Season Four: Life After Recovery

How I'm honoring joy, peace, and mess after 19 years of therapy.

The cold bar I’m cooped up in is covered in cobwebs. They’re not real—it’s mid-October and already local businesses are preparing for Halloween festivities. Paper bats blow in the breeze of a dusty fan. I’m holding back tears as a familiar song plays in my headphones. Hugging myself, I let out a small grin. These tears are ones of joy. Tears of pride. Tears of relief. I’m not that girl anymore, I think. I’m quickly aware that my laptop is the brightest light in the bar, and I wonder if I’m exposing myself. I wonder if it even bothers me anymore. I wonder how it once ever did.

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Hi Pretty Humans,

Welcome to week one, season FOUR of The Messy Middle.

If you’re new here, feel free to bop back to Season One and check out the archive.

I am so incredibly grateful to you for your readership. I started my Substack in January, and there are now 1,000+ of you here, and 100 of you are paid subscribers. THANK YOU.

If you are not yet a paid subscriber, I AM STILL GLAD YOU ARE HERE.

And, if you’ve found any of my writing supportive, entertaining, or remotely worthwhile, becoming a paid subscriber shows me what I’m doing might actually matter.

Without further ado, welcome to Season Four.

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I’m sitting in this bar, trying, to the best of my ability, to write this newsletter for Season Four of The Messy Middle.

Writing has felt like walking through concrete lately. I know I have to do it. I know I can. But every time I put my feet in the hardening mold, I wonder why I’d chose to walk through something so heavy.

Sometimes when I can’t get in the flow of writing I play my “sad playlists.” I know I know, not an effective tool for staying grounded in the present, but honestly effective for conjuring an emotional seed of inspiration when I’m lacking it.

“Look up” by Joy Oladokun comes on my headphones, and suddenly, I’m not in the bar anymore.

I’m on an airplane, wine drunk and hopeful. On my way to start a life without my ex-husband. On my way to find peace and relaxation. On my way to connect with something bigger than myself, and hope that, above all, getting divorced wouldn’t be the thing that ended me.

I remember the painful months that followed. How desperate I was for relief from the confusion and pain of my grief. How I was so wrapped up in doubt and insecurity, and how my eating disorder returned full force to help me cope.

That heaviness feels like a lifetime ago, and perhaps writing has felt like walking through concrete because I’m ignoring what’s true: That I’m no longer stuck in a hardening mold, and it makes no sense to try and step backwards.

Photo by Etienne Pauthenet on Unsplash

It’s taken three years to build myself back up.

I’ve had to move in with my parents a handful of times. I’ve gone back to therapy and eventually, re-admitted myself to eating disorder treatment. Life was dark. Heavy. Like concrete.

And in the heaviness, I wrote. I poured myself into the concrete so at least it could feel like me. I lay in it fully, allowing the hardness to mold my shape, honoring the weight of all that was and begging for the day I’d feel strong enough to break free.

As time passed, I found more comfort in myself, less fear of what was unknown, and the ability to manage what once felt like impossible puzzles. I wrote, I went to therapy, I made friends, and ultimately, found stability.

Somewhere between my most recent round of eating disorder treatment and today, the concrete has softened. Or, I’ve found strength. Or both happened, and I felt light enough to step out of the stickiness.

I spent this past summer honoring the levity. I played with friends. I played with time. I played with nature and milo and men. I allowed myself to let go of living in the past and have faith in the future. I spent most of the summer uncertain. Unsure. Lost. But I was well. And now, I know why.

Photo by Taylor Deas-Melesh on Unsplash

I’ve been in a lot of therapy—I mean A LOT.

I started at age 15 with a psychoanalytic therapist (i.e., let’s investigate your past, your childhood, your relationship with your mother and father and draw conclusions as to why you are the way you are). In college I saw a Cognitive Behavioral (CBT) therapist and learned to reframe my cognitive distortions—i.e., the beliefs or thoughts I had that were actually making life harder, smaller, and more painful.

The first time I attended eating disorder treatment I was introduced to Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which hosts a 200-something page manual of life skills like emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, mindfulness, and distress tolerance.

