I have a friend who once told me that when he stopped smoking, he started breathing.
When I quit doing drugs after seven years, it felt like I woke up. But before that happened, I hit rock bottom. The only way I can describe it is that I had a God intervention. I was curled up on my boyfriend’s mattress, experiencing these bizarre explosions going off in my head. And then I heard a voice speak to me. It said, “you do realize you are killing yourself.” Which I acknowledged to be true. In fact, I’d known it for while but was unsure of what to do. I was so desperate, I kept listening and that same voice then told me exactly how to stop.
6 months later, having quit cold turkey, I had a revelatory experience. The sun beat down on me as I stood on some ancient Greek ruins in Italy, as I took in the panoramic countryside. In that moment, it felt as if a fog lifted from my mind, and for the first time in my life, I felt truly alive. I’d been using substances since I was 13.
In that moment, I knew I was ready to know God. And although I had no idea what that actually meant, I felt a desire deep inside of me, and understood that search would be the focal point of my life.
Unfortunately, I still had to deal with my eating disorder.
I knew that in order to successfully be on a spiritual path, I had to have a healthy psychology. It was time for me to continue on this path of healing myself.
From the time I was a young girl, I always used food to console and nurture myself. It was my go-to. Starting in high school, my weight began to balloon from anxiety and stress. I could not stop eating.
My weight continued to yo-yo throughout my early 20s until I was ready to finally address my issues. I found and read a book by Geneen Roth called, When Food Is Love. On those pages, Roth spoke directly to me and I began using her strategies. I stopped dieting and started listening to my body. “Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full. Eat whatever you want.”
It took me four years to work through the underlying issues (and emotions) that were causing me to uncontrollably eat. This process invited me to make peace with myself and my past. I had to forgive. This opened me to the opportunity to be intimate both with myself and with other people. In other words, I had to learn how to trust, and finally free myself.
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