Fashion and Faith

Maybe this is a recovering women’s issue? Maybe men have a version of this but I don’t know about it. What I do know is that throughout my recovery I’ve had a running internal debate that goes like this: 

Voice One: I’m becoming a spiritual person now so clothing and make up and hair color does not matter. 

Voice Two: But I’m a happier person now too because of recovery and feeling good about myself, I want my outsides to match my insides. 

Voice One: God doesn’t care about hair color...

Voice Two: God cares about beauty and happiness so if being a blonde or having “warm” highlights makes me happy what’s the big deal?

Even after almost thirty years it continues. And throughout all this recovery I’ve tried following each voice...each one to an extreme perhaps --and then I let that pendulum swing the other way.

William Merritt Chase

In my first months of attending 12 step meetings I went shopping for “meeting clothes”. All of my life I had medicated my feelings with substances—food, booze, drugs and always there was a corresponding adjustment to my appearance, so why wouldn’t recovery need its own attire? I heard many years later that some women had sponsors who told them to dress up when they went to meetings, they should look their best, and to work recovery from the outside in. “Suit up and Show up” they were told.

I suspect that for the addicted woman who got to the stage of never brushing her teeth or changing out of sweats that could be a good way to go, but I was of the other breed that was overly invested in my appearance. So rather than learning to wash my hair and put on lipstick I really needed to experiment with “come as you are” and even “come at your worst” to learn that I’d still be loved and accepted.

In very early recovery when I was on my holier-than-thou cloud I decided to give up make

up and hair color, to only shop at thrift stores so as to be the “real” me. Luckily I had a sponsor who spent the equivalent of my weekly salary on her hair each month. When I professed my spiritual breakthrough and austerity she gave me a long look and said, “You didn’t get sober to wear sackcloth and ashes. So go get some highlights.”

Then a few years later I was having some success at work.  I was in a good job and enjoying secular success and peace in recovery. I spent some money with a personal shopper who advised that I needed a power suit, a silky red dress and who came to my apartment and went through my closet with me. It was sort of a sartorial personal 4th step inventory. (I actually did tell her all my clothing stories so it was kind of a closet catharsis). But after buying all those shiny new clothes I felt a bit too exposed and well, too shiny. I found that most of those new “dress for success” duds belonged more to an idea I had about myself than to my actual self. So the pendulum swung again.

Back and forth it’s gone over these recovering years. I have a wardrobe I like now and most

of it looks like it belongs to the same person. I make those “shopping in pain” mistakes still. (The H.A.L.T. advice should apply to shopping as well as drinking.) But my stages of rock star; tweedy intellectual, corporate power leader and cute girlfriend have gradually integrated into a closet that, for the most part, reflects who I really am.

The hook to change my outsides is still there though. My first thought whenever I contemplate an inner change is always to wonder what the external equivalent should be. 

So what does a sober, sane, happy woman look like? I think she looks like herself --and her best self—knowing that even that very self is constantly changing.


***************************
I loved writing about shopping, clothes and recovery in "Out of the Woods--A Woman's Guide to Long-term Recovery."

Does My Higher Power Love Clothes?

After these many years of working a Twelve-Step program I recently began to think about this idea of “choose your own Higher Power.” Of course I had heard that many times over the years. You too heard about making the group your Higher Power or make Nature your Higher Power or in those blunt, old-timer voices, “You can make the radiator your Higher Power, just pick something and pray to it.”

Maybe this was the snob in me but I thought, “well, if they have to do that I guess it’s OK but I have a God and that’s the best kind of HP.” Yeah, I guess that is being a spiritual snob.

But a few weeks ago I heard a woman who has a recovery life that I admire talking about how she created her HP and it hit me, “They really mean it—we can choose.” And I wrote this note in my journal: “Can I create my own loving, positive, supportive God and HP? What would He/She be like? How would I connect to them?”

I felt new freedom right away. Just pondering that helped me realize how much I had carried a childhood God into my recovery Higher Power. No wonder surrender is still hard. And no wonder I feel like I have to bargain and deal. But then another fear it me:

I like clothes a lot and I like art. I’m also a writer and I love to read. I spend a lot on books and clothes and well, beautiful things. That can’t be very spiritual, right? So the guilt again: Still not good enough for God.

But this morning looking at the new line of Eileen Fisher clothes—always joking that she must have designed for Thomas Merton and for nuns—it hit me: God loves beauty. God must love beauty a lot—look at all the beauty, design, color, style in the the natural world. My God, (literally) I’d love to wear any color combinations I see out my window today. Wouldn’t you? And perfumes? Yep. And design, shape, line. All there.

And literature? Whatever faith you follow there is beautiful language and marvelous texts. And there are stories that have transcended thousands of years, and poetry—every religion has poetry. Religious poetry is the basis for all secular poetry. So God must care about language, narrative and words.

And my beach vacation? God. The way my heart leaps at a beautiful scarf? God. Beautifully designed and well-crafted shoes? God.

Now we cannot be without discernment here. If I want 20 scarves (and I do) that’s not really faith-filled. There is greediness and grabby-ness in that? And that part of me that searches for a new handbag and then as soon as I buy one starts to look again---Oh that is my addiction and not my serene love of beauty talking.

But I’m going to try out this new Higher Power and believe that He/She is also happy with Eileen Fisher—and maybe has a hand in the social-justice-plus-fashion work that Eileen is doing. And maybe this Higher Power wants me to feel lovely and confident so I can write and speak to carry His/Her message. Maybe when I pray I can talk about all of me: my recovery, my work, my relationships and the beauty around me, and I can ask this new HP, “New olive bag—guide me on this too please.” And then get really quiet.