We are on your team.
©2025 ED Recovery Coaching
Words of Wisdom
March 7, 2025
Hello lovely human!
It is with a grateful heart that I greet you today. Thank you so much for granting me a little space in your inbox to share my outlook on life in eating disorder recovery as well as some of my go-to practices for supporting that life.
This months newsletter (which is actually my February newsletter cause #challengeperfectionism) is about an embodied decision that I recently made around an increasingly common beauty practice.
A big layer of my journey that, for me, was really introduced long after my cessation of ED symptoms involved an investigation into the cultural pressures that inform beauty standards and ways those are deeply embedded in diet culture and the wellness industry.
This has come up for me in hundreds of different ways and in recent years it’s come up in the context of the big question: to Botox or not? Botox might not seem like it has anything to do with eating disorder recovery but it presented yet another opportunity for me to pay attention to what feels aligned and good in my experience of being in my body.
Sometime around my 40th birthday the thought floated into my brain:
“Am I gonna have to get Botox now? Is that what we’re doing?”
It came with a little bit of a sinking and heaviness in the pit of my stomach that is often associated with old place of insecurity but I didn’t tune into that immediately. I went a little external first, reaching for answers outside of myself based on old patterning I had to use in past to maintain social safety. I started asking friends about it. Were they doing it? Did they like it? What was it like?
I found out a lot of my longtime friends were on the Botox train… actually most of the people I asked were on that train.
Moving even farther out of my circle and the circle of myself, I then turned to a moms facebook group (I know, I know) where I learned that not only were tons of people doing it but many had started in their late 20’s or early 30’s which apparently makes it work better or for longer! Which meant that I was already behind! I may have spent 10 minutes searching this moms group and reading relevant posts and comments but I catapulted from a gentle curiosity to doing somewhat urgent price comparisons.
I knew I needed to pause. I knew from a place inside of me that I’ve carefully tended to for many years. When I really checked back in with myself, Botox felt daunting. It didn’t feel exciting or alluring. I didn’t feel an internal pull towards it, I felt an external shove into it.
You see, one of my very best friends just loves Botox. She’s an empowered woman in the beauty industry and I’ve had the privilege of growing into motherhood and adulthood alongside her. We have our differences, and I tend to love that about our friendship. For instance, she’s been known to say, “flats are for quitters.”
This cracks me up! I, on the other hand, became a “quitter” two seconds after the world shut down during the pandemic saying, “I may never put shoes on again.”
I feel my connection with the earth through my feet on the ground. She feels the earth just fine as she is thrust into it through a stunning high heel. Neither of these are THE right answer but they are the right answers for our individual selves and we know it from the core of our beings. If you have seen me in my sneakers at the office or if you have seen her styling at the salon in a pair of pumps you have seen a badass woman who works from within herself.
So, after deciding that I was going to stay at the bus station waving at my friends heading off on the Botox train, you can imagine my surprise when the next thing that came up for me was judgement. Whispers of “why can’t they just age gracefully with me?” and “well I just don’t feel comfortable messing with my mirror neurons.” And it wasn’t legitimate concern, it was critical. It was not who I wanted to be in the world.
I could’ve continued down that path but the constriction in my chest, again, told me to push that internal pause button. Because judging my friends that I am, quite frankly, lucky as hell to have who have chosen Botox felt as unaligned to me as the injections themselves. What was it that was making me critical of some of the women I loved most in all the world?
Well, lovely human, it turned out to be a bit of grief and the fear of losing of privilege.
At my core I don’t believe that Botox is right or wrong nor do I believe that it is any of my business if someone else wants to get it. I was making a decision not to get Botox because I knew it was the right decision for me. It was a decision that generated a sigh of relief in my lungs, a settling in my core, and a welcome loosening of tension in my jaw.
But it was also a decision will result in a loss of pretty privilege.
Pretty privilege is something I barely knew I had before it started to fade. As someone who grew up under the scrutiny of 90’s beauty standards in a highly fat-phobic family, my body image was so severely impacted and distorted, I hardly had awareness of any sort of privilege of attractiveness.
Not knowing doesn’t mean I didn’t benefit though. And it seems important to name that there are multiple privileges that I continue to hold. I’m white, I have size-privilege, and I am currently non-disabled.
Still, at the prospect of saying yes to letting my face age, while some of my nearest and dearest embraced the advances and innovation of Botox, I ran into all sorts of emotional stumbling blocks.
And I don’t love admitting this but it all came down to – they’re going to be prettier than me.
Which somewhere deep inside snowballs into,
“They will be more successful.”
“They will be more desired.”
“They will be more protected and safer in the world.”
As if aging, the very natural act of simply showing the years I have lived, on my face, will leave me naked and vulnerable, out in the wilderness, for the vultures to peck at.
Good grief.
There is embarrassment and fear of judgement as I write this and decide to share in in this newsletter. I don’t want to be someone who gets stuck in all of this. I have a hard-won, precious life to live after all. AND it is something that’s been up for me. AND I know I’m probably not the only one getting hooked by such beauty decisions.
