Hi there everyone!

So, I'm sorry that this post is later than I would have liked, but I went away last weekend and my grandparents arrived from New Zealand and then last week was pretty jam-packed due to it being the last week of school and work and my sister was graduating (from primary school) and then a bunch of relatives arrived on Saturday (also from New Zealand) and it's been a little full on. And so while I'm disappointed about me falling behind a little on my schedule I think it's been justified (unlike some of my absences).

Anyway, all this talk leads me onto the subject of this post - tips to survive the mad rush of the holidays and relatives and family stuff.

While it can be great to have family around, especially over the Christmas and holiday period and especially if you don't get to see them very often but it can certainly become very stressful, very quickly. To be frank, I am really quite glad I only have to go through this every couple of years or so due to the fact that we live in a different country to the rest of the family. But here are my suggestions to help ensure the smoothest, bestest, least-stressful family occasion you can. I think most of them are pretty common sense, but I think it's good to be reminded of them every once in a while!

Avoid Controversial Topics
As boring as it may be to stick to boring, safe topics, please remember that they are safe for a reason. Talk about uni, talk about school, talk about work, talk about the weather, stick to the safe topics. Don't talk about things like whether banning women from wearing burqas in public in Australia is a good idea or not. Equally, if you have elderly or rather conservative relatives, maybe staying away from topics like tattoos and body piercings would also be a good idea. You know, just from personal experience.

Exercise Can Be Really Scary. No, Really. | Exercise Part 3

Hi lovelies,

Today I'm going to be wrapping up my series on exercise and I'm mostly going to be discussing my current thoughts on exercise and what/why (if any) I doing right now.

I'm really sorry that this is so late but it wasn't coming together and I kept working on it and it just wasn't working. But finally, finally, I got it done. :)

If you missed the first parts of this series, here's Part 1 and here's Part 2.

Okay, so onto exercise.

After my epitome about exercise and suddenly realising that continuing to exercise as I was was going to end up killing me, I gave up exercise and for the first 2-3 weeks, it was really, really hard. My anxiety skyrocketed and the amount of nervous energy I was expending felt like it tripled. Equally, it was incredibly hard to keep myself still. I would have to literally force myself to sit down and not walk and pace and move constantly in order to keep expending energy. It also didn't help that my mother was not 100% behind my decision to stop exercise all together. Obviously, she supported my decision to do so, but she is a firm believer in the 'exercise makes you happy and healthy' and I had spent an awful long time convincing her that exercise was something I did because it made me happy, not as a way to lose weight and she was pretty desperate to see me happy again. Also, she is fairly fatphobic and didn't want to see me recover in an 'unhealthy' way.

Source

But, despite all that, I stuck to it and continued to abstain from exercise. And, surprisingly, after about a month, all the anxiety just left. It obviously was not gone all together, but all the extra anxiety, the exercise-related anxiety I had been experiencing for so long, it all left. For a while then, I felt more at peace with exercise than I had in a long, long time.

Exercise Can Be Really Unhealthy. True Fact. | Exercise Part 2

Hi lovelies,

Today we are moving onto Part 2 of my exercise series. If you missed the first part, you can find it here.

This post covers my experiences with exercise during my eating disorder and talks a lot about what I was feeling and my reasons and rationale behind my decisions at that time. If you are triggered by discussions of disordered thoughts about exercise, maybe this post isn't for you. xxx

Last time I pretty much gave a run down of my early experiences with exercise and I finished up with me being happy and jolly while doing Tae Kwon Do. However, unfortunately, that wasn't going to last.

After I had been doing it for about 2-2.5years, things started to head downhill. At this point, I was heading into my eating disorder and was a very stressed person. At first, Tae Kwon Do was a lifesaver for me. I was somewhere I went, twice a week and escaped every other bit of my life. The people that I met there were amazing, amazing people and were completely different from anyone else in my life. There were very few, if any people my age (16-17 years) and so I spent my time with a couple of girls and a boy about 13-14 and a few older men and women (probably in their late 30s or early 40s). This was so extremely valuable to me because these were people with whom I had very little in common with in regards to everyday life. I don't really care what other people say, there is a world of difference between the everyday life of a 13 year old and that of a 16 year old. The fact that they both go to high school is fairly negligible.

