Welcome! I’m so glad you stopped by. Pull up a chair and grab a cup of coffee, because we have a lot to talk about. If you’re here hanging out with me, I can probably guess that you yourself or someone you know and love is struggling with self-doubt, fear, shame, a deep-seated feeling of I’m not enough, or some sort of frustrating relationship with food. Perhaps you are exhausted by the overwhelming societal pressure for your body to look a certain way. Maybe you have a full-blown eating disorder. Or friend, maybe you are just tired of trying so hard to do life “right” and you are certain that there has got to be more to life than this. Girlfriend, me, too.
It doesn’t have to stay this way
I have been in all of those hard, dark places. I have struggled with body image insecurity since I was old enough to notice other people around me. I have had disordered eating or eating disorder symptoms since I was a child in elementary school. I starved and over-exercised my body for over two decades, trying in vain to “prove” that I was good and valid and enough. I became excellent at staying small, scared, and timid, all the while hiding behind an outward appearance that was bold, productive, and successful.
What does recovery actually look like?
Throughout my years of struggle, I wanted to know what actually doing recovery looked like. There are so many books out there that dive into the gory details of what having an eating disorder look like. They were awful! Many of them even fed the stigma that all eating disorders looked the same, and that you were only sick enough if you looked a certain way or had a certain kind of treatment. Even then, I called bullshit. Sill, there were other books or blogs that went from “this is how terribly sick I was” to “look how amazing my life is now.” It was good to read of people making it through, but what did they do to get there? What I wondered was what does the messy middle of recovery look like? Here, my friends, is my messy middle. This blog is a genuine, real-time look at what healing from an eating disorder looks like.
I can’t promise my journey will always be pretty. I feel confident that it won’t be. I don’t know for sure that I’ll never slip up, that I’ll never need more help again, that gone are the unending days of over-exercise and restriction. I don’t know where this journey will take me, but I can promise to be real and unfiltered while I figure it out. I am tired of hiding.
If you’re ready for something different, let’s do it
This new kind of life, where you don’t wake up afraid of the calories you might eat and begin calculating workout times and schedules to fit it all in before you even open your eyes– I believe it really is out there. It is ours for the taking. Can you imagine a life where you didn’t feel overwhelming pressure to achieve big and push too hard and sleep too little, all trying to earn your worth? I can. And I want it. Yes, it is work. Yes, it is hard. And yes, I know for dang sure that sometimes it feels worse (or much worse) before it begins to feel better. But it DOES begin to feel better. It’s happening for me. It’s slow, but it is happening. I am finding a new, genuinely bold, exciting, and exuberant new life.
Let’s make it happen
I am so glad that you have made your way here. Let’s do this together. Let’s find the life you didn’t think was possible. Let’s do the work, get our hands dirty, and find what was inside ourselves all along.
Much of the journey is unknown. What I do know, though, is that you can’t unlearn what you already know. Each bit of experience and knowledge you gain changes you. We grow with what we provide for ourselves. So here, my friend, I hope you find information that will inspire you and feed the flame in your heart to strive for recovery with everything you have. The only thing I know for sure? You’re not alone in this fight.
