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Your Emails and Insights
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To all of you who have emailed me with your deepest fears and heartache -
Listen to what is in your heart; this is the true essence of who you are. For
every person who reads this page, may the words touch your heart as they have mine
and may you be inspired to fight for life beyond recovery. I PROMISE you, it IS
worth the fight. Love Melinda Dear Melinda, I am editing a book about people's personal writings about eating disorders. I would greatly appreciate it if you could send my request for submissions to your email list(s) and/or post it on your site. EDsubmissions@aol.com Thanks! Elizabeth Hi Melinda, I want people to know that there is so many stages to getting better.There is no moment where you decide 'hey I am better' it is something that you work out in many ways..There is a light at the end of the tunnel and you will be at a place one day where you can look back and see how bad your ED was! I know that I am so proud of what I have achieved in the past few months on my road to recovery, but I keep finding all the time that I put limits on myself about what is an acceptable weight gain.So yes, I have managed to convince just about everyone around me that I am on the mend, but it is still hard and I work at it daily.with the realisation that day by day I don't worry as much as I did yesterday! I find myself cheating sometimes.Saying stuff like "oh if I eat this in front of these people I will just not eat for the rest of the day" and stupid stuff like that.But then the realisation hits me that 'wow look how far I have come' and 'look at how happy I am starting to feel with the beginning of each day' and 'how nice it is to be able to go out and have a good night out with friends without worrying about the calories in a bourbon and coke'..It is amazing and I am feeling like a vital person again. I can walk down the street and not get pitying looks from everyone that goes by, I can do my job and I realise that I can truly excel at it in all aspects now, I can have fun again, I can look my boyfriend in the face and not feel ashamed that I have been destroying myself that day and only feel love for him (not the contempt that I felt when he would supervise my meals), I don't have to worry about what my Mum says to me (That I was 'well rounded' when I finally got up to 49kilos - geez and she wonders why I am going through this 'phase'!!!) and I am independent, living my life in the most beautiful city in Australia and I am starting to accept who I am and what I can be... A big part of getting better lies in the fact that I get to once a month hang out with the best group of chicks who know exactly what I am going through (Monthly meetings at EDSN) There is no judgement and everyone there can relate to what each other is going through! There are some things that a therapist is not going to be able to help with, and going to Amandas, has brought my spirits up sooooo much!!! When ever I feel uninspired, going there makes me feel so strong! To everyone out there with this unnecessary disease, please stop and think about how much you have to live for! Live each day to its fullest and love who you are.. I give all of you my warmest wishes for future health, and happiness. Take care! Ali Hi Melinda, The title of your website caught my eye because my body has become a cage. It is a true liability to me. I am a 27 year old who has suffered from anorexia for about 3 years (although it's hard to determine exactly when it all started). I am 173 cm tall and at my worst I weighed 42 kg. I was painfully thin, and running on a nervous sort of tense energy that never let me relax of have anything resembling fun. With the help of my wonderful family and friends I reached a point when I realised I was really sick and needed help. Over the course of a couple of years I saw a dietitian, GP and psychiatrist, all of whom taught me how to break my own rules and gain about 10 kilos and more of a life. I have now been living at home with my parents for a year, feel much happier and healthier, and look better. Everyone tells me how well I'm doing and how much better I am. My career is going really well, I have let myself open up to a loving relationship (after a long time of believing I just wanted to be on my own), and yes, I am much better. But my body is still a cage. My meals are regular and healthy but I still obsess about the food I put in my mouth and the rituals that surround mealtimes. I feel an almost constant need to exercise which I guess I can liken to purge-type behaviour. If my exercise routine is thrown out I get irritable and grumpy. I am only totally comfortable with eating if I have exercised (walked at least half an hour) before, or not eaten for an extended period. If think a lot about calories still and if one day my intake is low, it's a battle with my conscience the next day to increase it, because "I was so good yesterday". I can feel my routines spiralling into unhealthy levels again, and when I do relax I overeat, then feel terrible guilt that lasts for days until the calories are low enough for me to feel in control again. When I do make the huge effort to behave normally with food (eg not obsess over fat content or menus or fill my plate with lettuce), I feel wonderful. I want to feel like this all the time. I feel I need to be put back on track with a workable exercise regime and healthy eating plan again. But I don't want to talk to anyone at home. I don't want to hurt them or cause worry - I've already done that. I want to still be the strong rehabilitated me that has made them so happy, and pull MYSELF out quietly. Does that make any sense? Meg I feel soo guilty emailing u and asking for help but i feel i've