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Each year, I find myself at a different place when it comes time to Passover and checking in my self and my needs for the holiday, especially when it comes to food. I have been fully recovered from a decade-long eating disorder for 14+ years. #IntuitiveEating is my salve.
Each year, I remind myself that whatever I need to do - keep Passover, not keep Passover, start out keeping Passover, change my mind halfway through - is ok. Some years in my journey being recovered, I've been depressed, and I knew that keeping Passover would be dangerous.
Other years, keeping Passover has felt deeply anchoring and spiritually fulfilling, a way for me to feel physically rooted in my body in an ancestral kind of way whereby keeping Passover is a powerful ritual of connectivity. Other years, I didn't even think about it. Like at all.
This year, I find myself in a powerful moment of transition. I am working incredibly hard to reframe how I spend my time and how I take care of myself and how I set boundaries around my time and my self.
And so the thought of spending time worrying about what food is or isn't going into my body feels like an exhausting disaster waiting to happen. I'm already being so intentional about my body and its needs. Why add on this thousand-year tradition of restriction to weigh me down?
And so, as an intuitive eater, as a body recovered from an eating disorder, as a practicing Jew whose favorite holiday has always been Pesach, I'm choosing to liberate myself from the expectation of restricting my food.
I am already a vegetarian. I'm already #glutenfree and mostly #dairyfree to help regulate what used to be chronic sinus infections. What more could I possibly ask of myself in cutting out leavened bread or chickpeas and beans (I'm Ashkenazi) when that's a staple of my protein!
So this is me reminding other Jews out there, whether you do or have ever struggled with an eating disorder, whether you wrestle with your body and food, you have to save yourself first. That's the point of this holiday anyhow. I'm not a rabbi, so consult one as needed.
But I feel like I"m allowed to tell you pekuah nefesh - save a soul. Save yourself. An eating disorder is a mental illness. It is not a permanent place in which to live. THIS is what recovery looks like. THIS - this FREEDOM to choose.
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