Recovery

There I was, gone for 2 months, and as I come back, looking forward to re-entering the blogging world, it is just in time to learn that Janine is quitting one of the link-ups I join regularly. At this point, I'd love to thank Janine for hosting the Finish The Sentence Friday so far, for introducing me to it and providing something to write about every Friday  :-)

Luckily for me, the link-up still continues, hosted by Kristi and Stephanie, with quite an interesting cue for this week:

The most incredible thing my body has ever done is...

... recovering from whatever I've thrown at it over and over again.

Going back, starting in my early teenage years, I've never been good to my body. For years, I've suffered from severe eating disorders, gaining and losing again 20 or 30 pounds within a matter of a few months, eating meals just to yuck them up again in the bathroom minutes after getting off the table.

Once I was somewhat over all that, still panicking when thinking about fat or sugar, I compensated with sports. I went into martial arts and started to pack on muscles. I've destroyed the skin on my shin bones to prevent pain, at times, my whole body was more black and blue than normal color, but still I kept pushing, until I had this moment in the bathroom in one of the clubs I frequented and saw that bull-necked girl in a neckholder top and decided I had to change.

Yes, at this point, I was firmly lodged into the party scene, drinking heavily with the bikers and dancing the nights away in hip-hop clubs. There were weekends I was neither sober nor got any sleep, and those weekends were the rule, not the exception.

Luckily, at this point I entered my 20s, and my priorities changed. I didn't drink much any more, slept more, and my body returned to normal. I went to college and eventually met the husband. We were married and moved to the U.S., and I found a new drug: work. This was maybe the healthiest addiction I've had so far, but long work weeks paired with compressing 2 years of college into only 15 month and my first pregnancy again brought my body to the verge of just collapsing.

Then, we had Lily, and my life changed. It was a long and difficult birth, and when we finally got to hold our daughter in our arms for the first time, I knew that I had to change. I needed to be healthy, in body and mind, to be the mother our daughter would need. Someone, who is a positive role model, someone, she can watch and model her own life after, and become a healthy and happy person.

At that point, I don't know if my body would recover, from all the damage I have done, from this difficult birth and problematic recovery afterward. But surprisingly, it did. My body has not only recovered but managed to create and sustain two more children, and I feel the healthiest I've ever been.  And this truly amazes me.

I hope you all have a great weekend!