called. Then, the lesbian gay, bisexual student Alliance, and they were, they identified it, his witches. And I was like, well, what is that about? Then they got a book. They gave me a book called the spiral dance that was written by a woman named Starhawk.
Her given name was Miriam Simos, but she goes by star Hawk. And she talked about a concept of the divine that encompassed more than just one gender. And that just. Opened a whole new world to me. Like I saw Mary, the mother of Jesus in a whole new way. I, everything started to shift. So by the time I was 19 or 20, I had, I lived in a basement apartment.
So I had the yeah, like window Wells with the long window sell. And I made a little altar with candle and a picture of a goddess that I drew and a couple of little statues just sitting on the windowsill and a plant. And when later in my life, in 1999, I was initiated as a first degree priestess in the tradition of stone circle, Wicca.
And then by 2006, I was in a shaded as a third degree priestess, which is as far as we go, that's our, So that's sort of the degree at which we have spiritual care obligations to our community.
So, how did you with the loss of that spiritual community, where are you at all prepared when you came out?
Did you have any idea that your spiritual community that I'm sure spoke about how loving it was? It obviously felt like a safe place to you. Did you have any idea that you might be completely rejected? Did you know that was something that might happen?
Like what you're hearing so far, be sure to check out the patron page. That's patrion.com/dahlia Kinsey. There's several tiers to choose from and all of them include access to the body liberation community. So if you like to be in community with other people who are ready to break down all systems of oppression and get beyond diet culture, that's where you want to be.
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Well, later on, I found out that there were members of the choir who spoke to my mom and said, asked how I was or concerned for me, still loved me, which I was around, but what I had never known because we only ever dealt in music.
Was that the choir director and some of the sort of core other musicians I worked with all the time were very, very religiously and politically conservative. So I had no idea. I mean, I knew what the church's position was. Right. But I don't know it was so my home that I. I hate, I hate I missed it somehow.
I, I just, I thought it would be okay somehow. Yeah.
Somehow hearing that makes it even more painful to even hear. And I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that. You're so tender and exposed when you're young. And to see a young person walking toward a major one life change or gut punch. It's just tough.
It brings up all the memories other people have of being vulnerable and being caught off guard. Just having the, from under you when you thought you had a home there.
Yeah. Yeah.
How did you find the ability to trust community again, or did you always just crave it and want to replace it?
Well, I had a really strong community in college, in the queer community.
I sometimes say that I was raised by gay men. And I mean, it was sort of classic in some ways it wasn't always very functional. We danced until we were like, Sweaty and falling on the floor and mostly falling on the floor. Cause we had drunk away, too much. Our lives kind of revolved around politics parties in the club.
And, but they were really there for me. They're really there for me. And so I had a very strong community. It just wasn't a religious community and it was a while before I could. Signed the one who really identified as religious in any way that was a communal experience. It was years. It wasn't until I encountered Unitarian Universalism and was able to like go to church that wasn't only Christian.
Because in Unitarian Universalism, we have a really broad range of theologies, but we have a covenantal and ethical set of principles that we agreed to live by in terms of how we treat one, another other people and the earth.
Okay. So it's really kind of a nondenominational sect.
Yeah. It, cause they're a Christian UUs there are Jewish UUs. I have a friend who's a Muslim UUs.
That’s so interesting. When it comes to helping other people who are trying to move through trauma from being rejected by their traditional religious community, how do you help people get started? Cause I would imagine, depending on how you were raised, when you first started looking at other faiths or other options, the first thought that comes to mind is, Oh no, this is.
This is not safe or this is not okay. Did you have any fear that like maybe? Even looking at paganism, somehow it's going to open you up to dark energy, or you didn't have any fears about that?
Well, because I didn't really know about it until I met people I already liked and trusted.
I didn't really have that experience. I was like, Oh, Well, if my friend Randall is doing this, it must be okay. You know? And, it taught me to appreciate my ancestors, which is a really important part of my process. You know, you mentioned working with people who have, had traumatic experiences with religion, and then you said the word safe and being safe and feeling empathy. Are the most important things. I think in welcoming someone into a space where I don't have an agenda for them about what they're going to believe spiritually or how they express their sexuality, you know, as long as it's life giving and in sort of their life is.
