Blog – The BED Post

Ice-cream: The Final Frontier

I’ve been practising intuitive eating for a good two or three years now. I’ve discovered I’m not particularly a biscuit person, I’m not addicted to chocolate, stale crisps are not nice, mature cheeses are too strong, and I feel better in myself when I add in gentle nutrition.

Photo by Herlina Widyastuti on Pexels.com

So why was I still struggling with ice-cream?

I couldn’t figure it out. I’d made peace with so many of my former binge foods, but I still struggled to recognise when I’d eaten enough ice-cream, and before I knew it, the whole tub was gone. I knew it was THE most significant one for me, the first I used to reach for, the most comforting, the one tied up in childhood memories. But I’d made peace with pretty much every other food I used to abuse myself all those decades. What was it about this particular one?

I began to despair that I would never be free. I would never feel safe. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t make peace with that amazing sweet, frozen, comforting tub of dairy?

Then, one day I realised.

I was still restricting it.

Not in the same way as all those other foods, but restriction all the same.

My freezer was always full. There was very little space. So I could only ever buy one small tub of ice-cream at a time. That would get eaten quickly, then there would be no ice-cream available until my next food shop a week or so later. The lack of space meant ice-cream was always a scarcity, and that scarcity meant a scarcity mindset, more cravings, and the potential for more binges.

And there was such an easy fix: make space. And that’s what I’ve done. I decluttered my freezer and ice-cream now has a permanent space in my freezer. And now I can finally start to make peace with it.

Making space. Making peace. They’re both so essential to recovery. Making space to grow, to feel, for everything other than constant thoughts about food. Making peace with yourself, the you who was entwined with the eating disorder, the one who lied. Making peace with the loss the eating disorder caused, the wasted time, energy, brainpower. Making peace with the physical damage caused, too.

And so I face this final frontier. Yet again, I find myself making space, and making peace, to recover from this illness which has taken so much.

Resolutions to aid Eating Disorder recovery

It’s that time of year again. Christmas is over and we’re being bomabarded with diet and fitness ads, “New Year, New You” slogans, and promises of increased health and happiness. So to counteract all that, here’s some suggestions for New Year resolutions which will actively support your mental health and aid your recovery. How do I know? I’ve done them all. Take a look and choose whichever one speaks to you to try in 2023.

1/ Detox your Social Media feed

Social Media can support your mental health, it just depends how you use it. Unfollow everyone who makes you feel bad about yourself: no more fitspo, what I eat in a day or heavily photoshopped images. Replace them with accounts which make you smile, challenge diet culture and disordered eating, and expand your world.

2/ Start journalling

There’s no right or wrong way to journal. It can take any format you like: buy a pretty book with inspirational quotes, record voice notes, make mood boards, doodle or paint, try stream of consciousness writing, post on social media, start a blog, or write a good old fashioned diary. It’s a great way to release emotions, a form of mindfulness and creativity, and an excellent way to challenge the perfectionism that goes hand in hand with the eating disorder mindset.

3/ Smash those scales

I’ve been there, and I know that constant weighing only ever made me feel worse about myself. Even when I was losing weight, getting on those scales was just reinforcing my belief that a number, my size, was the most important thing about me. So when the numbers increased, I felt truly awful about myself.

If getting rid of the scales entirely seems too much, try cutting down to weighing once a week, the recommended amount in BED recovery, as a starting point.

4/ Be more mindful

I was rarely present when my eating disorder was in control. Letting things just be, with curiosity, was the opposite of that mentality of needing to control, atone for a past binge, or plan the next one. The brain power needed for those constant thoughts about food left so little space for being in the moment.

And that’s precisely why mindfulness can be so helpful. Short, structured exercises to help you get used to being present, noticing thoughts and feelings, can be a fantastic resource as recovery progresses. Mindfulness apps and courses are a great way to get started and learn different techniques.

5/ Be kinder to yourself

All that criticism you pile on yourself every day. All the shame and guilt. How’s that working for you? I’ll tell you what it did for me: it just made me feel worse and worse about myself, and fuelled increasing binges, further restriction, and more frequent purging.

How would you talk to a friend going through your situation? Why not try treating yourself with that same compassion? Hey, I get it. I didn’t feel worthy of it either to begin with. But the more compassion you show, the worthier the recipient feels, whether that’s your friend or yourself.

