For everyone out there who is struggling and trying to hang on right now, remember this:

An excerpt from this poem was shared on an ED listserv I'm on, and it was so beautiful and appropriate, I had to share it here:

For What Binds Us
Jane Hirshfield


"And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,


as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest?"

One of my best friends from college wrote this amazing poem about her own anorexia.  It's just achingly beautiful and I had to share it here:

June 1st, 1942: 927 calories, 63° Fahrenheit

The first verse:

what is it like, to measure time
in calories, each moment a caloric collection
of seconds, each month a record
of how many grapefruit eaten, how many
pieces of cake or slices of cheese denied,
days upon days stretching into the absence
of every fat gram you did not eat,
every desire you did not pursue,
every dream you did not have.

I try not to quote stuff verbatim on my blog, but every now and then, I read something that takes my breath away, and I must share. I found this on a friend's Facebook profile.

The Journey
by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

I was looking at Barnes and Noble this afternoon and came across a book of poetry by Louise Gluck (who has become one of my favorites). One of her poems from her chapbook "The Wild Iris" really resonated with me.

Snowdrops

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring--

afraid yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

This is a poem I wrote earlier this summer, but I thought in honor of all of the awesome recovery work that everyone here is doing (everyone!), I thought I would share this now.

Ode to the Cul-de-Sac

I lose weight
and a part of myself.
Where do we all go?
Living in a house of cards-
aces and spades and diamonds and clubs-
built in a wind tunnel,
a house destined to collapse.
Us victims move into
tents set up by the Red Corss.
Finding each other,
we find ourselves.
New building codes to withstand the Big Bad Wolf,
use bricks, not cards;
people made of substance,
not starved, lost souls.
My ethereal self floats,
light as a feather,
finding the person to whom it once belonged.

I found a link to this poem on the lovely Shapely Prose.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

--Mary Oliver

I remember

the jingle of the phone
my mom shaking me awake
"turn on the TV, you
won't believe what's happening."
buildings falling- a bad movie.
no. this is real.

I remember

the people running and the
sick knowledge that I was to weak
to run for my life.
the anorexia had taken over and was
killing me as much as a plane
slamming into a building.

I remember

the hollow falling falling
rush and buzz in my ears
from CNN and starvation.
lost in a cloud of smoke
created by my brain
staggering and brusing away ash.

I remember

the frantic trip to the doctor
where I lacked pulse and blood
pressure. stand up sit down.
wanting to give blood
like everybody else
but I had no blood to give.

I remember

wondering why I cared about
calories in celery when
people were dying alone apart.
wishing I could trade places
with those who had perished
because they deserved life
and I didn't.

I remember

nothing.
everything.

I remember

and I am alive. still.


*****************
This is a poem I wrote last night, of my memories of September 11th. I drove out to Philadelphia on the 13th and entered residential treatment on the 14th, having lost 40% of my body weight in 6 months. I was, for all intensive purposes, dead.

Six years later, I still live. I am at a healthy weight for my body, I am moderately happy, and I am trying to get better every day.

There is hope. There is always hope.