What My Recovery Taught Me About the Body, Nature, and Remembering Who I Am
Belonging Isn’t Something You Earn
There was a time in my life when belonging felt conditional.
I belonged only if I was thin enough.
Disciplined enough.
Impressive enough.
Contained enough.
Diet culture taught me, explicitly and implicitly, that my belonging had to be earned. That worth was something to prove. That social acceptance came from getting it right.
But my body knew something else long before my mind caught up.
Through my recovery journey—shaped by somatic work, long hours in nature, and work with psychedelics—I began to feel the difference between inclusion and belonging not as ideas, but as states in my body.
And they feel very different.
Inclusion vs. Belonging: A Nervous System Experience
Inclusion lives in effort. It’s conditional. It’s not always a guarantee.
It carries a subtle tension:
Am I doing enough?
Am I acceptable?
Will I be excluded if I stop performing?
Belonging feels quieter, wider, and more spacious.
It doesn’t ask anything of you.
Nature was one of my first teachers here.
Standing in a forest, lying on the ground, watching light move through trees, I realised something profound:
I didn’t have to achieve anything to be there.
The trees weren’t evaluating me.
The earth didn’t require improvement.
The birds didn’t need me to earn my place.
I belonged because I was alive.
Plant medicines echoed this teaching, bypassing my intellect and speaking directly to my nervous system. They showed me that belonging is not granted by approval. It is inherent.
As Brené Brown writes:
“Any belonging that asks us to betray ourselves is not true belonging.”
Yes. Yes. Yes. That sentence landed in my body like a truth I’d always known.
What Recovery Has Actually Taught Me
It’s hard to quantify a journey like this. Eating disorder recovery doesn’t move in straight lines, and it doesn’t reduce neatly into before-and-after photos or symptom checklists.
But after more than 16 years of deepening into embodiment and slowly shifting away from dissociation, I can name some things I’ve learned, reclaimed, and remembered through my own body.
1. Your body is not the enemy
Without befriending the body, recovery isn’t possible. The body isn’t what’s broken. It’s what’s been trying to protect you.
2. Hyper-awareness is not a flaw
The capacity to feel deeply into the body is a somatic strength. When fear softens, this sensitivity becomes discernment.
3. Sensitivity is human intelligence
Depth of feeling isn’t weakness. It’s what connects us to meaning, creativity, and care for others.
4. Shape-shifting is often attunement
Not knowing exactly what you want doesn’t mean you’re lost. It often reflects a nervous system that learned to track others closely in order to stay safe rather than tuning into your own needs.
5. Obsession with exercise has a purpose
It can be an attempt to feel edges, boundaries, and aliveness—to know I exist.
6. Restriction carries ancestral echoes
Sometimes the body holds unfinished stories, particularly of women in our lineages who couldn’t take up space or follow their desire. Recovery can be a generational repair.
7. Bingeing is a communication
It’s not a moral failure. It’s the body asking for consistency, boundaries, and rest. For your cup to be filled first.
8. Anger turned inward holds boundary wisdom
Self-punishment often points to places where limits should have existed but couldn’t get expressed. You are not the problem. The problem is the problem.
9. Eating disorders don’t exist in a vacuum
They mirror a culture that restricts, suppresses, vilifies, and judges emotional, relational, spiritual, and physical nourishment. This isn’t yours alone to “fix.”
10. Learning to metabolize love changes everything
At the root of recovery is the capacity to learn how to receive—care, food, pleasure, rest, support—without collapse or defense.
Recovery, Reframed
Over time, through healing and working with clients, my understanding of recovery itself shifted:
Recovery is about deepening into embodiment, not symptom management.
Recovery is relational and attachment-based, not prescriptive.
Symptoms are the body speaking about safety, threat, and unmet needs.
The body is not just involved in recovery—it is the resource.
Inherent strengths become symptoms when overused.
Regulation emerges through the interplay of attachment, defense, and sensory systems.
Recovery is a processing of adding nourishment; it doesn’t take things away.
We build a sense of self through experience, not insight alone.
Change your nervous system state, and the story can reorganize.
And again: learning how to metabolize love is central.
Belonging as a Birthright
Nature never asked me to prove myself.
My body never asked me to earn worth.
Recovery, at its deepest level, became a remembering—not a fixing.
Belonging isn’t something you qualify for.
It’s not a reward.
It’s not conditional.
It’s a birthright.
And when we stand in that belonging—not conceptually, but somatically—we feel more agency, more creativity, more authentic aliveness.
If this resonates
I offer 1:1 coaching and group programs for eating disorder recovery rooted in:
attachment-based care
trauma-informed somatic work
nature-inspired practices
and holistic psychedelic preparation and integration
This work is for those who are interested in coming home to their bodies, slowly, relationally, and with care.
If you’d like to explore working together, you’re welcome to reach out.