got nowhere else to go - so sorry. i developed anorexia when i was 14 and spent many months in hospital. by the time i was 17 i was normal weight but my mindset was worse. i then began exercising compulsively and binging and this has kept my weight within the normal range for the past 5 yrs. I look fat, feel obese and everyone thinks i'm fine but i've never felt so bad. i hate myself soooo much for failing anorexia. it's gotten to the stage where i've been abusing myself as punishment. now i want to die - i hate living in this hell. how do i get out of it?? i suppose if you had the answer, you'd be richer than bill gates but i don't know where to go and what to do. my 2 closest friends are anorexic and i feel like such a failure when i compare myself to them. i keep trying to go back to anorexia, yet the more i try, the more i binge and the more i have to exercise. i don't know what to do. i don't want to be anorexic again ... any suggestions? and how do I buy your recovery book? ellie NOTE FROM MELINDA: Ellie, recovery can be a slow and often frustrating process - I get the feeling you are very frustrated and are waiting for the 'back to normal' feelings again, and finding you are still struggling. It is common to struggle like this through recovery. But you need to remind yourself of your reasons for wanting to get better, and make a commitment to yourself, a promise that you will look after yourself, nuture yourself, and listen to what is in your heart. Recovery can be frightening as well because it is largely unpredictable. My book 'How to Recover From Anorexia and Other Eating Disorders' explains the complete recovery process in detail, and gives real life accounts of how others were able to recover - this will help you find your own individual recovery path. You can find it at www.bodycage.com/bookrecovery and can purchase it from this page. Keep fighting, I promise you it is worth it. Dear Melinda, Hi, my name is Kelly and I live in Portland Oregon. Last summer I got home from my 8th inpatient treatment after 4 months. I was hospitalized 4 times in 2 months before I left for treatment. Now my heart isn't doing so well and I wore a heart monitor for 2 weeks. I don't know what to do because I still struggle a lot. I have anorexia with purging but no binging. My weight is still higher than it's been in a long time but I have been slowly losing it. I work out now more than ever even though I can feel my heart skipping and I'm not suppose to be doing any cardio cuz of my weight and heart. I'm starting to feel hopeless again and have no family support. Soon I might not have insurance anymore which will be horrible because I won't be able to see my dietician, doctor or get labs or EKG's. Anyway, I'm just trying to find support anywhere I can get it. I want to be able to live a full and productive life and I know I can't do that with an ED. I just thought I would introduce myself and tell you I liked your site. I've never read one with so much understanding, being firm yet loving. Thank you for that. Love, Kelly hey melinda I have been suffering from various eating disorders for 6 years now...both anorexia and bulima....i started throwing up at the age of ten and things have just gradually progressed from there. i was so glad to come across your site. im in remission for the fourth time now and hopefully this time i wont slip up....one of the biggest helps ive had this time is a fellow anna sufferer i met on a pro anna web page. We had both been suffering for a very long time and were currently looking for a fasting partner. once we started emailing and sharing our stories and hopes and fears tho things started to change. We eventually made a decision to attempt recovery. for a year she has been the only person i can really talk to about anything. she's the one who understands me when i slip up, and supports me when i fail...and not just with anorexia, we talk about normal stuff too. what movies we like, our love life, our familys. ive never even met this girl and yet she knows me better than anyone ever has before. In the year that ive known her weve come a long way. together, we devised a system to slowly start eating again. It wasnt easy but eventually we started to heal. When i was having a bad day or a bad week her letters kept me from "going back to old ways"....in a way shes kinda been my savior. We still have a really long way to go but i just wanted everyone to know that talking to someone else who knows where you are comming from is the best kind of therapy. It let me know that i wasnt alone, and that someone understood and even shared some of the same feelings i had been surpressing all these years. thanks again for your time Jill Hi Melinda, I am writing this letter because I think I have an eating disorder. I can't stand the sight or smell of food and every time I try to eat something just to prove to people I'm eating I either go and vomit or I will take laxitives. I also take a lot of diet pills and water pills. I'm scared to die and don't want to die because I have 3 kids. This has been going on for awhile and I don't know how to stop. I just want to lose weight because I am fat, but would like to know how to control it or don't I have an eating disorder. Kris NOTE FROM MELINDA: Kris, your thoughts and behaviour are very dangerous - if you keep going this way, you are in danger of sucuumbing to a very serious eating disorder and it will take everything away from you - everything you know and love. It is a lonely, miserable existence. I speak from experience. Please confide in someone you trust about how you feel, as this will help you to understand how serious the problem. Please seek help before it is too late. Your children need you, and you need to love and nuture yourself - you deserve nothing less. Dear Melinda I found your