IndieLile

While summer roses all their glory yield   To crown the votary of love and joy,   Misfortune’s victim hails, with many a sigh,   Thee, scarlet Poppy of the pathless field, Gaudy, yet wild and lone; no leaf to shield   Thy flaccid vest that, as the gale blows high,   Flaps, and alternate folds around thy head.   So stands in the long grass a love-crazed maid, Smiling aghast; while stream to every wind   Her garish ribbons, smeared with dust and rain;   But brain-sick visions cheat her tortured mind, And bring false peace. Thus, lulling grief and pain,   Kind dreams oblivious from thy juice proceed,   Thou flimsy, showy, melancholy weed.\

You should never feel ashamed about eating because food is fuel to allow us to live our lives to the fullest. Food is also a way of expression and how we share our feelings and lives together. Food is the connection to great memories with friends or when it’s just you and your cat. Don’t let anyone question your worth to eat. You are worthy and you are strong. 

I’ve struggled with an eating disorder since I was 15 years old, and I am 23 now. It’s still hard and the feelings of regret and disgust towards myself still happen. I have to remind myself that I am only human and that I am worthy to the food I put in my body. 

You are allowed to feel these emotions because they are valid. Sit and reflect on why you feel the way you do. Is it coming from a place within yourself? Or maybe an outside influence? The key is finding a balance and learning that it’s okay to stumble and fall sometimes as long as you remember your own self-worth enough to take the last bite. 

This is a reminder to drink some water and go outside. Feel the sun against your skin as a reminder that you are alive. We are all basically house plants but with more complicated emotions. 

Unlearning abuse also requires unlearning the survival tactics you learned in abuse that you now call your personality. That’s not who you are, it’s who you became based on who they were.

Pain builds walls, but healing builds doors.

Betty White (2011). “If You Ask Me: (And of Course You Won't)”, p.22, Penguin

How do you heal from trauma? I think the first step is acknowledging that you have trauma. You also have to want to heal. Once you decide to take this amazing, and sometimes painful journey it becomes the most rewarding feeling.

When I have fears that I may cease to be  Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charact’ry,  Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,  Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace  Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!  That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power  Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.