From “Why me?” to “Watch me”
From “Why me?” to “Watch me” by Carmen Nunez The moment the words “your child has an eating disorder” were spoken, the world as I knew it fractured. Receiving my daughter’s diagnosis was not just a life-altering event; it was a life-shattering shift in all things that once were. I remember the immediate, cold grip […]
Self-Care Ideas
By Sue ChambersWhen my daughter was first diagnosed, no one told me—or maybe I just couldn’t hear it through the trauma-induced fog—that recovery could take three to seven years. I remember deciding, with absolute determination, that I would learn everything I needed to and have her well in six months. Looking back, I think I […]
When Overnight Everything Changed: A Parent’s Perspective on PANS/PANDAS
By: A Mom Who Wants to Help Others I woke up one January morning, not realizing that a simple virus was about to turn our family’s world upside down. My son had a high fever for several days, and we were told it was just a virus, nothing out of the ordinary. We did what […]
A Conversation With My Mum
A Conversation With My Mum By Bonnie Killip, dietitian (APD) and clinical hypnotherapist A few days ago, I sat with my mum and asked her a question I hadn’t before, at least not directly. “What kind of help were you searching for when I was first diagnosed?” I wanted to understand as an adult, a […]
If You Would Only Listen
If You Would Only Listen by Elizabeth Woodcock Yesterday, I ran across the email that I had sent to the clinician at the premier children’s hospital in my city. I had spent more than an hour composing the email, explaining that my daughter was losing weight and my fears about the possibility of an eating […]
Nurturing My Plants, Nurturing Myself
Nurturing My Plants, Nurturing Myself By Ella I think that anyone who has struggled with their mental health, whether that’s an eating disorder, depression, anxiety or any other measure of mental illness, understands how challenging it can be to take care of both your mind and body. When I was very unwell, I found solace […]
The Strength You Didn’t Know You Had
By Judy Krasna, F.E.A.S.T. Executive Director When people hear that my daughters are triplets, they always ask me how I managed with three babies. Truthfully, I don’t have an answer. Looking back on it, the first year was total insanity. No sleep for 9 months, non-stop feeding, changing, and soothing, and no downtime at all, […]
The One Who Always Gets Up
By Judy Krasna, F.E.A.S.T. Executive Director Two mothers are waiting outside of dance class. One mother says to the other, “Are you the mother of the girl who always falls?” The other mother responded, “No, I’m the mother of the one who always gets up.” I don’t know the source of this, but I saw […]
Dear Family
By AJA Dear Family, Today, your child was diagnosed with an eating disorder. Today, a doctor that you’ve never met told you that your child will die without treatment. Today, that same doctor told you that your child isn’t well enough to go home. Today, you learned that your child is sick. So sick that […]
Navigating Ramadan with an Eating Disorder
Post-Recovery Struggles: And You May Ask Yourself, How Did I Get Here?
By Josie Brown Imagine waking up in a foreign body. Every step feels disjointed, clunky. The way your clothes fall along your torso looks wrong, and every time you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, tears well up in the corners of your eyes because you have no idea what it is you […]
When a Burden Becomes a Privilege
By Selina Elison On a promising day, my daughter would go to school and I would be alone in the house. I would make a coffee, stand at my large kitchen windows, and stare into the trees on the neighbouring property. I could never recall for how long I stood there, paranoid that I might […]
Hope and Powerful Words of Support
By Anonymous I had one major goal as a mother and that was to raise both my daughters with positive body image. I literally did all the “right” things according to the professionals. But it wasn’t enough. As is the story of so many, all it takes is a certain set of conditions to align […]
Hope for Parents
By Amy It has been almost 2 years ago since this mama was hit by the anorexia freight train. I knew something wasn’t right with my 13-year-old daughter that spring. She was losing weight, fast. Her moods were more than a typical teenager. Her pediatrician, at the time, had us take her to the emergency […]
Surviving in Two Worlds
By: AJA I envied you, outside world. Free of an eating disorder. Unaware of the chaos it can cause. Your world is so carefree. Your world is so simple. Your world had been mine, not so long ago. But, when my daughter was diagnosed with anorexia, I was thrown into the eating disorder world. A […]
A Message of Hope
By Anonymous Editor’s Note: This was a comment on one of our blog posts; since it was already intended to be viewed by the public on our website, it was adapted as its own blog post. I am 31 years old and have been suffering with anorexia since I was seven. Reading Dr. Gaudiani‘s article […]
Paradoxes and Paths
By Judy Krasna, F.E.A.S.T. Executive Director One of the things that we emphasize often at F.E.A.S.T. is that there is no one path to a family’s eating disorder journey. The reason why this is so important is that we know that parents are traveling on multiple paths. If we put forth that there is only […]
Acceptance
By Angie When as carers, whether that be parents or siblings or any other family members, we start out on this journey with our loved ones, a lot of things change so quickly. So quickly, it is hard to comprehend at times. The downward spiral seems to be happening at a frightening rate and it’s […]
Mensajes iguales y opuestos: lo que necesitamos y no necesitamos escuchar en la recuperación
Thank you to our wonderful volunteer Sole Gonzalez for translating this post into Spanish. Por Emily Boring Una regla de oro: Nunca uses el lenguaje del TCA para responder al TCA. Quizá pueda parecer obvio. Desgraciadamente, me he encontrado con que en situaciones comunes ― conversaciones con clínicos bien intencionados, familia, amigos y otros apoyos de la […]
Why Us?
