Amelia Boone shares a powerful message of finding strength in vulnerability, her journey of recovery from an eating disorder and the incredible support she finds in the running community
As long as I can remember, I’ve fought the feeling of being broken. Growing up, the most common question I asked myself was “what is wrong with you? Why can’t you be like everyone else?” It’s a story that rooted itself firmly in my childhood and has stayed with me throughout my adult life, manifesting in various forms.
So much of the feeling of brokenness was tied to the shame of battling an eating disorder for 20 years, of being unable to overcome it on my own and continuing to relapse and fall back into old ways. And when the eating disorder finally started taking a toll on my body in the form of a string of stress fractures, I started to feel hopelessly physically broken.
But I learned how to be unbreakable when I took back control of my life and decided to seek help again. I learned that I was actually never broken, that there was nothing wrong with me, and that nothing needed to be “fixed.” What I needed to do was to cultivate that as an inner belief, and to celebrate the strength of vulnerability and struggle as a human experience.
For me, to “Be Unbreakable” is to celebrate the fact that none of us our broken as human beings. Our bones may break, our minds and spirit may be crushed at times, but whatever you may be going through at the moment, it will pass. Things will change. Better days will be ahead. So approach each day with enthusiasm: for the good times as well as the bad times. Nothing in this life is permanent, and nothing is wrong with you.
This past year for me has been a rediscovery of myself. It’s not a fixing of the broken, but a rediscovery of the unbroken, and knowing that there was never anything wrong with me in the first place. That’s how you become unbreakable.
By Amelia Boone
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Proceeds support a women’s scholarship to climb Mount Kilimanjaro