Years later I saw a therapist for EMDR to work through sexual trauma, then an Existential therapist who sent my brain on a goose chase looking for meaning in a meaningless existence, an attachment therapist who helped me see how my anxious attachment was causing issues in my marriage, an energy healer who did quantum healing on me to help me release the strain of my relationship with my mother, and countless other one-offs, longterm therapeutic relationships, nervous system healers, and more. 

I’ve gone back in time, planned for the future, let go of the past, accepted what I can’t control, reframed my distorted thinking, created new beliefs about myself and the world, learned to set boundaries and communicate, grieved, tapped into my mind-body connection, learned to use my body as a mechanism for mental and emotional relief, tried medication, been hospitalized…fuck me up and heal me sideways, I’ve done it all.

And what fascinates me now, here on the other side of all that fucking work, is how unbroken I feel. Not because I feel mended or healed, but because I don’t attach shame or blame to everything I’ve struggled with.

I truly believe (now) that I coped the best I could with life based on what I knew—I wasn’t a broken, damaged, unsolvable puzzle—I was a kid without a roadmap, a young woman without a voice, a person in a truly messed up society attempting to navigate this bizarre and still real existence as a modern human being. None of what I went through makes me bad. It makes me beautiful, because I tried.

Photo by Nuh Enes Sakallı on Unsplash

I’m hugging myself in a cold bar in Seattle, because when the old familiar song came on my headphones, I remembered how much three-year old me longed for this moment.

I remembered how wrapped up she was in healing, and how little she knew about living. I remembered how much pressure she put on herself to be well, to be symptom-free, to be “out of the cycle of suffering.” I remembered what it was like when my perfectionism still managed to hi-jack my wellness.

Of all the therapy and healing I’ve tried, of all the work I’ve done, of all I’ve learned and practiced, there is one true conclusion I’ve come to:

Wellness is not the absence of pain. Wellness is the presence of everything.

If you’d like to hear me talk more about this concept, I’ll be delivering a keynote speach at Cadre’s Wellness Summit in Minnesotta This November. Get your tickets here!

Yes, I absolutely had to work through trauma in order to see the world as safe. Yes, I for SURE had to reframe my thoughts and beliefs to think I was worth being someone’s friend or lover. Yeah-HUH, I needed to find tools and skills to communicate, manage my feelings, and cope with life’s stressors in order to navigate being a person.

And, now that I have, I’m so fucking happy in the mundane-ness of my life. I’m not living on cloud nine or constantly zen or able to effortlessly mitigate stress or rejection. I’m not sober or eating clean or sleeping consistently. I’m not perfect—I’m a mess. But my mess is mine, and I love it. I accept it.

I allow myself to live from a place that Rachel wants to, instead of a place I think I’m supposed to. I make time for friends and family and play. I say no when I don’t want to do things and set silly, pressure-less goals when I feel like I need motivation (aka, I signed up for a half marathon that’s next week, lmk if you want a story on how I’m navigating that as someone in ED recovery).

I live as much in the here and now as I can, while still honoring what future Rachel might be grateful for.

It’s a both/and. 

And now that I’m here, holding myself in the place I’m in where joy comes freely and ease is the norm, I remember when it wasn’t, and I feel grateful.

This is the theme of Season Four. Life After Recovery. Life after grief. Life after suffering. Life after the dust settles and the concrete melts. Life—not perfection, not “healed,” but alive.

I hope you’ll join me. 

All my messy love,
Rachel

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If you’re still working through your own concrete, I have created several tools to help you.

After 19 years of therapy and a master’s degree in mental health counseling, I’ve tried to distill all that I know and what has worked into simple, affordable tools.

📚Grief Workbook

If you’re grieving a loss, moving through heartbreak, or entering a new chapter of your life, try my Grief Workbook:

💖Inner Child Healing

Struggle with self-love, emotion regulation, or trusting yourself? I’ve created a comprehensive Inner Child Healing pathway (masterclass, workshop, and journal) to help you re-parent yourself, honor the true you, and lean into joy.

✍🏻Write to Heal

Want to transform your past into a story that might help others? This workbook helps you work through old stories and alchemize them into art, creative endeavors, or private healing.