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In the photo, she is wearing a white button-down shirt with the top few buttons undone.
Natalie Chitwood/The Turshen Family
Her shirt is tucked into straight-leg blue jeans, her right hand is tucked into her pocket.
She leans ever so slightly to her left.
The author also happens to be my mother.
Courtesy of the Turshen family
When the article was published, it was just a few months before my 13th birthday.
If Im being completely honest, I think I wanted hard evidence.
I wanted to see if the article was as tough to stomach as I remembered it being.
Courtesy of the Turshen family
The stories we see truly do affect how we see ourselves.
I am so grateful for her openness to hearing me and for her willingness to take accountability.
Its called, quite simply, A Conversation with My Mom About Our Bodies.
Natalie Chitwood
You might be wondering why this conversation appears in a cookbook.
Sure, we love recipes, but I think we also seek out seeing food reflected lovingly.
I know thats been part of my lifelong draw to cookbooks.
In them, its always felt like food didnt carry the weight it seemed to in my real life.
and the relationship I have with food in my real life.
These days, it feels so much more integrated.
The food I share is the food I no longer feel scared to eat.
A big part of getting to this place has been talking openly and honestly about what came before.
I already said it but it bears repeating: the stories we read and see impact us.
My moms story didnt end with Good-bye, Fat Head, and neither did mine.
Heres where we are today.
Everyone deserves to be treated as a whole personnot just a number on a scale.
One person who has listened to a lot of these conversations is my mother.
She honored this request and has been a witness to my evolving understanding of my body.
I thought it would be worth picking the conversation with her back up and sharing it here.
Julia:When did your consciousness about your body and weight start?
Rochelle:I have a very clear memory.
It was in the second grade.
We were put on a scale and then they wrote our numbers down on the board.
I remember mine was higher than other peoples.
Like something was wrong with me and I didnt somehow fit in.
So it started for you outside of your family?
You were supposed to be a little girl that wore a dress that had a waistline.
Okay, Im going to flash forward very fast.
You had nearly four decades of navigating your body and feelings about your weight before you had kids.
This is a really provocative question for me.
You parent the way youve been parented, right?
But I meant to say something before that I think is important.
Which is that Im not asking this question to blame you.
No, I got that.
Im clear about that.
I just want to better understand.
You know, I grew up with parents that parented in a certain way.
The way I was brought up, girls were minimal.
We were supposed to get married and behave in certain ways.
My parents werent reading parenting books.
My mother never even learned how to read.
I was always looking at other families and thinking they were better.
They were more Americanized than I was.
Both of my parents were refugees and werent born in America.
I wanted to grow up in an American family.
I didnt realize so much of it until you were out of the house.
So the education came to me, but late.
I mean, the one thing I will say is that I wish I paid more attention.
To even ask the question How are you feeling?
Well, it sounds like you werent really asked that.
Rochelle:Yeah, I grew up unaware of feelings, as opposed to doings.
It was transactional, and there were consequences for behavior.
And I feel like the answer was always, Well, what do you want to do about it?
And it was never about where those feelings came from and that there was nothing wrong with me.
Thats a big thing.
How do you feel about that period now?
All I can do is acknowledge it.
Im sorry it happened that way.
And wasnt contingent on how you treated your body.
Its what I wish had always been the case for both of us.
You know, I smile when I see you and sometimes you say, What are you smiling at?
And Im smiling at you.
And your posture is great not because of how you stand up, but because youre fully present.
To see that, that makes me happy.
I feel so much less afraid to take up space than I used to.
You take up the space.
Seriously, its wonderful to see all of you.
A few years ago, I asked you to stop talking about weight with me.
Yours, mine, anyones.
How did it feel when I asked you that?
I thought it was interesting.
It was a good idea.
But I was struck, you know.
Was it hard for you as well?
Theres a thread of comparison that Im hearing.
Like you trying to figure out how you are in comparison to other people.
So I had to stop doing that so I could figure out something different.
So it felt scary to ask you not to talk to me about your weight or my weight anymore.
Also because it had felt like such a bond.
To talk to you about our bodies and what we were eating or not eating.
I felt such a closeness to you for that.
Yeah, thank you.
I like hearing that.
But I think ultimately its been really good.
Well, we sure found other things to talk about!
