Addiction & Recovery

My meetings were for adult children of alcoholics. Anorexia took me there at the suggestion of my psychologist. Anorexia that landed me in the hospital twice by the time I was 24. Anorexia that I almost succumbed to but didn’t. I went to the meeting because I wanted to show my therapist that I didn’t need any stinking meeting or anybody else for that matter. Anorexics often thrive on the high of not needing anything from anybody. I walked my 80 pound badass self into that meeting and hated it. It was at that meeting that somone challenged me in a way that I’d never been challenged. I kept going back for a couple of years and kept going to therapy and I got a better handle on my life and how to separate from my folks. It was a long slow slog. I go back to therapy ever couple years for a year or two and then get back to living. I’m back in it now and have been since the election in 2016. I don’t go to the meetings anymore...my parents are long gone but those relationships and interactions from those I got to know at the meetings changed me and my perspective on what it means to belong to a group of people who can help each other through intense pain, longing, hardship and shame with no judgement...people who are willing to lean into all of that. 30 years later, I’m grateful for where I was and where I am. Some days it is still a battle. Some days I’m cruising....like anybody else I guess.