When I was just two years old, my family moved to a different country.
It's not something I consciously remember, but it’s something that marked me. Something that marked my life.
By the time I was eleven, I'd moved five times; today, well over ten.
Constantly starting over became a familiar part of my childhood, and so did the feeling that I never quite belonged and could never root myself.
Every move meant a new school to adapt to, new friendships to build, and new opportunities to feel like the outsider. Those feelings were reinforced by years of bullying. I grew up believing I was different, that I simultaneously took up too much space and yet wasn't enough.
Looking back now, my eating disorder didn’t start because of the stereotypical “wanting to be thin.” It started because I desperately wanted to feel safe, accepted and, more than anything, in control.
When I was twelve years old, I first started restricting my intake. And in this, I found that sense of control.
By thirteen, I was diagnosed with anorexia.
It’s crazy that, at first, it felt as though the eating disorder was helping me. It numbed difficult emotions and gave me rules to follow when everything else felt uncertain. But what began as a coping mechanism quickly became a prison.
Over the next years, my life revolved around my illness.
I moved between treatment providers, hospitals, therapists and countries, all while trying to continue with school and later university. I had periods where things looked better from the outside, only to relapse again.
Somewhere along the way, being "the skinny one" became part of my identity. Who would I be without anorexia? Would I go back to being a good-for-nothing? I didn’t want to find out.
As the years passed, I remained in limbo. My mind, my body, my life became exhausting. Small. Each appointment seemed to bring another worrying test result.
But the hardest part wasn't what I saw happening to my own body.
It was watching what my illness was doing to the people I loved.
I watched my parents slowly lose hope, and it was heart-breaking. I saw them cry more times than I can count. And worse, still: eventually, there seemed to be no tears left. The message was never spoken out loud, but I could feel it hanging in the room: perhaps this was simply how my story would end.
Either I would spend the rest of my life trapped in this illness, or I would die because of it.
The thought of going to sleep and not waking up felt like a relief.
Ironically, though, the eating disorder kept me from sleep.
Years of starvation had left my body unable to switch off. Night after night I lay awake, physically exhausted but unable to rest. The relentless insomnia, alongside all the other physical consequences I'd learned to ignore, became impossible to ignore.
I became sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.
If death didn't want me, perhaps it was time to give life a chance instead.
At eighteen years old, I admitted myself to hospital in Belgium.
For the first time, the decision was mine. I wasn't choosing hospital because somebody else had forced me to go. I wasn’t admitted just to go through the motions. It was my decision, my commitment, because, despite everything, a small part of me still wanted a future. To see what life could look like at the end of the tunnel.
I stayed for three months. I restored weight, gained insight, formed friendships with people who understood exactly what I was going through. For the first time in years, if maybe ever, I realised I wasn't alone. And that recovery was possible.
Recovery wasn't easy – I cried every day, doubted myself even more, and wanted to give up – but something unexpected happened: I kept going despite all of that. I found myself wanting the people around me to recover, and so I “set the example” and kept pushing on, both inside the hospital as well as on the YouTube channel I set up at the time.
Every day, I encouraged others to finish their meals by finishing my own. I reminded them the world wouldn’t fall apart by showing that mine didn’t. I wanted to prove that recovery was possible.
Somewhere along the way, it really did become possible.
Doctors had warned my parents that my chances of recovery were small. I’d been told I was a chronic case. I became determined to prove them wrong; I refused to let my eating disorder write the ending to my story.
Recovery didn't happen overnight, and there was no sudden ‘shift’ for me.
Recovery happened because things were hard, and I continued anyway.
Gradually, my world expanded again.
As I regained weight, I also regained my energy, my curiosity, my relationships and my dreams. I stopped asking how little space I could take up, and started asking what kind of life I wanted to build.
Today, I have the privilege of working as an eating disorder recovery coach, supporting people around the world as they navigate the same fears and challenges I once faced. I still run the YouTube channel I set up all those years ago, and we now have tens of thousands inside our community.
Every day I see people do the things they once believed were impossible: eating fear foods, reducing compulsive exercise, challenging eating disorder rules, and rediscovering parts of themselves they thought had disappeared forever. Ones they may not have known existed at all.
Watching that transformation never gets old, because I know exactly how impossible those first steps can feel.
If someone had told thirteen-year-old me that one day I would spend my life helping others heal, I would never have believed them.
Yet here I am.
If you're reading this while struggling yourself: I know how convincing an eating disorder can be. It tells you you're the exception. That you've been ill for too long. That you've done too much damage. That recovery is for other people, but not for you.
I believed every one of those lies.
But they were all lies, each and every one of them.
No matter how long you've been struggling, no matter how hopeless things feel, and no matter how many times you've tried before, it is never too late to choose recovery.
There is a life beyond the eating disorder.
A life where food no longer dominates every thought. A life where relationships matter more than calories. A life where your body becomes the vehicle through which you experience life, rather than the project you spend every waking moment trying to control.
I know that life exists because I now get to live it.
And if recovery gave me my life back, I truly believe it can give you yours too.
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