Why anorexia? Why me? I suffered from anorexia and over-exercise addiction as a way to cope with my mom’s clinical depression from the age of six. I was hospitalized, and this is where my journey of resilience began.
My story of mental illness doesn’t start with me. I was six when my mother fell into a deep clinical depression, swinging from manic to barely peeling herself off the couch to take a shower. I’ll never forget the ratty housecoat she wore in her down periods; I hated it and wanted to burn it. I saw my mother’s depression as a weakness, and I just wanted her to get up and get moving. In those moments, I vowed I would never be like her, and I would always have the willpower to push past any difficulties.
In my teen years, my older sister moved away, and I became the mom. I cooked and cleaned with my dad, did the grocery shopping, paid the bills, dragged Mom to the doctor and counsellors, and hounded her to take her meds. At age 15, I started working full-time to help out at home. I did all of this with a cheery demeanor while maintaining straight A’s in school.
I did not share my mother’s depression with anyone, not even my best friend. From the outside, we were the perfect family. All anyone saw was an honour roll student holding down a full-time job. On the inside, I started to disappear. Gradually, over the next couple of years, I grew more strict with what I would eat and developed a million and one food rules. I started to exercise a lot. I was jumping from one gym to the next. Stairclimbing my way to oblivion. All of it to satisfy my need to push forward and never stop.
There’s a stereotype of anorexic girls trying to look like skinny models in fashion magazines. That was never me. I knew I was too skinny. I wore baggy clothing to hide my skeletal figure and ward off the perpetual cold caused by dangerously low body fat. Yet, at the same time, being able to count all my ribs gave me comfort and made me feel like I would have a “good” day. I was addicted to my own endorphins. The more I pushed myself, the more satisfied I became.
While I appeared active and engaged, my secret life made me increasingly suspicious of friends and family. Would they disown me if they knew what I was really up to? I isolated myself, immersing myself in school, work, and taking care of the household, with frequent trips to different gyms to avoid the concerned gym employees who would question me. “Are you ok? I think you may be working out too much.”
I graduated from high school with honours and a full scholarship to UBC. By this time, my parents knew I had a problem, and they sent me to my grandmother in Italy for an anorexic cure from the 18th century. My grandmother force-fed me olive oil, ice cream, and other fatty foods. She yelled at me constantly, called me a slut, made me confess at church on my hands and knees, and locked me in the attic to stop me from working out. While everyone slept in the afternoons, I crawled from the attic into my cousin’s house, who lived next door, and rode their exercise bike endlessly.
I returned home lighter and with an additional phobia of olive oil and ice cream. When I later caught my mom sneaking butter into my food, I grew even more distrustful — and more restrictive in my eating. (Note: If someone you love has ED, sneaking stuff into their food is NOT a good recovery plan!)
Despite these secret struggles, I started at UBC and continued achieving at a furious pace. I got my degrees in sociology and psychology and entered law school. Meanwhile, my food rules grew increasingly irrational and my exercise more intense.
For years, I was addicted to the seemingly superhuman power of anorexia. I felt exhilarated when pushing my body, excelling at my studies, beating out all the guys, and caring for my family. I was terrified that if I slowed down, I’d end up like my mom, collapsed on the couch in a ratty housecoat. In the back of my brain, I knew that anorexia was deadly, but somehow, I couldn’t reconcile the fact that I was killing myself with how my drive and ambition made me so successful.
And it was all working perfectly according to plan until it didn’t.
Luckily, friends and family never gave up on me. Even though I’d get angry at them for their “presumptions,” they’d speak up in ways that sewed the seeds of my recovery.
Their collective concern started to affect me. I know the exact moment I hit rock bottom. I was 26, at the end of my last year of law school, 5’8” and 88 pounds — and dying. I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t believe I would, but I was too scared to eat, too scared to rest. The years of depleting my reserves finally took its toll, and I was so tired.
I was tired of hurting when I sat on my boney bum, tired of the bruises along my spine from my backpack, tired of the voice in my head that wouldn’t let me stop working out once I started, tired of scrubbing pans to death to protect myself from the calories in whatever residue was left on the pan even after it had already gone through the dishwasher.
I finished my Property Law exam and took the bus to the eating disorder clinic at St. Paul’s Hospital. I broke my silence for the first time and stopped trying to struggle alone.
The Bumpy Road to Recovery
I finished law school while admitted to the eating disorder clinic. I requested a deferment for writing my final exams from the Dean and Associate Dean, but they turned me down. So I went to my exams with my I.V. food drip in tow, took my drip out of my arm, hung the IV up in my locker, and wrote my exams. To this day, I marvel: what does it say about the stigmatization of mental illness when two law professors who could see my skeletal frame and read my doctor’s report yet still could not see that I was sick and needed to stop until I got healthy?
I recovered from most of the physical symptoms of starvation at the hospital. What I needed next was outpatient options to help me find a new way to live–no small task, for which there were and still are few publicly funded resources.
I hunted down private counselors, dietitians, hypnotherapists, and physicians. I found counselors with no ED experience, therapy groups where no one showed up, and clueless nutritionists with suspect qualifications. Eventually, I found the help I needed, but not until I spent over $100,000 out of my own pocket. It’s a good thing I went to law school!
When my ED was at its worst, I longed to be diagnosed with a different disease — something more respectable, a disease that wasn’t my fault. A real disease, one I didn’t have to be ashamed of and one that did not have “eat more cake” as a “cure.”
And nothing fed the shame that I had done this to myself like silence. For a long time, I kept my eating disorder a secret. After all, what would clients think if they knew their lawyer had to wear a glove to move the butter for fear that it would absorb into her fingers and make her fat? Only over time did I realise that it was generations of silence about mental illness that led me to my mental illness.
So, I started telling people about my ED. To my amazement, this new openness led not to broken connections but to deeper ones. I even found a life partner who loves me for exactly who I am. As an anorexic, I strived for endless achievement. In recovery, my goal has shifted to reaching out to others and developing genuine connections. Sure, I’ll always have ED. I’ll always have to watch how much I exercise for fear of slipping into old patterns. But my priorities have changed. My connections to the people around me and my need to be here for them, as well as myself, make me resist those twin anorexic urges to over-exercise and restrict eating.
Is this resilience? I guess so, although in my case, resilience is defined as a stubborn refusal to quit. Every day, I have to work hard to resist the lure of those endless workout sessions. For every meal, I have to remind myself to eat everything I have planned. I’ve reversed my osteopenia, rebuilt my body, birthed a beautiful baby girl and later a baby boy after I was told I could never have children as years of starvation had depleted my internal reproductive organs and founded Project True, a not-for-profit organization raising funds and awareness for those suffering from eating disorders. I’m a wife, mother, lawyer, exercise enthusiast, amateur improv performer, and activist. None of it is what I planned, but I have found that life steps in with the best solutions when my plans step out.
I never gave up. I took myself to the eating disorder clinic at St. Paul’s Hospital and refused to leave until the head clinical therapist put me on the admissions list. I searched endlessly for outpatient care, and when I hit a roadblock, I pivoted to try something else. I broke the silence and publicly announced my suffering from an eating disorder, and once I recovered, I went on a journey to help others.
When I was in the hospital, one of the nurses, upon waking me in the middle of the night to ensure I was still breathing, said, “Angela, life is messy, but don’t you want to join the messiness of life?”
For all those suffering in silence from an eating disorder, I encourage you to take the leap. You deserve it. Say YES to life. Say YES to living fully instead of merely existing.
Are you ready to share your story of RESILIENCE? You can do that HERE.