A Message From The Mushrooms
A little mushroom said to me,
“Restoring connection is eating disorder recovery.
An eating disorder keeps you far away;
Armoured and defended by focusing on how much you weigh.
In trying to make yourself small,
Your dying body tries to convey the message of: ‘stay away, once and for all’.
I know it’s hard to start trusting life,
To reach for connection rather than to pull back in strife.
In eating disorder recovery you learn how to take small steps towards intimacy.
Intimacy that feels safe unconditionally.
Do not let food become a place of projection.
Let your soft animal body be held in tender affection.
Yield to the Earth and let her body remind you of your inner direction,
Her soil holding mycelium networks, and her waters glistening reflections.
Nourish yourself with loving connection.”
It took me many years to realise that I was struggling with an eating disorder. Many people didn’t even realise either. In fact, rather than concern, I received comments from other people saying that they wished they had the control I had.
If only they knew that whilst externally it looked like I was in control, internally I felt overwhelmed, chaotic, and out of control.
The eating disorder was totally ruling the show. I no longer had control over it.
Many, many years later when I was no longer starving and was far into my own recovery, I tapped back into the energetic frequency of anorexia with the support of psychedelics in a journey. I remembered what it was like. I connected with the uncountable number of people around the world caught in the loop of restriction and starvation.
I remembered what it was like to be consumed by anorexia again.
The fear.
The confusion.
The anger.
The grief.
The disconnection.
For people with anorexia there is a deep fear of getting hurt again. Stuck in dysregulation, the body holds the fear, and anorexia is a desperate attempt of keeping that fear away from manifesting again.
Eating disorders stem from trauma of all kinds, including early traumas that people either don’t remember or have written off as insignificant. Trauma occurs in relationship and in the external environment, and so eating disorders are coping strategies that try keep the world and other people far away.
When no one is listening, when the world feels too loud or too quiet, or when no one is attuning to the needs that are trying to be communicated through words or through body language, starving becomes the only way to say, “get away.”
I have heard my clients say (and I can so relate), “When my bones stuck out, people didn’t want to touch me - I felt relief and protected.”
When someone starves to the point of disappearing, then there is no body to touch. In some ways, anorexia is like the walking dead.
This psychedelic journey showed me how some people literally have to disconnect from all living life, from the body and its needs and cues, so that no other body can come near them.
The cost of this is incredibly high, deep and painful. The energy it goes into trying to protect oneself is draining. The veil of life and death can feel so thin at times, draining connection and purpose from the person.
Connecting to this reality that so many people are enduring this at this time, with the support of psychedelics, was sobering.
And it inspired me even more to commit to continuing to understand the complexities (as well as the simplicities) of eating disorders - and - how we can start to create a world where eating disorders do not exist. A world where communities, cultural norms, and paradigms support each individual to live freely, to make empowered choices, and to feel regulated.
Despite the heaviness of this message that came through in the plant medicine journey, I was also reminded that in order to breathe life back into the body is to reconnect and reinvigorate the connection with the Earth – with the great body that nourishes all of us.
I was reminded that to recover, we have to connect with the aliveness of life. And I received the invitation from the Earth herself that this can be found by spending time with the Mother Earth - and to RSVP immediately.
To drink in her nourishment by bowing to the soils.
To sing to her waters.
To listen to the whispers in the wind.
And to remember how all of life is connected – and how our bodies are part of this delicate web.
This is how we recover. Through healing the wound of separation, we integrate the fragmented aspects of ourselves, reconnecting back into the fabric of the whole, only to realize that we in actual fact, we were always connected and that we deservingly belong.
Through reconnecting back to our bodies in relationship with the Earth, we are struck by the fullness and aliveness that is already present, waiting for us, and is that here for us to drink in and be nourished by it.
Photo by Qingbao Meng on Unsplash