6/ Challenge your inner fatphobia

We’ve all been brought up to believe fat is bad and thin is good, and that belief can be a real barrier to recovery. As a starting point. try following a variety of fat creators on social media to help get used to seeing a range of different bodies. Then start reading about the history of the BMI and the diet industry. Be prepared: this one will probably bring up difficult emotions.

7/ Learn a new skill

Have you always wanted to speak a foreign language? Learn to paint? Bake? Why not finally give it a go? Whether you enrol at your local community college or join an online forum, learning something new is one of the Five Ways to Wellbeing for a reason. It challenges the brain, increases self esteem, and can be a way of connecting with others. It’s also another way to challenge those perfectionist tendencies, because no-one is perfect at something they’re doing for the first time, but that doesn’t mean that trying can’t be fun.

8/ Give to others

Another of the Five Ways to Wellbeing, volunteering, giving or helping others in some way has been shown to be really beneficial for good mental health. It can be as simple as taking the time to pay someone a (non-appearance related) compliment or as involved as giving up a few hours a week to help a local charity. Either way, giving to others takes focus off yourself and your worries for a while, helps you connect with others, and just somehow feels good.

Thank you for reading and Happy New Year! Which resolution appeals to you most?

Swimwear and scars

Content warning: this post mentions sexual assault.

A friend shared a story recently about her struggle with showing her scar in a bikini. It was really inspiring and it got me thinking. I don’t have scars like my friend, well not external ones. Yet it occured to me that I’ve never worn a bikini. Definitely not since puberty, at least.

I suppose wearing a bikini is the ultimate in self confidence, in body confidence. My Instagram feed is full of beautiful fat women wearing two pieces. But since my recovery, I haven’t bought any swimwear at all.

Then I remembered the last time I wore a swimsuit on holiday. Way back when I was straight size, but not really any more confident in my body. And I remember the man who leaned forward and tried to put his hand down the front of that swimsuit, and my friend and I fighting him off.

I remember my therapist asking if I subconsciously binged to make myself bigger to avoid the groping, the unwanted comments and propositions. And it made sense. I feel less visible when I’m fat. I am less visible. My body is certainly less sexualised by strangers.

We’re all conditioned to want to be thinner, more attractive. But whenever I complied and lost weight, my prize was unwanted attention from men who believed they had the right to see me as an object. To stare openly at my breasts. To grope. To shout at me in the street.

Losing weight was supposed to be all my dreams come true. It was supposed to bring happiness, success, everything I ever wanted.

What it actually brought me was a feeling of unease, of not feeling safe. The expense of buying a whole new wardrobe for what I now know would be a temporary body, because my real body and my eating disorder always fought back. It brought a constant hunger. It never brought that confidence the models had in the ads.

So I tried to fake it. I put on a swimsuit. And look what happened.

I don’t know when the feeling of unease began. Maybe with being viewed and treated as an adult women from the age of 12 or 13. Or with the house party in my early teens when a boy kicked in the door to the bathroom, pushed me down on the floor and ripped my knickers off before I managed to get away.

As young girls we’re taught to feel pride in being sexually attractive to men. And so I did. But I also felt afraid. And in the midst of all this were those eating disorder thoughts of being ugly, and fat, and hating myself, and not understanding why men would find me attractive at all.

It’s all so fucked up.

Looking back on my therapist’s question years later, with all that I’ve learned about diets and restriction and how our bodies fight back, I don’t think I was deliberately making myself fat. My body was just responding to famine in the way it is biologically programmed to. Each successive period of weight loss, whatever the reason for it, has inevitably been followed by a period of weight gain, where I ended up bigger than I started.

In many ways I wish my body’s set point weight were lower, that I’d recovered into a straight size body that fit better in the world. But another part of me is glad that I’m fat. And yet another part of me isn’t particularly bothered about my body’s size at all.

Because through body positivity, I found body neutrality, and I’m starting to view my body according to how it feels and what it does, not how it looks. I may not love it. I may never love it. But that doesn’t mean I can’t listen to what it needs and treat it with respect.

I don’t know if I’ll ever reach the point where I put on a bikini. But I’d like to think that if I do, I’ll do it without fear.

It’s been a year!

On 24th July, 2021, I wrote the post “I binged today. Here’s what I learned.”

At the time, it didn’t cross my mind that I’d go a whole year without a full-on, painful, BED-style binge.

Yet here we are, in August 2022, and I haven’t binged like that since. There were so many points where it could have, and previously would have happened, and yet somehow it hasn’t. And I’m not even sure why.

