Please Don’t Ask Me How Long This Will Take
How long will recovery take? An open letter to our Supporters, We had the fight again — the one that happens when our heroic patience finally deflates, and our frustration comes hissing out until it permeates through the house. You want to know: How long is this going to take? How long are we going to suffer like this? You are tired. You are trying your hardest and we are draining our resources, but nothing seems to do the trick. You don’t know if there is ever a “right thing” to say. Most of the time, you feel like you’re walking on...
read moreHope and Hopelessness in Early Recovery: A Look Back
I should call the emergency line. I should email my therapist. I should tell [my fiancé]. I know exactly what I should do. I just don’t want to. I don’t want to be stopped. – Journal entry from Jan. 6, 2014 (full excerpt below) On Monday the temperature plummeted here in New York. The smell and feel of the cold air — which has been rare so far this winter — brought me back to January of 2014. It was one of the worst winters in recent years for the Northeast. It was also the winter I spent in residential treatment. It’s hard not to...
read moreRecovery Resolutions for 2016
Recovery Resolutions I get pretty sentimental around holidays. And since there’s not much else that says “New Year’s Eve” like resolutions and reminiscing on the past year, that’s what this post is about! The year 2015 has been difficult, but in very different ways than 2014 was. In 2014, everything was new to me — health was new, weight restoration was new, honoring my thoughts and feelings was new, relationships were new, even my voice was new (or, perhaps, renewed). The highs were high and the lows were low, but there was...
read moreIs Residential Treatment Worth It?
I recently exchanged emails with a young woman who is entering eating disorder treatment for the first time. She’s working with her treatment team to decide which level of care she ought to start on: partial hospitalization (day treatment) or residential treatment. We’ve corresponded a number of times over the last few months, so she asked what I thought about the possibility of going to residential. She worries about being away from her family and about inevitably having to transition to lower levels of care with less...
read moreTwo Years in Recovery
Two years ago today my entire life changed. I entered treatment at the Renfrew Center of NYC for the anorexia I’d had since I was 14, but for which I’d never been treated. At the time, I thought I would be in treatment for 4 to 6 weeks. It turned out to be 11 months — first a 6-month stint, then a 3-month, and most recently, a 2-month. I can’t say that the last two years have been “good.” By and large, they’ve been painful — at times excruciatingly so. But I also can’t say that I would change what...
read moreA Letter to “The View”: I Do Not Enjoy My Eating Disorder
To the hosts of ABC’s The View, On the Nov. 19 episode of The View, while discussing Donald Trump’s alleged weight loss, Joy Behar remarked that while backstage the hosts had debated whether it’s better to become anorexic or bulimic. Co-host Michelle Collins asked the crowd, “What do you girls think?” before promptly answering, “Definitely bulimic. You get to enjoy the meal.” An apology of sorts followed, with Candace Cameron Bure reassuring viewers that the discussion was meant in jest, and that she, as a recovered bulimic, was empathetic....
read moreAfter Anorexia: The Point at Which I’ll Be Okay Again
Just about two weeks ago I traveled to Washington, DC for the second annual March Against ED and my third EDC Lobby Day. (Photos to follow — stay tuned!!) There has been a lot to process from the two emotionally and physically draining — though rewarding — days I spent there. The March and Lobby Day are at once exhilarating and exhausting. The people you meet are unconditionally supportive, to say nothing of singularly empathetic. Being among this group is cathartic, but also at times trying. Two days of retelling our most difficult...
read moreNew 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...
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...
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...
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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.
