Elephant on My Chest
 I never thought I’d go five years eating nothing but raw food. No spaghetti with marinara sauce. No roasted chicken. No potatoes with gravy. No Friday night pizza, nor popcorn with movies. I wouldn’t have believed I could give up refined sugar and alcohol, that my days of Hershey’s Kisses and Almond Joys were numbered. I didn’t know I could forgo salmon and wine, Thai food and beer, champagne and margaritas—which wasn’t so bad since I was also saying adiós to tacos and cheese enchiladas. I was willing to make sacrifices in a last-ditch attempt to hoist an elephant off my chest.
Before I quit eating those foods, whenever anybody asked how I felt, all I could think was, it feels like I’ve got an elephant sitting on my chest, squeezing the life out of me. Every couple minutes I inhaled huge breaths. Still my lungs begged for air. I also had indigestion and was afraid to eat, felt lousy before meals, but worse after. Food burned, hurt, or left me bloated—even small amounts. I worried I might develop an eating disorder. Over four years, I went from mild, occasional digestive and stomach discomforts—which, following my doctor’s advice, I treated with over-the-counter medicines—to full-on chronic stomach and digestive pain, plus panic attacks.
While volunteering at my daughter’s school, I worried I’d stop breathing and collapse on the speckled-tile floor of her first grade classroom.
Was this it? I wondered. Was my life, at 43, headed downhill for good? I’d expected so much more, and resonated deeply with Indian poet, Tagore’s quote: “For years I have been stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I have come to sing remains unsung.”
I’d been writing poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction for twenty years, and though I’d published in literary journals, my book-length manuscripts collected dust in the garage. It had been a long, unpaid apprenticeship, which my husband (bless him) had supported, but I hated not having an income of my own—especially after our daughter started attending private school. I wanted desperately to do my part to help support our family. —But how? Had I wasted the last twenty years writing? My previous manuscript had been hit with a round of rejections I didn’t expect, rejections I (naively) took personally.
9-11 had been my coup de grâs, delivering what I thought was the final blow to my unrealized writing career. After all, I had thought, with everything going on the world, how could anything I have to say matter? So I narrowed my focus. Threw myself into motherhood. Became a room parent, my symptoms mild enough at that time to ignore—though I popped Maalox like vitamins. I slept fitfully, watched war on T.V., feared another Al-Qaeda attack, trembled at the words “code orange,” didn’t want to travel on an airplane, and was reluctant to go to our local shopping mall. I was paranoid about anthrax, earthquakes, afraid my husband would crash coming home from work on the freeway—all this, I realize now, was too much to digest. My “elephant,” a beast that fed on fear, grew fatter every day. But I didn’t realize any of this at the time.
At night, while she slept, I stared at my sleeping child and imagined I had stomach cancer and was dying. The thought of my daughter growing up without a mother was deliciously catastrophic. I allowed myself to wallow in the tragic sting of that thought—long enough to bring tears to my eyes—and then snapped out of it and returned to Helen asleep in her bed—lacy eyelashes, vanilla pudding skin, lips the color of raspberries. She snored lightly and smelled of yeast, honey, and Golden Delicious apples. She and her father constituted the real feast of my life, and I wasn’t ready to leave this banquet.
My primary care physician, after ordering upper GI x-rays, diagnosed acid reflux and prescribed drugs. I knew if I took them I’d be treating symptoms, which might make me feel better, but would allow my dis ease to progress. I needed a cure, not a cover up.
He referred me to a gastroenterologist, who wanted to stick a camera down my esophagus and look inside my stomach. I might have agreed if he hadn’t shown up wearing an open shirt with ropy gold chains glittering against curly, black chest hair —that and the fact he kept me waiting over two hours and spent two minutes examining me, never once looking into my eyes.
When my insurance company refused to let me see another specialist, I figured it was up to me to do my own healing. Since my problems centered on digestion and my stomach, it made sense to think about what I put into it. I read everything I could get my hands on about nutrition, which was how I learned about the raw food diet. I’d never heard of enzymes before—the life force in food—and how heating food kills enzymes, which is killing life in food.
Reading testimonials from people whose raw diets had cured a range of maladies, including, but not limited to diabetes, migraines, high blood pressure, allergies, fatigue, depression, and digestive disorders, I became hopeful and knew I had to give it a try.
