recovery

I stared at the picture of her sitting in the courtroom sobbing; I read the news stories, and I cried, too. As a sexual assault survivor myself, I felt a lot of things in that moment. Above all, the ruling was a reminder to me that, as a woman, I do not matter. Not in the eyes of society, not in the eyes of the law. It was a reminder that I do not deserve safety, nor will I be guaranteed it. It was a reminder that my body is not mine, and it never has been.

“Are you a cutter?” the medical aide asked me, gearing to strap a blood-pressure monitor around my upper arm to take my vitals at 11 o’clock one evening.

I’m afraid I’m going to lose my wife to AA. My wife and I are both in our mid 30s and we’ve been married for six years, together for nine. When we met, we both drank socially, or I thought we did. I started noticing after we got married that her drinking increased.

The first time I remember learning what a safeword was, I was sitting in my college dorm, devouring blogs about kink and BDSM. It all seemed so foreign to me, a teenager who couldn’t imagine real people doing any of the taboo things these blogs talked about.

I was jealous of the dog. “That dog gets to be so thin,” I tried to explain, tearfully, to my partner, “and it doesn’t even have to try. I’ll never be that thin.”

I’m a big proponent of teaching our loved ones how, during the holidays, to be gentle with our eating disorders (both in recovery and out).

The first time I cut myself, I didn't even realize I was doing it. I was at a high school party with one of my favorite people, whose effortless brand of "Naturally Glamorous with a Heavy Dose of Irreverent Wit" had once again commanded the attention of everyone in the room.

Here are a few ways you can do some inventory on your own behaviors and start dealing with addiction in a healing way.