I’ve certainly come very close. I’ve planned binges, bought binge foods, then put them away. I’ve had days when I just wanted not to feel, to numb myself, but used other ways to cope. And I’ve had days when I’ve eaten past fullness, just to take the edge off.

I’ve had plenty of days when I’ve hated my body, wanted to shrink it, trade it in for one that works properly and doesn’t hurt. When I’ve blamed it when something went wrong. I spent every day at my parents’ home in oversized and black clothes because when I packed, I was taking my anxiety about travelling out on myself.

I’ve delayed eating until lunchtime, even dinnertime some days. I’ve eaten nothing but binge foods every meal for days at a time until my body has screamed for something green.

I’ve eaten mindlessly. I’ve gone for weeks at a time without moving my body. I’ve had days when I’ve eaten nothing at all thanks to migraine induced nausea, and days where I’ve done nothing but graze.

But what I haven’t done is fall into such a pit of self-loathing that my only response is to binge until my stomach is so bloated and painful I could cry.

Why am I telling you all this? Because recovery isn’t about being perfect. Aiming for perfection can contribute to an eating disorder in itself. No, recovery is messy. It’s one step at a time, then sometimes three back. It’s learning as you go along: learning from mistakes, as well as successes. And it can look different every single day.

You take each challenge, each new experience as it comes. Leaping into the unknown, sometimes curious, sometimes terrified, holding onto the knowledge that whatever you face it won’t be as bad as before, when you were in the depths of the disorder, unable to see a way out.

Then little by little, the good days start to outnumber the bad. You face challenges, and change, and upset, and disappointment, and don’t automatically default to those old eating disorder coping strategies: bingeing, purging or restriction.

And one day, seemingly from nowhere, you realise that the eating disorder is no longer in control. It’s not screaming anymore. It’s a whisper, sometimes so quiet you can barely hear it. Sometimes it’s not even there at all.

It’s been a year since I last binged. My eating disorder is no longer in control. I’m in recovery. And I couldn’t be more proud.

Follow me on Instagram and Twitter for more content.

Avoidance

It’s been a few weeks since I last wrote a post. I’d convinced myself that I’ve been too busy. And it’s true, a lot has happened since I visited my parents.

I’ve started a new job, which has meant a lot of new things to learn. I’ve started physiotherapy, and been diagnosed with fibromylagia. I was caught up in a rather nasty Twitter storm. I attended a real life Mental Health event after over 2 years of campaigning online and appeared on a podcast for the first time. I’ve met up with friends. And on top of all that, there are a couple of eating disorder projects I’m contributing to in the background.

It’s fair to say there’s been a lot going on.

But I always find the time to write when I really want to. So today I turned on my computer and asked myself why.

And the reason? I’ve been avoiding, of course. The amount of online shopping I’ve been doing should have told me that. Or the amount of mindless scrolling on social media. My new ways of numbing myself now that binges have taken a back seat.

The sheer amount that’s been going on means I’ve got a lot to process. A lot of emotions to feel. But just doing everything I’ve been doing with chronic pain and fatigue is exhausting in itself. And on top of that, I’ve been really tired of feeling so much.

I’ve made a few breakthroughs in the last few months, and that’s amazing. But I had feelings fatigue. I just needed a break, to avoid and feel numb until I have the emotional energy and resilience to start processing again.

The last couple of weekends, my body has forced me to have a break. My migraines have returned, enforcing bed rest and cancelled plans. I’m still waiting for the new medication the rheumatologist advised and hoping it helps with the fatigue and lack of energy. Until then, it was inevitable that my body would rebel against the new stresses it is under.

Because change is stressful. Even positive change. And I know I probably haven’t helped matters by refusing to face that.

I’ve been focusing on getting through, and riding the worst of the thoughts and feelings as best as I can when they come up. But avoiding the rest.

I will return to processing and healing soon, I know I will. I’ve come too far to give up now. But I’m tired, and I need an rest. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve pushed too hard and too fast before in my recovery and it never ended well.

So I’m allowing myself to take my time, and avoid if I need to, while I get used to all the positive changes I’ve made recently in my life.

If you’re feeling tired and in need of a break, too, know that it’s OK. It doesn’t mean you won’t ever get there. It just means that all journeys need breaks, stops along the way, so you can rest, recover, and make sure you’re still on the right path.

Never discount the power of rest and recuperation. It will give you the strength you need to continue on the road to recovery. And if the rest includes a little avoidance, then that’s OK, too.

The Day the Music Died

TW: eating disorder feelings and behaviours.

I met him one drunken night in my favourite bar.

