Food won't fix you.

The “fix you” is really in invisible quotation marks because I do not believe that anyone is ever broken. But often we believe we are, and then we run around trying desperately to fix ourselves, and one of those things that we latch on to can end up being food.
I got into cleansing and detoxing not because I wanted what was best for my body and mind, but because I was looking for the quick fix. I wanted to fix my body and my life, both of which felt like they had gone off the rails.
Food is wonderful and medicinal, but it will never be everything. It will never replace the necessity of expression, of a well regulated nervous system, of fun. For a long time I refused to believe this because facing the deeper rooted problems felt too big and scary. The most nutritional meal plan in the world couldn’t fix the well of loneliness and the feelings of being lost and unworthy and that I’d really messed everything up.
Often we don’t even know what the real problems are, we just know that we’re stuck in a fight, flight or freeze response and we don’t know how to get out and everything feels overwhelming and too much.

If this resonates and you would like some extra support, I have two 1:1 spots open right now to work together.

Notes on experiencing long-term dis-ease.

Notes on experiencing a long term dis-ease:
Three years feels like a long time to be unwell. One could say it’s been a lot longer than three years, because I experienced extreme disordered eating for quite a while before then. But, three years of living with the fallout, of feeling exhausted from flip flopping between 12 hours of sleep and insomnia, of food reactions and food fear and brain fog and wild mood fluctuations. 
Long term illnesses are very expensive financially. Between my parents and I we’ve spent thousands on supplements and out of network specialists after being told by multiple conventional doctors that they could do nothing for me. I feel very lucky to have access to the resources that we do, while also feeling repeatedly brokenhearted and outraged at how badly the U.S healthcare system fails the people who need it the most. 
When you’re very unwell in your early 20s, there’s a grieving period for what is often referred to as “the prime of your life”. You know, that time when you’re establishing independence from your family, working for the dream, dating, networking, etc. Right now I cannot do “normal” things that one often does in their 20s, and I’ve needed to make peace with that reality. For a while I refused to accept the limitations, and would override them only to be out for days. Eventually I realized that it’s rarely worth doing that.
There is a roller coaster of feelings involved. There are days where I feel very at peace with the way my life has unfolded and everything that has led up to where I am now. Then there are those when I wake up feeling exhausted and in pain for the 967th day in a row and break down because I don’t want to do this anymore, don’t want to experience another day in a body that feels so entirely out of whack, where I feel overwhelmed, lonely, and behind in life, worried that it will be this way forever. There is no escape option though. Those are the days when I have learned to really slow down and be so soft with those parts, to make it entirely fine to watch my favourite show in bed for as long as is needed. To validate everything that I’m feeling as entirely normal and understandable.
Part 2 up next. 

Errors.

The inevitability of making mistakes as a human can be a tough pill to swallow. 
When we accidentally hurt someone, when we are reactive, when we are reminded of our own messiness- do we armor up, become defensive, look away and pretend it never happened? Or can we sit with humility and allow it ground us, to further open us to the world? 
Instead of categorizing them as failure, we can take the necessary steps to move forward and remedy our errors with grace. We can bow our heads and acknowledge that, even though we do the best we can, we always have more to learn, and that there is nothing wrong with that. 

Loss of the fantasy.

Warning: eating disorder trigger.
When we experience grief over the loss of a person, environment, identity, etc, what we’re often grieving is the loss of the fantasy that whatever it was represented for us.
This was my experience with the loss of what I had come to think of as “the perfect” (aka thinnest) body. When restriction failed me and I gained a lot of weight, I grieved the feeling of being untouchable and forever in control. The numbed out fantasy world that I was floating in evaporated, and I landed flat on my face.
Fantasies are there for a reason. They give us perceived safety from a reality we’d rather not living be in. When the bubble bursts it’s frightening and might feel excruciating, but it’s from there that we are given the opportunity to build a life we won’t need or want to run away from.