Recovery

noun

1. a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength.

2. the action or process of regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost.

Why do I sit here writing this today?

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting working through some exercises presented to me via the wonderful four week programme offered by my friend Mairi, Gather the Women. Over the four weeks each woman in the virtual circle spends time connecting individually to the girl she used to be, the woman she is now, and the woman she is yet to become, through daily rituals, coming together at the end of each week to connect + share. It is a deeply emotional journey, and it brought up a lot for me.

For those who don’t know, for a multitude of reasons, I suffered with an eating disorder in my late teens, all the way through my 20s. When I became pregnant with Caleb at 28 I stopped starving myself + purging if I ate over a specific amount of calories per day. I decided I would look after myself, for him (not yet for me). After he was born, I regressed slightly, but when he was two my world was flipped upside down. I met my friend Ania, who at the time was training to be a Health Coach, and she opened my eyes to a world which led me to create a true connection with my body, based on respect. I think having just had a baby, seeing the miracle of life, of the human body, first hand in that way, really helped cement for me how miraculous my own body was, and I really felt called to truly care for it.

I had always loved vegetables, and weird + wonderful foods, so it wasn’t a massive leap for me, but as I let go of the few processed foods I did have in my life, and added a tonne more vegetables in the form of smoothies + juices, alongside my regular plant packed meals, I felt my body move with me. For the first time in my life I was losing weight without denial, starvation, calorie counting + purging! And it felt healthy. It felt natural. I thought I had it cracked! “Just eat real food + your body will do the rest!”. I felt confident in my body, really for the first time ever. I had been much thinner when I was obsessively exercising + restricting massively back in my early 20s, but I was also an anxious, emotional wreck, who needed constant reassurance + confirmation from the outside world that I was ‘beautiful’. This time it wasn’t like that, I had built that confirmation from the inside, connected into my body on every level. I felt strong + truly at peace. I knew I would never go back to abusing my body again like I had before.

Something shifted

Savannah was born four and half years after Caleb. All the way through my pregnancy with her I had kept up eating well. I kept up my exercise too, something I had started doing with a more balanced + healthy mindset as I had created the changes in my diet two years previously. After Savannah was born my body returned back to its pre-pregnancy state really quickly, another confirmation for me: “Just eat real food + your body will do the rest!”.

However, everything was soon to change. From what felt like out of nowhere I started to gain weight. I was unable to exercise because of an injured knee, but my diet had stayed the same. I started to agonise over it. I had been wrong…I hadn’t got it sussed! Shit! I was so sad. I cannot tell you how sad I was. I thought I had been able to leave all that crap behind. Constantly worrying about how I looked, what I was eating, comparing myself to others. I didn’t want to go back. “Please don’t pull me back to that! Please just let me get on with living! Please let me be recovered!”.

The last seven years

Savannah is now seven and a half. One thing I can confirm is that I have NEVER again abused my body by starving it and/or purging. I have continued my commitment to my body to nourish it with only the best foods Mother Nature provides. As a result I have a healthy immune system, good mental/emotional health + I am ensuring longevity. The weight I gained (which I put down to hormonal shifts from breastfeeding, combined with my inability to be able to exercise as much), has slowly worked its way off, but not entirely by any means.

I have stuck with the emotional battles that have come up for me with all of this, so engrained in me from my eating disorder, and refrained from going backwards to those ways of living. I have always taken this as a sign of being recovered, that I no longer make myself throw up after eating one too many pieces of fruit or rice cakes in a day (yes it came to that for me way back when!).

However, as I sat with the meditation designed to connect with the ‘woman I am today’ from Gather the Women a couple of weeks ago, and I was reminded by the gentle voice in my headphones to love who I am today, no matter what, something occurred to me that really shook me. I was not doing the denial + purging, BUT I was not truly loving myself as I should be, and I was not doing so out of fear. I was holding so much fear in my body that if I started to be more mindful over what I ate (because mindfulness around food is important even if you do eat 100% ‘real food’) + if I started to commit to moving my body again on a regular basis, I might reignite my eating disorder. The realisation of that made me realise I wasn’t in fact actually recovered, it was just well hidden.

