What Recovery Means to Becca
What Recovery Means to Becca
"Recovery for me means showing up every day for my past, present and future self."
We're gathering stories from the SWEDA community and beyond, inspired by the prompt #WhatRecoveryMeansToMe. We’re building this series as a resource: something for people affected by eating disorders to read, that can support them and inspire hope, or just hear that they are not alone. We also want to raise awareness about how recovery is not a fixed or 'one size fits all' concept: it's something unique to each person and their own hopes for a life in recovery from disordered eating.
Rebecca Partos, SWEDA Trustee, person with lived experience, and Advanced Specialist Practitioner, Physical Health Lead/ General Hospital Liaison, Dorset All Age Eating Disorders Service
Recovery can often feel like a loaded word when you’re struggling with an eating disorder. In the past, I vividly remember flinching whenever someone mentioned the word ‘recovery’.
Recovery at that stage in my life translated as:
Pressure to change, pressure to ‘be better’, ‘pressure to ‘do better’ and pressure to live in a ‘bigger’ body when I was already struggling to accept the one I was in. It meant accountability and tolerating hard emotions without using maladaptive coping mechanisms. It meant finding new ways to communicate my needs and grappling with adulthood and all that brought with it. It meant being in the world rather than hiding from it. It meant giving up the only control I felt I had. It meant ‘being well’ and I had no idea how to be well or what that looked like. It meant ‘being fixed’ and never having struggles with anything ever again which felt unrealistic and unachievable. It meant looking in the mirror and accepting the person staring back at me. In short it felt terrifying.
I’m glad to say, the word recovery no longer holds those connotations for me. What I now understand recovery to mean is this:
Waking up every morning and making a conscious decision not to cause myself harm. Learning to speak to myself from a place of compassion rather than hatred. Understanding recovery doesn’t mean everything is perfect because that is not real life. Allowing myself to fail multiple times but getting up the next morning and starting again rather than giving up at the first hurdle. Learning from the times I relapsed and putting things in place to counter act whatever triggered this. Experiencing uncomfortable and upsetting emotions rather than trying to shut them down. Tolerating changes in my weight and shape and accepting the way I felt/feel about my appearance was/is going to take a long time to shift and that is ok. Recovery for me hasn’t been a seamless journey, it’s been a rollercoaster and a fight for survival at times. It has also been a place of enormous hope and hope can create a life worth living. One step at a time, one day at a time.
