Dear Wildflowers,
I went camping this weekend with my daughter’s girl scout troop. This particular weekend is called Camporee and from Friday to Sunday morning we spend our time hiking through the Florida wilderness (complete with wild boar, panther, bears and gators), canoeing on the lake, practicing archery and slingshots, building fires, doing obstacle courses and staying up late roasting s’mores around the campfire and dancing at in the moonlight with glow sticks until we then have to take the 10 minute walk back to our cabins in the pitch blackness. We sleep in old dusty cabins made of plywood on rusty, creaky beds and share our bathrooms with little critters of the forest. Last year it was also insanely hot but somehow we lucked out this year and actually got to snuggle under our sleeping bags at night in 46 degrees.
It’s not exactly a relaxing weekend, by Sunday morning I am usually very ready to get home, take a shower and get an actual good night’s sleep in my own bed. For some reason as this trip drew closer, all I could remember was that Sunday morning feeling. It honestly had me dreading the trip entirely as the weekend closed in. But then last night as I watched, exhausted, my daughter dancing around with her friends and all these beautiful girls, young women many of them, smiling and happy after having just spent the weekend with each other I remembered why I do this in the first place. Even more than that, this morning after the last backpack was loaded into the car and we waved goodbye until next year, I remembered a part of myself that is so incredibly capable of doing the hard physical and mental labor that a weekend like this takes. I had a moment of asking the question why is it so easy to forget the reasons why we do the things we do? And why is it so easy to remember the things that make doing it so hard?
I know that a lot of people wiser than me have better answers to this question but the simplest answer that I can come up with is: survival. We remember the things that scare us and that are hard because we are hardwired to survive and by avoiding those things. Our nervous systems inherently work to keep us away from the least amount of “danger” as possible and our memories are often part of that system.
However, we have since evolved and while I do very much believe in the wisdom of our bodies, there are some ways that they have yet to catch up without the help of our conscious and intentional mind stepping in.
This is the work of recovery. Many of us who have experienced trauma or are carrying around hardwired memories in our bodies, often related to food, have to constantly resort to the effort of remembering why we are doing this in the first place and choose the action that is opposing what our impulse is at the time. This is so hard because often when we don’t follow that impulse, we then encounter feelings of great discomfort. Feelings we often spend time trying to avoid or numb.
But here’s what I want to share with you my dear wildflowers: on the other side of it all…the toiling effort of doing the hard thing despite what you may want to do in that moment and the feelings that then follow…there is a space waiting for you to remember. Right there waiting for you is a space to remember who you actually are and what it is you can actually do that is so unaffected by the constant, nagging shout of the eating disorder that keeps you stuck in the memories of reminders of why it’s going to be too hard. Recovery is the work of hearing those constant reminders of how hard it was the last time you tried, having strong feelings about it, acknowledging them and then packing the bag to go again anyways.
And this is the part where I do ask you to trust me because sometimes knowing this is impossible in the moment, but there will be another side. There will be a moment when it all becomes worth it not because it all went perfectly and you aren’t exhausted but because you are able to remember the part of yourself that is unencumbered by the eating disorder. And maybe even more importantly than what you remember is what you discover about yourself, about what you are capable of doing and you move forward into the future with the only knowing that actually matters, that whatever does come your way, you are already strong enough to navigate it.
For my clients, here are your links to sign up for your sessions this week and all the other weekly tools: