Posts Tagged ‘Guest Bloggers’

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, or symptom use. Please use discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Emily Formea is a writer and coach passionate about eating disorder recovery, food freedom, and self-love. She is the author of Gaining a Life – The Untold Story of my Eating Disorder & Recovery and the host of the To The Girl podcast. To learn more about Emily, visit her website, and find her on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Your eating disorder THRIVES off stress.

Don’t believe me?

When do you feel most likely to restrict? When do you feel most likely to binge? When do you feel most likely to make yourself sick, start a new diet, limit your food, binge in secret, weigh yourself, weigh yourself again?

When you are stressed, my love. I know this because I do the exact same thing.

During times of stress, we want to have a constant. It’s human nature. We like routine, we like constants, we like ‘norms’ and ‘usuals’—and if you’re a bit more wound-up than the average person, like I am, then you also like control.

We love being in control. It brings us a sense of balance and self-management. When we feel most out of control with our emotions or the world around us, we want to control something to make up for it.

Enter your eating disorder.

**Content warning: Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Be Full

By Kaitlyn Rose

This emptiness that calls
with such urgency
is a lie,

A false promise of safety
and the ability
to Breathe
amidst
the pain.

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Rachel Freeman is a special education teacher, poet, creator, and lover of life. She is the author of The Hunger, a compilation of poems about identity, body image, and eating disorder recovery.

Here Rachel shares a few of her poems, as well as advice for others struggling with an eating disorder. 

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, or symptom use. Please use your own discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Bronwen Clark is a Los Angeles-based writer and therapist. She is the author of Don’t Be Weird, a memoir that follows her journey through treatment and toward eating disorder recovery. Find Bronwen at bronwenclark.com and @bforboundless on Instagram and Twitter.

Here Bronwen opens up about the purpose and process of writing Don’t Be Weird, and shares with us a selection of excerpts.

**Content warning: This is one person’s story. Everyone will have unique experiences on their own path to recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Elizabeth O. is a writer, doula, and identity navigation specialist from Pennsylvania who loves thinking and talking about how to make our relationships places to heal from oppression.

The role of gender and whiteness in the development of my eating disorder

My maternal grandmother passed away from cancer three years ago. All within less than two weeks, she went from healthy to gone. She was a Minnesota Baptist minister’s wife, and five days before she passed, she lay in the hospital with her end-of-life care pastor and me.

**Content warning: Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

By Bev T.

I’ve been dealing with chronic anorexia for many years. I have periods of time when I do well in my recovery battle and times when I feel like I’m back at the beginning. When dealing with an eating disorder, as you well know, it’s not just about meal plans and food intake. It’s about isolation, anxiety, panic, and all the noise you are hearing in your head from the entire committee, not just Ed. The Noise, as I call it, is overwhelming at times. Right now being one of those times, that noise can be devastating and in some ways deadly.

Everyone is dealing with the coronavirus pandemic causing widespread panic and anxiety. Dealing with everything being shut down and told over and over to stay home and self-isolate. No contact with people, and keeping 6 feet away from those you do come in contact with. Let me make this really clear: To someone with an eating disorder or those who have an entire committee in your head, as I do, this is like CHRISTMAS MORNING for the eating disorder.