Art Therapy and My Eating Disorder Recovery

I never imagined that part of my"mom lore"would be that I went to rehab for six weeks before I was even twenty years old. However, six-year-old Erin never would have imagined that a few years from now, she would be scared to eat her birthday cake. Thirteen-year-old Erin would have never thought in a couple of years that people would spread rumors about her being pregnant because they heard her throwing up in the school bathroom every morning. Around August of 2023, my eating disorder had infiltrated every corner of my life, and I thought there was no escape.

Obviously, the people around me who love me dearly thought that was total bullshit, and they shipped me off to a rehabilitation center. I thought I had zero privacy growing up with two sisters my age, but I was seriously mistaken. Zero privacy is living at a residential eating disorder treatment center. I thought there was too much drama in my life while living with my two sisters and attending public school. DRAMA is forty women aged fourteen to sixty, all living in one building together, and they're not allowed to leave the property without two days' notice.

At times, those around me made the rehab center I was at out to be a bougie sleep-away camp where I was making new friends and learning new skills all day."Not quite"is all I could say to that. Don't get me wrong, the turkeys, deer, rabbits, and foxes that lived on the sprawling manor property, which I used as still life references drawing outside during personal one-on-one art therapy sessions— were very nice. I did make many new lifelong friends! However, I went from eating maybe one or two times a day to six times a day. It was a grueling medical battle for every woman at that manor, including myself.

I was told on the packing list I received before my stay that I could bring photos of loved ones and some small pieces of decor for my room. I brought some of the art that I made before my eating disorder made me too tired to create art.

The staff would always compliment it when they entered my room for a check. One day, a nurse encouraged me to hang up my art on the outside of my door so that the rest of the residents could see it. That nurse must have known what she was doing because as soon as I hung up my art outside my door, the compliments came flooding in. They breathed a new life into my recovery journey.

People began to ask me if I took commissions! I was always asked to draw people's pets and favorite celebrities. The commission that really stuck out to me, though, was when a group of older women asked me to draw the gazebo on the manor's property. They wanted copies of the drawing I was to make to commemorate the beginning of their recovery journeys.

Suddenly, I had a new purpose at rehab! Day after day, I sat outside and drew the gazebo.

I would sneak outside and draw in every spare moment I had between groups. People would always see me sitting on the stairs up to the manor in the same exact spot every time I was outside. How else was I supposed to get the precise lighting angle on the roof tiles for each drawing session if I did not sit in the same exact spot every time? Moreover, while people giggled at my dedication to my drawing— they did not know I was also fueling a new commitment to my recovery from my eating disorder.

I will never forget the kindness shown to me by the art therapists at the rehabilitation center. They gave me all the supplies I needed to create my gazebo still-life masterpiece. They even loaned me a massive professional drawing clipboard so that when it was windy, my art did not get blown away! They gave me pointers on how I could improve the drawing, and not only that, but they often asked how the drawing made me feel.

Nobody had ever asked me how my art made me feel. In the past, my art made me sad

and like nothing I ever did would be good enough— because my art never looked good enough to me. This new gazebo piece, put simply, gave me peace. It was a fresh start. I was still drawing in my old style, yet I had a new mindset with me. That mindset was that this drawing was for recovery.

I made several huge mistakes on the piece. At one point, it was so windy, and my jar of ink tipped over onto the paper. There was now a massive blot of ink in the middle of the paper that I had no idea what to do with! That was the defining moment in my recovery. I could either give up on the drawing entirely like I would have in the past or turn this blot of ink into a central piece of the drawing and its message. Recovery is not linear.

I keep that message with me, and try to repeat it to myself several times daily. When I am having a bad day now, I turn to my art. I used to think all of my art never looked good enough. I just now have to accept that everything is subjective. My art is beautiful as it is! I'm sure the metaphor can be picked up on now— the same goes for my body in terms of my eating disorder. Beauty is entirely subjective; I am good enough and beautiful as is. The gazebo drawing helped me through some of my darkest and most challenging days at the rehabilitation center. Art indeed turned my life trajectory around for the better. Even if my recovery is not linear— I still have bad days. I am proud to say that because of my new mindset and my art, I have more good days than bad.

Erin Donnelly