Being, treated well. And the people with whom they're engaging are being treated well. And everyone are consenting adults that I don't have agendas for them about their theology or their way of life. And certainly not their identity in terms of gender or sexuality or you know, almost anything really.
I mean, I've bumped up against my own privilege and prejudice all the time. And it's my job to engage as Adrian Marie Brown says in dismantling any myths of supremacy, where I am privileged, like where I carry white skin privilege, for example. But I also encourage myself and the people that I work with, especially my non-binary black indigenous and people of color folks to do the other half of what Adrian Marie Brown says, which is to claim our own dignity, joy, and liberation.
And joy so important, but there is no liberation without joy. And so, and you can't feel joy unless you feel safe, right? You feel safe.
It's profound to hear it out loud. Like it really kind of, it hits differently, especially now seeing all of the suffering. Of course. The suffering has never stopped, but it just feels like now everywhere you turn, there's another crime I'm against humanity, or just another example of injustice and all these systems of impression that come down on people who have multiple marginalized identities, it feels like sometimes.
We start to believe that there's no time for joy because there's too much serious business going on and we need to be in this struggle.
Yes. And you know, when I think about this, sometimes I think about transwomen of color who are. Living life out loud and are in so much danger, so much of the time.
And that is just something that really, you know, enjoy intersectionality, right? Those trans women are living as women are living. In an incredible amount of intersectional oppression. And yet yours, see all this beauty of this, like delight. In often, not always, but often a really femme identity.
And I also identify as a sovereign fem that's one of the ways that I describe myself. And so seeing them is always really an inspiration for me. Not to turn oppression into inspiration. But that didn't sound very good, but that sucks. Our living in a police state, you know, like I'm in Portland, Oregon right now.
And at the time of our recording, it's a really scary, it’s a lot of really scary stuff happening here right now. And it's because people have stood up and said that black lives haven't mattered and they must matter. That it's you can't just say black matter because the world, a United States showing us over and over again, how people think that black lives don't matter.
And we have to say black lives must matter. They need to matter. They mattered to me. They do matter. And as a result of just people speaking the truth. Now, you know, we have federal agents and unmarked vehicles pulling people off the street
It is such a scary time in America, because of course this country has been problematic from day one from the beginning, for the first time a colonizer set that over here, there has been trouble.
But I think, yeah. Now, because when there is trouble. We for the most part now we all know about it. Of course, there's still a ton of information that's suppressed and hidden from us, but there is no more blissful ignorance for the most part. Amen. And so we are aware that we seem to be at a point where our nation is deciding.
Whether we're going to be a police state, whether we're going to slip into this very fascist way of living, whether we're going to, going to allow white supremacy to continue to form our nation's future, as it always has, like, will it continue to be? An American value, white supremacy, you know, are we going to keep doing that?
And its nerve wracking prior to that, this, I know a lot of people were staying. We were living in a post racial society. Of course, all BIPOC people knew that with some foolishness. There were a lot of people who really thought like, Oh, we've made all this progress. And we, a black president that was proved to a lot of people that like, Oh, racism's done.
And I've been asked so many times in my lifetime. I've ever experienced racism and every time I hear it, for some reason, I'm in shock. I'm like, are you serious? Seriously? Are you asking me this question right now?
How in the world do you not know, but it's always sincere. But now anyone who asks that question at this point, it's just clear that there's a lot of willful ignorance.
And because of the progress that we're making as a nation. Now, I even have words for stuff, forms of oppression that I never knew what's even called them because when everybody's gas lighting you and tell them you were post-racial people didn't say micro-aggression in the eighties, at least in my town.
I didn't know what that was. It was just like life and the way that people constantly make you feel like you're a piece of trash, even when they're giving you these backwards compliments
Oh you are so articulate.
Exactly. Exactly. Like a million times, I've heard that one or so pretty for a black girl or all kinds of foolishness, but there was no language for it.
And whenever you would speak up about it, people would tell you you're being hypersensitive or they would tone police here. So there it's empowering. And that now I see more people forming community. Around these issues. And I think joy and community are the antidotes to the damage that living under these systems of oppression do.