And those that did go to school were at schools that were very different from mine. One girl went to the local public high school and was in a constant battle to pass her subjects so that she would be allowed to stay on the triathlon team. For me, this was world's away from my struggles, although equally challenging, and it was a relief to be around these people. People that didn't care about school in the way I did and people that were just lovely, lovely people.

Self Care Help Package

Hello my darling lovelies,

I thought that this post was fairly timely to do, as I have emerged again from the cocoon of my own mind and am taking an interest in things around me once more. I've had a bit of a rough time recently, but fingers crossed the worst is over and things will be looking up.

However, I know that life won't always be going up for me, and I know I will crash down again - it's what happens when you deal with depression. So, what I thought I'd do is put together a little post on self-care and things that I find help me when I'm struggling. And, before you starting clicking the exit button, I'm not going to be telling you to 'get some sleep', 'go to the gym' or 'eat healthily'. Those tips are bogus, or at least, that's what I think. When I feel like crap, I don't want to be told to 'make myself a nice salad' or 'shake up my routine by surprising my spouse at the office'. Because I fail to see how eating a salad will make me not depressed and because I, along with a lot of people, don't have a spouse. I'm not joking, those were tips I found while doing some research.

What's in a Name Anyway?

Hi lovelies,

This is a post I've been thinking and toying with the idea of writing for a long, long time, and each time I've dismissed it as too hard and not necessary. But, as my blog grows older and I grow with it, I'm feeling like it's a topic I need to discuss.

When I started this blog, way back on the 5th June 2013, I didn't expect it to last. It was my second attempt at blogging (the first just ended up being forgotten about and ignored after a while) and to be honest, I didn't really expect it to last either. I thought that I would just do i for a while and then just forget about it like I did with the other one. And yet, here I am, almost nine months later, with me still posting. I know I'm not the most reliable blogger in the world, and I know that I can, and will disappear for days and weeks at a time, with no explanation, but I really want to change that. Having this blog has really given my own place. I place where I can write about the stuff I want to and that I'm interested in, as well as connecting with people that blog about amazing stuff.

Source here

When I started this blog, one of my main goals was to use it as a way to track my recovery progress as I moved out of anorexia (you can read my whole story in the My Disordered Story tab at the top, if you're interested). It was also a place for me to escape my life and be somebody else. Because of that, I took another name. Taking another name helped me to separate the shit that was happening in my real life and that i couldn't control, with my blogging life, which I could control. It was as if I created another identity - my blogging one and my real one. Which, in itself is stupid, because they are both real. They are just two separate halves of the same person.

However, as my real life becomes better, I'm leaving my eating disorder behind, I'm now on anti-depressants, I've graduated high school and left a lot of shit behind there, my blogging persona and real life persona become similar. I feel now that I'm more willing to share the fact that I blog with people in real life and the fact that I blog under a different name makes it a little difficult to explain. Also, I feel now that I'm lying to you guys, the ones that know me only as Lissa Spelt, the ones that came to listen to my silly ramblings and don't know me as anybody else. The fact that you are there, and that you are listening, means more to me than I can say, and I feel, now that my personas are melding into one, that I owe you guys the truth.

I don't understand it, but the snake is cute. :) Source here

I chose Lissa because I liked it, and because it was a shortened version of Melissa, which was one of the names that my parents were considering to call me. I've always liked Melissa and always had a connection to the name, but shortening it to Lissa gave me the feeling of control. I was taking control over something that I had never had control over - my name.

I've always been someone that needs control but it's only recently that I've realised this. Looking back over my life, it's fairly easy to recognise this trait throughout my life, but it took me a long time to accept that needing control is a trait of mine.

The last two years of high school, which is when I started this blog, were tough for me and felt out of control for a good deal of that time. When you start recovering from an eating disorder, it's one of the first things you have to give up. You have to give up control of your crazy rules, your beliefs and the control of your own food because you are literally too sick to make decisions. Being at a very prestigious school for academic achievement also didn't help. During year 12, I felt like I was out of control all the time - I just did what other people told me to do, I wasn't allowed to make choices, everything I did went towards something bigger. I felt like school ruled my life - it had the control over me.

