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August 23, 2021 by Lyndsay K. R. Toensing Leave a Comment

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Taking a pause. Not sure for how long, or what's n

Taking a pause. Not sure for how long, or what's next. But I know it will be beautiful.

#spiritualgrowth #takingabreath #being #selflovejourney #pause

2 years. No justice. Standwithbre.com #sayherna

2 years. No justice.

Standwithbre.com

#sayhername #breonnataylor #standwithbre

Trigger Warning Day 5: It’s national eating diso

Trigger Warning Day 5: It’s national eating disorder (ED) awareness week and I’m sharing my story.

Take care of yourself. If this is triggering for you, don’t read it.

Thank you SO much for the love, support, and notes from people with ED and those supporting a loved one with ED! It means so much to know my story is helping in some way.

ED a serious illness. Not a choice. The earlier it’s treated by professionals, the better chance the individual has of fully recovering.

You can see from my pictures that I’ve shared and from some of the comments, most didn’t know I was suffering. I rarely talked about my struggles with ED, depression, and anxiety.

People with ED perfect the art of wearing masks and “holding it all together”. Some of us are labeled “high functioning” because we are high-achieving people. Which is a coping mechanism.

My coping mechanisms included ED, over-working, and wine. I’d interchange these, also called symptom swapping, depending on who was around. Symptom swapping isn’t effective long-term because it doesn’t address the root issues.

My healing journey has changed from healing and forgiving the past to healing and forgiving myself. Including my relationship with my body and cultivating safety and worth from the inside using the tools from ED recovery and coach training.

Today, I have brittle bones, thin hair, eczema, chronic pain, irregular periods, infertility, and a myriad of other health issues. I still suffer from depression and anxiety, and I’m still in ED recovering.

I have an incredible ED support community, I greatly value a good therapist, and I have some safe, supportive loved ones in my life.

How can you support someone with ED?
DO:
- Encourage professional help as soon as possible
- Educate yourself about EDs
- Forget about the blame or the causes of it
- Act from a place of compassion
- Be a safe space (no judgements)
Don’t
- Ignore it or hope it will go away
- Push food, dieting, or exercise
- Comment on their body or appearance
- Openly judge your body or theirs
- Talk about your diet or weight loss

Please get help if you or someone you know is struggling with ED.

#NEDAwareness #eatingdisorderawareness

Happy birthday to this sweet gal! T is 5 today. So

Happy birthday to this sweet gal! T is 5 today. Some of the best beings are born on February 26th 💚💙💜

Trigger Warning Day 4: It’s national eating diso

Trigger Warning Day 4: It’s national eating disorder (ED) awareness week and I’m sharing my story.

Take care of yourself. If this is triggering for you, don’t read it. This post includes behaviors and trauma.

My ED has evolved from anorexia/bulimia to atypical anorexia.

Atypical anorexia is an intense fear of gaining weight, extreme food restriction without extreme weight loss, and it can produce a normal or above-average weight.

Eating once a day, cleanses, extreme dieting, and excessive exercise became my norm.

Triggers that intensify ED or cause a relapse are unique to each individual and are often tied to the reasons the ED started.

Triggers can include overindulging or not eating enough one day, big life changes, social pressure, or new trauma, including the things like covid, civil unrest, war, etc.

My ED triggers are tied to my trauma in some way.

A well-meaning compliment instantly and unconsciously spun me into binge eating/restriction cycles.

After multiple rapes and sexual assaults, including by men I knew and trusted, I still feel the urge to use behaviors anytime anyone comments about my body. Especially men.

A month after our wedding, my ex told me he no longer wanted to be with me because of my weight. Our 8.5 year relationship imitated the pain, and instability we both grew up with. I don’t remember which came first; suicidal thoughts or seeking treatment. But at 28-ish, I finally sought professional help for the first time.

Fall of 2019, my partner accepted a job back in MN despite my protests. It felt like my feelings weren’t considered and it made me feel as unsafe and unvalued as I did as a child. My ED ensued as I handled the move by myself while my partner started his new job in MN.

