Trigger warning: This post includes content related to eating disorders. If you are struggling with an eating disorder, please reach out to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) Helpline: (800) 931-2237.

Thank you for believing in healing and recovery.

My Recovery Letters

Today, Tuesday, May 1, is Eating Recovery Day. In 2014 (and again briefly in 2017), I spent several months in an eating disorder treatment facility, Eating Recovery Center (ERC), in Denver, Colorado. There I began my recovery journey as a patient in their residential and partial hospitalization programs before stepping down to another treatment clinic for an intensive outpatient program and outpatient treatment. ERC has grown and expanded, including their emphasis on alumni, since my time there. ERC began an annual tradition of choosing a theme to celebrate Eating Recovery Day, “a day dedicated to removing stigma, raising awareness and inspiring hope for recovery.” This year’s theme is “#MyRecoveryLetter.” I hope that my letters of gratitude, praise, and reflection (based on ERC’s templates) help you understand the spirit and possibility of recovery.

Letter of Gratitude

Dear Mom and Dad,

I want to express my sincere gratitude for you. I am thankful for your emotional and financial support for me on my recovery journey, and I am thankful that you have been wonderful role models. I appreciate knowing that your love for me is unconditional and that you will never give up on me.

Since I developed my eating disorder, our relationship has included fear (e.g. your fear for my health) and guilt (e.g. my guilt for your fear), but more importantly, it has always been filled with reciprocal, unconditional love and gratitude. Our relationship means the world to me. I could not have learned to survive the traumas I have endured without you and your love! Specifically, by loving me, you taught me that I am lovable despite my imperfections.

Additionally, you taught me that I am worthy of receiving help. You remind me every time that we talk: “You are important.” You reassure me when I feel alone, hopeless, and worthless. You never complain or turn me away when I need someone to talk to, and you always offer to support me financially so I am able to afford mental health services, such as psychotherapy, nutrition therapy, or psychiatry. You even paid the ridiculously expensive bills from my 2014 treatment that insurance did not cover.

I admire your ability to feel emotions and let them move through and out of you and your ability to express gratitude and joy for people and experiences, even when you are simultaneously experiencing a painful situation. The meaningful lives you live in line with your values inspire me. I admire your dedication to saving people’s lives through your careers as a gun-violence prevention advocate and a physician. Beyond work, your rich lives that include meaningful relationships and passion-driven activities motivates me. I appreciate your dedication to me and my recovery and am thankful for your role in my life.

I hope you understand how sorry I am that you have had to struggle with the pain of my illness. I hope that you understand that your love and support saved my life. I hope that you understand just how grateful I am that you are my parents and that I love you with all of my heart.

Thank you so much, Mom and Dad, for helping me on this journey of recovery and self-compassion. I love you.

With Gratitude,

Your Grateful Daughter

A Letter of Praise

Dear HAES Community,

I want you to know how much I admire you and the way you embrace body diversity, fight weight stigma, embody intuitive eating, and promote fat acceptance. I appreciate how compassionately you lift each other up and support each other’s journeys.  I value that you have gently drawn attention to both the covert and explicit fatphobia in our culture, as well as the insidious internalized fatphobia that so many of us feel that lead us to diets, disordered eating, and eating disorders. Without acknowledging and then challenging my own internalized fatphobia, I would likely not be as far as I am today on my recovery journey. You have taught me that true recovery is possible and that people can (and are) celebrating larger bodies. Keep up your advocacy for yourselves and each other. Continue to spread the message that all bodies are worthy of compassion and that weight is not an indicator of health or worth! You have made a huge impact on my recovery, and you are having a positive effect on millions of people around the world.

Truly,

A Dedicated Fellow Community Member

A Letter of Reflection

Dear Self,

As I reflect on my life (especially since I developed anorexia nervosa seven years ago), I realize I would not have survived without the strength and wisdom of my body and the resilience and determination of my mind. I hated and did not trust you, but you never gave up on me.

Body, despite the fact that I was literally starving you, you worked effortlessly to ignore systems and functions that were not necessary for my survival to focus on those that were. You directed my every thought toward food in hopes that you could drive me to eat. You did not give up on me even though my behaviors caused you suffering. You kept my lungs breathing and my heart beating; you kept me alive.

Mind, we have also had a tough relationship. We struggle with depression, anxiety, PTSD, BFRB, and anorexia. Despite these struggles, you lead me to continue to fight for recovery every single day. You work tirelessly to accumulate helpful coping mechanisms, to improve self-care practices, to develop self-compassion, and to find personal growth and self-worth. You lead me to take the difficult steps necessary to live a life in line with my values.

Earlier on my recovery journey, I felt worthless and hopeless. I felt like I was a burden on those people who loved me and that they would be better off without me. I knew that I could not recover without their support, but I also thought, “Why waste their time, money, and emotional energy? I probably can’t recover anyway.” I felt like I had no purpose in life – that all the hopes and dreams I had as a child were no longer going to be attainable. I was too sick to create a family or be a role model for a child. I was too sick to be a good partner or sibling or daughter or friend. I often did not believe I had a reason to continue to fight for recovery.

Today, because you did not give up, my life looks different in many ways. Although I still sometimes struggle with thoughts of worthlessness and hopelessness and am not yet fully recovered, I have made real strides toward full recovery. I finally feel like I will eventually find complete freedom from my food issues.

One example of a huge step toward recovery that I made recently is that I am no longer measuring my food. After leaving treatment for anorexia in 2014, I was given a meal plan by the nutritionist in my treatment team. The perfectionist in me (as well as my internalized fatphobia) would not let me stray from that plan by a single berry, peanut, or ounce of soy milk. Finally, in March 2018, I put away the measuring cups. With each day, portioning my food becomes a bit easier, and I feel hopeful that the urge to measure my food will one day be gone.

Another example of a stride toward full recovery is that I have started sharing my story and the importance of body/fat acceptance, intuitive eating, and health at every size through my blog, bodycompassionblog.com. This platform has allowed me to practice being truly vulnerable and authentic – necessary traits for recovery. A major part of this process is curating my social media intake to include role models on the subjects I discuss on my blog. Although I still have work to do to quell my internalized fatphobia, I no longer equate thinness with health, beauty or willpower, and I truly appreciate size diversity.

I have learned that despite my struggles and no matter what size my body becomes through intuitive eating, I am worthy of love and compassion. I know that to sustain this understanding, I must continue to prioritize my mental health. My commitment to myself going forward is to try to trust my intuition when it comes to eating, movement, work, relationships, and all other aspects of my life.

Thank you for not giving up. Thank you for believing in recovery. Thank you for waking up each day and deciding to live despite the unrelenting battle you still fight with your mind daily.

Sincerely,

My Authentic Self

Being you is more than enough.

Check out ERC’s Eating Recovery Day website to learn how you can get involved and to read recovery letters of other #MyRecoveryLetter participants. RECOVERY IS POSSIBLE!

Eating Recovery Day 2018 #myrecoveryletter | @eatingrecovery | myrecoveryletter.com