4 Quotes to Support Recovery
Finding inspiration in other people’s words helps me stay on the path to liberation
Today I wanted to share four quotes that I turn to when I need some inspiration and reminders about what’s important. Diet culture surrounds us, and my eating disorder was strong inside of me for 30 years. Using quotes is one way I keep myself steady in recovery. I hope you enjoy these ones as much as I do!
1. “Let your impossible standards crash to the ground.” —Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks
If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent many of your precious weeks on this planet worried about your weight and appearance. It’s totally understandable! We live in a body-toxic culture filled with awful messages and real experiences of marginalization and abuse based on our weight and appearance.
Nonetheless, when I turned 40, I woke up to the fact that I was probably halfway through my life, and I’d spent most of it stuck in an eating disorder. I wanted more from the next 40 years, so I set out to liberate myself from the impossible body standards I’d internalized.
I came by my standards naturally. First as a chubby kid being teased on the playground and sensing the judgment in adults’ eyes when they looked at me. Then as a teen with an eating disorder, desperate for love, reading so-called health magazines to find the path to worthiness. And finally as a grown-up racing from restriction to eating to purging, on an endless quest to change my life by changing my body.
In recovery, I decided to change my life by accepting my body—and myself—as is. I had to drop my impossible standards, and wow, did they crash! Without the perceived safety net of restriction and pursuing weight loss, I discovered so many meaningful things in life that have absolutely nothing to do with impossible body standards.
2. "We cannot selectively numb emotions. When we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions." —Brené Brown
Before I went into recovery, I read a few of Brené Brown’s books and was curious about this whole idea of vulnerability. It all sounded interesting but it didn’t really sink in until I realized I was completely numb to my negative emotions like vulnerability, which of course numbed my ability to feel positive emotions, too. Oh no!
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