Recovery Resources

In an effort to put something positive out into the universe, here is an image of an adorable seal cub:

Found on weheartit.com (uploaded by Paty Pegorin)

Knowing that this seal cub is out there makes everything feel a little bit better, doesn't it? (Being myself, though, I am of course now worrying about climate change and the melting ice caps . . . .)

In the spirit of yesterday's post on honesty (Satya) and asking for help in recovery, I want to share some recovery resources today. These are just a few of the articles, websites, blogs, podcasts, and videos that have helped me and motivated me in the recovery process. It's reassuring to have people to relate to and look up to in recovery . . . they can serve as reminders that, no matter how loud the inner Gollum is, recovery is not only possible but also totally worth it.

Podcasts

• Nourishing Minds Nutrition 
• Meg and Victoria are dietitians who focus on intuitive eating, health at every size, traditional foods, and hormone healing. They've both struggled with eating disorders, and in their podcast, they cover everything from exercise addiction to environmental sustainability. 
• Liveng Proof
• I found out about this podcast on the Nourishing Minds Nutrition podcast. Engrid is a personal trainer who dealt with disordered eating and exercise habits for years before discovering intuitive eating and mindful movement. Her show features episodes on the "pain body," femininity, sexual trauma, and holistic wellness, and her guests include psychoanalysts and chiropractors. 

YouTube

• A Case of the Jills
• Jill is a former marathoner who went through hypothalamic amenorrhea and exercise addiction, and her videos are insightful, honest, and moving. She answers questions primarily related to "detraining" and HA recovery, but for anyone who has a disordered relationship with exercise, I highly recommend her channel. 
• Follow the Intuition
• Elisa is the author of BrainwashED: Diet Induced Eating Disorders, and her YouTube channel features videos addressing issues about recovery from bulimia, anorexia, orthorexia, OSFED, and exercise addiction. Basically, she discusses everything, and her honesty and openness are encouraging and reassuring.
• MegsyRecovery
• Meg is an adorable newlywed who not only features her cute cat in her videos but also has videos from multiple stages of recovery. She answers viewer questions in each episode, and some of the episodes that helped me the most are the ones addressing "not feeling hungry" and the fear of "losing fitness." Meg also sometimes shares tips from her therapist.

Blogs and Websites

• A Life Without Anorexia
• Izzy now blogs at It's a Healthy Lifestyle, but her original anorexia recovery blog still has all its old posts up. She blogged throughout her recovery journey, so there are posts from every stage of recovery, which can be helpful for someone who's struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
• Wholly Healed
• Jess is a Certified Eating Psychology Coach who specializes in "functional endocrinology." Her posts address many of the myths propagated by the media that are hurting women's hormonal health. Reading about how chronic cardio, fasting, and calorie restriction may actually do more harm than good really opened my eyes!
• RawRitta
• Ritta recovered from orthorexia and exercise addiction, and her caring personality and honest videos and blog posts are encouraging and reassuring. 

There are many other helpful resources out there, but these are some of the ones I return to the most often. What blogs/sites/videos/podcasts have been helpful for you?

<3 <3 <3 

Letting Go is Courageous

A new month is almost over. And then it will be October. That has to mean something, right? I don't know. Maybe I should ask the cats.

What are your plans? What are you gripping onto? I often realize that whatever I'm clutching correlates with what I'm afraid of. If it's in my hand and I'm refusing to let go of it, chances are that I'm afraid of what will happen when I release. "Letting go" is an idea that's developed a negative connotation around it. We associate it with giving up and becoming weak. When we let go, we're undisciplined, lost, unmotivated.

Or are we?

When I let go of running, I was afraid. There was pitta-vata imbalance written all over me, and the more I fed into the frustration and fear inside me, the worse I felt. Speed and force can help us numb out of things, but as soon as the "high" of adrenaline subsides, the worry and fear and grasping creep back in. Tools like over-exercising, restricting, etc., are not long-term helpers for us when we're dealing with stress or anxiety. They're unsustainable and put our bodies in a constant state of sympathetic nervous system overload.

Having people that love you enough to call you out when you're going into SNS overload (pushing, resisting, and fighting mode) is a blessing. I'm so grateful to my loved ones for helping me see that moving faster and faster isn't going to make me feel better, and it breaks my heart that there are people all over the world who are going through destruction alone. We need to help spread the message that, in some cases, letting go isn't bad. It's not weakness!

Letting go is strength. It's courage. It's something we have to practice every day.

Our inner demons have all sorts of names. Anorexia. Perfectionism. Workaholism. Internet addiction. These insidious forces overtake us during a period of vulnerability in our lives, and before we know it, we're afraid of everything, most of all ourselves.

Image found on Sue Atkins

Marianne's got it. We're terrified of letting go because, somewhere within ourselves, we know that we CAN let go. It may not be cut-and-dry or simple, but it's possible. When people are overexercising, for instance, it may scare them to know that they have the power let the alarm go off a bit late and skip running. They have the power to do yoga instead, or sleep in, or read . . . .

In order to access our "power," we need to have faith that things are going to be okay. I'll admit that I'm definitely not the full-of-faith, let-it-be person that I'd like to be, but the point of writing this is to say that it's okay to let go of inner demons and let faith in. Let love in.

