love our bodies, love ourselves

Body image. The elusive positive body image that your treatment team constantly chatters about. Sure it would be nice to love your body, but let’s be real here, the notion of loving your body after spending years hating it is frankly insane. Love my body? That was not in the cards for me unless I…More

Recovery isn’t a destination; it is a forever journey. Does this mean it never gets better or you can’t win the fight over your eating disorder? Absolutely not. The struggle against your eating disorder gets easier and you become stronger in recovery, but with an eating disorder there is never a closed chapter or a…More

Body image has always been a struggle for me. Even before my eating disorder, I would say awful things to myself about my body. I could never seem to find peace with the way I looked. I was never enough—tall enough, thin enough, pretty enough—for myself. That hatred and discontent led me into my eating…More

There once was a time where my life where it was barely a life at all. I struggled through each day, worrying about each calorie that entered my body and if I had overeaten. “ Would I gain weight from this cracker?” Was a question that I asked myself all too often. I had developed…More

Hello! My name is Julie, and I am a nursing student and am recovering from an eating disorder. I created an organization to help others who are also suffering from mental health illnesses. My organization is called Running Without Ed which is in the process of becoming a nonprofit organization to help raise money for…More

Self-care sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it? We hear about it all the time. We know it’s something we are supposed to implement in our lives. What we don’t often hear is that self-care begins with self-awareness. Self-awareness makes for a better person, and I’ve come to see self-awareness as an adventure. Sometimes you…More

As we approach Eating Disorder Awareness month for 2014, I think back to the fall of 1979. My freshman year at Penn State University. I was a brutally shy teen who had been fat shamed at home by his mother and bullied at school over his weight, even physically assaulted. A teen who wanted only…More

Have you ever thought about how powerful a piece of paper can be? Whether it be a university acceptance letter, a love note or a birth certificate, sometimes a little piece of paper can have an amazing impact. I realized this at 12 when my teacher assigned my class a unique activity. The activity consisted…More

Let’s face it, if you aren’t “skinny”...life can be really tough for you. “Fat” isn’t just a term that is associated with body size, it is a term that is loaded with other implications such as being lazy, sloppy and ugly. The way society views “skinny” is very different....skinny is associated with being beautiful, successful,…More

Love our bodies, love ourselves. That phrase echoed with me for quite some time. I couldn’t quite understand why it has become such a challenge to love who we are both physically and emotionally. I first got involved with PEDAW because of my passion to help people recognize both their inner and outer beauty. We…More