“So rather than running from doubt, shutting down our spirits and hearts, or reaching for quick certainty, we can use doubt as a spiritual practice. We can wait. We wait for our tangled emotions to unknot themselves; we wait for our troubled or angry or grieving spirits to let their sorrow go. We wait for the humility to recognize our… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share
“It is easy to write off childlike faith in the universe and childlike wonder at the world as simply a lack of knowledge about “how life really is.” Well, how is life, really? Do we know—we who have been denying life, life’s beauty and its true challenges, for such a long time? Or did we know better as children, when… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share
“The leap of faith is this: You have to believe, or at least pretend you believe until you really believe it, that you are strong enough to take life face on. Eating disorders, on any level, are a crutch. They are also an addiction and illness, but there is no question at all that they are quite simply a way… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share
I do have faith. I don't have faith that a God exists, nor do I have faith that one does not; I… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
“Something had been confirmed: I was worth giving a shit about; I was getting to be a successful sick person. Sick is when they say something. Of course, I had been sick for five years. But now, now maybe I was really sick. Maybe I wasgetting good at this, good enough to scare people. Maybe I would almost die, and… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share
Because I'm not, in fact, depressed, Prozac makes me manic and numb - one of the reasons I slice my arm in the first… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
“perhaps our purpose is, for the time being, to be human, to live on this earth and in this human community, to receive something… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
I have never been normal about my body. It has always seemed to me a strange and foreign entity. I don't know that there… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
The joy is an absurd yellow tulip, popping up in my life, contradicting all the evidence that shows it should not be there. — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
“At a certain point, an eating disorder ceases to be "about" any one thing. It stops being about your family, or your culture. Very simply, it becomes an addiction not only emotionally but also chemically. And it becomes a crusade. If you are honest with yourself, you stop believing that anyone could "make" you do such a thing— who, your… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share
You can't teach an ear, you can't teach talent, but you can teach people who have those things not to just fly by the… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
It's really interesting to me how all of us can experience the exact same event, and yet come away with wildly disparate interpretations of… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
“Being here, living now, recognizing our smallness, is a spiritual practice. It allows us to be at peace with our humanity. It humbles us… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
We think of bulimia and anorexia as either a bizarre psychosis, or as a quirky little habit, a phase, or as a thing that… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
The anoretic operates under the astounding illusion that she can escape the flesh, and, by association, the realm of emotions. — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share Image
If I had been a different sort of person, maybe less impressionable, less intense, less fearful, less utterly dependent upon the perceptions of others - maybe then I would not have bought the cultural party line that thinness is the be-all and end-all of goals. Maybe if my family had not been in utter chaos most of the time, maybe… — Marya Hornbacher Copy Share
