Shout out to those who begin again even when it's soooo hard!

Hey, all!

Thanks so much for all your "not giving up!" stories and snippets.

When I wrote the OP, I realized many people may relate to that from a viewpoint of weight loss.

For me, weight loss is not so much my focus. For certain reasons, I struggle with emotional eating as a coping mechanism to cover anger and sadness and to keep negative thoughts and feelings at bay.

For most of my life, I was unaware that this is what I've been doing.

Starting again, in terms of my own experience, means breaking the cycle of emotional eating by: 1) developing more awareness that I'm even doing it 2) acknowledging and accepting that, at this time, it still occasionally occurs and will continue to do so until I address the underlying issue and find suitable alternative coping strategies 3) develop and practice new coping strategies 4) being gentle and kind to myself, including positive self talk, when things feel hard and I feel slow and I want to cover up those negative feelings with food.

Something that someone recently told me that I found extremely helpful:

"The healing process is not linear, as much as we want it to be. It would be easier to move from one thing to the next and so on until we are healed. But instead, the healing process is more like going up a spiral staircase. You go around and around, moving through the same struggles again and again...but you are getting closer to where you want to be."

This was great for me, because it spoke to my own thoughts and experiences. Although I recognized I still have difficulties, I do have to stop every now and again to see how far I've come.

If you want to know more about my personal experiences, you can check out my profile. Within I reference two audiobooks that have become great resources for me.

And although many people have heard that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step...not so many people think about how many of those miles are made up of:

- Wandering around because the traveler has no clue of where they are going...they only know they don't want to stay where they are.
- Retraced steps when the traveler hits a dead end and has to turn around.
- Retraced steps when the traveler unintentionally heads right back in the direction they came from, only to, sooner or later, figure out that is NOT where they want to head.
- Expanses of new, challenging and totally unfamiliar territory.
- Terrain that allows the traveler to exercise underutilized muscles and develop strength and surety.

And

- Hundreds of thousands of moments of decisions that may seem irrelevant at the time, but ultimately add up to being exactly what gets the traveler to where they are going.

Best to you all!

~M.C. Turtle