And I think there's more of a movement toward being intersect national progress. This is coming kind of slow and as we move forward, there's all this retaliation and all this backlash, and that's kind of creating a lot of scary tension. You don't know what's coming next.
Yes, yes, yes. All of that. Yes. We have, in the tradition of Wicca a practice, we talk about how, you know, like a kitchen knife, right?
Like the blade is not necessarily a kitchen knife, but it's a blade is a tool for us. It's one of our tools. And we talk about how its purpose is to be almost like a doctor scalpel to Paul back, images of illusion. And I feel like that's a lot of what you're talking about. Is that images of illusion like white supremacy is being uncovered for more and more and more people.
Ijeoma Olua was like, okay. So my book is on the best seller list. That's great. Let's see how long it stays there, you know, her book. So you want to talk about race and, I think. When we look at intersectionality, you know, I have to say sizeism and abelism are very often left out of people's understanding of what it means.
And God knows healthism as the people are like, what, I've never even heard of that. Right. You know? There are levels of sizeism and ableism, that, that run the gamut from just people telling their children, you know, Oh, you don't need to eat that last cookie you're you don't, you're not hungry. To you know, my having to advocate for myself at restaurants, Hey, I'll need a steady care that doesn't have arms. Can you make sure when I make a reservation that that's going to be available for me? And people with disabilities, I mean, it was just 30 years ago. The anniversary of the Americans with disabilities act
And still, I mean, I've seen it so much during COVID.
Well, they just don't do the right thing unless there's legal repercussions. And sometimes certain people, the only way to reach them is to punch them in the purse. And there are other people who, you know, they've built it, their compassion and they built up. They're just more kindhearted or maybe more aware, maybe in touch with compassion for themselves and therefore ripples out to others.
Basically people who aren't assholes. I can't think of it another way, who will do the right thing. Once they become aware that what they're doing is causing somebody suffering, right. Then those other people need consequences. And to see how many students have been left out during learning because of their disabilities, we're going to be seeing some lawsuits in this.
This coming year, you know, because you're supposed to have equal access to education and that's something that you're entitled to under the ABA and. People still aren't following the rules.
Well, and sort of other side of that coin too, is that many people with disabilities have been asking for accommodations like using computers and not having to go to some places to get education for employment and, Oh, look, now all of a sudden we can do it when, before people with disabilities were like, I, this would be helpful for me. And it's a reasonable accommodation and people said, no. But now yeah. Let your health, you white people.
We could have done it the whole time. It's so funny that you say that because I think just like with bisexuality and pansexuality, so many times people only validate certain parts of. The marginalized experience. Yeah. So if you can't see it, 24\7 people pretend it's not there. So if you have a chronic disease that people glance at UNC then, and for some reason, it's like, you're not disabled enough.
So if you're spoonie or you're chronically ill and you really, when you're in the middle of a flare or you're out of remission, you. Are obviously disabled. It's not good enough for people for some reason. Like, just like if you're bi you're not gay enough, never mind that you literally get kicked out of a community for coming out as a bisexual person, but then there's still plenty of people who are like, yeah, that's not really good.
Cause I hear that all the time. It's just so frustrating to see when you go into a community where you ship along. That even in those communities, there's a very narrow way to belong. Like, I don't know when, and we're going to get to the point where we can make more room for everyone and build community with people, even if they're not exactly like us.
Absolutely. I mean, I belong to a Unitarian Universalist ministers, group against sizeism and, and we talk about like literally making it room. Okay. Right. Like physically making room, as well as just acknowledging that like spiritual leaders and teachers. Come in all sizes and that there is this thread running through not exclusively, but really, especially for the sort of nice white lady, new age, spirituality world, where there is this beauty standard, there is the net standard.
That is great, very oppressive to other people who are working to help build up people's lives and their psyches and their resilience, because spirituality is a number one way that I know from my personal perspective to gain resilience. And that's I, my like thing, right. I'm always beating the drum about is that it comes about through gentle persistence and persistent gentleness.
And. Those are the things that help us make change, not shame, not, you know, saying that there's one way to believe something or one way to express the goodness of a body. Right. Every, every one of us is sacred in the body that we have. And, and I mean that in terms of not just size, but all of our embodied experience,
That’s beautiful.