Then, covid hit, George Floyd was murdered, and we moved back to WA as the world locked down and burned.

Let me be clear. I’m no angel and I’ve hurt a lot of people myself. The above are only one-sided bits of my journey demonstrating my triggers.

Since my ED was not treated early, I will most likely struggle with it for the rest of my life.

#NEDAwareness #eatingdisorderawareness #edawareness #anorexia #bulimia #atypicalanorexia
#bingeeating

Trigger Warning Day 3: It’s national eating diso

Trigger Warning Day 3: It’s national eating disorder awareness week and I’m sharing my story.

Take care of yourself. If this is triggering for you, don’t read it. This post includes behaviors and trauma.

By age 13, I hated myself, life, and felt very confused about love, safety, and my place in the world.

In 9th grade, a friend said, “Guess who Randy said would be hot if they lost weight. YOU! Can you believe it?” I wasn’t sure if her question was about his comment or about my inability to be hot. But this was the spark that started it all.

I decided that day to not eat for 3 days. We didn’t have scales at home, but my pants became very loose. Even “friends” started to notice. So, I continued.

“Luckily,” the group that came to school to talk about the dangers of eating disorders gave me tips.

I restricted, binge and purged, and excessively worked out. I lost weight, gained control, and with bulimia, also had a reset button on my spiraling thoughts.

I easily hid my behaviors. Dad worked nights. Mom worked late and sometimes out of town. No one questioned when I said I didn’t feel well when in the company of others.

The summer I turned 15, I was raped which added to my internal battle. I “needed” to be thin to be worthy of love, but I didn’t want attention and risk getting raped again.

By Junior year, I didn’t hide my behaviors as much.

Dad saw me purging and drug me in front of my mirror and said, “Look at yourself. You look sick!” To which I responded, “First I was too fat and now I’m too thin. I don’t know what you want from me.”

While I’m sure there were discussions behind closed doors, nothing happened. I didn’t have to see a doctor or talk to anyone.

The summer before senior year I moved in with my sister and her fiancé, splitting bills and “adulting.” My senior year boyfriend was an emotionally abusive, drug addict who offered me meth to help me lose more weight. Luckily, meth never appealed to me.

By graduation, I stopped getting my period, had frequent chest pains, heart palpitations, light headedness, and was deeply depressed.

#NEDAwareness #eatingdisorderawareness #edawareness #anorexia #bulimia #atypicalanorexia

Trigger Warning: It’s national eating disorder a

Trigger Warning: It’s national eating disorder awareness week and I’m sharing my story.

I ask that you take care of yourself. If this is triggering for you, don’t read it.

As mentioned yesterday, eating disorders are caused by a complex interaction of biological, psychological, and social factors. There is no one thing, one person, or one trauma that causes them. Eating disorders can impact anyone of any age, gender, race, ethnicity, social class, education level, or body size.

The foundation on which my eating disorder was built was just as complex.

I heard judgments about weight, food, and body image for as long as I can remember. I learned fatphobia and how having a bigger body would mean I would have a harder time in life. Unfortunately, the messages were not wrong because of the way society views beauty and bodies. But instead of trying to be the change they wanted to see in the world, the people that surrounded me contributed to the toxicity of it.

I was told I was too much. Too hyper, too loud, too emotional, too aggressive, too angry, too impulsive. I witnessed a long lineage of unhealed trauma dripping down from one generation to the next, and I felt the lashes of their own wounds when it dripped onto my siblings and me.

I witnessed the objectification of women in society, by family, and friends while simultaneously hearing how women weren’t to be trusted. Women lie, cheat, manipulate, and destroy families because they can’t control themselves. Listening to conversations about how miserable it was for men to have to “deal” with a woman “on the rag” or going through menopause. Messages that women’s natural cycles made them inherently bad. That made me inherently bad.

My truth was rejected, my experience was invalidated, and the belief that I am of value eroded. I learned to believe that being a girl, and a “big” girl, meant I wasn’t worth loving, honoring, respecting, or worth protecting. My value was only realized when I shrunk down, literally and figuratively, to fit into the box that society built for me.

