Goodbye to my ED for Eating Disorder Recovery

In this series of blog posts, we continue to work our way through Carolyn Costin & Gwen Schubert Grabb's book 8 Keys to Recovery From an Eating Disorder Workbook. 

In Key Two: Your Healthy Self Will Heal Your Eating Disorder Self, you are asked to write a goodbye letter to your ED. This can be a real turning point in your journey towards recovery, letting our healthy self speak out against the eating disorder.

Here is what Kristie had to say...

Dear Eating Disorder,

You came into my life promising protection, achievement, self-esteem, confidence and respect.

Instead of getting protection, I needed to be protected from you.  Starving and binging and purging and exercising while being under nourished was harming my body.

Instead of achievement, I lost my job, my friends, my peace and my happiness as a trade-off for a smaller body.

Instead of self-esteem, I gathered a thousand rules that I had to do in order to be ‘worthy’.  That created anxiety and a reluctance to be in the world because of how difficult the rules made it.  Self-esteem turned into self-isolation.

Instead of confidence, you tore me down at every step.  You had me believe that I was the problem rather than the problem being you.

Instead of respect, you had me do things that were inherently disrespectful to my soul.

All the things you promised came at a price that was too awful for my soul to bear.

Instead of counting calories, I will now count my blessings.

Instead of endless rules about food and exercise, I will follow one rule only, no more rules.

Instead of punishment for eating, I will reward myself for listening to my body.

Instead of fighting myself, I will fight you.

So this is goodbye.

Goodbye to hungry nights and hello to a satisfied fullness.

Goodbye to self-abuse and hello to learning to like myself.

Goodbye to shrinking away and hello to rightfully taking up space in the world.

Goodbye to rules and hello to freedom.

Goodbye to striving to be someone and hello to just being.

Hello me.  Whoever that is.

I don’t know yet who I am without you but I am determined to find out.

Hello to nourishing my soul.

Hello to choosing life.