National Eating Disorder Awareness Week--My Story

It all started on 1/16/07. I walked into Eating Disorder Center of Denver helpless, hopeless and in a state of severe depression. I truly wanted help, but was completely terrified to give up all my control and to receive the healing that I needed.

You see, it had been a very long road up until this point. I am not going to get into the depths of the “why’s” and “how’s” of how this all developed. But will give you a glimpse of what my greatest heart’s desire was which led me down this very destructive path. What you find with most individuals that have had an eating disorder, is that it starts out meeting one need and as the addiction intensifies it begins to take on a whole new level of meaning, ultimately taking over your entire life.

I wanted to be noticed. I wanted to be heard. This is a very common desire for most of us, but mine runs so very deep. I didn’t know how to communicate that in words and what started out as a very innocent way of controlling my looks turned into a vicious never-ending cycle of addiction. It started as a way of managing fear and then turned into meeting all my needs (so I thought) in my life. I had control; oh I had so much control! When things around me were spiraling down, at least I had control of my body. If I wanted to feel empty inside, I could make that happen. If I wanted to feel full, I could make that happen. I know you always hear that it’s not about the food….it really isn’t.

By the time I had entered treatment, I was going on 5 years of being in an entangled, terrorizing relationship with my eating disorder. The weeks leading up to treatment were by far the worst. I just stopped going to work because I couldn’t get out of bed. I stopped all contact with friends. I was very suicidal (and was mad at myself because I didn’t have the guts to end my life) and began cutting to release all the emotional intensity on the inside (and of course it was a cry for help). 5 years of weight loss pills (led to racing heart), laxative abuse (many years of GI problems), over-exercising, binging, purging, restricting….over and over and over again. I was what they would call “EDNOS, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified”. I was all over the map and bouncing back and forth between bulimia and anorexia.

I remember entering treatment and being so upset with myself. I was not at my goal weight and I was set on getting there and THEN going to get help. Do you want to know what I thought success looked like? A hospital bed. Yup, I thought that if I could get sick enough to get in a hospital bed then that would be enough (Oh sweet Jesus thank you for saving me). I highly doubt that if I would have made it to a hospital bed that I would have felt satisfied. That’s the thing with this addiction and any addiction…..it’s never enough. Once you meet your first goal weight, then you come up with another goal weight!

I had to come face to face with my eating disorder while in treatment, and let me tell you, it was not PRETTY!! I fought hard! Oh I was hanging on to dear life to what I thought defined me. I yelled, I slammed doors, I walked out of treatment….I look back now and I can’t even recognize who that was. Can you blame me though? I have such a deep understanding of addiction ever since walking this journey. It was my life, my savior, my friend, my confident….I needed something else to come in and replace it, I couldn’t just remove it.

Things began shifting for me when I met Celeste. She was in her 40’s though she looked so much older due to many, many years enslaved to her eating disorder. She just came from the hospital when she entered the treatment facility. She had to walk with a cane because she was so weak and her bones were so brittle. I was jealous when I first saw her. She did it. She got there. But then, I started to listen to her during our process group. As she painted the picture of what it was like in the hospital, for the first time something clicked inside of me. I used to glamorize the picture of making it to the hospital bed. When Celeste spoke about it, everything changed. A veil was literally lifted from my eyes and I began to see the reality of it all. Do I really want to die from this? There has to be more for my life! I want more for my life!

Celeste and I kept in contact after I discharged, and a few months later when she left she passed away from her eating disorder. I was devastated and completely heart-broken that her eating disorder won. The same story has repeated itself with many others that I knew in treatment, most ending their life in suicide.

This will be a book if I go into what recovery looked like for me, but what I will say was that it was a long road. There were set-backs and relapses and all out fights on the floor with me shaking my fists at God not thinking that I could do this. But you know what? I did. God came in and rescued me in a million different ways….someday I will share all of those, but while I was in treatment I found God for the first time. For the first time in my life I chose God for myself, not for someone else. I decided that who I was, who God created me to be, was enough. Please hear me when I say all this. I am not saying that everything was great after this realization or that I just “prayed it away”….oh it was work. It was a constant daily battle to allow God into the depths of my heart, places that I kept hidden, ashamed of, to let Him heal.

It’s hard to completely and radically change your ways. I was ambivalent about getting better for a very long time after I left treatment. I straddled the recovery line so to speak for a couple years after. It wasn’t until I started truly taking those steps forward that I began to realize that it would be MORE work to STAY sick. Passions were forming, desires were coming to life, and purpose had a feeling. And that was worth more to me than my eating disorder.

My trip to Africa in 2010 was the final straw in my recovery. I look back on that trip and see that it brought freedom to a whole new level. Honestly, I don’t even have words for it, but something happened deep within me. My eyes were opened to what true beauty looked like in the face of the suffering.

Discharge day in treatment was called “Samina”. It comes from the Arabic word meaning “healthy”. On my Samina day I shared some reflections of my journey. There was a song that I listened to almost every day, “beauty from pain” by Superchick. Here is the chorus---

“After all this has passed, I still will remain.

After I’ve cried my last, there will be beauty from pain.

Though it won’t be today, someday I will hope again,

And there will be, Beauty from Pain”

Friends, there is most definitely beauty from pain. There is hope. I left treatment determined to not just survive, but to LIVE! During this National Eating Disorder Awareness week, may you reach out to someone you know that is struggling. Everybody knows someday. Here's to my favorite therapists who walked so much of this journey with me and believed in me every step of the way. Jan, Maira, Felicia, and Brandis…..thank you!!!!