When you say that about that, the thinness and the white beauty standard. And. A lot of new age areas. I think about people who I've seen, I guess I won't say the show, but who will even say that fatness is linked to something being amiss in your spirit?
Absolutely true.
And they literally demonizing fatness.
Yes.
While telling us that they're here to heal us and they just don't understand where the love is in that type of spiritual practice.
Where you do not accept what is, and I don't mean to say that sometimes the body, like if you it's who, you know, you are gender wise and what gender you were assigned to at birth, isn't the same to me. That's different. Accepting what is in that case is accepting that you are not cis and that whatever your journey is for feeling the most at home in your body is only for you to define. What I mean is when people try and demonize what do you mean would have been able to accept on your own what you wouldn't have known to question had someone not told you because you see all these fat babies running around naked, who haven't gotten the memo that you're supposed to hate your body, and that you're supposed to be ashamed of your body.
You have to cover it. Don’t let anybody know you have bodily functions. Like don't use that diaper in public. You know, they just don't they naturally know that they are fine. They don't need fixing and they have no concept of using beauty as a way to access power.
Because who even cares, like why, why do we value beauty so much? How can, why would we obligate people to be beautiful?
Well, and that's such a, such a fine line, right?
Like, yeah. Beauty is a, that's a whole show. But yeah. Once own understanding of beauty being expressed in a way that is. Life giving to them is, is super important. Like my hair is purple. My lips right now, now our bright, shiny fuchsia. And I have a French manicure. Like these are ways in which I express my understanding of beauty and my self-concept.
Right. But. No. And no one is like, harming me about that. I mean, people give me a little bit of side-eye sometimes when I'm claiming beauty as a fat woman and that in that case, because those things seem contradictory. But for example, when I was in my first. Or second, sorry, my second congregation assignment as a minister.
I was the intern minister at a level Unitarian Universalist congregation. I preached on some of this I preached about welcome and how fat people were literally not welcome in that congregation because of the way the seats were. There were areas on the side, in the galleries where fat people could sit just like long ago.
You know, other people who were not white men had to be out of the way. Right. But the main part of the sanctuary, the chairs are really narrow and they were set up like movie chairs, right. So you can't move them at all. And they have arms and they have little tiny seats. So I was talking about welcome.
And how welcome can we express not only inherited how we speak to them, but how do we make room for them? Can they get in the bloomin' building and. So I, I, and I, and it wasn't just throughout fatness at all. I spoke about all kinds of things, but after that I preached the sermon. There were people who are really, really moved.
It was amazing. I got then people in fat people and people in between coming to see me in my office, you know, for weeks afterwards, it was, it was amazing. But immediately after the sermon, After the service in which that sermon happened, I was sitting down in the foyer part of the congregation, talking to somebody and a woman comes up to me and she says, hi.
She tells me her name. Here's my card. I'm a dietician. Let me know if you change your mind. Talk about this. Oh my goodness.
You know, thank you for sharing that because I am like up to here with how Tom death. The dietetic community. Yes. To these intersectional issues. The fact that they have bought into white supremacy hook line, and sinker and sizeism hook line, and sinker, that it is clouding. Their ability to that their ignorance is downright offensive.
And if they don't evolve, I don't believe the field will exist a hundred more years. I don't think people are going to go for it. That field is not aging. Well, at all, less than 2% of dietitians are black. And they're way more than 2%. Like when you look at the general population, like we're minority, so we're bigger than two, more than two.
And the areas in which they refused to get with the program when it comes to. The lie that being fat equals a death sentence, not true. Number one, being born, that's your death sentence right there. Like, well, we need to come to terms with our own mortality, decide how we want to live. And then when it comes to any kind of patient care, what the patient wants is crucial.
So let's pretend that there wasn't a ton of research to indicate that dieting is. Destructive to health and it sucks on so many levels. You clearly expressed that your interest was making room for people and inclusion. Where in that? Did she hear? Oh, I bet this lady wants my card. What? Like how the disrespect, just the nerve.
Oh, that's foul.
It was not, it was not a great moment. And the saying is, you know, speaking of white supremacy, another thing, and another thing is that it's the way that my experience in white supremacy is that I've been trained to be nice, right? Niceness. Swear to God. And I just come from the devil. I don't even believe in, I was like, oh, thank you so much.