 Years earlier, in one of my let’s-get-healthy phases, I went to a local health food market and filled my basket with organic kale, collard greens, spinach, and a mountain of other vegetables and fruits.
“Are you one of those Raw Foodists?” a pimple-faced kid at the register asked.
“No,” I said. I didn’t know such people existed, but here I was, a decade later, making my first plate of raw pasta. At the time I didn’t realize zucchini fettuccini could be accomplished with an ordinary vegetable peeler, so I invested $24.00 in an appliance called a spiral slicer. You put in any hard vegetable, like zucchini, carrots, beets, or jicima, turn a crank, and voilá: angel hair “pasta.” Toss with an uncooked sauce made from fresh tomatoes, basil, garlic, olive oil, and—Mangia! If you’re lucky you’ll experience what I did—a natural high. I’m not kidding! I could feel the life force of the food! Not only that, I ate a large portion and had zero burning, pain, or bloating—plus I was buzzing with energy! This was a relief, but also a revelation!
Still, raw food wasn’t all hunky-dory. Along with energy highs came physical detox discomforts, such as flatulence and diarrhea—though none of that was as challenging as some of the social situations I encountered. My family commented on how thin I’d become, and once, when I stepped into a Jacuzzi at my in-law’s house, my father-in-law, seeing me in my bikini, said, “You’d better watch out—if you’re not careful, your husband might run off with a fleshier gal.” A few weeks later we ate an extended family dinner at a restaurant that was so fancy it had stools to put your purse on—God forbid a lady’s handbag should touch the floor—yet the only thing they had to offer me, a raw vegan, to eat, off their fixed menu, was a plate of Romaine lettuce. Not even a cucumber or tomato. Fortunately I’d come prepared with a bag of almonds, which I hid in my lap, and nibbled over the course of three hours, as gourmet entrées, French wines, and rich deserts arrived at our table.
Awkward social situations became easier to bear when detox symptoms disappeared and surprising changes occurred: after a few weeks my chest and stomach felt better, I needed less sleep, toenail fungus disappeared, wrinkles on my face faded, my cholesterol dropped from 246 to 167, and I had more energy than I’d had in twenty years! This inspired me to start exercising again.
Months passed and I understood viscerally I’d never been so well nourished in my life. Caring for my body at that level inspired me to resuscitate my mind and soul. I’d been unconscious of my thoughts, which, like a stampede of wild buffalo, crushed the flowers growing on my inner plains.
Soon, I, a lapsed Catholic, found a church where the minister said things I believed, such as we are all powerful creators, and our thoughts create our lives whether we are conscious of them or not.
One nagging (elephant-feeding) thought lingered: My career is a failure—and so am I. But how could this be true? How could a person’s life’s path—to say nothing of that person herself—be a failure? This thought felt fundamentally wrong in my heart, though my head had no clue how to release it. So I enrolled in a Masters degree program in Spiritual Psychology that posed these questions: What if there is no such thing as failure—only opportunities for growth? What would you do if you knew you could not fail? I’d get my books into the world. I’d create a good income. I’d teach. I’d travel. I’d thrive. I’d say “yes” to my creative process and “yes” to my dreams. I’d be healthy, happy, and free.
Those where my thoughts, and this is what my life has become. Not overnight, and not just because of eating raw food, but changing my diet was the catalyst that heaved that beast off my chest.
In Asian cultures elephants are symbols of wisdom, famous for their intelligence and memory. I hope I always remember my body is a wise teacher and symptoms are vital messages. I hope too, I never forget what may at first appear sacrificial, might be an opportunity, a blessing, and a gift.
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Anatomy Lesson
I didn’t hear the word vulva until I was thirty. Instead I grew up hearing about it, my private parts, my down there. My mother and grandmother used Italian slang to refer to it: pesciuscia. Once, in Italy, my sister went into a market with my grandmother and asked the man behind the counter for some pesciuscia instead of prosciutto, which is the Italian word ham. My grandmother smacked my sister in the head and walked out red-faced and empty-handed.
My grandmother wore a garter belt and stockings, but no underwear. Sometimes we’d visit Jolly Roger’s Amusement Park; when we went to the restroom, she’d lift her skirt above her hips and squat over the toilet. I thought the hair was gruesome, the gaping, pink, protruding center dense with blood mysteries I’m beginning only now to understand. Mother told me, “Before her hysterectomy, Grandma had only one ovary, so it was a miracle when she conceived me.” At the time, it made me think there was something freakish about her.
