Your guide to visioning recovery, body acceptance,
and learning to carry grief with grace.

You’re not broken.

Recovery is possible.

You can find your happy. Even After.
 

Dr. Linda Shanti specializes in Grief, Eating Disorder (compulsive eating, emotional eating, binge eating, bulimia, and anorexia) recovery, Body image challenges, Anxiety, Depression, and imperfect parenting. She also utilizes expressive arts modalities to assist in healing and visioning during life transitions.

  • Are you uncertain about who you are after someone you love has died?

  • Or without the eating disorder?

  • Do you feel as if you are “too sensitive” or “should be further along” in your recovery or grief process?

  • Do you want freedom from food obsession?

  • Do you find yourself engaging in disordered eating even though you "know better" (have read all the books, are a feminist, feel awful every time afterward, know it won't fix what you are really struggling with)?

  • Do you often “compare and despair” looking at other people thinking they have perfected this body image/life/career/relationship/recovery/grief thing figured out and you don’t?

  • Are you wanting to cultivate a spiritual practice or use art for self discovery?

I can help you explore these questions and others in the confidential space of therapy.

 
 

Why Visioning?

You have to vision, to image-in that something is possible before you can experience it. You have to imagine yourself in it. What do you imagine finding happiness again (or in the first place), recovery, freedom from food obsession, freedom from (or a more mindful and compassionate relationship with) depression and anxiety, and accepting your body to look like? What would finding new meaning when traveling with grief be like? How would you feel? What would you be doing? What would your relationships look like?  In the words of Meister Eckart: 

 

"When the Soul wants to experience something, she throws out an image in front of her and then steps into it."

 

 It is possible to recover. It is possible to get yourself back (or find yourself in the first place). You are not alone. 

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Blog
4 Myths about Grief
4 Myths about Grief

You should “move on” from grief, closure happens at the 1-year mark, when rainbows and unicorns appear, and other myths about grief

Dear Casserole people (How to Support a Loved One in Grief)
Dear Casserole people (How to Support a Loved One in Grief)

4 Ways to support a loved one in grief for the grief adjacent.

Myths about Using Your Tools in Recovery, and Grief
Myths about Using Your Tools in Recovery, and Grief

In eating disorder recovery, therapy, and grief, we often talk about “using your tools.” Using your (healthy) coping mechanisms is so helpful! Support groups, journaling, expressive arts therapy, utilizing a food plan, hydrating, sleep hygiene, meditation, medication, can all be such helpful tools in your eating disorder recovery and/or grief process! However, sometimes we think that using these tools means we will arrive somewhere, at a destination endpoint, with no more discomfort. That is a myth. Here are some myths about recovery and grief coping tools I’d like to clear up.

6 Tools to Get Through the Holidays When You Are Grieving the Loss of a Loved One
6 Tools to Get Through the Holidays When You Are Grieving the Loss of a Loved One

If you are traveling the holiday season without your loved one who has died, it can feel overwhelming to do all the traditions you used to do together. It can feel like one, big, looooong grief trigger. Here’s a thought:

3 Healing Benefits of Using Art with Grief
3 Healing Benefits of Using Art with Grief

The art of grief is that art can hold and express emotions and experiences where words fall short. Art can help “get the bad feelings out so that the good feelings can come in.” Art can also provide symbols as medicine…

Eating Disorder Recovery and Grief: when are you done?
Eating Disorder Recovery and Grief: when are you done?

Grief, like eating disorder recovery, is individual. Although sometimes it can follow a trajectory like this recovery slogan:

It gets better

Then it gets worse

Then it gets different

Then it gets real different.

There are all kinds of metaphors about how grief is something you learn to carry more gracefully over time. The grief doesn’t get smaller. We grow bigger, around the grief, and learn to live with it differently. Here is a beautiful visual of Dr Lois Tonkin’s model of grief, which shows how the griever grows around the grief…

3 truths I've learned along the Road to Recovery...
3 truths I've learned along the Road to Recovery...

Three tidbits I’ve discovered along the road to recovery:

1) You are not responsible for your eating disorder. You are responsible for your recovery.

2) The size of your body is not your business.

3) The mean girl voice in your head will continue to share. You do not have to believe it.

Black Lives Matter and BIPOC Resources for White people, Moms, and Eating Disorder Recovery
Black Lives Matter and BIPOC Resources for White people, Moms, and Eating Disorder Recovery

BIPOC resources for white women, moms, and eating disorder recovery

Taking Off the Mask of Perfection: Being a New Mom in ED Recovery During COVID-19
Taking Off the Mask of Perfection: Being a New Mom in ED Recovery During COVID-19

New moms and women recovering from eating disorders face particular challenges during the pandemic. Here is one new mom’s experience along with questions exploring how to cope with sadness, isolation, and support while taking care of a new baby.

Why Your Head Might Be Full of Bullshit (and What to Do About it)
Why Your Head Might Be Full of Bullshit (and What to Do About it)

The bullshit in your head, aka cognitive distortions, can be affected by sleep, hormones, and diet culture. Here’s what you can do to identify the cognitive distortions and get back into your eating disorder recovery.