…reflecting on autonomy, growth and gratitude by stacey james mcadoo…
Sometimes it’s hard to notice incremental growth or healing.
I had been dreading my annual checkup for days…not because of my provider (she’s easily the most dedicated, thorough, timely, and kind doctor I’ve seen in years)… but because of my complicated relationship with scales. I hadn’t weighed myself in months, but I knew from the fit of my clothes that the number was climbing.
A couple of years ago, I started saying “no thank you” to the scale at doctor’s visits. The first time I did it was both terrifying and liberating. I’d been having a full boxing match in my head right before the nurse asked me to step up. I knew the number wasn’t going to be what I wanted, and I was already beating myself up over it. But when she asked, something took over and I simply said, “No thank you.” She just smiled and said, “Have a seat, let me get your blood pressure.” No drama, no big deal. Yet I can’t begin to explain how powerful I felt in that moment.
As hard as I try not to let myself be beholden to a number on a scale, sometimes old habits creep back in and I almost failed to see my true growth over the past year because of it.
After going through four or five routine screening questions during last week’s visit, my doctor asked a simple question that caught me off guard: “Are you still having trouble sleeping?”
I actually had to stop and think about it—and that pause gave me my answer. Either I’d become completely numb to sleep deprivation, or falling asleep (and staying asleep) was no longer an issue. I realized it was the latter. The funny thing is, I don’t even remember when sleep returned to me, but clearly it happened somewhere along the way this past year.
I live with complex PTSD, and the last two and a half years triggered it deeply. But as I’ve shared before, my brain loves me so much that it has spent my entire life trying to protect me. At first, it protected me by blocking out people and passages of time. Then, after the loss of Norel and the unraveling of my life, its defense mechanism shifted. It allowed me to function during the day to handle my business, but it used my sleeping hours to process my grief and trauma. That meant a mind I couldn’t shut off and/or I would have disturbing dreams, or be woken up because I was crying out, literally fighting, or speaking in distorted, frightened murmurs.
So while I walked into my appointment dreading the scale (and this time I did step on it and faced a double-digit increase from last year) I walked out overwhelmed with gratitude. Because for the first time in a long time, I realized that I have been able to rest without fighting.
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Stacey McAdoo, the 2019 Arkansas Teacher of the Year, has dedicated over twenty years to advocating for traditionally underrepresented students and educators. Her relationship-based approach to education is featured in the award-winning Arkansas PBS docuseries Closing the Opportunity Gap and her specialized course, Coaching Self-Expression: Go-In Poet.
As the founder of the Writeous Poets (a spoken word and youth advocacy collective) and an expert professional development facilitator, Stacey designs transformative sessions centered on arts integration, equity, and empowerment. She currently serves as a professor at Reach University and the national Managing Director of Learning & Development for Teach Plus. Additionally, she is the host of the A Mile In My Shoes: The Walk & Talk Podcast and the founder of Still Standing: The Practice, a community for resilient women who, to the world’s astonishment and surprise, continue to stand and thrive despite life’s most unimaginable challenges.
Still Stacey 