Finding Healing Through Words

When you decide to have weight loss surgery, you aren’t just changing your body—you’re changing your whole life. It’s not simply about eating and moving your body differently; it’s about grieving old habits, building new ones, and learning how to live inside a body that feels unfamiliar. It’s a journey of courage, loss, hope, and discovery.

As a therapist and a poet, I’ve seen how powerful it can be to have a place to bring all of those emotions, not just the physical steps of recovery. That’s why I love using poetry therapy in bariatric counseling.

Poetry therapy is about using words—whether you read them, write them, or simply speak them out loud—to explore feelings, thoughts, and experiences that are hard to name. Writing gives us a safe way to let grief, anger, joy, and gratitude have a voice. It’s about the process not the product. It is about the person not the poem.

For bariatric clients, it can be a way of honoring all parts of the journey: the excitement of weight loss, the frustrations of new routines, the loss of food as comfort, and the discovery of a self who is capable of growing through the discomfort.

Here is a poem I wrote about life after gastric sleeve surgery which captures a mix of discipline, grief, and transformation:

Instructions for Gastric Sleeve Post-Surgery

One cup of fat free Fairlife milk
pour in a quarter cup of egg whites
stir and drink, repeat every morning

reach at least 60 to 80 grams of protein
64 ounces of liquid in a day, just do your best
listen when your body tells you what it can tolerate

take 30 minutes to eat, a few ounces if you’re lucky
wait 30 minutes to drink, one sip at a time
wait 30 minutes between drinking and eating, eating and drinking

chew thoroughly, eat slowly, put the fork down
give it a couple minutes until the next bite
chew, chew, chew, walk, walk, walk

Ask yourself regretfully, why did I do this?
revisit your why, before you turn 50
no need to compulsively think of food all the time

take two bites, your done
eating isn’t enjoyable anymore, it will take time
now you have living to focus on

Ask yourself how are you feeling?
acknowledge your grief, your anxiety
there is nowhere to hide

Focus on strengthening your body, moving your body
loving your body, learning your body, your
new body, new everything

Accept your hair is falling out
accept everything is different
accept all of it, all of you

Use this tool. Use that tool. Use every single tool.
write a goodbye letter to your old foods
unlearn everything, create a different mindset

now with the weight off, over 120 pounds
is the real beginning
putting all the steps and practice into place for good

even though you still see the 300 pound you
in the mirror, you know you are also the 165 pound you
and you are grateful for both

when you think of snacks today
they are snacks of joy and hope,
living snacks that truly fill you, not food

You wear your loose skin proudly, a badge of honor
for transforming from harm to health
you feel human again, dare I say, you may even feel like a woman

you do not take it lightly, these possibilities you now have
you might as well go where you have never been before
after all, this is proof that you are capable of doing hard things

If you’d like to try writing yourself, here are a few places to begin:

• A Goodbye Letter: Write a letter to a food you are letting go of. Thank it for what it once gave you, and release it as you step into a new life.

• Your Body Speaks: Imagine your “before” self and your “after” self are having a conversation. What wisdom might they share with each other?

• Mindful Bite: Write about a single mindful bite of food—describe its taste, texture, and what emotions it brings up.

• Future Self: Imagine yourself five years from now. What does that future version of you want to tell you today?

I often suggest a simple evening journaling ritual:

1. Write one feeling you noticed in your body today.

2. Write one thing you’re grateful for in your healing journey.

3. Write one intention for tomorrow that supports your health and healing

It doesn’t have to take more than five minutes. Over time, these little notes create a map of your transformation.

This journey is about learning to live, to love, and to create from a place of wholeness. Poetry therapy gives you a way to honor the complexity of your story. It helps you carry the grief and the gratitude together, and to see yourself as a whole person—body, mind, and spirit.

And perhaps most importantly, it reminds you: you are capable of hard things.