Be small. Be quiet. Be obedient.

#NEDAwareness #eatingdisorderawareness #edawareness #anorexia #bulimia #atypicalanorexia

Trigger Warning: It’s national eating disorder a

Trigger Warning: It’s national eating disorder awareness week – that means time to share.

Please take care of yourself. If this is triggering for you, don’t read it.

Picture: Aug 1996, 16 years old, leaving the hospital after my first back surgery.

When people think of eating disorders, they often think of anorexia and emaciated people. In this photo, I was in the thick of an unchecked and undiagnosed eating disorder that started about 2 years prior.

Restriction, binging and purging, overworking out, diet pills, and major depression and anxiety.

My social life improved. Friends praised me; my boyfriend loved that he could easily close his hands around my thighs. My family no longer made comments about my weight. Thin privilege is real and I loved it.

Unfortunately, no one realized that I was struggling with serious mental illness.

According to the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA), eating disorders are the second most fatal mental illness in the United States. Only surpassed by opioid use disorder.

Eating disorders have MANY causes, and are often broken into 3 categories:
👉Biological – If someone in the immediate family struggles with an eating disorder or body image issues, the members of that immediate family are at risk of developing one.
👉Psychological – People who have or had an anxiety disorder are more prone to developing an eating disorder.
👉Social – We are steeped in diet culture for too many reasons to get into in this post. Our peers, society, political agendas, marketing and advertising, socioeconomical, racial and ethnic “assimilation”, and other social pressures can increase the risk of eating disorders.

My eating disorder didn’t start when I was 14, the groundwork was laid at a very young age and built up over time from all three causes above.

Over the next several days, I’m going to share more about my journey with my eating disorder. Including what contributed to it, what did and still does triggered behaviors, and what I do when I relapse. Because yes, I still relapse.

My hope is that sharing my story will help someone in some way.

#NEDAwareness #eatingdisorderawareness #edawareness #bulimia #atypicalanorexia

"Attorney General Daniel Cameron just announced th

"Attorney General Daniel Cameron just announced that the grand jury failed to indict any of the officers for Breonna Taylor’s death, and that they would indict only Officer Brett Hankison with shots fired into other apartments during this senseless killing." Standwithbre.com

We are in the middle of Black History month and weeks away from the second anniversary of the fatal shooting that took Breonna's life.

Today, according to the New York Times article 'Officer Accused of Recklessly Firing in Breonna Taylor Raid Goes on Trial', "Brett Hankison, a former Louisville police detective, is facing three charges of reckless endangerment after the authorities said he fired “blindly” into Ms. Taylor’s apartment, endangering her neighbors."

"The only trial to emerge from the nighttime police raid that killed Breonna Taylor began on Wednesday, but the case centers not on an officer who shot her, but rather on a former police detective accused of recklessly endangering her neighbors by firing into their apartment in Louisville, Ky."

Some may point out that her family was paid and that some no-knock warrant changes have been made (with very limited adoption). But that was hush money and appeasement, not justice. Justice would mean that the people that killed her, that went to the wrong place and broke in windows and doors in plain clothing, and opened fire when Breonna's boyfriend tried protecting himself and Breonna, would be held accountable.

We all know, Breonna was the first and unfortunately won't be the last.

According to Statista.com (February 1/2022), "Sadly, the trend of fatal police shootings in the United States seems to only be increasing, with a total 995 civilians having been shot, 117 of whom were Black, as of December 2021. In 2020, there were 1,021 fatal police shootings, and in 2019 there were 999 fatal shootings. Additionally, the rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans was much higher than that for any other ethnicity, standing at 38 fatal shootings per million of the population as of January 2022."

Please continue to support reform, continue to remind people of unfinished business, and continue to spread LOVE above all.

Had to share this adorable face. Feels like a toug

Had to share this adorable face. Feels like a tough day out there.

#pyrlife
#greatpyrenees
#selfcare #healingjourney

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