I hope I am not the only one who sometimes goes to bed at night or wakes up in the morning and thinks to herself, “Remind me why I am showing up for this (life) again?”

Lately, it has happened a bit more often than usual …. that life has felt heavy, overwhelming, confusing …. full of more questions than answers, more insecurities than confidences, more drama than accord.

In these moments I have found myself searching – HARD – for joy, yet finding only trace elements where a robust surplus formerly lay. I have felt the weight of onrushing unanticipated endings without the corresponding lift of encouraging new beginnings.

The other day I even caught myself thinking, “Man, life sure seems like a thankless job sometimes.”

And sometimes it does. Sometimes it feels like there should be somebody we can complain to – some higher up whose job it is to fix those darned potholes we keep hitting.

But there isn’t. There is only us. For those of us who have faith, perhaps there is God (or whatever our personal preferred terminology may be). But then faith complicates matters, because of the fact that sometimes we are tested, sometimes good-seeming things are really not that great and bad-seeming things are the best thing for us in the long run.

So still, faith or no faith, there we are, complaining to ourselves …. consoling ourselves ….. working out in our own minds and hearts how to make what feels not-too-great feel at least tolerably better.

Interestingly – unexpectedly too – what I have learned through this most recent “thankless job” period is that I can actually do this.

I can find reasons to motivate myself to get up when I would prefer (and it also seems perhaps wiser) to stay in bed. I can find ways to calm myself down – and stay calm – when every rageful or sad molecule in my body is longing to act out.

I can even find tiny sweet things – things that aren’t perhaps the red carpet and fireworks display the hard times seem to merit, but are still …

Recently my longtime dear friend and colleague, Dr. Dena Cabrera, and a newer friend of mine, Emily Wierenga, released a much-anticipated new book to help moms who are recovering from an eating disorder. Yay!

“Mom in the Mirror” was released this month by Rowan & Littlefield Publishers. When Dena first mentioned the concept to me a few years ago, right away I was anxious for her to begin work. This is because we have so many members within MentorCONNECT, the eating disorders mentoring nonprofit I founded in 2009, who are moms. So while I am not a mother myself (although I am the proud parront to a most beautiful and intelligent bird named Pearl) I am regularly privy to some of the struggles and strains that cross the minds and hearts of mothers who want to make sure their own eating disordered ways are not passed along to their kids.

While not everyone on MentorCONNECT will necessarily relate to some of the faith-based passages in “Mom in the Mirror” (both co-authors are dedicated Christians and so their faith necessarily infuses their personal journeys and the work they do to support others as well) I personally felt that the book is written in such a way that readers who are not Christians can still find tremendous value in the majority of the material.

In this way, “Mom in the Mirror” really does offer readers the best of all worlds – inspiring personal stories of recovery from the authors and others interwoven with the latest eating disorder research by noted experts in the field and practical tools and tips throught to help readers strengthen in recovery.

In February I traveled to Reno to speak for NEDAwareness Week 2013 by invitation of Center for Hope of the Sierras and the University of Reno.

This trip was significant for too many reasons to easily process. For starters, the last time I was in Reno was 1994-1996, when I was still ungodly sick with anorexia and bulimia, feeling lost and scared every minute of every day and doubting absolutely everything – including whether I would make it to 1997.

I came back a changed girl. Woman, really (technically I suppose that is what we are supposed to call ourselves when we reach age 42). But sometimes I still feel like a girl – my eating disorder blocked out so many otherwise high quality years of my life, years when I just wasn’t there because I was so gridlocked in my own inner battles.

I also came back and discovered I was booked at the exact same hotel where I used to stay in the 90′s! Then called the Reno Hilton (and costing $20 per night) today rooms go for over $100 and the large white landmark is much more grandly named the Grand Sierra Resort and Casino.

Best of all, I came back to spend time with some incredible folks, including my sweet hostess, Melissa from Center for Hope of the Sierras. We were talking after the Beauty Undressed program ended, and we got on the subject of self-love. Specifically, we were brainstorming about how we know we do or don’t love ourselves.

My contribution was this: I know I love myself when I treat myself with the same patience, respect, open-mindedness and open-heartedness as I would a different person (friend, family member, pet, et al) whom I know I truly love.

For instance, if my best friend came to me and told me she had said or done something awful that she was quite prepared to hate herself for. I wouldn’t jump in there and pile on more hate. …

Every spring and fall I travel. A lot.

Some months I might be in and out three, four, even five times. Occasionally I drive but mostly I am flying. When I fly I am juggling logistics, connections, weather watches (the worst)….plus changing time zones, ever-varying food offerings and more.

To say I can get anxious at times is like saying my folks’ bottomless pit of a dachshund, JP Morgan, is sometimes hungry. When it comes to travel, just add me and anxiety is inevitable.

But looking back at my spring travel season this year as it winds down, I can see how over the years I have learned to do everything I reasonably can to make the anxious part of traveling as manageable as possible. It is also to see how I do this – by establishing routines.

My routines start the moment a trip is confirmed. First, I set two alarms to make sure I am up in time to arrive at the airport as close to precisely two hours ahead of my flight as I can. Next, on the way to the airport, I listen to the same CD and use the drive time to visualize smooth travels. As well, I always take the same route to the airport and get off at the same exit. And when I arrive at the airport I always use the same shuttle parking lot.

As far as food and logistics, I try to have a selection of basic foods that I always bring with me in my computer carry-on bag (which always contains the same items in the same places within its depths).

Finally, I print out everything in a little sheaf of papers I can grasp and hold (which of course makes me stand out like a flashing recycling-resistant neon bulb in the midst of all those other savvy travelers swiping and scanning on their smart phones….)

And I use the travel time to either do absorbing work or (more realistically) meditate and nap. Queasy by nature, I have even trained myself to survive turbulence by visualizing my body as bigger than the plane …

In my life, there is a never-ending stream of highly insecure visitors who are always eager to hang out with me.

For instance, fear. Or, I should say, fears. Plural. Very, very plural. Here is just one example. I am a speaker with a decade-long track record of delivering successful events. But every time I get on another plane to go speak I am afraid this is the time I will tank, that “that thing” that always happens when I get up in front of people (namely, not sucking) will not work and I will go down in flames in front of 1,000 college students who are all busily uploading my public display of suckiness straight to YouTube.

Another common visitor is anger. I feel angry and I judge myself harshly for it. Even if it is totally justified, even if the anger is so primal – like my limbic system takes over and spews out anger from the cave-woman me whose fight-or-flight is screaming “Saber tooth tiger! Strike now or die!” – I still judge myself for feeling angry. If I don’t remember to judge myself in the precise angry moment, there is always plenty of time later. Endless amounts of time.

Yet another common visitor is sadness. Maybe we could call it depression. Or loneliness. Or apathy. Or boredom. It takes on various shades and forms, but after more than two decades battling mental illness (eating disorder, depression, anxiety and the like) those grooves are still pristinely paved and waiting in my emotional psyche. While I feel like I am growing more positive and peaceful day by day, I can still count on daily hopeful visits from the sadness squad, who figure this might be the day they  get lucky and I finally decide to join back in.

All of these visitors can add up to mighty insecurity mighty quickly – if I let them. The key to not letting them, I have found, is repeating one simple phrase: “This is normal – you are a human being and all human beings feel these …

I learned to love myself the way I learned to recover from my eating disorder. I just set my mind to it, chose to believe in it, and never EVER gave up. I still haven’t given up.

I know what you’re thinking.