The year was 1993, I was 32 and taking 80 mg of prednisone every day for a severe flare up of the mysterious autoimmune disease that lives in my body. The medication caused an explosion of weight gain from the overabundance of cortisol the drug gave me. As pound after pound came on, I reached a point where my body had grown to almost twice its normal size. I was in most ways unrecognizable. I had always been thin and barely able to maintain enough weight to stay healthy. It was a season of shock and awe both for me and for those who got to witness it. It was also a season of great personal discovery.

I now think of what I went through in the early 90’s as season of scorching heat applied to my body image and self esteem. I think of it like this. When a gold miner finds a piece of ore with veins of gold running through it, they understand that the only way that they will be able access that gold is through the process of refining the entire rock in an intense fire. They know that the gold will stand the heat while the lesser ore burns up. In order to get through the reality of my experiences with an ever changing body, I had to actively participate in accepting the reality of it and today as I reflect back, I realize that it was some of the most difficult mental work of my life. Mental work that quite literally made it possible for me to live the last 32 years grounded in my own body without shame and entirely changed the way I perceive others. It was a huge deal for me.

What I discovered when I was fat was that behind my reflection in the mirror there I was. I was there when I looked at the very large image with the moon face and the big hump on her back between her shoulders. It was as if all I had ever known about my existence spoken to me and said, “Wow, you are still here.”

All at once, while staring at my body in the mirror, I saw my core self like I had never seen it before. In an instant I understood that whatever it was that made me, me, was not first and foremost the body I saw reflected back at me. It was a profound moment and I have never been the same. I vividly realized that this self was more mature than the little girl in the 60’s getting ready for school or the adolescent worried about being approved at the skating rink on a Friday night but she was one and the same. I knew in an instant that I was quite literally not my body. I knew deep in my experience that I was something entirely complete, whole and separate from the human body. Oddly, knowing that to be real in my experience gave me a whole new love for the body I was in.

My physical body did not become irrelevant to me when I realized that I was whole and complete without it, because I knew with equal clarity that the only way that my real self could be here was to be at peace with it and to fully accept it as it was. I understood so deeply that as a human being, I was going to be going through things where my physical body was concerned and that those things would result in weight gain and weight loss. I understood that if I wanted to live a life of value, I would need to be as committed to the development and growth of my core self as anyone ever is to their physical fitness. I realized that I might even grow in inner strength and resilience because the physical constraints would mean that my physical body would operate at a different speed than many others. Most of all, and specifically for this post, I learned that at my core self, I am not fat or thin. I am me and I exist in the body I have. I respect her. I care for her.

As I am daily witnessing the reality the new weightloss drugs on the market, the one thing I struggle with more than any other is that people will cease further discovery of what is really at the core of who they are having replaced that understanding with body size and an acceptable self image. Don’t misunderstand that I know how hard it is to carry unwanted weight. I know that this medication has helped many diabetics and others who really need that weight under control. I will not villainize thinness. I just worry that as a result of this sudden workable way to drop pounds, we are at greater risk of losing our core selves and increasing the shame on those who do not measure up.

As a society already hyper-focused on the perfect image, we are ignoring what it really takes to become mature, healthy people. It is crucial for a functional and prosperous society to have leaders with higher thinking and moral processing skills who live above the whims of an ever changing culture. It is equally crucial to understand imperfection as reality. No adolescent I worked with in treatment ever recovered without the discovery of her core self. Not one.

I wanted to write this today simply to encourage you that no matter what your physical body’s circumstances…breast cancer (two friends now dealing with it), the realities of an aging body (I just spent a week living at an assisted living facility with my mom) or just being in a body you don’t think you want for its size… consider going deeper.

You are worthy of knowing your real, core self apart from anyone or anything else. And if we are to survive as a human species, it is vital to pursue it.