He was there to play a short acoustic set and afterwards, we got chatting. About music, life, the usual drunken things. I gave him my number and a few days later, he called and asked me out.

Not long after (maybe not long enough after), we moved in together. It was all going so well. Until it started to go wrong.

My grandfather passed away. He had been my safe person, the man I looked up to the most. And then I fell out with my father. In a matter of months, I had lost both of the male influences in my life.

Of course I didn’t process the loss. I tried to bury it instead. With alcohol, cigarettes, and of course, food. I wasn’t even aware I was doing it. Looking back, I’m not even sure if I’d got over my first bout of depression, or if I was in my second, whether it was grief, or the binge eating disorder taking over. I know I didn’t talk to him about it.

I gained weight, and became more reclusive. I made excuses not to go with him to his gigs, for nights out with friends, to visit his family, because that was my only chance to binge in secret. I was closed off, secretive, and sometimes resented his presence because it meant I couldn’t binge.

Of course this is a simplification of a complex relationship. But it was never going to work. I was living a lie, terrified he would find out who I really was and stop loving me.

Then one day he told me me had feelings for someone else. That she reminded him of me when we first met. And for the first time since I was a small child, the emotions came flooding out. I cried, I punched him, and I threw him out, unable to deal with what was happening.

Photo by Jessica Lewis Creative on Pexels.com

And when he left, music left, too. In a way, literally, because he took my favourite albums, but also because I couldn’t bear to listen. I didn’t want to hear any of his songs, nor any songs that reminded me of him, of our failed relationship, of how angry and sad I was. The feelings were too raw. I buried them the only way I knew how: my eating disorder morphed into bulimia, I was chain smoking, and I started going out drinking again.

Later, I met someone else. Someone who wasn’t into music. And I forgot the part of me that loved it, this backdrop to my earlier life. I forgot the small child who loved to dance and sang in school plays in that time before she hated herself too much to intentionally attract attention. I forgot the teenager who chose her university based on its music scene. And so, even in my single years since, I’ve never returned to music.

Then a couple of days ago, I heard one of my favourite songs from the time I was married. From an album he had taken with him, that I haven’t heard in the decades since. And in that strange way music does, it triggered the gut-wrenching grief I couldn’t face at the time.

These feelings are some of the hardest I’ve had to face through recovery. They are physically painful. They are suffocating, all-consuming. I’m finally starting to understand why it’s called heartbreak. The pain in my chest, the heaviness in my stomach that won’t stop…

For the first time in a very long time, I am battling the urge to make myself sick.

And I am beginning to realise that maybe I was remembering it wrong. Maybe it wasn’t the dieting that led to the bulimia back then. It was the grief, the sadness, and the pain. The restricting and the purging were my physical responses to the emotional pain I was in. I was trying to lift the deadweight in my chest, literally force it out so I didn’t have to feel like that anymore.

I buried the pain so deep I didn’t remember what it felt like. I buried it so deep it took two whole decades and years of work towards recovery to resurface.

And now there is no way out but through. But I have to believe that this pain means I am finally close to full recovery. I am trying to accept it, lean into it, and learn the lessons it is teaching me, even though it is so very hard to do.

It’s time to let go.

Well, this is a lot!

After two years of lockdowns, isolation, boredom, and self-reflection, it suddenly feels like someone’s pressed the fast forward button on my life. As if I’ve gone from zero to 100 overnight.

So many amazing things have happened over the last few weeks! I’ve got a new job. The Instagram and Twitter accounts are doing better than ever thanks to unexpected support from much bigger accounts. (If you’re reading this, thank you so much!) I’ve left my small part of the UK for a holiday abroad. I’m seeing a physiotherapist when I get back to help with my pain…

So I should be on cloud nine, ecstatically happy, relieved that so many things are going well, right?

I am. I really am. But recovery isn’t always that simple. This is A LOT. Way, way too much happiness and gratitude and excitement to deal with at once. I’ve never had to process quite this much at the same time before. So I’ve reverted to anxiety and overwhelm, and the ED is trying to find its way back in.

It’s most noticeable in how I feel about my body. I loathe and detest it right now. I hate how it feels. The amount of space it takes up. I shudder with disgust every time I catch my reflection, so I’m trying to avoid mirrors.

My eating and appetite are all over the place. I’m going between days when I’m so anxious my stomach is in knots, and days where my body is screaming at me to eat to make up for the anxious days.

Of course there’s the tears. Always the tears. Because that’s still how I release most emotions.

