When Healing Doesn’t Happen...

At Least Not In The Way You Planned

I have arrived in the year I will turn 50, and as I write this, I’m six months into the podcast I co-host with my sister about rediscovering happiness in midlife.

It’s called The Road Back Home, named after a poem I wrote in 2018, in the midst of a battle I couldn’t seem to win.

Every time I read that poem now, I'm struck by its powerful foreshadowing of the journey ahead. Proof that even then, in my darkest hour, I had the knowing that ultimately, mine was a call to surrender.

What I didn’t have yet though and which would still be a long & painful time coming, was the acceptance that this was a fight I simply couldn't win.

The Road Back Home - Poem & Artwork by Amanda Grace 2018

The Unraveling

For most of my life, I didn’t recognise that I had an eating disorder. I thought I just had a weight problem.

I convinced myself that if I could just learn how to ‘do’ food, I would get what I wanted and finally be happy.

Not long after turning 40, that illusion began to shatter.

By then, I had spent decades cycling through diets, bingeing, purging and over-exercising. At one point, I had a gastric band surgically placed in my body — not realising that I was effectively outsourcing my bulimia to a medical device.

It malfunctioned, leaving me unable to keep food, or even liquids down, for nearly two years.

And I let it. Because I believed the control it gave me was worth the suffering.

Until of course, it wasn’t.

I proposed to my now husband at the end of 2015 & after much agonising, I had the band aspirated. I launched myself into yet another new year filled with the hope & promise of dieting.

I was determined to be my smallest self on my wedding day—because I needed to prove to myself - and ‘the world’ - that I could.

Then, one month before our wedding, I lost a pregnancy. And I was not prepared for the tidal wave of confusion and grief that crashed down over me.

My old coping mechanisms returned with a vengeance & completely took over. Over-eating, under-eating, binge, purge.

Even drinking wasn’t the escape it used to be—it only made my distress even worse.

The Breaking Point

In 2017, I quit alcohol.

Not as an act of virtue, but one of necessity—because my thoughts when drinking had started to turn dangerously self-destructive.

I soon learned however, that even complete abstinence couldn’t fix my life. That the best it could do was at least stop complicating it.

But I still didn’t deal with what was underneath.

I carried a deeply entrenched belief that I was a faulty product—a woman-child, broken beyond repair—and I despised myself for it.

I hated that I couldn’t live up to the expectations I believed were necessary for my ‘success’. I operated as if every interaction was a silent negotiation of worth.

Instead, I began another descent. This time into overworking as a shiny new vehicle for the addiction I had to proving my worth.

If I couldn’t escape my insecurity through control of my body, then maybe I could do it through achievement.

I convinced myself that I was in recovery. But I wasn’t. I had just entered the final sprint towards my moment of reckoning.

Here’s the truth I eventually had to face

I didn’t know how to cope with life when things went wrong.

• When I couldn’t control my body.

• When I didn’t get what I wanted.

• When life didn’t go the way I had planned.

For years, I had believed that if I could just fix myself—then happiness would follow.

But happiness doesn’t come from control.

It took crisis after crisis to finally force me to look at myself with brutal honesty.

Just after my 48th birthday, on a retreat in the hills of Tuscany, I finally dared to admit the truth. I was exhausted. Unhappy. And completely disconnected from myself.

One evening, I pulled my first-ever tarot card. It was the Nine of Swords, also known as The Lord of Abandoned Success.

And in a moment of piercing clarity, I remembered my poem.

The road back home is not one of triumph.

It was the first time I truly understood that manhandling my way to happiness, was not the answer.

I had spent years fighting myself, trying to force my life into a shape that would make me worthy.

And so it was during that week, tucked away in the cypress tree covered hills of Tuscany, that I quietly accepted my defeat.

And that the answer to all my problems was not to master the 'virtue' of control; it was to concede to my greatest fear, throw down my arms and surrender.

Three days after arriving home from Tuscany and over 6 years after putting down the bottle, I walked into my first 12-step meeting and stayed — not because I wanted to be there, but because I had finally run out of solutions & places to go.

The Gift Of Desperation that brought me to my knees. From my art journal.

Learning a New Way to Live

And so as I enter my 50th year, my work now is to unburden myself of every thought that tells me that love & belonging are things I must earn.

I'm letting go of the idea that my worth is tied to numbers, whether they be flashing on a scale or printed on a pay check.

I have stopped performing and started living.

I am finally accepting my patterns for what they are & changing them with courage, instead of trying to outrun them in fear.

My daily journaling practice now serves not to analyse in the hopes of figuring out where it all went wrong - but to declare what I respect about myself, how I am quietly being of service and to remind myself what I have to be grateful for, as well as what I enjoy.

And also to remain vigilant as to what unsettles me—so I can recognise resentments before they fester, take whatever responsibility I can, realign myself with clarity and self-compassion and take corrective action wherever necessary.

My nightly inventory

It's taken me almost half a century to start building a sense of self from the inside out.

I am no longer waiting for permission to be happy.

I am vigilant about equating my worth with success.

I am careful not to hold my self-esteem hostage to the opinions of others.

I am learning to love & respect myself, without conditions.

I see now that happiness was never something I could earn.

It wasn’t anything that could be handed to me.

Happiness was something I had to claim.

That’s the journey I’m here to write about.

That’s the experience I speak from on my podcasts.

That’s the conversation I want to be having.

Because happiness is a gift you give yourself—not a prize you win for having control.

And so that’s my story, reader. If it resonates, I’m so glad you’re here.

This space is for conversations about what it really means to reclaim happiness.

I invite you to subscribe—because while the road back home is one we all must walk alone, there’s comfort in knowing you’re not the only one walking it.

Always,

Amanda xx