A friend gave me the book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott for my birthday earlier this year. I started reading it a few weeks ago and found one passage that really spoke to me:
“I also remember a story that I know I’ve told elsewhere but that over and over helps me to get a grip: thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”
When I think of how I’ll ever recover from my eating disorder, I’m often overwhelmed and “immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead.” However, I realized that if I approach my recovery “bird by bird” – minute by minute, hour by hour, bite by bite – it doesn’t seem as hard. I don’t have to put crushing pressure on myself to recover today, or even tomorrow, or to never binge again. I don’t have to take on the rest of my life all at once. I just have to face each urge as it comes.
Today, I felt a strong urge to binge. I told myself that there was a lot I don’t know. I don’t know what the future holds or when or how I’ll recover from this eating disorder, but I do know that right now, in this moment, I can choose not to binge. And I didn’t.