By Angie Williamson, UK Why? Why was the only question going through my mind. I was lying on a very uncomfortable single fold out bed on a children’s ward, at about 2am. We had been admitted with some significant heart issues earlier that day, 4 days before Christmas 2021. The heart machine was beeping non-stop […]
Reclaiming the Power of “When” in Eating Disorder Recovery
By Oona Hanson “When did this start?” “When will things get any better?” “When will this be over?” Time is one of those things parents think a lot about during their child’s eating disorder treatment. We may spend hours, even days, going back in our minds to earlier moments: When did I first notice changes […]
To A Young Girl Fighting
By Alexa Cohen To a young girl fighting, The appointments after appointments must be exhausting, I know that it is because that’s what I’m living right now. All day at a unit where I know no one. Alone and scared everyday to one day achieve the life I have always wanted. A life free of […]
Reflections: A Decade Later
By Victorious Doc Mom We were on a ski trip and my husband noticed our 12 year old daughter had become much thinner. We suspected anorexia nervosa (AN), so we reached out to our pediatrician who was not helpful. My husband and I are both physicians. I reviewed the medical literature and learned that Family […]
You Saved My Daughter’s Life
By Eliza Wilkins You saved my daughter’s life. Thank you and I am grateful are too weak, too formal for what I feel, but they are the only words I have. So, thank you for saving my daughter’s life. I am grateful. When I first felt the hair rising on the back of my neck, thank you for being […]
You Will Always Belong
By Judy Krasna, F.E.A.S.T. Executive Director Losing a child to an eating disorder is the worst nightmare of every single parent in our community. I am living that nightmare personally. While I don’t hide it, I try to be considerate about the fact that I know it scares the living daylights out of all of […]
Revelation at the Mall
By Judy Krasna, F.E.A.S.T. Executive Director My daughter’s eating disorder sucked all of the joy out of her life, but there was one place where it wasn’t the all-powerful satanic demon that destroyed her happiness, and that was at the mall. My daughter loved shopping. I hated shopping with her, because for her, it wasn’t […]
The Balancing Act
By Judy Krasna, F.E.A.S.T. Executive Director My son-in-law tested positive for COVID last week and he was extremely sick, despite being young, healthy, and fully vaccinated. My daughter was torn about what to do; obviously she didn’t want to expose herself and her 2 young children to COVID. They live in a small apartment with […]
Love Comes In Many Forms
By Martina Candiago, Windsor, Ontario, Canada We are almost at the end of our journey through hell with my daughter’s eating disorder. My daughter is 19 now, she has full control of her meals, and she is thriving. She does still have regular monthly check ups. I often reflect on the beginning of her illness, […]
Green Beans And A Plastic Spoon
By Rachael Steil, eating disorder recovery advocate, founder of Running in Silence. As I walked with my family through New York City in the summer of 2012, all I could think about was food. “I’m hungry,” I said, hoping it was loud enough for my parents to hear, but not too loud as to sound desperate. […]
There Is No One Path
By Judy Krasna, F.E.A.S.T. Executive Director If you take a poll of our community members and ask them why they are engaged in offering peer support to other families of people with eating disorders, most will answer that they want to guide other families around the pitfalls that they themselves encountered while caring for their […]
Help Others, Always
By Judy Krasna, F.E.A.S.T. Executive Director Tomorrow marks one year since my daughter Gavriella took her own life after a fierce 13-year battle with anorexia. Even after a full year, it is impossible for me to wrap my head around the harsh finality and the immense depth of our staggering loss. For so many years, […]
I Never Aspired to Be a Tough Person
By Judy Krasna, F.E.A.S.T. Executive Director I did a podcast recently for ED Matters sharing my personal and tragic experience with suicidality in eating disorders. I was given an opportunity to speak about the loss of my daughter, Gavriella, to anorexia and suicide, to tell people a little about who my daughter was, and to send a […]
How Can I Help? A Guide For Family and Friends
By Sarah, F.E.A.S.T. Volunteer When a friend or a loved one is suffering we want to help. Often it is difficult to know how, so we say, “Iʼm here if you need me” or “Let me know if thereʼs anything I can do?” Of course it is lovely to know that people are there for […]
My Kid Is Getting Better, So Why Do I Feel Worse?
By Oona Hanson When caring for a loved one with an eating disorder, you have to develop all kinds of new skills and coping strategies. One of the ways to survive the grueling treatment process is to adopt an unflappable, almost robotic approach in the face of unpredictable outbursts, cruel insults, and terrifying threats. Wearing […]
Climbing Out of Anorexia
By Josie Brown Since I was 14, I’ve identified as a climber and poured my heart and soul into the sport. Climbing taught me to appreciate my body for what it was capable of doing. It was my medicine, my rock. When I thought I had nothing else to live for, the thought of sending […]
One Day
By Maxine Hardy One day our family life was amazing and one day it wasn’t. One day my 15 year old bright, athletic, happy and energetic daughter was healthy, with the world at her fingertips, and then one day she wasn’t. That day was so vivid in my mind…the horror of it. Knowing that yesterday […]
The Rough Road Toward Recovery
By Natalie M. My daughter is currently in her sixth month of refeeding after a horrible relapse in September, 2020. This sweet, beautiful, amazing human being, attempted suicide after several months of losing weight, without us realizing it. After a hospital stay of a few weeks, we had her back home and did the only […]
Any Other Name
by L.H. an·o·rex·i·a What is in a name? they say. As a child this name brought troubling images to mind. It made me think of the glossy tabloid magazines I spied as I stood in line next to my mother at the grocery store check-out. A word not often spoken aloud or acknowledged. Fast forward […]
Holding Contradictions: reflections from a recovered daughter to encourage parents supporting recovery during covid-19
By Emily Boring, author in recovery Last April, I had the privilege of speaking to a gathering of parents—a local support group for families of children with eating disorders. I’d been invited to share my story of recovery from anorexia. We met at the neighborhood high school, in a Spanish classroom with cheery posters (“¡Si, […]