Written by Empowered Member: Margot Hopkins
I admitted to a partial hospitalization program two years ago thinking I would be there for four weeks. Those four weeks quickly turned into a two year long fight to take my life back. I was admitted to residential programs three times, and had countless trips to the hospital. I never could have imagined walking into treatment for the first time that the next two years of my life would look the way that they did.
In the span of three months my eating disorder took everything that I once knew about myself away. With a lot of hard work and time I have begun to find parts of myself again. And now in three weeks I am discharging from intensive outpatient care for the first time since I started two years ago.
If you told me this is where I would be right now a year ago I never would have believed you. I had completely lost hope in my future and in myself. But I was lucky enough to have family, friends, treatment providers, professors and countless others hold onto that hope for me. Knowing that I had so many people behind me gave me the strength to wake up everyday and show up for myself. I take a lot of pride in the fact that I never gave up even on my darkest days. There were so many times that I thought the cycle I was stuck in would take me over forever, but I found reasons everyday to keep going.
When I discharged from residential the last time I wanted to create a new identity for myself as an athlete, and that’s when I found Empowered. I have now been out of residential for a little over a year, and I know I couldn’t have done it without the community that Empowered has brought me. Empowered has saved me from relapse countless times.
Those two years in treatment were by far the most painful years of my life, but I am so grateful to say that I can see the other side. My hope is that telling my story gives at least one other person that is struggling some hope that it can get better even when you think its impossible. Don’t get me wrong I still have my hard days, but I no longer feel alone and isolated by my eating disorder. I have now found the people that surround me with endless empowerment and love.
