Trigger warning: I will never mention exact numbers or weights, although I may refer to being underweight, needing to gain weight, or struggling to accept my weight, and will avoid describing eating disorder behaviour details as much as possible. However, some material may be sensitive and triggering despite my best intentions as I share journal entries about my experience with my eating disorder in all of its ups and downs. 

Welcome, my name is Sarah, and in this blog I’ve felt inspired to share some of my journal entries from the past eighteen years since developing anorexia nervosa and struggling through it and towards recovery.

Throughout my journey, reading others’ published stories, speaking with others who were struggling or had recovered, and reading a myriad of self-help books helped me greatly, and I hope to add one more voice, illuminating my struggles and journey towards recovery through the journal entries I kept along the way.

While my inner critic tells me that the world does not need one more/my eating disorder story, this is something I have felt a pull to do for some time, and I also believe that perhaps one more voice is not such a bad or unnecessary thing as I remember how sometimes just one nugget of insight from someone or one story framed a certain way would have such a positive impact on me. And for years as I was journaling, I would have this thought or vision that perhaps one day my story too, in the form of these journal entries, might be able to help others in similar situations to me by providing some extra comfort or self-understanding if they resonated with some of what I was going through, or even extra motivation to recover by hearing their own inner wise voice reflected in mine as I would write down my insights and encouragements for recovery.

Re-reading through these journals now, I also think they just provide another interesting look into the mind of a teen/twenty-something trying so hard to find herself and figure out a way to have a more loving relationship with herself and the world. Now at age 30, I feel I have come a long way. However, I am very aware that becoming more loving, compassionate, self-aware, and at peace with the world is a never-ending journey……..but one which is now not nearly as painful to be a part of, and of which I am extremely grateful to be alive for. This is life, in all of its rawness and ups and downs. Life, the one I craved to be able to manage without an eating disorder and its numbing shell.

A brief history: At age twelve, I developed quickly and ferociously an eating disorder, namely restrictive anorexia nervosa and compulsive exercise, that almost took my life several times in those early years and made my life miserable for at least thirteen years more. However, the years leading up to it were not without challenges either, like so many with an eating disorder will be able to attest to I am sure. And the past eighteen years have been some of the most challenging, I truly believe, that I will ever have to get through. Not because I think my life going forwards will not have suffering, loss, pain and struggle, but because I feel that the tools and world views I have had to discover and cultivate in order to survive my early challenges have made these later sufferings bearable in a new way, a way in which there may be pain and challenge on the outside but where I will never have the same experience of deep suffering from such harsh self-criticism and self-abandonment on the inside. My relationship to myself and the world has forever changed because of my earlier struggles, and I believe also developed out of necessity to get me through these struggles.

I also believe that my parents’ meditation practice, which teaches connecting with the heart, and their spiritual teacher (whom I call Master in some entries, or associate with God, the Universe etc. – my spiritual views are very open) whom I met when I was little played a large role in the thoughts and faith that moved me towards recovery since I grew up with them meditating and reading spiritual books to me. To this day, it continues to play a tremendous role in my sense of self and well-being.

It feels like it has been a very long journey, and I know I could not have gotten through to where I am today without the people in my life who cared for me – family, close friends, doctors and therapists. But just as strongly, I am grateful for the sense of  inner guidance that would come to me in some of my darkest hours, when it was these insights, realizations, thoughts, and visions of the future that pulled me through and helped me do the scary things I needed to do to keep moving forwards. Often, it felt as if these insights were from some universal, loving wisdom that was greater than me yet within my own heart, and for me it was this feeling that made me yearn for, and believe in, a richer, fuller life. And it feels good to be able to read over these journals now and tell my younger self, “You made it. All that dreaming and struggling was worth it. Life is as beautiful, and messy, and real as you hoped it would be.”

Thank you so much for being here and reading my story, and I hope that in some way this blog has a positive impact on your journey, as so many others’ stories have had on mine.

~ Sarah

P.S. I also hope that my method of posting is not too confusing, but it feels right to read through different journals at random and publish any entries that stand out to me as wanting to be shared, which will likely not be in chronological order. I am actively working on following my intuition/inner wise voice more and perfectionistic thoughts less, including with this blog……..

~ Sarah