An Eating Disorder Survivor’s Response to Trump
The Election of Trump It has been a while since I’ve written. I had a post ready to go explaining my absence, which has been largely due to a new job with ample responsibilities and challenges. But then Tuesday happened, and suddenly my own travails lost their significance to me. There is little else I’ve been able to think about besides the savagely disappointing loss we experienced on Election Day. I was ill prepared for the actuality of a Trump presidency, and even less so for the grief that followed. I understand the political and...
read more
The danger here is that unlike photoshopped models, fitness stars tell you that what they have is real, and that you could—no, you should—achieve it, too I was always “the thin one.” I spent more than a decade wavering between being underweight and being anorexic. Naturally, people just assumed that my body type was slender and somewhat frail. “You look like a model,” people would tell me. More than once, a stranger approached me on the street or in a cafe to ask if I was a ballerina. (Perhaps it is only in New York...
Medication and Eating Disorders: An “Anti” View
A diabetic isn’t considered weak for taking insulin. Why am I looked down on for taking medication to help my mind function? The right to take psychiatric medication — without having to justify it — ranks high on the anti-stigma agenda. There is a long way to go in achieving true mental health parity, but the frequency with which I see this particular plug leads me to believe that we’re making headway. So now I ask that same community of mental health advocates to expand your open-mindedness in yet another direction: my right NOT to take...
read moreThe Medication Game
I have a longer piece in the works about my thoughts on psychiatric medication. The delay is due to the fact that I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, and I’m trying to pare them down from well over 2,000 words. While editing continues on that front, I thought I’d share a prologue of sorts. The following is a journal entry I’d written months ago and just recently stumbled upon again. I would say the timing is uncanny, given the other post I’m working on, but it’s not really a coincidence when the dice seems to be weighted on this...
read moreOrlando: the Latest Gun Massacre
For Those Affected by the Orlando Tragedy The news coming out of Orlando this week is heartrending. I imagine I’m with many of you when I say that I feel profoundly sad, as well as fearful of and incensed by the repeated mass gun violence across the United States. I have wanted to post something in response, but I’m realizing I don’t have the psychic energy to do so. When this unfolded, I was in the midst of writing an emotionally heavy post about the Stanford rape survivor, so I have to admit, I’m burned out. I realized,...
read moreYes, Recovery Really Does Get Better
Pushing Through the Final Phases of Recovery I haven’t written in a while, you might have noticed. I relapsed, and I was too ashamed to admit it here. It was a quick, steep backslide, and the trigger was very specific: I weighed myself. I went home for Christmas and encountered a scale. I thought I could handle the number. I couldn’t. I freaked out. My nutritionist dissected my meal plan in order to show me I wasn’t eating excessive amounts. We discussed the natural fluctuation in weight that bodies undergo. We even discussed weight loss and...
read moreThis is Anorexia
Oh, celebrity anorexia rumors… they never stop. As I was researching the relationship between eating disorders and social media for a conference I’m presenting at in May, I stumbled upon a rather abhorrent story called “18 Anorexic THIN Celebrities That Need a Few Big Macs!” (For obvious reasons, I’m not linking to it. But the website is called Juicy Celeb, which pretty much tells you everything you need to know.) It’s so frighteningly off-base that it’s not worth the effort it would take to even...
read moreWhat an Eating Disorder in Recovery Sounds Like
Wait… You’re not over that eating disorder yet? During National Eating Disorders Awareness Week (NEDAwareness), I did a fair amount of preaching to the choir about early intervention. Presumably, some of it reached the general public, but since the overwhelming majority of my followers — if not all of them — are people who have been affected in some way by eating disorders, most weren’t new to this conversation. That’s not a bad thing. This population needs education and awareness, too. However, a somewhat jarring...
read moreNEDAwareness Week 2016
#NEDAwareness: National Eating Disorder Awareness Another NEDAwareness Week is drawing to a close. This year’s theme, “Three Minutes Can Save a Life: Get Screened, Get Help, Get Healthy,” focused on the importance of early detection and intervention. I can’t emphasize enough just how important it is to act as soon as possible if you suspect that you or others you love are struggling with eating-related issues. Catching an eating disorder or disordered eating in its earliest stages shortens the overall duration of the...
read moreOral Roberts University Requires Fitbit for All Freshmen
Oral Roberts U requires students to track activity for a grade Oral Roberts University, a Christian college in Tulsa, Oklahoma, recently announced that it is requiring all freshmen to wear the popular fitness and activity tracker, Fitbit. The school will track each student’s activity level (and other health data) as part of a first-year course known as Health Fitness I. The Fitbit data will account for 20% of students’ grade. The move is a modern upgrade for a long-established fitness curriculum at Oral Roberts, which previously required...
read more
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.