<3 <3 <3

Wolves and Stardust

I was excited to find Women Who Run with the Wolves in my college's library last week, and every page of it holds poetry and power. Metaphors, myths, and stories are such incredible learning tools, and exploring the psyche alongside characters like Vasalisa the Wise and Baba Yaga is equal parts exciting and inspiring.

When I was little, I loved all kinds of stories and legends, and I thought that there was a very thin veil between our world and the "spirit world." I completely understand that not everyone will resonate with this sort of spirituality, so feel free to think of it metaphorically if that makes more sense to you. But based on my studies of literature, history, art, and physical health, I like to think that we are deeply connected to the earth and to each other.

In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes refers to the famous opening line "Once there was, and once there was not" as a "paradoxical phrase ... meant to alert the soul of the listener that this story takes place in the world between worlds" (71), and for some reason, this line made something click inside me. Suddenly, so many of the life-draining, soul-sucking, self-bashing elements of the very physical, very aggressive culture we're constantly bombarded with seemed to be significantly less important and less powerful. The "world between worlds" reached out and said, "Yes, there's this physical stuff, and yes, that's relevant, but remember what/who you actually are, okay?"

Found on Pinterest

<3 <3 <3

Inspiration for Today

My brother this morning: "Is it really only Wednesday?"

The news this morning: going back and forth between tragic and inspirational.

We need more cute bunny stories and fewer heartbreaks.

Here's some inspiration for today. (I may have spent some time on Pinterest while getting ready for work . . . )

And, of course, a song:

"Life is Better With You" (Michael Franti and PS22 Chorus)

<3 Frances

Things Like Stars and Yoga and Podcasts

“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?”  

It's Virginia Woolf's 136th birthday today! She's one of my favorite writers, and when I was accepted to study English at KCL last year, I couldn't believe it because KCL was the school she studied at. I obviously didn't end up moving to London and attending KCL, but I keep the letter from them on my desk just because I like seeing it.  And it's a more positive reminder of Virginia Woolf than the movie The Hours is.  I love The Hours for its tragedy and depth, but if I watch it again I'm afraid I'll end up an emotional wreck.  Are there any particularly heartbreaking movies that you feel drawn to?  I have a hard time not watching sad movies or reading sad stories because they're so powerful.

From Wikipedia

Speaking of which . . . this month, I discovered the On Being podcast.  Whenever I'm doing work-work, school-work, or house-work, I like keeping company by listening to podcasts, and the On Being show is amazing. Perhaps the best description of it is from the pod's website:

On Being opens up the animating questions at the center of human life: What does it mean to be human, and how do we want to live? We explore these questions in their richness and complexity in 21st-century lives and endeavors. We pursue wisdom and moral imagination as much as knowledge; we esteem nuance and poetry as much as fact. 

I'm hoping to write more here later about episode suggestions, but if you have the time, you should definitely listen to the episodes with Marie Howe and Matthew Sanborn.  Howe's episode is perfect for Virginia Woolf's birthday. It's about "how language . . . has a power to save us," and it explores the way poetry brings experiences to life and makes us each a little less lonely.  Sanford's episode is about feeling compassion and appreciation for our bodies, and Sanford's story is incredibly compelling.  Paralyzed as a 13 year-old, he now teaches yoga to everyone from those overcoming physical disabilities to teens battling eating disorders, and his perspective on life is eye-opening. You really have to listen to the episode or read the transcript to get the full impact of his thoughts, but one of the things that he said that stood out to me the most was that, instead of focusing on ways in which his body isn't working, he focuses on all the amazing work it does just to keep him alive. Wow. It's beautiful.

From Daily Mom

 

The last little tidbit for this morning is (cue fun music) morning yoga! Yay! There is a lot of struggle and disconnect and resistance in the world right now, and stress is something that we all experience on a daily basis. As you may know from previous posts of mine, I've been working to combat the body-image/control issues that have resulted from anxiety, and when I'm stressed, I have a tendency to want to move into GOGOGOGO mode. 
But Ayurveda teaches us that like increases like. If you're freaked out and high-strung and do activities that build on those feelings, then they're just going to get worse. So I've had to hang up my "harder, faster, stronger" fitness mentality and focus more on softness and flexibility, which I've come to realize may actually be better for my health than constantly pushing the limit was.  Truth is, running fast and far may be exhilarating for some, but for me it usually just meant feeling wired.  I got high off the endorphins, but then all I could think about was the endorphins and when I'd "hit the wall" again . . . which is bad!  Now that I'm foregoing heart-gargling intensity for yoga, I'm finding that I'm thinking a lot more clearly. I've always appreciated yoga, but I never realized just how true all those "yoga changes your mind" stories are. The past three days, my mum and I have done short Yoga With Adriene or Lesley Fightmaster videos together to detox after work, and during one of Adriene's detox videos, my mum and I actually managed to really breathe for the first time.  We didn't take those shallow stress breaths we normally take but rather long, deep breaths with audible exhalations, and it was really freeing to be loose and fluid, not tight and rigid.
So if you're feeling anxious or knotted up or under pressure, maybe take five minutes (yes, just five minutes) and try a little "feel good" movement with Adriene.  See? I'm making it easy and putting the video right here, just a click away :).

 

 

Much love and light!

<3 Frances