I will let you know if I,
Oh, no., but I like that you can give yourself some grace and know that that was trained into you. That was a trained response.
It was, it was a trained automatic response. And it's actually, for me, it's a trauma response. Right. There's that fight, flight, freeze, or please. Yeah. Or fawn sometimes it's described.
I'm definitely in that category, that last category, when I feel threatened, I, get very compliant and it's so funny. Cause I'm all like, you know, full of piss and vinegar and then, but if I feel put into a corner, I try to like sweeten my way out of it. And that's my automatic.
I never thought about that as one of the defense mechanisms, but that makes sense because that response was the quickest way to end that interaction.
Yeah,
I have noticed when people use that with me, I complain about people at work refusing to come right out when they don't want to be a part of a project. They won't just say it. That's what I would do. I'd be like, no, I don't want to do that. I can't get people to just admit they're never going to turn something in.
They don't want to do it. They'll just say, yeah, thank you for calling me. Thank you. I will get on that. And that's the fastest way to get me off the phone is to agree with me and I, it never occurred to me that this could be part of a trauma response. Like they're responding to my, confronting them about this missing work.
Hmm with that. And maybe I just need to leave him alone. Cause I didn't recognize that that's what that was. I just kept saying, why don't they just say no? Right. I have a, I have a story that you may not have time to keep in this interview, please, please share. It's very pertinent to what you're talking about.
I went to get a mammogram everybody's favorite thing, right. Super fun. And they had asked me if I needed a wheelchair to get from the desk, the front desk, to the exam and room. And I said, no, thank you. I have cane. I'm good. And, but I, they did ask for a quote chair. In the examination room, because in between I had four pulmonary embolisms.
Big fun. Yeah. Live to tell the tale though. So happy about that. But my pulmonary capacity is really not great and I have lower back issues. So I often need to sit down and stretch my back, like do a little cat cow yoga, in, in a chair between some of the imaging. Well, so the technician that I was working with had to bring in a wheelchair and he was like, you said, you didn't need a chair.
And I was like, well, I didn't know that care meant wheelchair, but okay. So recognize what this woman is doing in terms of the vulnerability of the patient. Right, right. She's got her hands all over a part of your body that most people don't go touching your boobs and putting them on a machine and squishing them up.
And she says to me, so are you having surgery? And it took me beat and then I was like, Oh no, no, she is not. And I said, what do you mean? And she said, well, you know, surgery, and this is like, this is some radiology technician was doing the mammogram. And I said, no, no, I'm not, I'm actually not a good candidate.
For weight loss surgery for various reasons. And I have a friend who died, another friend who almost died recently and, a colleague of a friend of mine who died, as a result of complications related to weight loss surgery. And she said, oh, you've had bad experiences. And I'm thinking to myself, Deaths of your friends is not a bad experience, but she goes on to say, I've seen 600 pound life.
Oh my God. How did you know backhand her?
Well, because I have this like niceness. Ooh, Bullshit response and I'm just thinking, just let I can just get through it. I'm just going to get through it. I'm just going to get through it. I'll be done. I'll be fine. I'll just get through it. And she says, I'm not saying you're 600 pounds.
Oh, my God, somebody shut this woman.
It keeps getting worse and it, and it's, I'm not done. She said have you seen it because it's really great. And the show's all about how weight loss surgery can change your life and help you so much. And you, and I said, I'm really not a good candidate for it for, for various reasons. And then we were done. And a ton to her finally and I said, you know, I feel like you may, I'm so embarrassed to describe how, how minor this comment was, but it's the truth. I'm kind of embarrassed because I feel like you've treated me maybe differently. Then you might have another patient. And she said, Oh, and by the way, she was about like, I would guess a size 12, maybe 10 and like five foot, two I'm five, nine, and was like many, multiple times of her.
And she said after I said, I think you'd be treated me differently from the way you might other patients. She said, Oh no, I would never do that. I'm so sorry if I imposed upon you in anyway, I mean, look at me. I'm no skinny mini. She says to me, okay. Then I wanted to throttle her. I was like, not even come at me with that stuff
Icing on the cake is that she read me my films, the tech.
