My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened. Michel de Montaigne This might be more true of those of us who have struggled with eating disorders than anyone else. For many years, I couldn’t escape the frantic prison of my mind. Every morning questions pummeled my mind. What if it the weather is terrible and I can’t go for a run? What if someone asks me out to lunch today? What if I miscounted the calories…
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The other day as I was washing dishes at our kitchen sink, I glanced over at our small Tropical plant that I have on the counter and I had to rack my brain to remember when I had watered it last. I think it had been a week or so and I felt bad as I looked at it drooping and wilting over to its side. It looked so exhausted and tired! As I looked closer, I noticed how dry…
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It really hit me this morning, I wake up each day with a list of “have to’s” rolling through my mind, and you know, I never thought anything of them. That is how normal they were to me….until literally right now! Those “have to’s” are NOT normal or healthy, they really are restrictive, confining….and so hard to live by! My goodness, how free is my life when “I have to” (no option) do this or that? It’s not, not at…
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You know those Bible verses that you’re pretty sure weren’t there the last time you read a passage? Those verses that seem like God must have put them in there just for you? Those verses that make you wonder if the author had been given a preview of your life and knew just what you needed to hear? I know several verses like that. In fact, when I read Ps. 139, I sometimes wonder if David had heard of eating…
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It has been a hard two weeks. Today once more I found myself sitting on the kitchen floor in tears. I was trying to make lunch, but instead the eating disorder voice was taking over. As I sat and cried my mind jumped back to the last conversation I had with my therapist at Magnolia Creek when I was there last spring. As I was getting ready to leave, she told me this, “Bethany, remember: if you want to really…
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On Friday I trashed the scale. I called my husband, Rich, at school and asked him if he cared if I got rid of our scale. He didn’t care. He wasn’t the one who religiously weighed himself multiple times a day. I thought of all sorts of dramatic ways I could dispose of it. I could drive sobbing all the way to my therapist’s office (one hour each direction), interrupt a session and deliver my scale creating a moment of emotional…
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“When you’re having a heart attack, you know it. There ain’t no doubt.” Those were his first words to me. I had just rushed to the hospital emergency room after I’d received a call that my close friend had been taken there because of chest pains. Even though I arrived only minutes after he had, he was already hooked up to monitors, had received a clot busting medication, pain medication and was on oxygen. Within twenty minutes of my arrival…
Continue Reading »One of the major mistakes parents have been making for at least the last thirty years (and perhaps the past fifty) is protecting their children from negative experiences, such as disappointment. As a result we have had at least two generations of adults who are not well equipped to handle negative emotions. Here are my suggestions for how to handle your children’s negative experiences. 1. Acknowledge and empathize with the child’s feelings of disappointment: “I see that you are really…
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It was the first night of 6th grade science camp. All through elementary school, I looked forward to this week away from home; it meant I was a big kid, it meant adventure, and meeting new people from other schools in the county. Although it’s been decades, I still remember the exhilaration of walking into the mess hall for dinner wearing my favorite clothes-a pale blue short-sleeved sweater with tiny flowers on it, green corduroy pants, and suede saddle shoes…
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There’s a time warp in everyone’s life. I guarantee you, if you’re over 21 and have left your parents’ home that there is a massive time warp between their home and yours. If you’re married, if you have kids, it is exponentially larger. I always chuckle when we visit my in-laws because my husband’s time warp is even more obvious to me than my own. I can hear it in his voice as he explains his job as an Army…
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This morning, walking my dog down Sydenstriker, I watched a little girl learn to use a white-tipped cane. Nine-thirty in the morning, most of her friends were in the school building she practiced in front of. An older lady stood protectively between her and the street, holding her own white-tipped cane. Like metronomes in perfect sync, their canes scanned the sidewalk 10 inches before them. The little girl had wild brown hair. Her profile was slight, a little beanpole dressed…
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As I battled my way through the Valley of the Shadow of Death that is anorexia, I got pretty used to believing that I don’t weigh enough. Somehow, even though I was stumbling through the steps of recovery so that statement would no longer be true, on some level, I clung to “skinny” as part of my identity. The chains of an eating disorder have begun to finally fall away. And I am happy. Every single morning it feels brand…
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