Nia is an Eating Disorder Associate at Orri (and our resident poet!). To inspire you in recovery today, she has written a poem on the experience of growth in life and eating disorder recovery.
It lies in the uneasiness
The in-between
The unfinished sentence
In the letting go of what could have been
It is in the snotty tissues and painful hearts
In the fact it is making you braver and stronger than you were at the start
It is in the fear and blind faith and letting go
It is in the patience while things feel slow
So I think where to begin? How do I grow?
When there’s more safety in the now, in its knowing and consistency
When I’m fearful of the unknown and chaos and growth being messy
Fearful of the process
Of feeling better and then being the same as before
What if I can’t change? What if it’s flawed?
But then I think
What if I were to learn I were living in a pond
And I never got to know there was such thing as the ocean, and beyond
For holding onto something that felt good enough, where I should be and belong
Was the very reason something better never came along
So I brace myself and prepare for what might be
But in the knowing that there will be something better out there for me
Because I’ve learnt that there is so much beauty on the other side of discomfort
And that growth however hard it is will be triumphant
So step forward and I let go
And I tell myself
This is growth
This is pain
This is being alive
We hope this resonates with your recovery journey and inspires you to hold onto hope and grow today.