book in the library Melinda. Started reading it last night. It makes me cry, but it also reminds me that I'm not alone. It also reminded me that I've not being paying enough attention to my recovery. As you said, the easy option is to slip back into the old habit of strict self control and discipline, and now I realise I've done just that, to a worse degree than I thought. Again I feel raw and ashamed and fragile (as I guess you do when you face up to how unwell you really are), except this time I've kept it to myself. It seems a bit harder when everyone around you thinks you're doing so well. But at least I know the steps I need to retrace. I've taken them before. Soon I want to feel strong enough to do what you did and move away for a while. I have dreams to fulfil and that wont happen if I don't improve. Thankyou for your words; thankyou for taking the time to tell your story. Meg Hi Melinda, First of all, I would like to thank you for your wonderful site and all of the energy you are devoting to helping others. I am just now starting to begin the recovery process, and as you know it is very hard. It's only been two days so far, and it's a constant struggle. For the past two years I have been dealing with an eating disorder-- For the most part I was anorexic, but this past year I also started making myself sick on the rare occassions when I would eat something. My motivation to try and break free of my disorder was figure skating. Eating disorders can do severe damage to your body--and especially your bones. I am just now starting to realize this, and I know now that I don't want to do irreparable harm to my body. But even though rationally I know this, it doesn't make this process any easier. Although I am forcing myself to eat three times a day, I have to fight the overwhelming temptation of just making myself sick to get rid of the food I ate. Skipping meals is equally tempting--but somehow I am making myself eat. I feel weak, because starving myself and/or making myself sick made me feel in control and I was so proud every time when that number on the scale crept lower. I feel like I'm giving in to temptation by eating and I hate that. I'm trying to just go meal to meal and not think about whole days or weeks. I even ate a spoon of ice cream yesterday! The voices still scream inside, but I am trying my best to not listen to them. Hopefully one day I won't hear them. The thought of eating still scares me and after every meal I force myself to eat, I feel very panicked and agitated. I can't yet imagine eating without feeling the incredible guilt. I feel so alone and it's not easy, but I am not going to give up. And maybe one day it'll get better. Melinda, congratulations to you on recovering, I am so very happy for you! You are inspiring me-and so many others- not to give up. Thank you so very much for all that you have done. To all those who are going through the same thing--know that you are in my thoughts and prayers, you are all such beautiful and special people. I wish you much happiness--you deserve it. Rhea thank you for replying to my message. Since i wrote you the first email i have gotten a little help. I told my mom everything and she took me to the doctors. I have another appointment with my doctor tomorrow. I've gained a bit of weight. Thanks for making such an inspiring webpage. jen Dear Melinda I wanted to say to everyone out there that you can recover and you are worth it!! I always had low self esteem, and somewhat bad body image. I remember in 3rd grade thinking i was too fat, when really i was pretty little. I don't know what caused it though. anyway, i've done gymnastics since i was 8, and even though my coaches didnt put pressure on me, i did, and i didn't realize it untill i was about now. I am 16 now. I had an abusive boyfriend when i was 14, so right after we broke up, i started skipping meals and making my self vomit. by the time i went back to school, i had lost a lot of weight.though i wasn't what you would call emaciated, i was too thin. my dance teacher had noticed the wight change, and asked me what was going on. i ended up admitting it to her because i trust her and she was more of a friend than a teacher. i started seeing a therapist soon after. i kept getting worse and worse. during this time i had another boyfriend, who, by the way was also abusive and he raped me on our 6 month anniversary. My therapist told me that if i got any worse, i would have to go inpatient. i decided on my own that i couldnt control it, so i went to a treatment facility in Utah. I was very nervous, but the girls were very sweet and supportive. I was in treatment for for 71 days. I 'm gonna tell you right now that it is extremly hard, but it is worth the fight. i have been out of treatment for about 6 months now, and I am doing very well ,although i still struggle with anorexic and bulimic thoughts. It is not a straight road, either. You'll have set backs and you will slip and do your old behaviors once in a while. but that is normal. It doesnt mean that you failed(i know that some of you will think that because i did, and most do). You learn from your mistakes, and you get stronger. I have learned so much about myself. I have come out of my shell...before i wouldnt even go up in class and ask the teacher a question. Now, i speak at school to several classes,especially health and dance, and i try to help other people beat it. You can do it if you put your mind to it. Another thing is that treatment is more successful and much easier if you do it by choice, not get forced into it. Keep trying and don't give up. I believe in all of you!!! thanks for the great site Melinda...it has helped me a lot. Love Always, Lisa My name's Dominique and I'm 8 1/2 years old. My friend told me to go to your website and it's the best I've ever been to