In pursuit of my newfound career objective, I called a few local practitioners who specialized in eating disorders and asked whether I could become an intern or shadow them in their practice. They all told me that because of confidentiality issues, they couldn’t allow me to do that, but one of them also told me about the International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals (IAEDP), an eating disorders organization that had just relocated to Orlando and was looking for volunteers. I called the executive director, Dr. Marie Shafe, who asked me to come in for an interview. She turned out to be one of the most amazing and inspiring people I’ve ever met in my life, and she urged me to volunteer. Before long, I progressed from volunteering to a paid position. I started to help out in the office, working on the newsletter and working alongside the director as her assistant. By that time it was the year 2000. I was in college, applying to graduate schools and working when I realized I was actually falling apart at the seams. I was realistic enough to know, after taking so many psychology courses, that I couldn’t go to graduate school and learn to help other people until I’d helped myself. I called my parents, told them that I was putting graduate school on hold and, for the first time, admitted to them that I really needed and wanted help. I’d also confided in Dr. Shafe, and she helped me get into an outpatient treatment program.
Over the years I’d been to see many different therapists on several occasions, but until then I’d always told the therapist exactly what I knew he or she wanted to hear, and that was it. I simply wasn’t ready to hear what the therapist had to say to me. I wasn’t ready and willing to see a life without my eating disorder. I’d go to a nutritionist, take the meal plan I was given and throw it in the nearest trash can before I even got home. In other words, I manipulated everyone and sabotaged myself in order to maintain my eating disorder, which felt safe to me. The thought of giving up the eating disorder and going into an unknown place was much more frightening than maintaining the familiar, miserable as it was, and suffering the consequences.
I was still thinking in black-and-white, all or nothing. I was going to do recovery the same way I’d approached anorexia, wholly and completely. I slipped, as we all do, and boy, did I ever beat myself up.
But this was different. Now I had a nutritionist, a therapist and an entire treatment team, and I was truly ready to take back my life and get better. For the first time in my life I began to understand the feelings that underlay my eating disorder: why I hated myself so much, why I felt so undeserving, why I felt that everything had to be perfect. At first it was very scary to feel again after avoiding those feelings for so long. I didn’t like it one bit, but once I began to understand that I didn’t need to be perfect, that recovery wasn’t going to be perfect, I started to breathe again. It wasn’t easy, and I could not have done it if I hadn’t already come to the realization that I wanted to get better and was ready to do whatever was necessary for me to get healthy. Up to that point, I honestly hadn’t been willing; I just didn’t want to. No one—including me—could love me enough for me to be encouraged to get better. I’d devoted ten years of my life to my eating disorder, and now, for the first time, I wanted to live, laugh and feel good about myself again. I even wanted to go on a date. At the time, I hated my body so much that I was literally avoiding any kind of contact at all with the opposite sex. Instead of checking out the guys, I spent my time sizing up other women and comparing them to myself—and, not surprising, I was always the one who came up short. I felt as if someone had taken away my soul, and now I wanted it back.
Never once in my entire life had I awakened in the morning, looked out the window in sunny West Palm Beach and said, “Today I’m going to become an anorexic.”
I started to get better, but things didn’t immediately become all better. In fact, my recovery process was far from easy, predictable or perfect. That was yet another hugely important realization for me. Initially, I was still thinking in black-and-white, all or nothing. I was going to do recovery the same way I’d approached anorexia, wholly and completely. I’d decided to get better and, therefore, I would be completely better immediately. I would be the Queen of Recovery—at least that was what I thought. Of course, it didn’t happen that way; it simply isn’t possible. I slipped, as we all do, and binged—and boy, did I ever beat myself up afterward. As was typical for me, I used my slipup as an excuse to keep telling myself that obviously I wasn’t good enough to do even recovery correctly.
Slowly, however, my journey to recovery was progressing and I was gradually getting healthier, which meant that I was also seeing things more clearly—at least some of the time. Part of that clarity involved coming to the realization that I wasn’t going to be able to counsel people with eating disorders in a one-on-one therapeutic environment while I was still recovering myself. That relationship would simply be too intense and triggering for me, and I didn’t think I’d be able to maintain the proper therapeutic distance. In my heart, I knew I wanted to speak publicly about eating disorders because, as I was struggling with my own recovery, I really didn’t have anywhere or anyone to go to for support. It was completely up to me to hold myself accountable and go to my treatment sessions. I had a wonderful family and wonderful friends, but none of them really knew how to provide the support I so desperately needed. How could they have known? I was living by myself in Orlando, I didn’t confide in them, and therefore they had no idea what I was really going through.
There were several times when I could have easily lost my battle with my eating disorder, but I hadn’t.
I didn’t want anyone else to have to walk that path alone. I didn’t want them to think that they couldn’t get better. I wanted to walk beside them when they were going through the same thing I had so that they would know they were not alone. During the entire time I was in treatment, I had never known a single person who got better. I was white-knuckling it the entire way, and I wanted to make it different for others. I loved the work I was doing at IAEDP, but I wanted to get out there and bring education and awareness to boys and girls who were the “me” I’d been in seventh grade. I wanted to tell them that I knew what they were thinking—that they thought they were in control, that they could just lose some weight and then stop. I’d walked through that door, so I knew that once it slammed shut behind them, they’d have no way to get out. Never once in my entire life had I awakened in the morning, looked out the window in sunny West Palm Beach and said, “Today I’m going to become an anorexic.” I wanted them to know that, and I wanted them to understand that if they walked through the same door I had, it might be the same for them.
During that first year of recovering, I remember talking to a friend on the telephone and laughing out loud. My friend started to cry and told me that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually heard me laugh.
Once I’d made the decision to focus on helping other people through education and advocacy, there was another phone call to my parents. I told them I’d decided not to go to graduate school, after all. Instead I was going to start my own nonprofit organization. I was starting to feel healthy; I knew I could do it, and I wanted to give back because I’d been given a second chance. There were several times when I could have easily lost my battle with my eating disorder, but I hadn’t. Now I couldn’t take my recovery for granted; I wanted to share what I’d seen and what I’d learned. I realize now that my parents had been assuming that as soon as I got better, I’d be going back to school. Needless to say, they were a bit shocked. My mother was supportive, but my father was very apprehensive. He really wanted me to follow the traditional educational route, the one he had always wanted and planned for me. In the end, however, they agreed to support me for a year—which at the age of twenty-one seemed like a lifetime to me.
I filed the incorporation papers for a nonprofit organization in October 2000, moved back home in December 2000 and in January 2001 opened the Alliance for Eating Disorders Awareness. I called all my friends, my family, all the people I knew from treatment and various therapists, and I asked them all to tell me: If they were the parent of a child with an eating disorder, or if they had a client with an eating disorder who needed support, what kind of organization and what kind of information would