It feels like the ED is asking how dare I be happy? Reminding me that I’m unworthy, that I don’t deserve all the wonderful things that are happening to me right now. Reminding me that I’m all the awful things it used to tell me I was, and not who I’m starting to believe I can become.

Well, the ED can eff off! I’ve worked too hard and too long to let it back in. I’ve worked hard for these successes, this happiness. I’m not giving up now.

Of course I’m overwhelmed. Change is scary. Even good change. And my life is a little upside down in the best way right now.

So I’m trying my best to ignore the ED thoughts and feelings and enjoy the successes. And maintain the hope that one day the voice will go away.

It’s difficult. It’s uncomfortable. But it’s a lot less uncomfortable than life with an eating disorder. And what is the point of recovery if I don’t push myself to live the sort of life I always wanted, but never believed I deserved?

Life is too short, and I’ve wasted so much of mine already. So I’m going to have to learn to be comfortable with feeling uncomfortable for a little while.

Because when I do, it seems that good things happen…

Lessons in love

The thing about recovery, and stopping eating disorder behaviours, is that it brings stuff up. It leads you to re-evaluate your life, the life lived in the shadow of an eating disorder. It makes you question everything, especially if you had an ED for a long time, like me. How much was my life shaped by my ED? Who am I without it? Who do I want to be?

And with Valentine’s Day approaching, my thoughts turned to love and relationships.

I have spent my life “failing” at love. Everyone round me encouraging me to couple up, find a partner. But feeling uncomfortable about it, being fiercely independent. Struggling and often unhappy when I was in a relationship, but not really knowing why.

So, I went back to the beginning and started looking for the reason.

If I’m honest, I didn’t have much in the way of good examples when it came to relationships. I would describe my parents’ marriage as tempestuous. I never really saw my grandparents together, and my aunts, who I saw a lot, were both widowed.

Photo by Berendey_Ivanov / Andrey_Kobysnyn on Pexels.com

I escaped into books as a child, into wondrous alternative realities. When I was reading, the world around me didn’t exist. But those books and fairy tales fed me lies about love and romance, about knights in shining armour coming to girls’ rescue, about love at first sight, great romances. And crucially, they didn’t say what happened next.

I had no idea how relationships worked. But I knew I didn’t want one that involved a lot of fighting. So I went along with what my partner wanted. I stopped having opinions, I “put up and shut up”, and in the process, in each of my relationships, I lost who I was. If I even knew who I was in the first place.

Because what else could I do? Let the guy get to know the real me? The greedy fat pig who binged every time their back was turned? That would have been a disaster. No way was I going to let that happen.

There’s an awful lot of talk these days about loving yourself. It’s mooted a lot in the body positivity community. It’s not a concept I grew up with, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s a big ask when we’re surrounded by constant messages telling us we’re not good enough unless we buy product x or y.

I’ve never loved myself, and I doubt I ever will. Love is a strong word. I accept myself as I am now. Most of the time I like myself, but love? No, not really. But I don’t see that as a major obstacle. It hasn’t prevented my recovery, and it certainly didn’t stop me from loving those I have had relationships with in my life.

No, the barrier wasn’t that I didn’t love myself. It was that I believed no-one else could. That I was unloveable. Worthless. A fat, ugly, overemotional mess who sometimes had thoughts so dark I didn’t dare speak them out loud.

And so I spent my relationships second guessing what my partner wanted. Never revealing my awful, true self. Becoming more and more unhappy, increasingly lost, until they gave up and went off with someone else.

And because that was what I believed about myself, I struggled to accept love. I never noticed when someone was interested unless they actually told me. I’m ashamed to say I even dumped a couple of men who came across as too keen. They were clearly suspect if they were that into me – their judgement was flawed.

So this is what my experience has taught me:

You don’t have to love yourself to have a successful relationship, but you do need to feel worthy of love.

And you know what? I think that’s something I can achieve.

I don’t know if I will find love again, but if I am lucky enough to be given the chance, I will not hide who I am. That person will get to know the real me. The me who still struggles with dark thoughts and bad body image sometimes. The me who gets bad tempered when I’m tired and in pain. But also the one who has found the joy and self-acceptance I never thought was possible. And I hope they will feel able to show me who they really are in return.

Because maybe that’s the love I was missing out on all along. If only I’d felt worthy of it.

Whether you’re single, in a relationship, or still working on feeling worthy of love, Happy Valentine’s Day!