The more important piece to me in all of this is that when I dealt with the deeper fears that bubbled beneath the uncharacteristic and unaligned judgment that I was feeling, the judgment got up and walked out. More space to live, to accept, to connect was left in its wake.
This is never going to be a newsletter that tells you Botox is bad or good. That’s up to you! I will tell you, FOR SURE, that I am not morally better for opting out of this one. There are still plenty of beauty practices that I seek out. I get my hair colored. I wear make-up. I try to take care of my skin and have spent more money on skincare products since turning 40. Some of my intention there is to take good care of my body and some of it is pure vanity. Right now, those things feel alright in my body. There’s a joy and energy around them.
What I know is that I made a few decisions that were right for me and that I was able to do so because of my ability to listen to my body and utilize my internal experience and knowing as a compass. It is also true that privileges that I’ve had have made recovery more available to me. While I honor the good and tender work I have done to return to myself, I must also name the privilege that gave me easier access to the various processes that helped me build the bridge.
Yes, I decided not to get Botox. And I also released any “higher than thou” positions on the whole thing. When I felt experiences coming up in me that I knew weren’t aligned with my values and how I want to show up in this precious life in recovery, I acted on it. I turned inward, got honest with myself and allowed myself the time and space to shift into alignment. Here’s a glance into the process I followed:
5 Steps to an Embodied Decision
1. Push that pause button!
If you notice yourself urgently seeking for answers outside of yourself, see if you can just slow yourself down or, I like to say, push pause. See if you can drop below your racing thoughts or activated search for answers by taking a conscious breath or placing a hand on your heart or another part of your body.
2. Find an embodied sense of connection with support:
This could be a person, a sturdy structure, or the earth. This is NOT asking someone for advice or even verbal encouragement. This is allowing yourself to feel support in your body with mindful presence. It could look like holding hands with a trusted loved one or sitting back to back or side by side with your bodies leaned against one another for support. It might be leaning against a wall or a tree. Sometimes. for me, it’s just getting my bare feet on the ground, preferably outside.
3. Track your sensations and emotions with curiosity:
What does your body have to tell you about the decision you are trying to make? What do you feel and where do you feel it? Some common sensations are tense, numb, buzzy, bubbly, heavy, light, loose, dense, dropping, lifting, strong, weak, vibrating, warm, cool, and the list goes on. We often ignore sensations and few of us are given any foundational teaching on how to listen to them but they can offer important information and are often how we know we are having an emotion.
4. Listen to the voice inside you:
This may come up with an emotion or sensation or you may find your voice through an image or song. What is the core of you wanting to express? Journaling or talking to a trusted friend or therapist about what comes up when you try to listen to your self, can be a lovely way to process what your inner voice has to say.
5. Orient to your resolve when you have made your decision:
Notice how you feel when you’ve made whatever decision you land on. Notice what possibility opens up now that you have accessed your innate knowing.
For me and my Botox decision I first noticed some immediate relief and settling. Then I noticed that judgement that came up and I went through steps 1-3 again. Once I discovered that it was actually fear of losing privilege (not judgment about my besties) that was driving the judgey feelings, I could feel the fear and sit with it. Sometimes the fear still pays me a visit and sometimes it’s nowhere to be found. The nice surprise that came after processing all of this is that some space of self-acceptance and appreciation arose. Even the fact that my forehead wrinkles above my left eye are so much more defined that the ones above my right eye became sort of delightful to me. Like, what caused that? Years of raising an eyebrow in nonverbal communication during my years of teaching in my first career? The ongoing flirtation of making eyes at my sweet husband? What stories does my face tell?
I appreciate you reading this today. I would welcome any thoughts or responses that you’d like to share with me! Can you relate? What sorts of decisions are you making in your life that you’d like to experience from a more embodied place? What else would you like to see me write about?
If you received this from a friend and want to get on the list for my free newsletter, please click here to sign up:
https://www.edrecoverycoaching.com/newsletter-sign-up/
Now enrolling: Recovery Rites Program
I currently accept clients exclusively through a virtual 10-week, embodiment-based, group coaching program inviting you to engage deeply with your innate right to healing from your eating disorder. I’ve designed this program around 9 powerful practices to help you set deep intention and presence around your life in recovery so that you can access the transformational energy of healing that, I assure you, you are already holding within you.
You’ve been working on this for a long time, you’ve come a long way, and you’ve learned a lot.
But good grief… Will this ever get easier?
You’ve been told that recovery is worth it, and you want to believe it. You want to be able to settle in your body and in your life. You want to feel connected to others and the world. You want to feel alive!
I’ve been there too. I’ve stood on the precipice of what felt like the riskiest cliff of my journey, where stepping into my intuition felt like walking on a tightrope engulfed in the fog of my doubt and the unknown of the future. I’ve had to take those steps — those steps where you know you have to move away from the eating disorder but don’t know that there will be ground beneath your feet as you chart new territory. I know what helped me, and I know what has helped others. I am ready to join you and our April cohort to begin the next phase of your journey.
If you are interested in this program, I would love to speak with you. Please fill out our interest form here, and I will be in touch to schedule a call.
©2025 ED Recovery Coaching