Margery Arnold on How the Loss of Mom Represents Living Two Different Lives – Episode 44

The Changed Podcast with Aden Nepom

Margery Arnold is co-host of the Positive Thinpact Podcast. In this episode, she discusses her health, the challenges of having co-morbidities for Covid, and how losing her mother at the age of 24 was either a devastating end to life as she knew it, a challenging beginning to live as she is... or both.

If you're not familiar with the Positive Thinpact Podcast, this was a project that Margery and I started in 2019. She had a wild idea, that perhaps one could hold on to the excitement of learning the rules of a new fad-diet as a way of gaming the brain to avoid the moment of self-sabotage that inevitably comes after a few weeks on a stringent eating plan. What better way to catalog such a journey than on a podcast?!

At the time, her goal was to lose 250lbs.

Now as wild as this idea was, she wanted to start the project, not with a doctor, dietician, or natural health expert at her side... but instead with me a friend and facilitator with a background in improv and play.

Margery and I have been friends for nearly 15 years... if our friendship was a person, it would be a teenager! I suppose that means that our friendship is filled with honest opinions and unreasonable confidence in wild ideas being worth some attention.

I've heard many stories about her mom over the years, we used to meet up and share a piece of cheesecake to commemorate her mother's life on the anniversary of what would have been her birthday.

But hearing her story in the context of this interview, gave me a new perspective on my friend's experience. It also allowed me an opportunity to reflect on grief, the impact of losing a loved one, and more.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• For listeners of Positive Thinpact, there is a long-overdue update about how Margery's journey has been going (or had been going at the time of this interview's recording, in the spring of 2021)
• How to handle your opinions about other people's weight gain, weight loss, and other body changes
• The invisibility of being fat
• Thoughts on choosing to take medication to lose weight, in light of the dangers of covid for those who have health and weight issues
• The status of the Positive Thinpact Podcast
• How someone who is analytical by nature, and well-practiced at studying data and recognizing patterns, processes change.
• A discussion of the human ability to predict the future, and the accuracy of predictions
• The importance of pattern recognition
• The pivotal experience of losing her mother to inflammatory breast cancer following standard hormone therapy for menopause
• The impact of having cared for a dying parent as a person in her early 20s
• An acknowledgment of how individuals grieve differently and a few suggestions for those who know someone currently grieving
• The key idea when you lose a parent young, you end up living two lives: the one when they are still alive, and the one in which they no longer exist.
• How life might have turned out differently, better in some ways, worse in some ways, had mom survived

A few links to check out:

The book Margery referenced is called Motherless Daughters: The...
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