By Josie Brown
Imagine waking up in a foreign body. Every step feels disjointed, clunky. The way your clothes fall along your torso looks wrong, and every time you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, tears well up in the corners of your eyes because you have no idea what it is you are looking at. That’s how I felt when I returned from my 6-month stay at an inpatient facility where my body underwent major physiological changes; I no longer knew my body. It was a straitjacket I was cursed to walk around in, and any control I had over its appearance lay in the tyrannical hands of doctors trying to keep my heart beating. That year and a half post-inpatient was the hardest year and a half I had ever suffered through, harder even than inpatient because even though I felt complete and utter disgust towards my holding vestibule, I had to navigate the labyrinth of public high school and face the questioning eyes of my peers. I had to return to my studies, relearn how to socialize outside of a medical setting, and survive the tempest of clashing thoughts, emotions, and desires whirling through my mind. It was not easy, and it was during this time that I faced some of my darkest days.
During this stage of my recovery, the only way I could stay afloat amidst the squall was to numb myself from the new sensations coursing through my mind and body. This was not a new tactic for someone who for years had ignored her body’s signals out of fear of change; however, I knew I could no longer return to my old vice of restricting and overcompensating through exercise. I knew where that path would lead me and although I was confused and in pain, I was sure as hell not going back to an inpatient center. Having that drive to plow ahead on the path of recovery while numbing out my mind’s screams of terror for the body I now inhabited helped me out of the darkest days, but I learned I needed new skills.
Although I always despised my school and felt invisible walking down the hallways teeming with 3,000 students, I found that having more mental and physical energy gave me an increased ability to socialize and strengthen my circle of acquaintances. I met a few friends and explored more of my sexuality for the first time while tackling questions about my identity with friends who cared and wanted to learn about what I had been through. The number one biggest thing that helped me during the hardest time of my life was having the strength to talk to new people, forge new relationships, and rediscover who I was through taking social risks. Where during the height of my disorder I had completely cut ties with my greater community of friends, during recovery I learned I could not exist alone and that I needed the support of other people as well as the struggles that come with navigating relationships. Relearning how to socialize gave me something else to focus on other than food or my body, and although I was afraid people would be as disgusted by my body as I was, I found that no one commented on my changed appearance. Kindling a community of friends who I loved and trusted was recovery skill number one, and having friends to lean on and talk to when things got tough pulled me through the darker days.
I’ve always enjoyed frolicking outside in the wilderness. As a child my family would take vacations to our cabin in the Black Hills where my brother and I would clamber up rock faces, scamper through the pine brush and thistles with our granddad on long-winded adventures (where he would often get us lost), scour the mica mine trail for cool mica slabs and rose quartz crystals, wade through chilly Iron-Creek, and play badminton in the lawn outside the community cabins. These ventures were not limited to the cabin. At our suburban home in East Cobb, my brother, the neighbors’ two boys, and I would build forts in the forest behind our houses and concoct elaborate games involving tree climbing, brandishing rusted saws and other rubbish, and chopping limbs off trees. These expeditions into the wild unknown of our backyard spurred in me a love of nature as well as a love of play and movement. My body was the vessel that enabled me to play, and I am so grateful I had the opportunity when I was young to be free and play. I learned how to move my body in relation to my surroundings and got to explore the many physical sensations my body had to offer such as what pulling a giant rusted pipe out of a pile of rocks felt like or how balancing across a fallen log engaged certain leg muscles. These embodied physical experiences shaped my early explorations into the broader world, and perhaps because I am a very physically in tune person, exercise was an easy vice for me to turn to as a way to block out confusing mental and physical sensations that were occurring in my body at the time my illness developed.
When I first came out of inpatient, I was limited in what activities I could do, obviously because exercise up until then had been used by my illness as a means for me to conquer my body and control it. One of the first activities I was allowed to return to early on was rock climbing because it was such an integral part of my life before treatment. I remember going to the gym in Colorado and coming out sobbing because I could barely lift myself off the ground. I thought I’d never climb or be able to do any sports again because my body was so different and foreign to me. However, I was determined to get my strength back, this time in a healthy way, and over the course of a few years with a couple slip ups along the way I have managed to get my mind and my body to a place where I genuinely enjoy the act of moving my body. Whether it be up a wall, across a trail, or on my mat during a yoga class, I love moving my body the way it wants. It is through movement that I tap into bodily sensations and have relearned my body’s cues. It is also through movement that I have been able to connect to the greater world around me because movement is natural to every earth system. Even rocks move through the process of erosion. Getting to a place where I move in tune with what my body needs has been crucial in my recovery, and it is empowering to know how much work it took to get to a place where I can say I love the way my body weaves and dances through the world in time with everything else moving in and around it. Healthy movement is the rope that tethers mind-body-world. Having a body that is healthy enough to move the way it wants feels amazing.
Even more important than relearning how to move for my recovery process was learning how to exist in stillness. I have always struggled with letting myself relax and “veg out”. Especially during my illness, any second that I wasn’t moving was a second wasted; however, some of my most healing moments have occurred when I let myself exist in complete stillness. I remember in 2020 when I was getting my yoga teacher training certificate we did a mandala meditation day where all day we rotated between gentle yin yoga sequences, 20 minute long seated meditations, and breathwork practices. We would break for lunch, and debrief in between each sequence, but the day was meant to draw ourselves inward which proved extremely challenging for me and during the third round of this meditation, I burst into tears out of nowhere. For so long I felt such a great discomfort sitting alone with myself in my body, and all that discomfort, pain, and mental anguish that came with having a disorder that would never let me rest came pouring out. It was during that moment when I discovered the beauty of the inward journey through stillness. Through the practice of meditation and sitting still with myself beside rivers, streams, on rocky outcroppings, or simply in my room, I have come to not only appreciate my body in motion, but also in rest. Life is a practice of balance, a yin and yang of stillness and motion. Learning to embrace this balance of life, especially when recovering from an illness rooted in imbalances, has helped me find love in myself and the greater world.
We must go inward to expand outward, and recovery is the process of learning to appreciate the wonders in addition to the horrors of living in a mortal body of flesh and bone while also appreciating that mortal body’s relationship to the entire world of other beings. Often, eating disorders thrive in an ego that is overly negatively fixated on the self. Through putting in the work to find a community of peers who love me unconditionally, rekindling my relationship to the body through finding balance in movement and stillness, and discovering my relationship as a part of the world beyond myself, I have made progress in repairing that broken ego that for so long ruled my perception of self. Although this process is long and there are still days when I feel uncomfortable in my body, I have grown so much since leaving that inpatient facility six years ago and cannot imagine going back. There’s so much out there beyond the confines of myself to explore, and I love having a physical body that enables me to question and play in that greater world.
