Quotes About Recovery

For all its God language, the Twelve Step program isn't actually an attempt at religious conversion. Really, it just tries to bring us to a place of new spiritual understanding that allows us to live differently in this world.

I relish my life. It is a life of which I am fiercely protective. I have wrested it back from madness, and madness cannot take it from me again. I will not throw it away. So what if it isn't a normal life? It's the one I have.

Steps Six and Seven are often brushed off, especially by the nonbeliever, because they seem to assume a direct relationship with a personal God. But they really are essential, and reconceptualizing them in a way that allows us to reach their spiritual core—the development of a clear moral self—is crucially important to those of us working the Steps in sobriety.

We turn skeletons into goddesses and look to them as if they might teach us how not to need.

It is not a sudden leap from sick to well. It is a slow, strange meander from sick to mostly well. The misconception that eating disorders are a medical disease in the traditional sense is not helpful here. There is no 'cure'. A pill will not fix it, though it may help. Ditto therapy, ditto food, ditto endless support from family and friends. You fix it yourself. It is the hardest thing that I have ever done, and I found myself stronger for doing it. Much stronger.

And so I went through the looking glass, stepped into the netherworld, where up is down and food is greed, where convex mirrors cover the walls, where death is honor and flesh is weak. It is ever so easy to go. Harder to find your way back.

This is the very boring part of eating disorders, the aftermath. When you eat and hate that you eat. And yet of course you must eat. You don't really entertain the notion of going back. You, with some startling new level of clarity, realize that going back would be far worse than simply being as you are. This is obvious to anyone without an eating disorder. This is not always obvious to you.

When it´s bad I feel like I´ve been hit by an anvil, shattered like cartoon characters but without the instant recovery. That´s the deep pit where I feel all lost and alone. But when it´s good, it´s as if all my nerve endings are deliciously electrified; I´m on fire inside and swept off my feet by the passion and energy that washes over me. That´s the pinnacle where I am truly alive

The plants themselves gave me a cure for that: They taught me to bury myself when I need to regain my strength. It is what they do—return to the ground, rest, and begin again.

À vivre trop longtemps avec un bunker à la place du cœur, on s'habitue à la noirceur.

Sus labios revoloteaban como un copo de nieve. El segundo copo de nieve perdido en una playa de verano, y yo que trataba de recuperarlo con mi nevera demasiado grande. A partir de dos copos de ese tipo, puede hablarse de tempestad.

Prima o poi nella vita passa tutto, credimi. Si guarisce sempre, anche se ci vuole del tempo.

Me curo de este amor perdido a golpes de consuelo, es una medicina dulce que a veces pica un poco, pero que me permite reconstruirme.

Era la época en que todavía llevaba mi corazón hecho pedazos metidos en una caja de zapatos.

A heart's wound heals quicker than a soul's scratch.

Picking up the pieces of a shattered dream is better than having no pieces to pick up at all.

Tears are the sound the heart makes when it breaks.

Running too hard too often is the single most common and detrimental mistake in the sport.

Beets are a flavorful, versatile vegetable with a very high concentration of a class of antioxidants known as betalains. Research has shown that betalains have uniquely powerful anti-inflammatory properties, so they help athletes with postworkout recovery.

You can be a depressive and be happy, just as you can be a sober alcoholic.

Pain is a debt paid off with time.

And for three weeks I was trapped in my own mind again. But this time, I had weapons. One of them, maybe the most important, was this knowledge: I have been ill before, then well again. Wellness is possible.

Illness has a lot to teach wellness. But when I am ill I forget these things. The trick is to keep hold of that knowledge. To turn recovery into prevention. To live how I live when I am ill, without being ill.

And yet, I was scared of falling asleep, because the moment I fell asleep my wounds would heal and right then I didn't want that to happen. Right then, I found a strange but real comfort in the pain.