because it's so true and honest. I've had an e.d for a year and a half now, it started around the beginning of last year. My friend and my older sister took me to this doctor and I was diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa. A year and 2 months later and I love my life. I see this brilliant counselor at my church and she's helped me alot, more than group or anything else did. She told me about Jesus and how much He loves me and can help me though all my problems no matter how impossible it seems. I'm starting secondary school in 2 weeks, 3 years early, and I'm really excited and looking forward to it. I compare things to how they were a year ago and I almost can't believe already how I lived like that, with the constant fight inside my head. I can't believe how much I hated myself. I just want people to know that recovery is so worth it, it may be harder at first but it gets easier. Love Dominique Thank you so much for taking the time to read and respond to my e-mail. I am so impressed by your dedication to helping so many people recover, please know that your personal emails helped me so much, because it was proof that someone did in fact care. I very much admire and respect you, you have made a huge difference in my life. The energy and devotion you are investing in this battle is amazing, and I wish you only the best. Thank you for helping all of us--you are a true inspiration. Anorexia is regarded as a frivolous disease, afflicting frivolous persons. The assumption is that you would have to be frivolous... have to be down right moronic... to "want to be that thin", to "not know what you are doing to yourself", to "believe the media's lies"... Thus, it is nearly impossible for an intelligent anorexic to seek help or compassion with out being met with condescension... I am not a frivolous person... I am an art student, a language student, a theology student, and a writer... I am a devout humanist and a lover of the sciences. I know how the human body works on a cellular level... a genetic level even. I know how popular concepts of femininity evolved in Western culture. I never wanted to be "that thin", I have always abohred "the media"... Yet years of my life were consumed by anorexia/compulsive eating... How is this possible??? I geuse even intellectuals need affection... the thin get affection. When I was healthy I was ignored by all. When I was on the verge of death I was doted on by my family and adored by men (or at least lusted after)! No one had ever shown me that kind of love or respect prior to my anorexia... despite my myriad academic achievments. And no one has shown it to me since my recovery... despite my continued academic success. I miss it... but more than anything I am heart broken to have discovered that all those who seemed indifferent to my creativity could be so easily and wonderfully thrilled by my own destruction. Thank you so much for listening. NOTE FROM MELINDA I doubt people would have shown you respect when you were close to death. They would have been desperately worried about you because they love you so much. Much of your email is your own perception. I suggest asking those who you are close to whether they are now indifferent to you because you have recovered or why they do not pay attention to your academic achievements. Unless you communicate your pain, you are in danger of destructive patterns emerging. Open yourself up to those you love - perhaps their own perception is that you wish to be left alone. Have a heart to heart with your family and friends - if they knew how you were really feeling, they would be devastated. Communication is the answer. Sadly the way of the world is that people don't communicate as much as they should therefore we are left to assume other's thoughts and opinions without giving ourselves the opportunity to really know what they're thinking. You sound like a beautiful person with so much to give. Let yourself give, and let yourself receive love too. Hi Melinda, Just wanted to thank you for your kind words. I guess now i'm starting to understand that i have to be honest with myself. I realise now that I can't recover because other people want me to, I've got to do it for me. Maybe I'm just scared! I don't remember what life is like without controlling everything that passes my lips. But I'm gonna be determind to keep trying and who knows, maybe some day I will be mailing you to tell you that I've done it. Thank you once again, you really are very kind. Peter What happens if you try to recover and fail time and time again. What do you do when you begin to feel like it would just be easier if you were dead. Cos this is how I feel. I'm fed up of trying, I've had anorexia for 11 years i'm 23) and for the last 3 years I've tried to beat it. I can't afford counciling and nobody understands me. I feel like i need to run from myself, to get away from me. I'm crying as I write this because I can't understand,if other people can beat anorexia then why can't I? Does it take a certain type of person to beat it? maybe I don't have what it takes. >I ask you for advice as I know you have recovered.(well done by the way) Thanx Love Charlie NOTE FROM MELINDA: Remember, it's what is inside that makes you beautiful ... your consistent focus on weight and shape and calories, will only bring you much sadness and heartache ... you deserve more than that, you deserve to be happy and live with peace in your heart. Obsessing about weight is not the answer - the answer lies within yourself. Think really hard about what you want out of life, and dont be afraid to reach for the stars ... this is where you should focus your energy, imagination and talent.Focus on your reasons for wanting to get better. And above all, be brave and be strong.
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