“ Connect with supportive people who empower you. The more you jump into your life, the further away from Ed you can get. Don’t have a backup plan for living. Live today. […] Trust in God. Believe in yo… Jenni Schaefer
“ I left myself out of humanity by focusing on differences. This isolation only strengthened Ed” (17) Jenni Schaefer
“ I would not encourage you to go through the sweat, blood, and tears of the recovery process only to reach some kind of mediocre state where you were just ‘managing’ the illness. It is possible to live… Jenni Schaefer
“ To stay in recovery, you must be responsible for finding your own motivation. Remember, motivation may not be easy to come by at first. It will probably be a very small, timid part inside of you. When… Jenni Schaefer
“ Anita Johnston, Ph.D., author of Eating in the Light of the Moon, taught me to look in the mirror with curiosity rather than fear. So I may look at my reflection and think, ‘That’s interesting. I wond… Jenni Schaefer
“ During the worst stages of my eating disorder, I was all-or-none with food—either bingeing or not eating. Much of my experience was, in fact, that if I ate anything, I would eat everything. I began to… Jenni Schaefer
“ Food is something I am going to have to face at least three times a day for the rest of my life. And I am not perfect. But one really bad day does not mean that I am hopeless and back at square one wi… Jenni Schaefer
“ Clinicians have told me that our emotional is arrested at the age that an eating disorder takes control of our lives. After we recover, we pick up emotionally where we left off at that age. Jenni Schaefer
“ Real hope combined with real action has always pulled me through difficult times. Real hope combined with doing nothing has never pulled me through. Jenni Schaefer
“ Anxiety becomes high energy when taken to the light. For me, it worked like this: I used to live in a constant state of anxiety, worrying about the past and the future. Now I do my best to focus my at… Jenni Schaefer
“ Being thin created intense anxiety that I wouldn’t be able to maintain that weight for life, and I couldn’t. Jenni Schaefer
“ I wrote in my journal about how good I felt when I was not living under Ed’s control. Then, when I really felt like giving up, I read these pages and realized that I was striving for in recovery was a… Jenni Schaefer
“ In the past, my brain could only compute perfection or failure—nothing in between. So words like competent, acceptable, satisfactory, and good enough fell into the failure category. Even above average… Jenni Schaefer
“ Ironically, this physically weak feeling signifies that I’m actually getting stronger. I know from my past that I will ultimately feel strong if I just sit with the feeling and experience it. Jenni Schaefer
“ When we feel like giving up, like we are beyond help, we must remember that we are never beyond hope. Holding on to hope has always motivated me to keep trying. I have found this hope by connecting wi… Jenni Schaefer
“ Sometimes I felt lonely because I pushed people away for so long that I honestly didn’t have many close connections left. I was physically isolated and disconnected from the world. Sometimes I felt lo… Jenni Schaefer
“ My job is not to worry about what everyone else thinks about me but to discover what I think. If I actually want to know what someone else thinks, my job is then to ask that person. More often than no… Jenni Schaefer
“ Holding myself to perfectionistic standards, I used to think I had to become lifelong friends with everyone who entered my life. This was exhausting, and I now know it’s not true. I believe the old sa… Jenni Schaefer
“ Why couldn’t I find one action that would make the need to binge automatically disappear? Because there is no magic action to make that horrible prebinge feeling go away. The cool thing is that we are… Jenni Schaefer
“ With Ed, I always pushed away the good and only heard the bad. Today, I let in the good. Jenni Schaefer
