Reclaiming the Black Body

An essential exploration of the overlooked impact of disordered eating among Black women--and a prescriptive road map to returning to peace and wholeness within our bodies, from the clinical therapist who founded Black and Embodied Counseling and Consulting PLLC Licensed mental health therapist, somatic healer, and eating disorder specialist Alishia McCullough understands that for far too many Black women, the myriad effects of racial trauma have disrupted their most essential relationship: the one they have with their bodies--and by extension, with their food. African Americans are disproportionately impacted by disordered eating behaviors, yet their experiences are frequently overlooked by doctors and mental health experts. As a result, entire communities--our McCullough’s groundbreaking work radically validates the lived experiences and generational traumas of BIPOC communities. As part of a steadily growing movement among clinicians to “decolonize therapy,” McCullough rejects the patriarchal, white supremacist mindset that has dominated the field, and instead embraces a more integrated approach that seeks to understand disordered eating patterns by examining the psychological wounds left by centuries of racism. Weaving together crucial history, compelling client stories, guided practice, and McCullough’s own experiences with disordered eating behaviors, <Reclaiming the Black Body< is a revealing, potentially life-saving book that illuminates the way home, back to the safety and comfort found within our bodies.

Autorentext

Alishia McCullough (she/her) is a licensed clinical mental health therapist and founder of Black and Embodied Counseling and Consulting PLLC. She specializes in somatic therapy, trauma healing, and eating disorder treatment with a focus on cultivating embodiment and fostering liberation. Alishia also runs the self-paced online course Reimagining Eating Disorders 101.

Klappentext

"Food has always been a political tool for the oppressor--and the Black body has always been one of its many battlegrounds. Licensed mental health therapist, somatic healer, and eating disorder specialist Alishia McCullough understands that for far too many Black women, racial trauma's seismic impact has disrupted their most essential relationship: the one they have with their bodies--and by extension, with their food. African Americans are disproportionately impacted by disordered eating behaviors, yet their experiences are frequently neglected by doctors and mental health experts. As a result, our most vulnerable communities are forced to navigate systems primed to dismiss their needs, leaving them without proper care, or often even the language they need to identify what's wrong. McCullough's groundbreaking work radically validates the lived experiences and generational traumas of BIPOC communities. As part of a steadily growing movement among clinicians to "decolonize therapy," her deeply affirming approach seeks to understand disordered eating patterns by examining the psychological wounds left by centuries of racism"--

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How Our Eating Became Imbalanced

“Eating disorders are a natural response to intergenerational wounds, gender violence, and racial trauma.”—­Gloria Lucas, founder of Nalgona Positivity Pride

When I think about how eating became imbalanced in my own family, I know that food scarcity—­or our lack of access to food—­deeply wounded us. Whenever my parents went grocery shopping to fill our pantry and refrigerator, my siblings and I were often scolded for how quickly we ate the food they bought because, as our parents told us, “Groceries are not cheap.” I also grew up in a “clean your plate” household, meaning that during dinnertime we sat down, said our prayers of gratitude to God, and ate all of our food without complaining. If one of us did complain, or refused to eat what was being served, we were either punished or made to feel guilty with statements like “Children in X country are starving—­you better eat that food.” In this way, my siblings and I learned to ignore our bodies’ desires, to dismiss our hunger and fullness cues. We learned that listening to our bodies could cause feelings of guilt or shame. As a child I did not know what to do with those emotions, I just knew they felt bad. Dinnertime with our family evoked feelings of anxiety and distress because the message was always “We don’t have food to waste.”

Looking back, I don’t blame my parents for doing the best they could with the resources they had to support our family. They were only repeating the behaviors that were passed down to them from their parents, who in turn received them from their parents. Instead, I hold accountable the class disparities in this country, and how our capitalist system has made food and our ability to nourish ourselves a privilege rather than a human right. I grew up hearing stigmatizing and false messages about Black people receiving “handouts” from the government for food stamps. Even though at times we were qualified to receive them, my parents refused to accept them—­choosing instead to work multiple jobs and put in extra hours to ensure that our family had only just enough.

I later learned that we were always riding the line between being too privileged for government assistance and too poor to actually afford the things my parents needed to support a family of five. We were struggling, but that struggle was preferable to the shame they felt for needing help in a system that had left us disadvantaged.

I carried the lessons of this upbringing with me into adulthood. In my early twenties, I would intentionally eat less because, even during periods when I was making enough money to afford a variety of foods to support my body’s needs, I had learned to internalize the scarcity wound my family had experienced. I held the vestiges of my childhood within my body—­I made a habit of rationing my meals because I believed that there might not be enough for me to eat, that I could not afford to eat more, even when I was in the financial position to do so.

Years later, as I began to delve deeper into my work with eating imbalances, I decided to take a closer look at my personal history with the hope of gaining a greater understanding of how my eating became imbalanced. Reflecting on the past, I began to realize that my Westernized Christian upbringing had a huge lasting influence on my thoughts around my body and food. As a young girl, I was raised to believe the creation story of Adam and Eve. Eve decides to eat an apple from the tree of forbidden fruit and, as the Bible story tells us, her lack of willpower and her human capacity to be deceived causes her to become disconnected from God. After consuming the forbidden fruit, Eve becomes ashamed of her body and is labeled as disobedient to God. I now realize that this famous story—­one that many of us grew up hearing—­is also a prime example of an imbalanced relationship with food and nourishment.

The story of Adam and Eve was a cornerstone of my conditioning around resisting “temptation,” which included anything that could be deemed desirable: cravings, “guilty” pleasures, foods considered to be indulgences. Both the literal and figurative rigidity around the creation story began to fuel my eating patterns. I internalized the idea that the worst sin I could commit would be to fall into temptation around food I’d come to view as “forbidden.” It was important to me that I force my body into obedience by controlling the way I ate. I followed what mainstream society told me was “healthy” and “unhealthy” to eat, and …