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Words of Wisdom
April 11, 2025
Greetings Lovely Reader!
Thank you for your time. This months letter includes some mild references to eating disorder behavior. Please take care of yourself and feel free to pass on this one if you need to, or just skip down to the third paragraph.
I had my final eating disorder relapse in 2004.
It was pretty dodgy. I flirted with it for a long time knowing what the risks were. And then at some point dieting became diagnostic criteria, exercising became everything, and stuff with eating… well it got weird. I found myself obsessively dreaming about fear foods with sheer terror and coming face to face with too many toilets. I was standing at a choice point between an authentic relationship with the person who would eventually become my husband or just continuing down the familiar but haunting path that I knew was bound to lead into a never-ending darkness as it always had before.
After over a decade of trying to make my body something I felt acceptable living in, after years of disappointing my parents (again and again and again), after the short treatment stints of the 90’s that mistook my physical resiliency for true healing, after isolating myself from and eventually losing multiple friend groups, after dropping out of college… and then nursing school, after nearly losing everything – I shifted course. I stopped treading down the familiar, well-developed trail of darkness and began charting a new path.
It started small, with me just sort of hanging out in the trees next to that old trail. I’d periodically find myself headed back, or just yearning to move back to it. Afterall, developing a new neural pathway is as labor intensive as the clearing and grading and marking and filling of a literal new trail through the woods. But eventually, my footsteps to and fro began to create a clearer path away until, one day, I stopped looking back all together except to send that younger version of me and the path she took, when it was the only one she could, all the love and acceptance that she needed then.
And obviously my journey to becoming a recovered person was a complex one full of backslides and mis-steps and trying again, and again, and again. It involved a ton of help and resourcing along with some luck.
But here’s a controversial secret about this last go-round:
I didn’t go to therapy.
I know. I feel nervous even sharing it.
I had one session with a therapist at the university counseling center who offered, “well, at least it doesn’t seem too severe” (it was). And in her defense, I probably pulled out my biggest people-pleasing smile, nodded and said, “I feel better just talking to you” (I didn’t).
Now, I’m going to stop for a second and say to anyone who has an eating disorder who is reading this, VERY LOUDLY AND CLEARLY IN MY LOUDEST AND CLEAREST WRITING VOICE:
GO TO THERAPY!
Now, I know this is not accessible to everyone as it was not accessible to me in my last relapse. But if you are able, go to therapy, see a dietician, see a doctor, get yourself a coach! Gather a robust team of eating disorder specialists to help you.
This is not a post against therapy. It is a post that acknowledges that resourcing oneself with professionals is not always accessible and that does not have to mean that recovery is out of reach.
For me, after the empty run in with the counseling center, I felt hopeless about having professional help. It did not feel available to me. I couldn’t bear to tell my parents or cost them more money. I couldn’t drop out of school (again). I didn’t really see a path back into formal treatment.
All I had was the knowing that I had stepped off the well-worn trail of empty eating disorder promises.
I was in the wide wilderness of eating disorder recovery.
Maybe you are too.
As I made my way in this new direction, I had a few things going for me and this was what I relied upon in the beginning.
✨ The knowing that I needed to shift course in the first place
✨ A tendency towards optimism and gratitude that was misplaced but I could sense its presence (I know these things have a questionable rap in the therapy world now and I get it but they were instrumental for me)
✨ The beginnings of some very important relationships that I didn’t want to lose
✨ The awareness that there is no recovery without food and the acceptance that food and supporting myself in taking in and digesting food was going to be essential.
✨ And, strikingly, I was away at theatre school in a program that offered me my first conscious introduction to embodiment as a concept. I had been disembodied for a long, long time but this was the invitation back in that I needed.
It would be many years later, well into my recovered years when I was becoming a therapist myself that I would begin to put the pieces together of how I recovered. That it wasn’t just magic, or perseverance, or privilege, or luck, or meal after meal or “body image work” or finding myself or finding love.
It was all of it and so, so much more, that both led me out of the wilderness and built my capacity to be wild.
Again, this is not a blog against therapy or the treatment team approach, I happen to also be a licensed therapist and have worked on many amazing teams and have often wondered what it would have been like to have had longstanding professional support. I believe in that approach… but I also believe that there are a lot of ways to recover and they are almost never clear cut or linear. Sometimes a modality doesn’t work, sometimes there’s a barrier we don’t expect, sometimes what works for one doesn’t work for another and the answers haven’t been identified by science yet. Sometimes we have to off-road.
This off-roading is something I bring into my coaching all the time. I believe in trusting the innate wisdom of the person, even if they are in the throes of an eating disorder. As I, in the throes of my own eating disorder, slowly began to grow trust in myself.
I’m offering a journal prompt for those experiencing their own wilderness. Maybe this wilderness is your own eating disorder recovery or maybe it’s some other new beginning.
✨What is this wilderness you are in?
✨How is it for you to be there?
✨ What has brought you to this new beginning?
✨ Something about this concept of “Wilderness” that feels so relatable to the early stages of recovery is the idea of being in a place that is unknown. On that note:
✨What is something about yourself that you do know?
✨ What might you have going for you?
✨ What is something about the unknown that you feel curious about?
Feel free to share your responses with me if you feel compelled to. I promise to respond.
Follow me on Instagram! I’m going to share a couple of fun images of my wilderness adventures in my recovered life: @recoverwithchristine
Enrollment Closed: Recovery Rites Program
I currently accept clients exclusively through a virtual 10-week, embodiment-based, group coaching program inviting you to engage deeply with your innate right to healing from your eating disorder.
Enrollment is currently closed. I will announce dates for the Fall in the next newsletter.
I currently have one spot open for individual coaching. If you would like more information on this, please respond to this email.
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