Do you know how much power you have?

One of the most motivating powers in life is this – the power we all have to inspire and connect with others. Even just by reading this, you are part of an inspiring process; working towards overcoming the darkness of eating disorders. Your awareness is a show of strength; it means so much more than any number, figure, weight or measurement.

Take one of your hands and hold it in the other.  Here you bring together the tools capable of so much; unlocking opportunity and powering progress. Think of all they have experienced, how they form part of the memories they will go on to share with others. Your skin may be warm, cold, tense, dry – but either way it is alive. Feel the power of not just potential, but your life. Living and inspiring are two things we all capable of. And I want to do this too – without an eating disorder telling me it is otherwise.

Thank you

Thank you for the amazing response to my decision to blog about my eating disorder recovery. I am touched by your support – whether you send a message or even just take the time to read, it is a form of engagement and adding to the inspiration.

I felt like an empty hand reaching out into a darkness. Yet what you have helped me to realise is that recovery is in my grasp.

The Doctors

Do you know how weak you are?

That is the kind of outcome I am expecting on going to the doctors. They will draw attention to the low BMI, the hair loss, the bleeding gums and jutting bones. I have sores on my back from the pressure and now sit for hours struggling to string sentences together on my laptop, when it would have taken me minutes before. This is physical weakness – and I want the doctor to tell me that it can’t go on.

The physical weakness cannot go on, but now the strength starts.

Do you know how much power you have? YES

Today is the day of my first doctor’s appointment since being honest about my eating disorder.  Honesty is an important factor here; as over the years the eating disorder has turned me into a marvellous liar – including lying to myself. I have told people I am readily ‘fine’, that I have eaten elsewhere, am busy; anything to avoid situations out of my usual routine with food. I have told myself that this the way to be streamlined, clean, efficient. Sounds quite clinical don’t you think? Cold.

I know that I need to move away from this clinical, hard-cut attitude towards myself; it is indeed cold. Yet I have also had some ‘cold’ encounters with medical professionals in the past – particularly GPs – some who have seemed disinterested, even frustrated. Even amongst medical circles there can seem a crucial lack of compassion when it comes to eating disorders – the highly false stereotypes that they are a ‘situation’ or ‘phase’, something selected.  

I certainly would not select a life like this; a life forced to a precarious balance between consumption on output. I can only eat so much of foods I deem ‘efficient’, I drive myself to write, to work, more and more.  The eating disorder seeks to ‘streamline’ me into ‘success’ accompanied by elaborate routines of exercise.  For so long I have been living ‘a life’ the eating disorder has driven. Not MY life.

I wonder if the doctor will see beyond the ‘success’ and realise the growing sense of panic, anger, fear.

“You’re not thin enough”

That’s a phrase I fear. It’s the phrase many people fear when going to seek professional help. It seems like the conformation that you have not even ‘achieved’ being ill enough.

But I am determined to approach my appointment with an open mind – just as I am going to address my skewed perception of ‘success’ and ‘achievement’.  I don’t know whether going to the doctors will be either of these things; but I what I know deep down is this - that it is progress.

If anything, going back to the doctor is progress because it a step in putting me in touch with reality, rather than the routine of disorder.  Eating disorders drive denial and self-isolation and I am fighting back. I’m putting one of my hands in the other and feeling the life pass through it.

Feel the heat move slowly between your hands... human touch matters; and in more ways than one. Physical or digital, public or private, we all have the power to reach out.

And I’m reaching out.