Grief, ED recovery, Mental Health and all the lovely things that give my Sisyphean rock meaning
Pretty Painful Grief Letters doesn’t ask you to process or “move on.” It simply sits with you, honest and raw. Grief is lonely, but this book makes it a little less so — like having someone beside you who understands the ache without needing to fix it.
I thought starving would erase my anger, but it only buried it alive. When WeeGee died, my anger was grief with its teeth out. Recovery means I can’t run anymore. I have to sit with Angry Rhio, feed her anyway, and let her break me open.
Recovery isn’t a straight line — it’s whiplash. Some days I can eat without thinking, others every bite feels like a fight. I delay meals, restrict without meaning to, and feel crushed by my body’s weight. It’s like crash-landing from space, suddenly aware of gravity pressing on everything.
Being sick in recovery forced me to stop, and without distractions, all I could do was feel. Getting better meant facing my changing body, creatine panic, oedema, and weight gain — all at once. And through it all, I realised something: coping mechanisms work so well, they stopped me from coping.
Woken by my GP and a ringtone loud enough to break the dead, I found out my liver enzymes are high and my lymph nodes still swollen. I didn’t feel much about it. Just took Sticky Junior to the doctors and kept eating sausage rolls like nothing’s wrong. Maybe nothing is.
I bought the Starbucks. I blogged. I showed up. I did the things that are supposed to help. But sometimes self-care feels like shouting into a black mirror - a screen that only reflects your own tired face back at you. And still, people ask if you’ve tried yoga.
Recovery isn’t soft lighting and healing crystals. It’s grief. It’s crying in Asda over leggings that no longer fit. It’s showing up for meals you don’t want. It’s rage, numbness, hunger, and hope tangled together. I’m not healed - but I’m trying. And that trying is what healing really looks like.
Buying clothes in recovery isn’t a glow-up montage - it’s a fight with Clippy, grief over leggings you've burst out of, and a quest to not be bottomless in Lidl. But somehow, in navy and Nike Air Max, I’m finding pieces of myself again. Not just clothes - breadcrumbs back to who I used to be.
Twelve years in recovery, and I still wore clothes like camouflage. Now, in relapse recovery, my body changes daily—and suddenly I have to ask: who am I dressing for? Who have I ever been? This time, I’m choosing clothes that fit me, not just physically, but the parts I buried to survive.
I didn’t want sympathy, I just didn’t want to disappear again. These swollen glands might be nothing, but the peanut butter of resistance night? That was everything. A step off the rope bridge. I want to bring you with me — with balloons, and peanut butter, and something like hope.
