You're Invited to a Celebration!

Need a pick-me-up? This quick, bonus video might be just the thing for today:

You're Invited to a Celebration

Dear YOU (yes, YOU!),

You're amazing. Don't argue with me. Don't dispute it. It's a fact. You may be mentally rattling off all the reasons why you're NOT amazing right now, but for every one you can come up with, I have something to say about it. So you might as well just sit and listen for a minute. You might as well let your mind rest, especially if it's been in self-hate mode for a while.

If you're on your way to self-love, fantastic! I'm proud of you. If you've already found self-love, wonderful! It's great, isn't it? If you're still fighting your way to self-love, skeptical of whether or not that concept can ever exist for you, keep fighting. It's worth it. I promise.

But back to the ways in which you are amazing... You are here. That may seem like a silly, simplistic answer you don't think makes you amazing at all. But it does. Think about all the things you've faced in your life so far. Think about all the journeys, the hardships, the struggles, the pain. Then give yourself some credit for surviving it all. I bet it wasn't easy. Yet here you are. So that's pretty amazing.

Celebrate that this week. It's Eating Disorder Awareness Week. And I'm aware of you. Yes, you! You've made it this far. You're fighting. That's amazing. Or you've fought your way through and are doing well. That's amazing. Are you condemning yourself right now? Are you disappointed? Are you saying it's no big deal? Stop that way of thinking. Stop arguing with these words. In a nutshell, all I'm saying is that YOU ARE HERE. And that's cool. So why put energy into discrediting that?

Your energy can be better served elsewhere. Trust me. And you are so worth it. If anything is worth that energy, you are. So don't break yourself down. Don't sell yourself short. Don't give up on yourself.

Celebrate you. Yes, you!

I'm going to celebrate you. You can join me or not. It's your choice. But I'm going to celebrate you and you're invited. If I'm going to celebrate you, then YOU really should be there too, don't you think?

So come on, celebrate you. Yes, you!

Hope

What I'm about to say is pretty much the whole point of my blog...but at the same time, I don't flat-out say it enough:

Recovery is possible.

On a daily basis, I think my heart breaks a little for all the girls and women out there (and boys and men too) who are struggling with eating disorders. I think I'd be in pieces if I wasn't able to turn my breaking heart into a force of positivity and support. I know so many wonderful people suffering from a disease they wish to control. I know so many beautiful people who don't see their own beauty. I know so many people who have so much to offer the world, but are at a loss when it comes to helping themselves.

I've been there. I stared anorexia in the face and it took me over for a while...until I decided to bite back and take my life into my own hands instead of passing it off to an illness that would have been only too happy to kill me. I know that's putting it simply. It's not an easy process and sometimes it gets more difficult instead of the other way around.

I get countless emails from people who have been touched (and by touched, I mean slammed) by an eating disorder. I ache to heal them, but know that it's not up to me. All I can offer is my support and my encouragement that it can be done. Recovery is possible.

At times, I feel like a little fairy who just spouts happy words of positivity and shows people the good in life like nothing bad ever happens--at least that's what I feel people must think of me at times.

In reality, I'm not a fairy and I'm not preachy. What I say and do is all about one word: HOPE.

I want to give hope.

That sentence above could have been something entirely different a few years ago. Change the last word and it would have been my state of mind: I want to give up.

That's no longer the case, obviously, but that journey from wanting to give up to wanting to give hope had a lot of stops in between. I wanted to get better. I wanted to get real. I wanted to get heard. I wanted to get a life. I wanted to get OUT. And when I did...when I did all of those things...I wanted to give hope.

Because it's not a fun journey, even though from time to time it has its little benefits and its little joys. A good trick is to make a celebration out of everything that could be uncomfortable or unsettling. You don't fit into your clothes anymore? Donate 'em! Call your nearest and dearest and have fun cutting a few choice pieces up and throwing the shreds like confetti! Take your mother or your sister or your best friend and head to your favorite and buy some new things that make you feel good! A little moral support can go a long way.

When things are too much, there is always hope. Hope is there and it will wait if you want to put it away until tomorrow when you have more energy. Hope is everlasting. Hope is the balm that can get you from one day to the next. And because hope is possible, recovery also is possible.