Reading · This Is Not Your Mother's Eating Disorder

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Eating disorder recovery is not just about our relationship to food or to our bodies.

Eating disorder recovery is not just about our relationship to food or to our bodies. Many of us live with or are diagnosed with other conditions like ADHD, OCD, and Autism. My ED treatment and recovery, along with my late in life ADHD diagnosis (all at 54 years old), my menopause journey, and my midlife transitions (divorce after 25 years, kids leaving home, moving in with my boyfriend), have all conspired to make me feel like I am riding one of those mechanical bulls every day, gripping the horn like I am about to be rocketed into outer space.

So, my recovery involves learning as much as I can about myself. Everything is connected and makes more sense when we don’t segment ourselves into puzzle pieces. We are more like bodies of water with eddies and tributaries. You gotta travel down and through all of those to know what your ocean's landscape contains.

The poem below was written last weekend at an annual outdoor festival-style gathering of about 200 people, while camping in one of the most stunning spots in the world. We were in a valley tucked between the mountains of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, along the Cowlitz River, with Mt. Rainier only a few miles away.

The 4-day bacchanalia brings together families, old friends, music, and art. My boyfriend is a part of this extended group, and he performs as well.

In the lead-up, there have been 3 months of slow, difficult, yet beautifully revealing recovery from my Achilles tendon injury, and I was in a giant Robocop boot at the festival. It was not easy (fuck—it was hard) to get around the multi-acre, rugged landscape. I love being in nature, hiking in the mountains, swimming in rivers, playing in fields, dancing, and sleeping outside.

But with my bum leg, everything was exhausting. One of my challenges, as many of us with eating disorders can relate to, is the compulsion to be “perfect”, to people-please, to keep my desires quiet in service to making everyone else feel good. I struggle with staying in my body, interoception (knowing what I am feeling), shaming myself for having difficult feelings, and expressing my needs and wants.

All of this becomes a stewy mess and usually bubbles over into what feels like an uncontrollable storm of emotion. It’s honestly excruciating. And it’s been happening more frequently over the last two years, in recovery from my ED, as I scuba dive inside a lifetime of oceanic trauma. As I feel the biggest damn feelings I have felt in decades.

My injury has also dropped me into a chasm of vulnerability. I have been painfully reliant on my partner since I haven’t been able to walk, make food for myself or drive. And we had only been together for a year when I hurt myself. New relationships already ask a lot of us: to reveal the entirety of ourselves and hope our hearts don’t get broken. All of this felt like someone had unzipped my skin bit by bit, leaving my insides exposed to the elements.

So, yeah. Back to the weekend festivities. It was hot, dirty, and loud, and there was little opportunity to be alone—with people I barely know but who my partner has known and loved for decades. He is also very well known in his community as a beloved and respected multifaceted artist.

I felt ashamed and angry about my inability to show up with excitement and joy. I was unable to let anything go—not the comments by my boyfriend’s friends about how “lucky” I am to be with someone as talented as he is. Not the stream of adulation he received about his music performance or his art. I was holding onto resentment that there hadn’t been more time to celebrate some fantastic news I had received the day before we left.

I am still learning to accept my anger as valid while simultaneously listening to my wise, adult self, who can gently remind me of my worth.

I saw the shame spiral coming like a tornado in the distance. I felt powerless to stop it. And when it came, it overtook me. I was a house being torn apart. I could barely talk to anyone. And so, on that last afternoon, I sat in a giant field, exposed and held by the sun, and wrote the poem below.

Sometimes it helps to remind ourselves that these feelings are not a choice, despite what the toxic wellness world will have us believe. It’s not that you can’t change your emotional responses. But you can only do that when you realize your body is reacting to a time long ago, when adults in your life did not validate your feelings, only tried to yell and degrade you out of them. When you were abandoned by the people who were supposed to make you feel safe, no matter what. When you ultimately had to learn to survive by dissociating from your emotions to keep the peace.