We are at the end of National Eating Disorder Awareness week, and this year’s theme is “Come as you are.”
I thought it fitting to include a post of someone’s story. A story of recovery, success, gut-wrenchingly hard work, struggle, beauty, acceptance, and grace. I have had the incredible HONOR of observing this warrior, my friend Dena, as she wrestled her eating disorder to the ground over the past few years. Sometimes I watched from up close, and sometimes from afar, but always I saw one thing: incredible determination and perseverance, and a refusal to stop.
My hope is that even one person will read her story and take heart.
Keep going.
It’s worth it.
And so are you.
The following is posted with permission by All Bodies Consulting
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39 years old and finding myself inpatient, hospitalization and treatment for eating disorders. Away from my children. Making bracelets. Devestated, heartbroken, broken- and yet, no longer alone.
Having lived with disordered patterns for over 30 years, from binge and compulsive eating to severe restricting and chronic dieting, from exercise avoidance to obsessive exercise, from cycles of depression, anxiety, control and anger with a constant hum of the unattainable pursuit of perfectionism- it’s all I knew, it was my normal.
Until the day that the tools I had used to control, too survive, started to turn and control, and to kill.
What I began to uncover, throughout those days up that little dirt road in Wickenburg, Arizona, was what was underneath, driving those disordered eating and exercise behaviors. Even though my obsession for over 30 years was food and calories and grams and fat and carbs and protein- the newest program or cleanse or detox- I began to realize, it wasn’t about the food. It wasn’t about the exercise. And it wasn’t about my body.
@rosewoodcenters, staff and patients, gifted me with the ability to accept who I was without the disordered eating and without the compulsive need to move. They helped me identify gratitude and beauty for all my body can do. How to be present, be blissful and above all, to truly accept, we are more than enough, right here, right now, with no need to change.
Those are my gifts of recovery.
National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, February 27 to March 3, 2019
#ComeAsYouAre #NEDA
#NedaWeek2019
#rosewoodcentersforeatingdisorders
#allbodiesconsulting #recoveredfitness #eatingdisorderrecovery
#prorecovery #recoverywarrior #edrecovery #bingeeating #bingeeatingdisorder #bed #recovered