Hi. This is me, Kim, and this is my personal page. I didn’t put any pictures here to show you how thin I have been or how I look physically now, because it seems that most of us are into comparisons... and you would probably compare yourself or your sickness against how I looked or look. What I have found is that the state of my internal affairs often mirrors my body size, but sometimes not! Lately, since I have been in recovery for the past three years, I have had terrible, horrible struggles which were not evident in my “healthier” looking body. My struggles are still present, but now less noticeable on the “outside”.

 I think that is one of my frustrations in my recovery, that as I gained the weight that I needed to be physically healthy, people began assuming that my inner turmoil and eating disordered behaviors had ceased. The truth is, some of my most terrible seasons have included torrents of exercise and purging, which left my body looking “healthy” and not bone-thin, but my emotions were like a rollercoaster of pain.

 I am grateful for my recovery and what it has taken for me to get to the place where I can embrace the battle I have with my eating disorder and thank God for allowing it in my life. I hate the disease itself, but I am grateful for what it has accomplished in me as a person.

I have begun to be a real individual, full of feelings, hopes, dreams, and not just a being obsessed on achieving the perfect shell. My life is not completely evolving around what I look like or what people think of me, although at times I still struggle. I do not live daily in the deceptive state of hiding my disorder and covering up my actions. I don’t allow my eating disorder to drag me with it into the secretive, deceptive, isolation that it breeds in.

 There are days that I find myself seeking the coping skills that I had while in the midst of my disorder: isolation, numbness, and other eating disordered behavior, but those times are few and far between. For that, I celebrate my recovery for where it is today, although I know that there is further to go on my journey.

 If you asked me what were the key tools that got me here, I’d have to tell you that there were many. My number one help was having a spiritual relationship with the God I know, who has been with me throughout the darkest days when I just wanted to die. I also had the support, the unconditional love of a 12 step sponsor, and later a strong Christian friend, who walked me through the many “dark nights of my soul”. Alongside all of that, was the willingness to continue to reach out to others suffering too... to attend meetings, to seek the help of a trained eating disorder counselor, to break through my fears of seeing a nutritionist and a doctor.

 Some of my greatest victories were the seemingly “little ones”. Allowing myself to be weighed by the nutritionist, without ever knowing my own weight, was a huge step in giving up control for me. That someone else could know my weight without me knowing was enormous. Going to group therapy and being willing to look at the dark shadows in my life, accept them and move on, was tremendously healing. Walking through tough truth with others was hard, but necessary. Sharing my struggles with other women who I didn’t know, bearing my soul and allowing myself to become vulnerable, and even (yikes) cry, was another important part of my healing too.

 It has been a process and a journey, full of valleys and cliffs. Many times I thought I’d fall off that cliff, only to find that I landed on my feet again, stronger for the fall. I have had relapses and triumphs, but mostly, I have had a journey of self-discovery. I hope one day to understand and embrace myself as the person God created me to be. So I guess that’s the synopsis of my story and the reason this website is here. I hope it helps and encourages others walking this walk of faith and gives hope to those who feel that there is no hope.
 

To My Home Page Write me at: soskim@aol.com