I thought you're not allowed to do that.
You're not.
So this lady is just out of control, totally out of control
The good news
The good news is I got tremendous response from the company that owns that imaging center. Good, wonderful. I mean the head of like finance and customer care called me back after I submitted a complaint and he said, I don't care if you're 80 pounds or 800 pounds, you should be getting compassionate, respectful care.
And you did. Oh, really?
And that's awesome that, so when you're out of the, the traumatic incident, you stood up for yourself when you were able to. So I think that's important for people to hear too, that maybe can't do it in the moment. That's fine. Don't beat yourself up. And if you do it after that's fine.
Or if you decide you don't even have the energy for it,
Whatever. And, and that's the thing, gentle persistence, right? Like, I, I was really upset afterwards. I cried in the car. I told my wife all about it. And then I was like, you know what? I deserved better. Like, in every conceivable way. Yeah. In that interaction and there's something I can do about it.
Right. And so I was able to offer myself compassion, which I think is so essential for anyone with a marginalized identity to offer themselves ourselves. Self-compassion that it is not us. Who are the problem? We are not the ones breaking the peace. The peace was broken long ago and we're just responding to it.
And that comes back around to tone policing, right? Like, no, you know that people, if somebody is angry, I'm so sorry that your feelings are hurt. Your feelings are less important than the harm you're causing somebody else.
Correct. Correct. And I, I love hearing that from cis white woman. Because again, I gotta say not all the cis white ladies have gotten a memo and that their feelings are not the most important thing on the planet.
Well, the secret's out some people
As far as I get it right. Like I have really big feelings. And my wife has always like, yeah, Catherine has big feelings and sometimes they come out of her eyes cause I'm a crier. Right. You Have to know when it is appropriate and to whom it is appropriate to express your feelings. Right. Like it's okay to feel embarrassed.
It's like you didn't do what you wish you had done. Like you made a mistake, all the things. It is totally okay to feel that way. It's not okay. Those feelings on to a person who is in a relative state of oppression to you and make them educate you by their anger. Like that it's not
Absolutely it's so it's, I get so angry when I hear about all the ways that the healthcare system continues to fail everybody, like darn near everybody.
And I initially I had, when I was working on my trailer for this episode, I thought that I was a fat queer black registered dietician, but because my auto immune disease affects my metabolism. Sometimes I'll say I'm fat and people will be like, yeah, you are, I've been other trucks. I say, and they're like, what are you talking about?
Then I sound like that size 12 loony toon. And the way that, body. Positivity movement is half the time the women who are putting themselves out there, half-dressed on Instagram. This is what self-love looks like. They're like a 12. Or in between a 10 and a 12, and that doesn't address what people who are in the super fat category are going through when it comes to accessibility.
Like it's nowhere near the same experience.
Fat Liberation and body positivity are not the same thing.
Exactly. Can you elaborate on that? What is fat liberation?
For me fat liberation or the liberation of embodiment entirely is centering the experience experiences of the people who, frankly, who have the hardest time in our culture, because we have been the least welcomed.
You know, I am happy for any person to love their body. Like, love it up, have some pleasure. It's great. But again, it's about audience. It's about who you're talking to. When that woman said to me, well, I'm not skinny many, like I was probably like three times or size. And it's like when people tell me, Oh, I really feel like I need to lose about 10 pounds.
That's when I want to punch someone in the neck. Because I'm like, why would you tell me that? What saying about what you think about me right now?
I it's like the assumption is because they have, well, I was just thinking when you said that when you have internalized fat phobia and you're still in a relatively small body and you are totally unaware of your fat phobia, your fat hatred, it's not even a phobia.
You say, stuff like that, thinking that everybody has that fat hatred and that you're about to create connection over this thing that you haven't common, your body's wrong and their body's wrong. Them not knowing, not everybody's still stuck in that place of fat hatred. And some of us understand that bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and there's such a thing as body neutrality.
And who said, we all had to be this one way. So they think they're building community. And they don't even understand how putrid what they're putting out is.
That's a great word. And in fact, they're triggering my fatphobia right. Triggering my own fat hatred. cause I was thinking about right, like the biggest indicator of whether or not tiled is going to grow up and have issues with food and disordered eating.
