I have been on this earth for 20,062 days. Today is the first day I draw breath without my father. Despite knowing this day was not only inevitable but imminent, I’m still consumed with grief. There’s no easy way to farewell the man that gave me life. The first man I ever loved and the one who set the bar so high for future love.
I invite you to look at my campaign, subscribe to it, share it, and if you would consider it – preordering a copy so I can get this message out into the world.
Over the past two years I have been penning words and putting together my memoir – Stalked by Demons | Guarded by Angels: The Girl with the Eating Disorder. I AM NOW AT THE SCARY END OF THE PROCESS
On a personal and a global level, I think it can be categorically said, 2020 was a really, really shit year. Globally, […]
I’ve been recovering for six months now. Just over. And I guess the difference between actively seeking recovery and actually recovering is the associated behaviours. It may seem blindingly obvious, but changing eating disorder behaviours is really fucking hard. It’s taken me years of psychological therapies to put into practice the very things that make perfect, logical sense. But here I am – putting stuff into practice for six months now. More if you count my time in the clinic where I was forced to be healthy.
I don’t know if my official mental health diagnosis is bipolar II – or not. There appears to be no consensus on anything aside from the fact I have emotional dysregulation and severe insomnia issues. In my opinion, those two things are more than enough to make anybody go crazy. But mental health diagnosis or not, my life is full of highs and lows.
It bothers me when I don’t write in my blog. Not because I think my writing is doing anyone a public service, but because this forum is my outlet for internal rumination. And if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s internal rumination.
Life is filled with moments where we hope. And where we dream. I have learned to be wary of hope but to embrace dreams.
According to the authors, the first seven keys are about recovering ‘from’ and this key is about recovering ‘to’. The focus is on searching for the spiritual, soulful side of ourselves – which can sound like mumbo jumbo if you’re not willing to be open-minded. I’m applying my willingness to this key.
There is a very good book called 8 Keys to Recovery From an Eating Disorder by Carolyn Costin and Gwen Schubert Grabb. I have started the keys on numerous occasions in the past, but now I feel completely ready to tackle them all. There are multiple writing exercises within each key, so without giving away the entire contents of the book, over the course of eight weeks I want to share my recovery journey with you. The following is a composite of all my answers for this key.
There are a lot of behaviours associated with eating disorders – some cross between different types of disorders and some are stand-alone. If you don’t change behaviour you can’t recover.
Eating disorder behaviour isn’t about ignorance – we all know how to eat properly. Rather, it’s a coping mechanism that is extremely hard to let go of and the thought of not using ED behaviours is, quite frankly, terrifying. If I’m not numb, what will happen? But this girl had transformed from full-on eating disorder patient to completely recovered.
A month or so back I won a travel writing competition. I was pretty excited about that. To enter you had to submit 150 words about your favourite travel destination. As per usual I wrote about 1000 then had to trim it down. So it ended up a little truncated however, it passed the test and I won.
There is a very good book called 8 Keys to Recovery From an Eating Disorder by Carolyn Costin and Gwen Schubert Grabb. I have started the keys on numerous occasions in the past, but now I feel completely ready to tackle them all. There are multiple writing exercises within each key, so without giving away the entire contents of the book, over the course of eight weeks I want to share my recovery journey with you. The following is a composite of all my answers for this key.
Music is powerful. Babies are comforted by music in utero. My son used to wake up and dance to the ‘Sound of Music’ when I was six months pregnant and performing in the show. So it stands to reason something as emotionally challenging as recovery from [name your problem] can benefit from soaking in the soporific sounds of music that speaks to the heart.
