Today I Take Time to Inhale Peace and Exhale Fear!

Today I take time to inhale peace and exhale fear!

This is an excellent reminder to step back and take a moment to try and ground ourselves whenever we feel fear overpowering and crippling us, keeping us perpetually standing in the same spot.  Learning to recognize when fear is blocking us from life and recovery is both a difficult and important part of the healing process, because inducing fear is one of an eating disorder's most powerful weapons.  

Our eating disorders threaten us by insisting that if we don't strictly obey them and their rules then we will lose control, our lives will fall apart, no one will love us, people will call us ugly, we will become total failures, we will hate ourselves, among many, many other things.  But when we step back and try to inhale a little peace and perspective, we realize that we don't know that any of these horrible outcomes are actually true.  We are just too afraid of these possibilities to step away from our eating disorders, which keeps us perpetually locked in their cycles.  That said, the more I walk the road of recovery, the more often I have seen that my eating disorder is a liar; when I have faced the smaller, daily fears it throws at me, I realize they weren't really anything to be afraid of after all.  Rather, I have found joy and life and freedom when I let myself face my fears and move through them.  These small victories lead me to believe that what actually lies on the other side of my fear is not failure, ugliness, loneliness and sadness, but actually joy, life, freedom, connection, self-acceptance and authenticity.  So today, let's continue to more toward freedom by inhaling peace and exhaling fear!

Inhale, Exhale,

Taylor

I Am Powerful In My Body!

I am Powerful in my Body!!!

With this statement, we remind ourselves to honor our own power.  Many of us with eating disorders have disowned, lost sight of, or simply forgotten our inner Goddess from whom our power, self- awareness and self-knowledge arises.  We have quieted our inner power by trying to control and distance ourselves from our physical bodies.  By ignoring our bodies' needs and distracting ourselves with thoughts of self-hatred and calories and exercise, we keep ourselves disconnected from our innately powerful selves.  After all, how can we possibly have the energy to know or connect to ourselves when we are constantly tired, hungry, irritable or distracted by thoughts about how to control our bodies every day, every meal, every exercise?

These words remind us that we can only reconnect to our inner power when we allow ourselves to become one with our physical bodies and selves again.  Once we ground ourselves by listening to our bodies and their inner wisdom, rather than constantly fighting against them, we begin to feel solid and whole.  And this reunion of body, soul and mind is when we can begin to re-inhabit, re-learn and reconnect with ourselves as powerful, beautiful, sensual beings whose inner light and abounding power refuse to by silenced anymore.  

Let us take today to be grateful for our bodies, which house our souls from which our inner power emanates!

Wishing you power and connection,

Taylor

Imperfection is Natural, Imperfection is Beautiful!

Imperfection is Natural, Imperfection is Beautiful!


For those of us recovering from an eating disorder, learning to question and challenge the ideal of perfection is essential.  For years, my eating disorder has told me that I need to be perfect, that I need to do everything perfectly, and that others need to think I'm perfect, or else I'm a failure and completely devoid of worth.  Chasing after this ideal has kept me in an endless cycle of rigidity and self-hatred.

Living with the constant desire and expectation of perfection has brought out the worst in me.  When I'm inhabiting that space in my head, I'm likely to lash out at my partner with unkind words if he doesn't do things according to plan or if our experiences aren't occurring "perfectly."  When in this frame of mind, I have also robbed myself of multiple opportunities to live in the present, to adapt, to accept and experience the joy of life's unexpectedness.  Ultimately, the ideal of perfection limits me enormously, and the ED loves to keep me chasing after this illusory ideal because it tells me that it can show me exactly how to attain perfection, if I just do everything it says.  This is, of course, a big eating disorder lie.

I love this statement that imperfection is both natural and beautiful because it reminds us that, above all else, we are all human and to be human is by definition to be imperfect. And isn't that in its own way so beautiful?  This affirmation directly stares the ideal of perfection in the face and challenges us to begin to see imperfection as something inspiring as opposed to something shameful.  When we open ourselves to the idea that we don't have to be or do everything in our lives so perfectly, a new world emerges.  We are no longer crippled by self-loathing and doubt when things don't go exactly as expected or when we don't look like the people we see on TV.  The idea of imperfection being normal and the idea that it is actually beautiful is like a breath of fresh air!  It reminds us that perfection is boring, unattainable and limiting.  When we open our hearts to the idea that things can be imperfect, we free ourselves from the shackles of our EDs because we no longer want or need their input on how to be perfect.  So let's take the time today to embrace imperfection in all of its beautiful and glorious forms and be proud to go through life as our own unique and imperfectly beautiful selves!

Wishing you lots of imperfection!!!

Taylor

Hello!

Hi and thank you for visiting my blog! I'm really excited to be doing this and to have the opportunity to share some of my thoughts with anyone who decides to visit and read my posts. My primary goal with this blog is to share with others some of the daily affirmations that have helped, and continue to help me, on my journey of recovery from my eating disorder.  I call it a journey "of recovery" as opposed to a journey "to recovery," because the longer I tread this path, the more I realize that recovery isn't an ending destination, but rather a way of choosing to live one's life on a daily basis.

For me, affirmations have proven especially helpful while doing my work as they are such simple statements, yet they pack a large punch when it comes to their meaning and how they can be applied in our daily lives.  Because sometimes it's easy to read our daily affirmations then forget to access them later on when we need them, I am using this blog as a space to actually take a few minutes to deconstruct the depth of each affirmation and how we can apply them to our lives.  Taking the time to ponder the words and actually think about how and why I want to use them in my life seems to help me develop a closer relationship with the affirmations, making me more likely to reach for them when times get tough and I notice myself slipping into old thinking patterns. The affirmations I post will be varied, some seemingly very specific to eating disorder recovery, others more broad as often these statements can be applied to any number of events, periods, or challenges in our lives.

Anyways, thank you again for stopping by and I hope that anyone who reads this will find some words to take away with you that will hopefully help you in whatever way shape or form you want or need them to!

Happy Affirming!

Taylor