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Books That Brought Me Back
13
items I spent over a decade running after freedom before I finally got set free about 5 years ago. These are books I read along the way — not a program, not advice, just what helped me on the road to getting truly free. If you’re still in it, I hope one of...
Sections
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What Actually Helped
What Actually Helped
Books, workbooks, the program I lived in, and a place to call if you need a person instead of a page. Roughly in the order they mattered to me.
This was the first book I read on my recovery journey. I don’t remember every detail of it now, but I remember it being the start — the first time I let myself actually look at what I was dealing with instead of pretending it wasn’t there.
Hope for the Hollow: 30-Day Makeover for Women Recovering from Eating Disorders
After 10+ years of fighting anorexia, I didn’t need another book that just explained what was wrong with me. I already knew what was wrong. I needed something that would actually walk me through getting free, one step at a time, instead of leaving me...
Conquering Eating Disorders: McGee, Robert S
The book told me I could trust my body again. The workbook is where I actually had to practice it. It wasn’t enough to agree with the idea — I had to sit down and work through what my body was actually telling me, one exercise at a time, instead of o...
The Intuitive Eating Workbook: Ten Principles
I could quote the facts about eating disorders in my sleep by that point. Ten-plus years in, I knew all the information. What I couldn’t do was see myself clearly, or name what was actually happening underneath the rules and the control. This book di...
8 Keys to Recovery from an Eating Disorder
Written by a husband and wife, and she walked through her own recovery. It's biblical counsel rather than clinical treatment, which means it belongs alongside real care and not instead of it. Good for the woman who wants her faith in the room while s...
Table for Two: Biblical Counsel for Eating Disorders
Putting this here on purpose. Books helped me, but a book is not a lifeline and I'm not a doctor. If you're in it right now and you need to talk to an actual person, this is where the current helplines are listed. There is no shame in using it.
Eating Disorder Hotlines for 24/7 Crisis Help
This is the one that isn't a book. I lived here for a year and it saved my life. It's a residential program in Nashville for young women, and it is completely free — they don't charge you anything. I graduated in August 2016. If you need more than a ...
Mercy Multiplied — Nashville
This is my own testimony, in my words, written at the end of my year at Mercy. If you want to know what actually happened to me and not just which books I read, it's here. I'm putting it on this list because when I was in it, reading that someone had...
My Mercy Testimony — August 2016 Graduate
Nancy Alcorn founded Mercy, the place I lived for a year. These are the stories of girls who walked out of things that looked impossible. This one is on my shelf for a reason — when you've been there, you read it differently.
Echoes of Mercy by Nancy Alcorn
This is the one that teaches you to treat the eating disorder as a separate voice instead of your own. Naming it and talking back to it sounds strange until you try it, and then it changes how you fight. Almost everyone in recovery ends up with this ...
Life Without Ed — Jenni Schaefer
This one isn't about eating disorders, it's about what trauma does to a body. But it explains why the thing you're fighting doesn't respond to logic, and why willpower was never going to be enough. It's dense. Take it slow.
The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk
A memoir, not a how-to, and written by a Christian woman who lived it. Sometimes you don't need another framework. You need to read someone describing the inside of your own head and realize you're not the only one who has thought that way.
Hollow: An Unpolished Tale by Jena Morrow
An eating disorder lives in your thoughts before it ever shows up in your body. This is about learning that you don't have to believe everything your own head tells you — which is the same thing I ended up writing a kids' coloring book about years la...
Battlefield of the Mind — Joyce Meyer