I never saw my mother’s vulva when I was a child, so I naturally assumed she didn’t have one. This made her perfect in every way. She didn’t have what Grandma had—no black mass of tangled hair, no gaping, raw, red-hot, sagging flesh.
As for me, I used to stimulate my young clitoris through my cotton panties when I was in bed. I wouldn’t slide my hand underneath the elastic band. Touching myself meant getting that “nasty” smell all over my fingers. It meant feeling wet and hot. It meant wildness, being eaten alive. (Today, I can't resist putting my moist, scented fingers to my nose and breathing in.)
Several months ago, at my sister’s house, after my husband and I got out of the shower, our niece and nephew came into our room. We were wearing towels, and Jim’s fell down. Their eyes immediately fixed on his penis. “Eeew,” cried Diana, who is four. Her two-year-old brother, Robert, was equally disgusted and fascinated. I told them Uncle Jim’s penis is beautiful, and Jim let them look. When they’d seen enough they turned to me and said, “Now you.” I opened my towel, but my vulva and breasts weren’t nearly so startling; they’d seen their mother naked before.
I wondered if they thought, as I once did, that adults are dirty because they have pubic hair and bulging flesh. I told Diana she’d look like me one day, and she shook her head. But the longer they saw our naked bodies, the less intrigued they were. It was already old hat. No mystery.
There is still so much they do not know. Diana will have to unlearn the lie that her vulva is dirty. She will have to learn to celebrate her genitals with the same enthusiasm she now has for Christmas, when she and her brother excitedly open their presents.
I hope it doesn’t take her thirty years to delight in the sight of her own genitals. She will have to look underneath her cotton panties. She will have to open her legs after being told repeatedly to keep them closed. She will have to find a way to move beyond her mother’s fears of AIDS. She will have to learn that not all men leave the way her daddy did. She will have to take possession of her thighs, her breasts, her clitoris. She will have to know what she likes and dislikes. She will have to learn how and when to prevent semen from lodging in her womb. She will have to learn the difference between his and her own pleasure. The candles are lit. The incense coils up in to the air. Oils, lotions, and fresh fruit won’t teach her how to liberate herself from the rule she’ll have lived with all her life: good girls don’t do that.
Robert will have to learn to love a woman other than his mother. He will have to find the courage to look into a cave without cringing. He will have to learn that pimples won’t appear on his face if he touches his penis in the night. He will have to claim the warm, wet fluids of his body. He will have to learn to love himself, to put aside rulers, dollar bills, and fast cars. He will have to learn how to put on a condom. He will have to learn how to cry. Everything is amok. Daddy is gone. Uncle has a brown jungle stretched between his thighs. The animals are here even when they can’t be seen.
When I was twenty I had an older lover who once sat me down in front of a mirror, spear my legs, and pointed. “Clitoris, labia majora, labia minora, urethra, vagina, anus,” he named. Though I thought my genitals were ugly, he liked them. When he buried his face in me, he wasn’t doing it to be nice. He savored my scent and told me he liked it lingering on his mustache. He could taste me at work, he said. It made meetings at the district attorney’s office move faster.
We lived in the Virgin Islands, on a rooster farm, in a house built on stilts. The roads were lined with lush foliage, and the air was hot and moist. I felt innocent and free back then. Cunnilingus on the living room couch, wondering when the wet spot would dry. Wondering if my brother could hear us. Wondering if he’d come out of his room and see us, sticky, naked, and numb.
Once my lover pointed to a small red smudge on the side of his penis and and said, “Bad boys get this from bad girls.” Though he was scrupulous about naming parts of my anatomy for me, he neglected to tell me about herpes.
My first outbreak brought fever and a lesion in my throat that was so severe I couldn’t eat solid food for weeks. Years later I found intercourse with my husband painful. We avoided sex and held the secret in our hearts.
It took ten years to ask for help. We learned that my husband had the virus too, but he was asymptomatic. Why, I wondered, did I have outbreaks?
Finally it became clear that they were symptoms of a disease beneath the disease: sexual shame. Once I found a way to let some of that go—to look between my legs and appreciate my genitals—my symptoms began to disappear.
"Anatomy Lesson" first appeared in The Sun, May 1994.
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