Last year was rough. To put it in perspective, I’d been through cancer in 2014 and I found last year scarier. The cancer diagnosis certainly had terrifying moments, but at least I had a roadmap for treatment, stories of recovery and plenty of in-person support.

During cancer treatment, my boyfriend and other friends took turns coming to chemo with me in San Francisco. A family friend checked in with me regularly about taking my walks, since there were proven statistics that walking would better my chances of recovery, sometimes by 50%. I even felt love from people I didn’t know. Women I’d never met knitted caps that were freely given out at Kaiser, to keep my head warm after losing my hair. I wore mine to sleep every night. While I was buying shoes at Nordstrom’s, a woman saw my headscarf, smiled and came over. She touched her long locks and said, “It grows back.” All the caring interactions greatly helped my recovery. I felt seen.

My experience last June was quite different. A month after a stressful breakup with my boyfriend, whom I’d been with for almost 5 years, I lost my energy and began losing 20 pounds I didn’t want to lose. I became emaciated and had a hard time calming my nerves.

I went in for all the major medical tests: colonoscopy, CT scans, and blood tests. The results: slightly low iron, which could be remedied with supplements, but everything else was in normal range. This felt like good news and bad news. The good news: maybe this wasn’t so serious. The bad news: how do I move forward without a diagnosis or roadmap?

I know, I said to myself. I’ll look on the internet. I can at least get some ideas and maybe hear about people who came out on the other side of this. Apart from a personal trainer who recommended things like eating chicken thighs rather than breasts to get more fat, there was almost nothing. Nada. I even googled ‘underweight’ and got a site about losing weight.

Weight loss is a billion dollar industry in the U.S. Apparently, underweight doesn’t sell as well. Yes, there are shakes and drinks out there for gaining weight, but most didn’t agree with me or seemed unhealthy. I felt helpless. After initially eating less because of acid reflux, I was now eating lots of supposedly weight gaining foods and the weight still kept coming off. Hmmm…’the weight kept coming off’ is a phrase people gleefully say on weight loss commercials. They act like that would be music to anyone’s ears. Believe me, it’s not.

We’ve been led to believe that fat is bad (subject for another blog), which is not only dangerous, but is skewing how people see things.

I was losing about five pounds a month from an already slim frame and felt frightened that I was ‘disappearing’. Where were the stories of people turning this around? With so little reflection of my experience, I felt even less visible. I looked like a skeleton, had lost muscle tone, felt terrified when I looked in the mirror (I stopped doing that for long periods) and thought I might be dying.

I got a few responses that confused me. A man I knew who hadn’t seen me in awhile told me I looked great. Really? Is anything in our culture that’s not fat, hot? Someone else said, “You’re so lucky, you can eat anything you want” (which wasn’t true at the time.) Oh, yeah, I thought, would you say that to someone in a concentration camp? Had the world gone crazy? ‘Lucky’ was certainly not how I felt.

I learned a lot in the next 5 months. I had to. As a holistic practitioner, I knew many people and was able to bring together a great team of healers. I got a lot of emotional/spiritual support talking to friends, mostly by phone. The calls were very meaningful, but I also learned that when it’s not cancer, friends who live north of San Francisco, across the Golden Gate bridge in Marin County, don’t usually like to cross that bridge. (Note to self: get more San Francisco friends.)

Image by ElenaBelous-shutterstock.com

Since my energy was low and nervous system so sensitive, I simplified my life. I stayed close to home, walked in the nearby woods and drove very little. At times, I felt deeply isolated, but maybe this was life’s way of getting me to go more inward. I used daily practices I knew and some newly discovered ones to rebuild my system. Many things helped. Here are some of the most obvious ones:

1) I went to Community Acupuncture (many cities have them) at least twice a week to strengthen my immune system and up my chi (energy) levels. Since they work on us in a group room, they charge less than an individual session and people can go more often. Even without talking, getting out of isolation was important. Humans are communal animals.

2) I saw a healer regularly whom I trusted. For me, it was not just about finding someone good, but also someone who cared. She held the vision that I would be fine when I couldn’t do it for myself. For months, I clung to that vision like a lifeline.

3) I practiced DNRS, a technique based on neuroscience that calms over-reactive responses in the limbic brain. See https://retrainingthebrain.com

4) I did a training, taught by a scientist, in the energy healing model I already used in my work. It was based on the latest science in the area of weight and metabolism. On the third day, the teacher did a distance healing with me. Many factors came up that needed to be balanced, including a chemo drug still in my system that wasn’t making it through the detox pathways and an ‘exercise hormone’ that was misreading my body and sending the signal to burn fat 24/7. Six weeks after receiving the session, I began steadily gaining weight: twenty pounds in ten weeks! I incorporated these techniques into my practice and now use them with clients. http://bodywisdomhealer.com

5) Around this time, I did a potent two week Chi gong teacher training, with the group I’d been with since 2010. Since I felt too weak to travel, I did it all by Live stream. The level of energy replenishment I received from the training was amazing! After months of hardly driving, I was able to go to an event north of San Francisco the following week. Soon after that, I went back to my Marin Chi gong practice group and started seeing clients again at my Marin county office.

Unless it’s an eating disorder, I found that underweight issues are largely ignored in our culture. My intention in launching ‘Accidently Underweight’ is to support readers with unexplained weight loss issues and those who are underweight and don’t want to be.* I’d like to offer what I initially couldn’t find: access to resources and stories that help people feel seen and know that healing is possible. To be clear, this is for a particular group of underweight people. Many people are quite thin naturally, because of metabolism and genetics, and lead happy, healthy lives.

Today, I can say I do feel ‘lucky’ It seems like a miracle to have turned things around and be back in the river of life. Dealing with these challenges, ushered in a change in me that was about way more than weight. I feel like I’ve shed a skin, have new opportunities and am seeing life through fresh eyes.

Image by Don White

I look forward to dialoguing with you, hearing your successes and challenges, and sharing stories, hopefully that inspire.

It’s easier to heal in community. Shall we take this journey together?

*Any writing or suggestions found in these blog posts are not meant to be a substitute for a doctor or therapist’s advice. If you’re under the care of a doctor or therapist, please check with them before following any suggestions found on these pages.