Previously, before I had Savannah + I made the initial changes, my body just shifted. I didn’t expect to lose weight when I started to eat really healthily back then; it was a side effect for me, and I thought it was just simple: “Just eat real food + your body will do the rest!”. Actually though I had ‘lucked out’. I hadn’t had to do ‘the work’. I hadn’t had to dig deep + truly work on healing the deep seated roots of my eating disorder. I hadn’t had to make the commitment to my body to stop purging just because I loved it, and not just because I didn’t need to because I was keeping slim anyway. I was finding time to exercise easily, with just one young child + no business of my own yet. I could still live a relatively self-focused life, and not have to truly face my demons.

As I sat + listened to this meditation, I didn’t write down what would have been expected of me, and which many of us perhaps just write down in these moments mindlessly because we think it is ‘doing the work’ - I couldn’t write down “I love myself as I am today” because I realised it wasn’t true, and if I kept just saying I did, when I wasn’t truly living it, I would perpetuate the continuous cycle I was in. I wrote down: “I don’t love myself in this moment, because if I did, I would be showing up every day to exercise, without fear! I would be able to mindfully evaluate my food consumption, and sit and truly listen to what + how much my body needed, without fear of falling back into denial + deprivation. I am not showing up for myself today in the way I want to, because I am not fully recovered, and maybe I never will be! But it has to stop now, because I cannot stop myself from moving forward from being the healthiest + strongest version of myself because of the fear of becoming psychologically unwell again. Truly loving myself, in this moment, is showing up for myself completely, without fear, not just accepting who I am in this moment + hiding from the work.”

I don’t feel confident in my body right now, because I am not strong, I am not at my optimum health, because it is not coming easy like it did before, and I have been scared to do it consciously because I am so scared to become emotionally ill again. I don’t trust myself, clearly. I don’t believe in myself enough. Well I didn’t anyway. I didn’t know it, but I didn’t. I didn’t love myself enough. Loving myself is not about “just eating real food”. Loving myself is accepting that I am still that young woman, she is still in me, but I am wiser now + I can hold her hand + reassure her that it will be OK. Maybe I won’t ever go back to how my body was before I had Savannah, but right now I don’t feel confident, not because of how I look, but because I am not even trying to be the best version of me for fear of losing control, and I know I am not showing up for myself completely as a result, which doesn’t feel good. But have I ever really been in control if I am living with this underlying fear that I didn’t even acknowledge was there? No, I am not. Nor am I truly, truly in a healthy state of health, mind and strength (when considering the definition above). So with both of these things considered, am I recovered? No. I am not. I am wondering now if I ever truly will be, but what I am sure of is that I can go through the process now more consciously + with a deeper reverence + acceptance.

True recovery

Here is where I know I can create true healing! My daughter will NEVER pick up from me that I have these feelings about food or my body. Maybe one day she will read this post, but as she is in her formative years, she will only see + hear me speaking with a healthy mindset. To be honest this doesn’t feel forced because when I am with her my desire for her to feel this is so strong that it actually is my reality in those moments. And I do truly live what I teach her - I nourish my body daily, I don’t berate it in the mirror, I don’t spend my days obsessing over food, and I never speak negatively about myself. Sure I have the deeper work to do I realise now, but all in all a healthy mindset around food + a deep gratitude for my body, is my reality. It is therefore her reality, and I work to teach her, for herself, every day, to nourish + trust her body implicitly. In her I will see true generational healing occur, or I will do everything within my power to help ensure it at least.

And with each woman within my world that I teach to truly nourish their bodies, to do the work to dig into their wounds + their stories and release them, to reawaken their magic, to reclaim their freedom, to rewrite their stories, I will be part of the shift that will hopefully see every next generation of women be free of this bullshit, because as we do the work, we all pass it on: physically, mentally, energetically.

I was not born this way. Society, life experiences, family stories, family + friend’s words, they made me this way, but I know it was my path for a reason, as I know it has been the path of so many women.

From where I was in my 20s, constantly planning my food, noting down calories, obsessively exercising, measuring every inch of myself, I am a different woman today. These things don’t limit my life anymore minute by minute, or even day to day for the vast majority of my life, but what the last month has taught me is that they do limit me still from being the most fulfilled version of myself. I believe now is the time I can truly do the work to break this down, and I am grateful for that. I know I will always live with it in some shape or form, and that complete recovery, where it is not part of my psyche at all, is most likely impossible for me. HOWEVER I do know recovery will come through me: I am here for this work for me, for you, for all the women who follow us.

With love, and in constant pursuit of truth,

Rochelle x