Safety/boundaries

The professional organization that I am attending a conference for (Assoc. for Size Diversity and Health) has recruited as their keynote speaker this year Susie Orbach.

She is obviously well-known and has a size-diversity book recently out, but there is much upset about a woman with an historical stance that says people (really just women) are fat as a way of hiding from our lives and our sexuality. She also has been supportive of working to end the "obesity epidemic."

These are problematic stances for me, and I am also very interested in what she has to say. I find myself falling somewhere in the middle of people who are passionately arguing and I keep wanting to throw myself into the fray. To say what? Stop fighting!

I have a very hard time with conflict. Conflict in my family of origin was brief, brutal (not physically, just emotionally for me), and then never again spoken of. In this instance, I feel particularly torn as it mimics a situation from my childhood when I stood between 2 shouting adults that I loved and attempted to take each of their sides.

I have had to remove myself because I recognize that there is no place for me to safely step into a debate in which both sides feel reasonable. This is a good boundary for me to hold, but it also feels slippery. I don't know how better to describe it.