Battling the Black Dog

It’s back. It’s barking and growling and scratching at the door, trying to get in, and I’m trying so hard not to let it.

But it’s exhausting. I’m so tired, constantly wanting to sleep. Yet some nights I lie awake. Not thinking or fretting or stressing, really. I just lie there with my eyes closed, waiting for sleep to come.

There’s no inspiration. Just a couple of weeks ago I was posting, writing, creating. Now I’m silent, unmotivated. I have nothing to say. No positive stories to share.

The tears. Not a day has gone by without tears for a week now. They flow silently, without fanfare, as I sit here, waiting for the feeling to pass.

They say Churchill called it the black dog. Sometimes that’s how it feels. A big black dog following me around like a shadow. But sometimes, like now, it’s an all-consuming fog that blocks out the light, turning everything a deep, dull grey. It makes everything quiet, eerie, it blurs sharp lines. It invades my brain and leaves that foggy, too. Unable to see clearly, focus, see the sun hiding above the clouds.

Deep down, a part of me knows that hope and joy are out there, but no matter how hard I look, how far I reach out, I can’t find it. The fog is hiding it from view, hoping I forget about it, waiting for me to sink further into myself instead.

I don’t want to give the fog what it wants. I don’t want to let the black dog in.

I’m arming myself.

I’ve upped the nutrition-rich foods. So what if I ordered them online and bought some of them pre-prepared? It’s all I can manage right now, and nutrition is nutrition. There’s no point forcing myself to the farm shop to buy soup ingredients, then letting them rot because I don’t have the energy or motivation to chop and cook them.

I’m taking my painkillers because no-one should have to deal with the double whammy of pain and fog. And the lower pain means I can do a bit of exercise each day to boost my mood.

I’ve reached out and called a friend.

I’m watching comedies to reassure myself I can still laugh.

And I’m writing this, getting it out, reducing its power.

And still the fog descends, smothering me in its cloak of darkness.

And still I fight on.

I’ve been here before and won. I will prevail.

The BED Post blog is a year old

November 2020. A global pandemic. Dark evenings. Boredom. And I decided it was time. Time to tell my story, on my own terms. Time to take what I had learned challenging stigma as a mental health champion in the real world. Time to face my fears and go online.

I googled “how to start a blog” and got stuck in. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know any bloggers, but at least I’d read a few blogs. I wasn’t even really active on social media. But hey, what had I got to lose? Most likely no-one would read what I wrote anyway. And I intended the site to be anonymous so it wouldn’t matter.

It was time to think of a name. I finally settled on The BED Post, because that’s exactly what it is. I post about BED. But the name also references the silence and secrecy that so often goes hand in hand with BED and ED behaviours. And finally, there’s an implied naughtiness that amuses me. Who doesn’t love a cheeky double entendre, right?

On 16th November 2020, after a week or two of playing around trying to figure out what I was doing, a lot of swearing, and a few sleepless nights, I finally hit “publish” and The BED Post blog was born.

And then absolutely nothing happened for over two months…

It wasn’t until the end of January 2021 that I posted again, and started the Instagram account in readiness for Time to Talk Day and Eating Disorders Awareness Week. Then things really started to pick up…

By April I had broken my anonymity and was starting to have fun experimenting with photos and reels on Instagram. Then in May the lovely BarefootRebel Zoe Burnett encouraged me to start using the Twitter account. I was discovering just how much I enjoy creating, finding my voice in a rather public way. And getting to know so many wonderful, supportive people in the online ED recovery community.

I’m not sure what, if anything, I expected when I started The BED Post blog, but I didn’t anticipate that it would support my own recovery so much. It has taught me the importance of pushing myself (but not too hard), facing my fears, feeling my feelings, being honest, learning new skills. It is helping me find out more about myself: both past, sicker me, and who I want to be in recovery.

And I certainly never expected such wonderful feedback. Messages and replies from amazing people who have reached out to share their experience, let me know something I posted helped, ask a question. Likes from people who I have never met but are becoming friends. I am so grateful for the many ways these people have enriched my life, and feel privileged that my work might have made the tiniest difference to someone else’s.

The BED Post blog and social media accounts might be small, but I’m still pretty proud of this past year. After all, I’m just a middle aged woman oversharing online in the hope I can help someone else feel less alone, less worthless, and more hopeful that recovery is possible.

So thank you to everyone who has followed, read, watched, liked or glanced at The BED Post blog’s content this year. I appreciate every single one of you. And I hope you’ll join me in discovering what the next year brings.