Reply To: Purging: Something Every Girl Does Along the Way?

[Loki Samudratira]

There are so many good replies to this query!
I think that “Purging” happens, whether it is because of shame, fear, denial or even a thoughtless act of loyalty.  In happening, “Purge” highlights a problem or is a sign of the big transformation to come.
In early forms of medicine, taking care of toxic conditions associated with digestive stagnation or ingestion of “bad” food was often in the form of purgatives (they make you force it out one end or another).  In our transformations, including our unfolding of our truer selves and that gender form, I think it is those moments of reaction to pain, fear or what have you that we reject or throw away a symbol of ourselves or our feelings in hopes that disassociating with it will make the uncomfortable or even traumatizing things stop.  When it becomes clear that it no longer works, we mourn or regret hurting ourselves in that way and appreciate the innocence and beauty that those things really represented.  Perhaps, sometimes those things weren’t fitting but we attached a meaning to them, all the same, and it took panicking and tossing them out before we could find a better suited medium to takes it’s place.
Perhaps this is why “Purging” is needed.  Perhaps we let go to be shown our truer selves and the things that may symbolize more accurately our happiness.