So yesterday’s Oprah was interesting. The topic was why women let themselves go. This was mostly code for why women let themselves get fat. Yes, there was a bit of discussion about putting hair in ponytails and not putting on makeup. But given how easy those problems are to fix, I don’t think this would have been as big of a show. Instead, most of the stories really focused on how thin the women once were, and how fat they were now. And Oprah (or was it Dr. Robin) suggested that this phenomenon of women letting themselves go was a “crisis.”

Now none of the women on the show had gotten seriously, grossly obese. One of them, Andrea, gained 40lbs after she found out her fiancé was a jerk, yet she was so embarrassed by the situation (including her weight gain) that she broke off her relationship with her best friend.

I can relate to that. I haven’t kept touch with old friends in Boston (where I lived before my mother died). Part of it has been that I was ashamed that I was still on the climb up the scale. But even as I’ve been coming down, I’m still not ready to reach out. I keep telling myself I just want to get a little closer to where I was before.

Anyways, it sounds like this show was the first in a series, and late in the show, Oprah directed folks online to get involved in her “Launch Your Personal Comeback” effort.

But first, the discussion centered on the five women’s stories. The common theme that emerged – according to Oprah and her new bud Dr. Robin – was the importance of finding one’s real sense of value, one’s purpose, as a means to heal the “spiritual wound” that is about not feeling good enough.

I don’t disagree with the issues related to the underlying cause, though I do have some issues with the proposed solution.

Our spiritual wounds

On the show, the concept about spiritual wound was a personal one. There was the story of the woman who had been sexually abused, the woman who had the crappy boyfriend, the beauty queen who had been laid off from her job.

This idea of personal wound is certainly important. I have my own wounds, and I’ve struggled with them. Yet I’m starting to believe that it’s also time to revisit the concept of the wound being a social or cultural one. How much of our fat is because we feel we don’t fit in?

It’s been nearly 30 years since Fat is a Feminist Issue was published. Ms magazine reflects on that:

And Susie Orbach, in her 1978 classic Fat Is a Feminist Issue, saw story lines playing out upon women’s flesh: She presented food as language and fat as a metaphor — a filter between us and the world, telling a story about our relationship with our mothers, men and ourselves.

She urged women to stop dieting and instead seek to understand the reasons why they were fat in the first place. Fat, she wrote, has hidden agendas and can express many things: the desire for protection, to remain unseen, or to rebel against imprisoning social ideals.

The “I wear my fat as a shield” concept is pretty well understood. I’ve said it myself, and spent much time in therapy trying to understand it. But I’ve long believed that the whole “why am I fat” question can only be looked at as an onion: with layers that become more clear the more you peel.

That’s why I am particularly interested now in this idea of the “spiritual wound” that is about rebelling against social ideals. (Whether that rebellion is out of frustration or fear is also an interesting question.)

For example, consider the concept of woman as the angel in the house:

The popular Victorian image of the ideal wife/woman came to be “the Angel in the House,” who was expected to be devoted and submissive to her husband. The Angel was passive and powerless, meek, charming, graceful, sympathetic, self-sacrificing, pious, and above all–pure. The phrase “Angel in the House” comes from the title of an immensely popular poem by Coventry Patmore, in which he holds his angel-wife up as a model for all women.

But even 100 years or so ago, some were rebelling against this concept. Virginia Woolf wrote about how important it was for her to kill the angel in the house:

I now record the one act for which I take some credit to myself, though the credit rightly belongs to some excellent ancestors of mine who left me a certain sum of money–shall we say five hundred pounds a year?–so that it was not necessary for me to depend solely on charm for my living.

……I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defense. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing. For, as I found, directly I put pen to paper, you cannot review even a novel without having a mind of your own, without expressing what you think to be the truth about human relations, morality, sex. And all these questions, according to the Angel of the House, cannot be dealt with freely and openly by women; they must charm, they must conciliate, they must–to put it bluntly–tell lies if they are to succeed.

I find this a very interesting quote in the context of fat as a feminist issue. Yes, I put the food in my mouth. I didn’t exercise. I drank too much. But maybe, just maybe, some of this was giving voice to my resentment at having to live the lies that women are pressured to live even in this day and age. Be sweet. Think of others first. Don’t be sexually assertive.

So yes, there are personal spiritual wounds, and we all do need to address them. But it’s worth considering: what if your real problem is that your authentic self doesn’t fit the approved stereotype? Maybe we don’t need diets; maybe what we really need is to find courage.

Finding one’s purpose?

According to Oprah, what saved her was the belief that she “was God’s child” and that she had discovered her purpose. She and Dr. Robin suggest that what’s needed to heal these spiritual wounds is a “search and rescue” and that women need to become “more of who they are.”

Well, okay. Here’s my take on this. Depending on where you are, this whole “what’s my purpose?” question can be a lot of work, and it’s something that I think can make you go nuts, especially if you’re inclined to think that you won’t be well until you figure it out.

Here’s a newsflash: I don’t know what my purpose is. And I’m okay with it!

What I figured out over the last year was that finding your purpose, if such a thing exists, may be like the prize in a video game. Getting the prize is much easier once you have conquered the major obstacles in your path. In other words, I think your purpose can wait. For me anyways, figuring out my purpose in life can come after I’ve learned how to nurture myself, set the right limits, and gain confidence in my ability to deal with my problems.

An article in the November Oprah magazine — “Are Your Goals Holding You Back?”– struck me as being very supportive of this. The author writes about Steven Shapiro’s approach to “goal-free living” (his book is coming out in December).

Here’s a snippet:

“Someone in the audience raised her hand and said, ‘I have a question. I’ve been very good at setting goals and very good at achieving them, and I’m still miserable. Why is that?’”

Give Shapiro a minute, and he’ll rattle off the reasons. … “Number one I’m calling ‘Whose goal is it, anyway?’” he says. “most people’s goals aren’t their own. Then tend to be driven by society and family pressure.”

Second, he says, when you focus on a goal, “you put blinders on. You lose you peripheral vision and miss out on all the great opportunities around you. Third … you’re always living for the future. You end up saying, ‘I’ll be happy when….’ You sacrifice today in the hopes that something wonderful is going to happen tomorrow. But it almost never does. … That’s what happens with goals. You’re constantly chasing them.. The fourth issue is that you’re courting failure.” Meaning, he says, you become attached to one outcome, and even if you get it, reality seldom matches the dream in all its Technicolor splendor.” …

“Goal-free living isn’t about being aimless or saying ‘Oh, this is getting tough. I’ve got to stop,’” Shapiro contends. “It’s about being passion-driven in the moment, while knowing you can change course.”

How Zen.

Anyways, I offer this up fully being aware that this may not apply to everyone. Just like OA works for some, but not for me. Same is probably true of some of this touchy-feeling inner child stuff: your mileage may vary.

I share it just in case that there are others who are struggling with the “what’s my purpose?” question. I do think it’s worth trying different things that may help one find the North star to navigate by. For me, the North star isn’t my purpose, it’s that, as Wayne Dyer would put it, “your purpose is not as much about what you do as it is about how you feel.” [emphasis mine]

I started my journey wanting to feel a sense of peace: I wanted to stop the struggle. Either I was going to be wicked fat and be okay with it, or I was going to stop shoving food and drink down my throat and beat myself up about it.

These days, I feel pretty darn good. I still don’t know what I’m going to be when I grow up, but I’m feeling like I’m on the right track. But I think that I may just spend more time figuring out how to rebel against the angel in the house.