Source here

I also was scared during this time. I was scared of people that I knew finding out that I blogged. I was scared of my family finding out that I blogged. If I took another name, it reduced the chances that they would find out. To be honest, I doubt it really stopped them from finding out - I'm sure they all saw various pages that I'd left open on the computer and I know it came up on my favourites page and I'm sure they wondered why I suddenly started taking photos of food and watermarking all the pictures of my nails. I know for a fact that Opinionated is out there, reading what I'm writing now because I saw my blog open on her iPod once (hi sis! You can stop pretending you don't read this now). But again, it gave me a feeling of control. I felt like there was something that I controlled in my life (and to be honest, when you look at the other choices I've made in my life to regain control, this one is fairly healthy.

I'm now also thinking I might like to branch out a little bit from just blogging. I have tumblr and pintrest for my nails (I promise I'll add a link to them soon) and I'm considering going over to youtube as well. Do I know what I would make videos about? Nope. Maybe some nail art tutorials, otherwise, no clue! It's just that, one of my closest friends has just told me she has a youtube channel and after seeing her videos, it makes me want to do my own (and if you're interested in checking her out, she's there as OwlsandBiscuits). Anyway, the fact remains, the more I want to integrate my real life into my blogging life, the harder it is and the worse I feel about maintaining two separate identities.

But, what I do want to make clear is that I'm not making things up or changing facts. Everything I post as Lissa is true - it's just the name that has been changed. And that is partly why I've held off blogging about this for so long - I'm just so afraid that people will see me as a fraud, a liar and a cheat. You guys that follow me, whether on tumblr, pintrest or blogger mean a lot to me and I don't want to lose you guys, simply because I'm coming clean about my name.

This is me, fresh from the pool, about to make lunch.

So, hear goes. My name is Dani. It's short for Danielle. It's origin is French and it means 'God is my judge'. It's a really boring, run of the mill name. It's not different and a little it quirky like Lissa (which I really liked), but it's my name. It's what people call me when I'm out in the real world. And I'd like you all to know.

As for my blog, I don't really know. I think I might keep posting as Lissa, but maybe not. Maybe Lissa was a persona that I took to hide behind when I couldn't cope with the real world. Maybe she is somebody that I've outgrown now, although she'll always be apart of me. Maybe she is my online persona or maybe I've grown tired of hiding and am ready to accept that this is me, and yes I have problems, but I'm not afraid of telling people that. All that I do know is that I feel better for writing this and I feel good about stepping up and coming clean.

Pretty please, and I'm really asking you this time, please let me know what you think of this. How do you feel? I said I felt better for writing this, and it's true, but I'd also like some reassurance that you are not too deeply offended. If you are, please let me know anyway. I really want to know what you think about this because it was such a personal post.

Dani xxxxxx

Valentine's Day....

Hello lovelies,

So, as you are all aware, I'm sure, it was Valentine's Day a couple of days ago. And I know this is definitely a little late, but deal with it. :)

Anyway, I've always had conflicted ideas about the day, and so I thought I'd share them with you. :)

When I found out the origins of Valentine's Day, it became a lot less happy hearts and flowers for me. Valentine's Day commemorates St Valentine of Rome and St Valentine of Terni, both whom were martyred during the Roman Empire. The two were Christian and were executed for practicing Christianity and trying to convert others to their faith, instead of the Roman's paganism.

Source here

Depression and Anti-Depressants

Hi lovelies,

This post is going to be a hard one and one that you may not want to read about. In staying true to my policy of being truthful, I am going to be tackling the topic of my depression and namely, my methods of dealing with it. (On a sidenote, did you see my alliterations in that sentence? So many ‘t’s!).

Mental health is an interesting topic for me. It was never discussed inside my house, I never knew anyone that had an issue with mental health and all I knew about it was what they taught us in year 10 health. That’s was, until I was plunged head-long into it in yr 11, aged 16, with depression, anxiety and anorexia. I discuss my anorexia here and most of you probably know I’m in recovery from it. My anxiety is far milder than the others and generally only becomes bad when the others are also bad but my depression – that’s something I don’t mention much.