These feelings and thoughts are symptoms of a treatable condition. With help, you will get better.
These feelings and thoughts are symptoms of a treatable condition. With help, you will get better.
What I feel deeply compelled to share, and what has resonated most with you, you’ve told me, isn’t about that recovery journey in hindsight. It’s the normal life I lead now as a mother, who despite her own healing around eating and body image, still struggles in ways that you relate to. You are on this journey with me because it’s your journey too.
At first I couldn’t put my finger on precisely what moment I wanted this birth story to begin. You see, I began suffering from those teaser contractions midway through my second trimester. This prompting one pointlessly premature visit to the Labor & Delivery unit and many nights of anxiety-ridden “I think it’s time” moments. In my mind, this story starts then, although several more months would pass before his actual birth. I’ll fast forward. He was small. Too small, we worried. We had weekly ultrasounds at the end, monitoring his growth and health. He passed with flying colors every time, despite being barely in the tenth percentile. Yet still, I was huge. All moms say that. But I was huge. […]
I’m writing this from my spit up speckled living room couch that has been my home base for almost three months. Buster is nestled beside me on his lounger, indulgently sucking his fists between coos and giggles. I’m tired. My shirt is damp after a particularly messy feeding; it smells musty and vaguely like vomit, though I am certain I pulled this one from a clean heap of laundry earlier. It feels good to be sitting here focused on these words. But a bath would be nice. The glorious blur of maternity leave has sharpened and will come to its bitter end in just a few days. As I ready myself for a triumphant return to my full-time job, I […]
I’ve been meaning to write to you for a very long time. You’ve been busy, though. Growing. Bending. Creating life, and then pushing it out. And so quickly you turned around and did it all a second time. Despite my silence, I’ve been pulling for you, and please trust that you’ve been on my mind. I regard you with both deep adoration and perhaps only cautious acceptance. This is probably the root of my avoidance of late. I admire you and I fear you, because you have changed. You’ve accomplished crazy awesome feats and have evolved in ways that can be frightening and uncomfortable to me. Even now after so much time healing and nurturing a more positive image of […]
This post was written for Recovery Box and appears on their blog, linked here. Recovery Box was developed with survivors, encouragers and professionals in mind to encourage an authentic and creative approach to eating disorder recovery. —— Last week, I watched the ball drop while curled up on my plush living room armchair, sipping sparkling grape juice from a champagne flute, bargaining with my eyelids to stay open. I was ready to see 2018 come to a close. Last year brought joy and also pain. In the last 12 months I made a major career change, lived the busy life of a working mom and became pregnant with my second baby. Like you, I overcame painful obstacles and navigated some […]
LCSW | amateur mom | motherhood in recovery | blogger-to-be