Category Archives: ED Recovery

Baked Potato and Progress

I read a note I wrote on Facebook in 2009, and I was so proud of myself because I had baked a potato all by myself. I share this vulnerable moment with you, so that you know there is nothing too small to celebrate. I didn’t have much in my adulting/self-care/survival skills toolbox. That potatoContinue reading “Baked Potato and Progress”

Lessons in Unlearning

My child is six. She has lived a short period of time and yet has learned so much. She tells me that the sun is a star and that blood is made in our bones. She also asks a LOT of questions, like are mosquitoes REAL, and what about dragons? Her world is full ofContinue reading “Lessons in Unlearning”

Powerlessness

I’m (slowly) recognizing where my power lives, and where it does not. I’ve spent most of my life trying to flex my power. “Intellect over instinct,” my dance teacher told me, and I became a master of overriding my body’s natural cues. Hunger, fatigue, pain, nothing stopped me or even slowed me down. I walkedContinue reading “Powerlessness”

Ready to Burn

Last night, my daughter asked me how to get a flat tummy, and she sucked her little belly in. “I want it flat, I don’t want it fat, like this” and she exhaled her tummy back out. She’s six. I know I’ve been pulled back into my eating disorder but I thought I was keepingContinue reading “Ready to Burn”

This is not a scale

This is a trap.This is going in Time Out. It can come out when I no longer imbue it with the power to determine my mood. I know who I am.I know how I feel. Yet time after time I forfeit that power— I hand it over to a number that tells me only myContinue reading “This is not a scale”

Ego

The WORST I was listening to a woman I admire and she said something that landed so hard I have to share it. She said that she can’t say she had “low self-esteem,” because she had “no self-esteem.” And that part I’d heard before and nodded along with, but then she went on to remindContinue reading “Ego”

Becoming a Badass: Dysmorphia and Acceptance

I don’t recognize myself in the mirror. I almost always surprise myself. I must not remember or know what I look like. I remember the first time it happened, but I was in high school and I’d just dyed my hair. Bright, Angela Chase red. From a golden wheat brown that was neither a sunnyContinue reading “Becoming a Badass: Dysmorphia and Acceptance”