New York State Residents: We Need Your Help to Pass Anna’s Law!!
New York residents in Congressional District 27 — We need your help! I’ve been in Washington, DC for the last two days, lobbying for the Anna Westin Act with the Eating Disorders Coalition and participating in the #MarchAgainstED with countless eating disorder survivors, families, and advocates. I have a lot to say about my experience, and I will post more about it in the coming days. Right now, however, there is task we need your help with. The New York lobby team had many meetings yesterday, and we received a lot of positive feedback — except in one case. Representative Chris Collins...
Read MoreFrom Solitary to Solidarity: Why I Marched (and Will Continue to March) Against ED
This post was written as a request from the MOM Marchers asking me to share my experience with last year’s inaugural #MarchAgainstED Self-reliant. That term has stuck to me for much of my life. (That, together with my mother’s fond saying that a shark could bite off my leg and I still would refuse to cry.) My independence is a chicken-or-the-egg kind of quality. Have I always preferred to solve my own problems? Or was the descriptor “self-reliant” innocently bestowed on me at some point during childhood, and I spent the rest of my development living up to it? However it originated,...
Read MoreA Priceless Piece of My Being
I’m starting to realize that you don’t know me very well. You know a very important part of me, of course — the eating disorder survivor. Many of the people closest to me aren’t even privileged to that information. But I realize that you don’t know how I got here. I’ve never shared much about my childhood or adolescence, which is the very place where that eating disordered side came into being. One reason for staying quiet about my younger selves has to do with privacy. Other reasons are a complicated mix of self-consciousness, fear of judgment, fear of...
Read MoreThe Original Definition of Courage
I asked myself today why I’ve been struggling to post here. Over the summer the reason was obvious — treatment took up most of my time and nearly all of my energy. Then, once I returned to work and eventually completed treatment, I spent several weeks in a bit of a “funk.” I wasn’t depressed per se, but I was struggling to focus on tasks, big and small. I had to devote all of my energy to the highest-priority items — my recovery and my full-time job. Thankfully, things have gotten steadily better over the last couple weeks. My mood has stabilized, and with it my focus has improved....
Read MorePlease Help Jackie!
I’m posting again about my friend Jackie and her GoFundMe campaign, because her update this morning (#37) blew me away. She recounts how, two years ago today, she allowed her primary care physician to help her finally address the eating disorder she’d struggled with since childhood. From there, she began to see a therapist and a dietician, and she eventually admitted to Monte Nido. I’ve only known Jackie for about a year now, but reading about where she was two years ago made it apparent to me how far she has come. She is SO close to her fundraising goal. And she has done...
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I'm a writer, a mental health activist, and a 20-something in recovery from an eating disorder. This blog chronicles my journey through the middle ground toward full recovery.
