Modern B*a*g Ladies introduces our first Featured Travel Guide, Tricia Waltman, founder of Vision Art Designs in a  3 part series.

It is a core belief of Modern B*a*g Ladies that we are more alike than we are different.  Our mission is to provide a platform for women, of all walks of life, to share their stories.  By sharing we connect, inspire and go along our journey with more understanding and willingness to accept and help our fellow sisters.  At the end of each story our Travel Guides set us out on a scavenger hunt in search of you Discovering Your B*a*g.

Burying and Finding Myself Again – Fat Suit Trick

As a child, I believed in everything and thought anything was possible.  Starting with my Snoopy Comic Books, I loved to read.  Later, with chapter books, within the first paragraph I could transport into another world, feeling like all the characters.  I believe this now, but not for many years in between.  I remember being comfortable with myself one day at Kmart with my Mom.  I must have been 5 or 6.  When we got out of the car, my Mom reached down for my hand and I felt safe, loved, protected, and happy.

Later in my life my mom has supported through years of repeated behaviors that would lead to my own shame and degradation.  I have a good feeling that she doesn’t quite understand me but she supports me anyway and isn’t that acceptance all we are looking for?  I’ve had and kept the same friends since I was 10 years old so my best friends are my day-to-day source of encouragement and support.

When I was 7, I was molested by my father, once.  Once is enough to really, really screw with your head.  I kept this a secret for 8 years and didn’t think that much about it. It seemed more like a dream.  When I became vocal about it, all hell broke loose.  Instant divorce and I watched my Dad sit in his chair with a bottle of booze, crying and drinking for 3 days straight.  It was the most pitiful thing I’ve ever seen and to this day, I have trouble seeing a man cry.

I did the most common thing that a sexual abuse survivor does for many years – abused myself.  I drank like a fish, smoked, I wasn’t respecting my body, went from job to job – with all my excuses, then later, gained a ton of weight; the ole fat suit trick.  I believed that’s all I was worth.  I lay in this muck for a long time.

The Weight of My Borrowed Beliefs

As I write this today, I’ve shed 62 lbs of that fat-suit, but you may find a package of Twinkies in my bag.  “Women Food & God” should be added to my reading list.  I’d love for this issue to be laid to rest. A huge step towards recycling my baggage was the decision to acknowledge my body as worthy of better care.   Physically, I’ve really put myself through the ringer.  From age 13 to 35, I drank to the point of being drunk.  That’s a lot of days to feel like crap and layers added in an attempt to affirm the borrowed belief that I was not worthy of my own greatest and the true security I felt that day with my mother at Kmart.

A thought weighs on my mind, a secret I have held from my daughter.  She doesn’t know about my Dad.  I never wanted to tell her because I thought she would pity me and that is no place for a Mother.  Now I’m wondering if it would be more powerful to explain age-appropriately about what happened and allow her to see how I can use it to help others.  It is still a struggle.

I tried to be something I’m not the last 5 years of traditional employment.  I worked there 10 years as a dispatcher/operations manager in the thick of the “good ole boys club”.  I kept my job for economic reasons but I knew in my heart of hearts, I was meant to do something else.  A blessing of my past job was that I had free time to read spiritual self-help books and for the last 2 years making collages.  It was a welcome diversion from the monotony. When I was laid off in Sept 2009, I was inappropriately happy as hell to be set free and I knew exactly what I wanted to do.  It was a huge risk to put all my energy into one thing but I had to take the opportunity!!

TO BE CONTINUED… Read Part II

Tricia invites you to join the Discover Your B*a*g Scavenger Hunt over at MBL’s Facebook Page and here in the comments.  While you await Part II of Tricia’s story, Visions ~ Actions ~ The World Says OH YES.  Tricia challenges you to set out in search of the following…..

Reading and exposing herself to different ideas and awareness set a course for Tricia to discover her B*a*g.  Discover, rediscover or set out on a journey of finding a book that has taught you, or will teach you something.  What was the lesson? Did you take action or change how you did or approached something?  Share the book title, the lesson and how it changed your thoughts and/or actions.  You haven’t read since high school or college? No biggy! Consider reading Donald Miller’s post on the subject.

Collect your findings in Tracia’s B*a*g decorated with her very own visions of healing.  It’s more than a bag.  It’s an awareness of you as a Traveling Sanctuary to be fueled and tooled, so you can be completely yourself. $5 of each sale is donated to Enchanted Makeovers, a non-profit organization that brings peace and possibilities to women and children living in shelters.

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