Many things annoy me and the thing that’s annoying me today, particularly in regards to eating disorders, and disordered eating is the idea of ‘challenge food’… I think that this over simplifies and actually strengthens our ED, if we step over and miss out on all the nuance involved in this challenge. Hear me out…

What do I want to say to anyone who knows the patterns of restriction/ self hate/ loathing/ general unhappiness/ and crushing perfectionist control like I do?

Watch Brene Brown.

Facts are things that I can google or ask several people and get the same answer… Feelings are not facts, but it is precisely this lack of knowledge and logic that has been guiding my every decision whilst being held captive by my various disorders for most of my life.

Is it all real?

Is none of it?

How on earth do we find out?

… as I cried I asked the universe for deliverance. I asked it to help me quit this fucking pain riddled existence that I called home. The universe answered.

I’ve learnt to be more specific in my prayers. 

I am free to think, do, speak and act in pretty much any way I want. There are consequences always and forever, but the important thing here is that I have the initial freedom to choose all of them. With that freedom is the immense responsibility and awareness that with each choice I make, I lay a new brick in the building I call home. The type of home I’m building relies entirely on the choices I’m making.

If your critique never shifts, is always the same, hurts you and is stopping you from living your life with freedom, love and kindness…Then your critique, quite simply, is wrong.

Failure will always be there, it is what we do with it that matters. Are you going to let yours be as dull as perfection is, or will you use alchemy and magic to transform it?

We are good enough. We are good enough to fail, and that’s what creativity is. It’s thousands of failures all mixed together that somehow turn into something beautiful. This alchemy is not for us to understand, but we can surely just accept it’s inevitable truth can’t we?

This is just one exercise that I use with my students struggling to begin an artwork, it’s a fantastic way to get inside our own heads and spend some time with our true desires and pleasures. I hope you enjoy the process as much as we do!