You know, unskillful eating for themselves. It's how their parents talked about their own bodies. And both of my parents had very weird disordered relationship with food, you know? And, and it, it makes a huge difference. You don't know that children are listening. But I'd say on exactly.
And it doesn't matter if you tell them, Oh, but you're beautiful, baby. And I love you and whatever they know that they are you. And if they see that you keep criticizing yourself and you are worried about your access to love and power because of the size of your body. That's what they're going to have. If you think you're not pretty, then they know that must mean they're not pretty because they are you. They're literally part of you and they understand that on such a deep level, you cannot give your child something.
You do not have. And if you don't have self-acceptance in your toolkit, you can't pass it on no matter how badly you want to, which I know could bring up guilt for some people. But again, you know, when you know better than you do better and you can't rag yourself out for what you did in the past, but if you're in a place where you still, yeah, you have somebody small around you.
The biggest thing you could do to help them with their self-image and their self-acceptance is work on your own is lip service doesn't really go anywhere with kids. It's all example.
Yeah. Well, and as we, you know, sort of wind down, I think I want to come back to that self-acceptance piece and how we miss the Mark.
Right. All of us have quote, unquote, bad body days where we feel uncomfortable in our bodies or, you know, our bodies. I feel like they're not our friends, even though they're our steadfast allies and our oldest friends, they've kept us going all this time. And, and if they're hurting or they're sick, they're letting us know.
That they're having a hard time, right?
Self-compassion that persistent gentleness I really think is the only way we're gonna get rid of diet culture because diet culture is based on shame and blame and guilt and.
Gentleness kindness, compassion for ourselves is those are the like spiritual, I think of them like the children of love. Right. They're like emanations of love and they are why I do the work that I do around all kinds of identities. And, I just hope that everybody who listens today, gets that, that as
Angry as I get. And Americans you get. Right. Totally rightfully. and as any, any person who is combating harm that we can offer ourselves the compassion to start again when we mess up to say, I'm sorry. I know. So what I did and I'm going to try to do better next time. And then to work on. Okay. The next day is a new day.
I'm forgiving myself for screwing up yesterday and I'm gonna keep on, Representative John Lewis, who just recently died, talked about, you know, not giving up. And getting into good trouble, which a lot of people are getting into right now. And I'm very grateful for that. But you know, fat people who dare to say in public that we're fat, that's good trouble.
Like start there.
I like that, that, that tangible entry point. And I love the example that John Lewis set in being a joyful person and knowing that you get knocked down. That isn't the important part of the important part is that you get back up and that you keep you just understand that perfection is not human.
It's not a worthy goal. It's not required. It's not realistic. All you have to do is keep going and you're going to keep growing. Just don't stop. Do you have an exercise or something really tangible for somebody who wants to build more self-compassion that we could do now, whether it's a meditation or prayer that you could share.
One of the simplest meditations that I offer myself comes from the first time I ever went swimming in the Gulf of Mexico and I, I love the ocean. So I got there and I just couldn't resist. And I took my shoes off and I walked into the Gulf of Mexico with all my clothes on and I couldn't tell. Where I ended and the ocean began because it was so warm and I dove down under the water.
And when I came back up, there was a warm rain falling, and I was in the ocean with the rain falling on me. And that is what I wish. For my self-compassion. And for everyone's sense of self compassion is being utterly surrounded, rounded, covered, safe. You know, you respect the ocean, but it was a part of the shallower part of the Gulf of Mexico, but safely held and buoyed up, right.
The floating. Able to be held on all sides and to just be drenched by compassion. And I really, I do think of that. I think of it as a warm rain, falling when I had just come up out of the water and turning my face up and letting that rain fall and just wash away every ounce of a lack of forgiveness or shame or blame.
I love that visualization. That's excellent. Thank you for sharing that and thank you for coming on. I hope you'll be back.
I would love to come back sometime, and this has been amazing Dalia. Thank you so much.
Was that an awesome first conversation or what I feel like we're killing it right out the gate? I'm so excited to be connecting to all of you. And I'm looking forward to building community around this type of content.
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All right. See you next time.
Processing Rejection from the Church and Finding Your Own Queer Spiritual Path with Reverend Catharine Clarenbach | Episode 1