It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m beyond excited and incredibly grateful for the year that was, and more so for the year that will be!

But 5 days ago on Boxing Day I was feeling the complete opposite. I was probably the bluest I have been in around 10 years, since I broke up with my son’s father just 3 weeks after he was born.

I woke up and for the first time in almost a decade I thought about bingeing and vomiting. It wasn’t about what I had eaten the day before – I couldn’t even remember or care about that. The problem was I was sitting with very heavy feelings. I’ve sat in these kinds of feelings before, but this was somehow different, and I imagined gorging myself on food and then going into the bathroom to purge it all up.

I hadn’t realized how upset I was – the negative emotions had crept up and suddenly saturated me. So I sat with the pain and wondered what to do. I decided to go for a walk on the beach, rather than reach for the chocolates.

Since then, I’ve had some incredible insights. I think reaching a very dark place can bring in light and make you aware of things that aren’t working in your world, if you choose to address them.

I recently realized that I have a very difficult time dealing with rejection. If I feel rejected by someone, it triggers many very traumatic memories in me. I used to shut down these feelings by using and abusing food. Now that I no longer have an eating disorder, I have to sit with the feelings, and often they keep getting bigger and bigger until I eventually “explode” – and I do this by writing everything down.

Unfortunately, I often write to the person who I felt has rejected me. I go through a set of emotions – upset, then anger, then embarrassment, then I’m very apologetic and then I try and explain myself. This inevitably sends me into deep shame and then I feel worse about myself than before I felt rejected!

I realize that before I start venting in words, I first need to check in and work out if my feelings are actually stemming from self-rejection. Or if I am the one pushing that person away because I don’t feel like they are treating me as I would treat them.

Although I have been fully healed from my eating disorder for nearly a decade, I am still discovering things about myself, growing as a person and working out continually how to be a better me. I keep discovering reasons why I developed anorexia, and what made me hold on to a chronic eating disorder for over two decades.

I think it is essential that we all try and keep working on ourselves and continually learn how to be better people. Not only for our own health, wellbeing and happiness, but so that we can contribute to a healthier, happier, more loving society.

2016 has so many possibilities, and who knows what can happen in just one day or just one year? The best advice I can give you is forgive yourself, love deeply, throw away your demons, keep on your journey and nourish yourself with self acceptance and self love.

Susannah xo

Susannah McAlwey

Sensitive. Sanguine. Sincere.

I miraculously healed myself from a 25 year chronic combined anorexic/bulimic/binge eating disorder, despite numerous medical professionals telling me I would “never” recover! My 25 years of hell was beyond a nightmare with infinite hospitalisations, almost dying from a potassium deficiency, lying to everyone I loved, feeling constant shame and guilt, not being truly connected to anyone, feeling misunderstood by everyone, avoiding any social situation around food, being unable to keep a job or relationship, despising myself every minute of every day, and not living the life I was meant to live – in supposedly some of the best years of my life. I can tell you infinite stories of my addiction, as well as my road to recovery. I can tell you how I cured myself 100% with no lingering symptoms, and I can help you do the same! I call myself “The Nourishment Coach” because I believe eating disorders, disordered eating, body image concerns and obsessions with food and weight stem from issues well beyond food and eating. I believe they can be cured by true self nourishment.