Following My Own Map

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Kimmy Schuelke (she/her) is a teacher, speaker, and author of the children’s book The Tangle. A survivor of both a long-term eating disorder and colon cancer, Kimmy integrates somatic work and yoga into the classroom to help students regulate their nervous systems for better learning. She is a passionate advocate for ED recovery and systemic change, somatic work, and trauma-informed education, proving that our bodies are the vessels for our stories, not the sum of our worth.

Learn more about Kimmy on her website, or follow her at @teachingkimmy on Instagram and YouTube.

For a long time, I lived in a body I didn’t even recognize. I remember my first session with my therapist. I was sitting there, and I looked down at my own hand resting on my lap. She asked me how an emotion felt in my body. I couldn’t answer her because I couldn’t connect with any part of my body. She told me to start with my hand. I had to stop and really think about the fact that it was mine. I was so disconnected from myself that I couldn’t even process that my hand was a part of me. That was the reality of my life for almost four decades. I was just a passenger in a body I didn’t trust.

That disconnection started when I was only seven years old. I can still remember the clinical smell of the doctor’s office when my pediatrician looked at me and asked, “Don’t you want to be skinny and pretty like your mom?” In that one moment, he handed me a heavy map that told me my worth was tied to my size. It told me I wasn’t enough and I was too much, all in the same breath.

The bullying at school just reinforced that map. I was a target for other kids, and I didn’t have an advocate. There was no one to stand up for me, no one to tell me that the things those bullies were saying weren’t true. When you’re a child and you’re being treated like that, and there’s no one to defend you, you start to believe it’s your fault. You start following the maps that other people give you.

For years, I lived in a long, grey season of functional survival. To the outside world, I was a mother and a teacher, while inside, my eating disorder was a silent thief. It occupied 90% of my brain space. I was physically present in the classroom or at the dinner table, but I was never fully there. I was lost in the logistics of the disorder and the weight of the shame.

The path to recovery was never a straight line for me. I spent decades swinging on a pendulum between extreme control and a total loss of it. When I was diagnosed with colon cancer at 36, the ED voice found a new way to hurt me. It told me the years of struggle had broken my body beyond repair. I felt more disconnected than ever, treating my body like a failing machine rather than a partner in my survival.

Through recovery from my eating disorder, my therapist helped me realize that while I didn’t have an advocate then, I could build one now. We worked on creating an internal advocate, a voice that is strong enough to stand up for all those younger versions of me that are still carrying the pain of the past. I’ve learned how to look back at that seven-year-old on the doctor’s table, or that ten-year-old getting bullied on the playground, or that teenager who hid in the bathroom during lunch, and be the person who finally says, “I see you. You are good. And I am here to protect you.” Building that advocate within myself allowed me to stop running from my past and start healing it.

It is no coincidence that I became a teacher for young children, the same age I was when I first started showing signs of an eating disorder. I didn’t just pick a career; I went back to the age where I felt the most alone, so I could be the advocate I never had.

In my classroom, I see my younger self in my students every day. I know that if a child isn’t self-regulated, loved, and respected, they aren’t able to learn. My passion for trauma-informed education and somatic work comes from that place.

I’m now teaching young people how to listen to their bodies and move through their feelings so that energy doesn’t get “stuck.” I want to give them the tools I never had, the tools to feel safe in their own skin, no matter what anyone else says.

Writing my children’s book, The Tangle, was a huge part of this. It’s the book I desperately needed when I was seven. It’s a resource to help children navigate their own internal “tangles” using the somatic strategies I use myself. Seeing a child use those tools is a form of liberation for me, too. Every time I advocate for a student, I am healing those younger parts of me that were never protected.

But I’ve learned that even with a strong internal advocate, we aren’t meant to survive this world alone. For years, my eating disorder was like a massive rock I was white-knuckling in the middle of a rushing river. I was terrified that if I let go, I would drown. I stayed stuck there for so long because I felt like I was the only person in the water.

Along the way, I realized I didn’t have to be my only advocate, and I wasn’t alone. I started to find “guiding lights,” like The Emily Program; those people and communities who could hold a lantern for me when the path got dark. My therapist and nutritionist didn’t just tell me to let go; they showed me that the water was safer than I previously thought. Having that support made the journey feel lighter, and for the first time, I felt safe enough to finally uncurl my fingers from that rock and let the water carry me home. I learned that I didn’t have to be perfect to be worthy of the journey.

This is the power of community: finding people with similar struggles who have found a way through. I saw this happen a few years ago in my own second-grade classroom. We were researching important people who have made an impact on the world. One of my students, a young boy with a speech delay, chose to research the poet laureate Amanda Gorman.

Later, his mother called me in tears. She told me he was so excited to discover that Amanda Gorman had overcome her own speech articulation issues. He saw someone who shared his struggle, and she was making a difference in the world. Suddenly, his own voice didn’t feel like a burden anymore; it felt like a superpower.

In sharing my story, I am not only being a light for others with similar experiences, I am also healing myself and all the younger versions of myself. We don’t have to be “perfectly” healed to be a guiding light for someone else. When we share our truth, we give others permission to do the same.

I look at my body now with so much appreciation. This body survived the bullying and the eating disorder. It survived colon cancer. It birthed two beautiful children, and it carries me through every single day. It isn’t a problem to be fixed; it’s my home. I have moved from survival to liberation, and that liberation comes from listening to my own body instead of following the maps I was handed by that pediatrician, those bullies, and society as a whole.

I am far down the river now, and I’m not floating alone. I love the way sea otters hold hands in the water so they stay connected and safe while they sleep, ensuring no one drifts away in the current. That is what community looks like to me. We don’t have to be a heavy anchor for each other; we just have to be a steady hand to hold.

Every time I look at my own hands now, I don’t see a stranger. I see the hands that hold my children, the hands that write books, and the hands that reach out to my students to tell them they are safe. My body is not a project. It is not a failure. It is the brave, scarred, beautiful home that refused to give up on me, even when I had given up on it.

I am done following the maps other people gave me. I am done trying to shrink into a version of myself that makes the world more comfortable. I am letting the current carry me towards presence and not perfection.

I am far down the river now. It’s a slow movement, like watching your children grow; you don’t always see the inches of progress day-to-day, but when you look back, you realize you are miles from where you started.

And as I float down this river, I’m reaching back. I’m holding out my hand for the seven-year-old girl still sitting in the doctor’s office. I’m holding out my hand for my students who are searching for their own voices. And I’m holding out my hand to everyone still white-knuckling that rock in the middle of the river, exhausted by the weight of their eating disorder.

If you or a loved one is experiencing an eating disorder, help is available. Reach out to The Emily Program today by calling 1-888-364-5977 or completing our online form.

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