I came across this memory a few days ago and it took me back…back to a day we saw a glimmer of hope during my daughter’s recovery ….and she gave me permission to share it….

As a child, growing up in South Africa, she had never seen or felt snow…. It was something she had always wanted to experience.

We lived in Cape town, South Africa and the closest she’d ever seen to snow was a hailstorm one day when she was little, she had run outside to catch the ‘snow’ and brought it in to show me, so excited….

When she was 14 years old, we made the life changing move to New Zealand, and this meant that her wish to see and feel snow could become a reality… 

Adjusting to life in a very different country with a very different culture took its toll on her and a year to the day we landed in New Zealand, she was diagnosed with Anorexia nervosa, this was devastating, and the eating disorder became her reality and the idea of visiting the snow just a distant thought….

Getting through each day became the only focus and there was  no space for dreams or wishes…For so long, she did not want to go anywhere at all, barely leaving the house…. 

She hadn’t spoken for months, there had been no eye contact or smiling…..just silence…

As a family, we had tried to gently ask her what she would like to do, where she would like to go…. nothing was really working, she was so very shut off from the world, a shell of herself…

One weekend during our second Winter in New Zealand, we decided we were just going to take her to the snow ….. And this is what happened….

The drive to the mountain was silent, she couldn’t show how she was feeling about it, we couldn’t see whether there was any glimmer of excitement or joy buried under that shield the eating disorder had given her….

Arriving at the mountain, I got out of the car and remember looking out at the snow, up at the clear crisp blue sky and just putting every ounce of hope I had left inside me out into the universe…. muttering under my breath ‘Please let it be today, please let’s find a spark’

At first, she held back, looking at the utter awesomeness of the snow, the white magical powder covering absolutely everything around us….

And then she walked into the snow as we watched, holding our breath….

This was truly a soul moment for her having never seen this natural wonder before…. we didn’t realise it would also become a soul moment for us too…

The minute she lay down in the snow…. she let go….it was as if her soul crept back into her body… she gestured for me to join her, and I ran to lay down with her…. she turned to me and for the first time…she smiled… 

For a moment, it was as if the eating disorder did not exist in our lives, and we had our girl back….

There was still no voice, she had been silent for months but there was eye contact…. there was that spark…This wasn’t the day the eating disorder just ‘left’…it doesn’t just happen that way…. but it gave us another tool in our kit to help support her, to give her more….something to recover to.

Nature is such a healing force and this trip to the magical white beauty that day allowed a little life back into her existence.

Finding connection to the awesomeness of nature can allow someone with an eating disorder to see that there is so much out there, so much to do, so much to love, so much to heal for… 

Recovery is HARD, being there for someone you love during recovery is shatteringly difficult and can, at times feel impossible…

The one lesson I learned as a parent, was to remember that she was still there, she needed gently and sometimes firmly and lovingly to be guided into those things she truly wanted in her life, the things she was missing out on….

I will never regret ‘telling her’ that day, we were off to the snow, I didn’t ask, I didn’t compromise, I just told her…there were no guarantees I could get her in the car yet she did reluctantly join me for the drive….

The eating disorder can come up with so many ‘reasons’ why someone suffering cannot do the things they truly want to. Having someone to support the person and give them the reassurance that they CAN do the life things can be a massive step forward in recovering to a life beyond living with the eating disorder.

These little glimmers all fit together eventually, just like a puzzle. And all of the broken pieces fit back to become whole again.

Hold on to hope, get out in nature, the world is bigger than the eating disorder and someone with one, needs to see that…

See video…..