Recovery Bucket List

Writing to you all from the land of Quarantine, it's Madison.

So I know this time is really hard. For a lot of us, we have learned to cope with our mental illness through community, through gathering with food and friends. Food doesn't seem as scary when everyone else is doing it, when we have the din and distraction of others to temporarily make us think that we are okay. There was a really long time that I had to eat around other people because I got too anxious and self-concious to eat by ourselves. We need that community to give us those social cues. When that is taken away from us, it brings back a lot of those issues and insecurities with not only our bodies, but with ourselves, and they get right down deep to those hard issues.

Does this hit close to home?

Yeah. Me too.

So I'm reflecting back on positive memories today and namely, the first event that I volunteered at dealing with ED advocacy. It was the Quad Cities Eating Disorder conference put on by the Eating Disorder Coalition of Iowa (EDCI). I was lucky enough to get to meet and speak to Jenni Schaefer, author, speaker, and ED advocate. She presented on life without an eating disorder and introduced me to the concept of a "recovery bucket list".

Most people with eating disorders in recovery have this, but maybe they just don't use that specific title. What do you want to do when you're free from an eating disorder? How are you going to love your life when you no longer obsess over your body and food? How is your ideal life going to look? These can be as broad or as specific as you want. They can take place 20 years in the future or just in the next 10 minutes. And I think that while our social support is limited today and might be for a while, this is a great time to reflect inward and rediscover that internal motivation for why recovery is so important. You cannot do the things on this list unless you are committed fully, every day, to recovery.

So let's share.

My Recovery Bucket List

Travel abroad and experience all cultures fully!

I'm looking at you, mountain of pasta in Italy that I am going to eat.

Learn to code!

This isn't directly related to recovery, but I find it difficult and I just reeeeally want to do hard things!

Become a mom.

Because DUH. I need to be healthy and strong in order to have kids one day and I sure as heck don't want them to grow up thinking their bodies are anything less than incredible.

Get a master's degree.

In what? Who knows! I seriously don't, but I want to further my education in healthcare and maybe even teach people how to take care of themselves? Again, not too fleshed out but gosh darn it I want to go back to school.

Be around to celebrate my friends get married and have kids and NOT worry what I look like.

I am worth more to my friends than my looks or my body and that's the tea. I deserve to give myself the same love they give me.

Let me know your bucket list items in the comments below!

xoxo

mads