Recovery asks a lot of you.
It asks you to trust when trust feels impossible.
It asks you to show up when you’re tired, to believe when everything feels heavy, to keep going even when the world feels like it’s pulling you backwards.

And on top of that, life doesn’t exactly pause when you decide to heal.
Bills still need paying. Work still demands your attention. People still expect things from you.
The world keeps moving, even when you feel like you’re standing still.

It’s easy to feel like you’re failing when stress and healing collide.
When you know all the “right things” to do, but your body still aches with tension.
When your brain still feeds you old lies, even though you’re fighting every day to believe something kinder.

You’re not failing.
You’re human.

Healing isn’t clean or linear or Instagram-pretty.
It’s messy. It’s gritty.
It’s doing the best you can with what you have on days when even breathing feels heavy.

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When stress hits, it’s tempting to slip back into old coping mechanisms.
Maybe it’s restriction.
Maybe it’s overexercising.
Maybe it’s numbing out with control, with busy-ness, with chasing the feeling of “enough.”

Because stress pokes at all your softest parts.
It whispers that maybe you’re not as strong as you thought.
It tries to convince you that healing is conditional, that you’re only “good” if you’re doing it perfectly.

But recovery isn’t about perfection.
It’s about resilience.

It’s about saying:
Even when it’s hard, I will still choose myself.
Even when I fall back, I will get up again.
Even when the world feels too heavy, I will not carry it by hurting myself.

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Here’s the truth no one tells you enough:
Healing is still happening on the heavy days.
Maybe especially on the heavy days.

When you reach for food even though your brain is screaming at you not to.
When you choose rest instead of punishment.
When you show yourself gentleness instead of cruelty, even just once, even just a little.
That is recovery.

That is growth.

The world can feel overwhelming and loud and too much.
But you are allowed to move at your own pace.
You are allowed to make healing small and soft and slow.
You are allowed to make it yours.

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If you’re walking through stress right now, please know this:

You don’t have to “win” at recovery to be worthy of pride.
You don’t have to have a perfect day to be deserving of rest.
You don’t have to hustle through your healing like it’s another goal to achieve.

You are already doing the brave thing.
You are already worthy.

There is nothing wrong with you if life feels heavy and healing feels hard.
That’s not proof of weakness.
It’s proof that you’re alive, that you’re trying, that you’re human.

And being human has always been enough.

xox pepetoe