Like the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) in the US, Canada's National Eating Disorders Information Centre (NEDIC) supports and promotes a variety of country-wide initiatives to inform the public and ignite hope within our communities .
I was nervous and scared, as I set up my table at my university club fair in August. I was about to embark on an unfamiliar journey: starting the first eating disorder support group at my school.
Passerby: “What is this?”
Me: “Hi there, this year I am starting a support group for those struggling with eating disorders and disordered eating. Would you like to hear about it?”
People who know memay consider me to be a “healthy person” but in reality, most of my adult life I’ve teetered near the point of death, both literally and figuratively. Some might argue that what pushed me to this point was my battle with anorexia. In the past I would have agreed with them, but the more years I put between me and my disorder, the more I realize that my poor health was the result of a larger battle with myself – the eating disorder just served as the mask.
The person sitting next to you in class or in the cubicle across from you might be suffering from a severe eating disorder. How do I know? Because that person suffering was me.
WordPress has a number of interesting features for bloggers who use its platform. One of them is the ability to track how many people visit your blog every day and what posts they look at. Recently, I noticed that an entry I re-posted on Facebook the other day, “A Little Girl, A BIG Red Balloon And A Radiant Reminder of What Being ‘Beautiful’ Is Really All About” , continues to attract lots of attention even though I first posted it more than 3 months ago, which is what prompted me to re-read it myself late Wednesday afternoon. I s
The complexity of eating disorders and disordered-eating appears to be ever-growing, and the fear of those suffering and their families is never far behind.
As a survivor of an eating disorder and member of the LGBT community, I am often asked what it takes, or has taken, to identify, unmask, confront, battle and eventually overcome this life-threatening illness.
The National Eating Disorders Association, in association with feminist activist and editor of Everyday Feminism, Melissa Fabello, is calling for stories that focus on underrepresented experiences and communities in the eating disorder field through The Marginalized Voices Project. We are looking especially for voices from marginalized communities and narratives that challenge eating disorder myths.
Pick up any eating disorder memoir at your local bookstore, and you are more than likely to find some iteration of this narrative arc.
Well-to-do, young white woman develops an eating disorder, spirals into near-oblivion, seeks treatment for her eating disorder (which usually results in her being admitted into a residential facility), experiences a myriad of successes and failures, and eventually commits to finding her Self again. Well-to-do, young white woman walks out of treatment with a new sense of hope on the road to recovery.
Continued from Volume 7, Issue 1 of Making Connections
One writes to capture and crystallize one's joy, but also to disperse one's gloom.
~Anne Morrow Lindbergh, War Within & Without: Diaries and letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1939 – 1944
CRYSTALLIZING JOY