After 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 experiences, reliving our worst memories, takes a...
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...
Read MoreThe Role of Faith in Eating Disorder Recovery
I’m in a weird place right now, experientially. I’m feeling — a lot. It must be a good thing, because all these feelings of late are born out of my doing fairly well across-the-board: eating regularly, following nearly all of my meal plan, spending fewer days in a refuge of inebriation. That’s great — of course it is. And it’s not as though feeling emotions is new for me. Emotions came back over a year ago, resuscitated along with the rest of my starved being. I suppose the difference now is that I understand them more. I know what they are and, more and more, why they are triggered. I can...
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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.
