Hope Renewed: Surviving an Eating Disorder

After being engaged nearly 4 months now, it seems like within these past 4 months at least a dozen other friends of mine have gotten engaged as well! While becoming a soon-to-be-bride is one of the most exciting times in a girl’s life, I have found that the title also brings a lot of pressure.

I wanted to write this blog post to try and encourage my fellow bride friends who have ever struggled with an eating disorder but it’s also a time for me to journal about my frustrations with the assumptions society today places on soon-to-be-brides.

Ever since the night I got engaged I have continued collecting stacks upon stacks of bridal magazines seeking all I may need to know about wedding day prep and how to make my dream day “perfect.” As I flip through these magazines I seem to find a common trend which is really disturbing to me. The headlines on almost every other page are titled things such as “Time to Get Gorgeous”, “Create that Perfect Wedding Day Glow”, “Glisten Up”, “Shine Your Hair,” etc. Essentially, according to all these magazines, when it comes to being a bride being BEAUTIFUL is a prerequisite. I have just highlighted a few of the beauty headlines that flood the magazines, however, the most attention is placed on getting that wedding day/honeymoon body that also seems to be an assumed “must” if you plan on walking down the aisle and being socially accepted.

As a girl with a history of anorexia, when I first started reading these articles, I was honestly a bit deceived thinking I need to know and do this stuff since I am a bride after all but as time has gone on, I've seen how much of an impact these articles have made on me and my image of myself. Article after article left me feeling inadequate. I didn't like the path I was headed down since reading these articles and felt like my eating disorder past was coming back to haunt me. If the articles weren't bad enough almost every person that comes up to me to congratulate me on being a bride leads into “So, what’s your wedding exercise program looking like??” or “You better get bikini ready for the honeymoon!”

After talking with my fiancé about this as well as my parents, I set up an appointment with my doctor just to touch base and seek some encouragement. As always, he reassured me, saying that on my wedding day I need to be nothing but myself and to make sure I don’t alter myself for society’s distorted “norm.” After seeking out my support team’s help and really thinking through things, I feel so much better now and realize that while it’s good to learn healthy bridal beauty tips to make me feel my best on my special day, it should not be running my thought process.

I’m not saying to boycott bridal magazines by any means; I’m just saying while flipping through the magazines, use a filter and be discretionary about what you believe as truth. As individuals with an eating disorder past, it’s easy to slip back into the “comfort” zone we once knew, which runs creepily parallel to the status quo the media has set up today.

As I mentioned before, my best friend decided to write an article about my recovery, for one of her college writing classes. It can be seen below. I am beyond thankful for her shared passion to share the good news of recovery with others and for her unending support and love for me. I love you,Court.

This is what you would find in Bre Page’s dresser drawers:

Nine pairs of jeans and 24 shirts, all from Express.

Enough Conair straighteners to supply an army of Victoria’s Secret angels.

A shoebox filled to the brim with jewelry from Swarovski and Michael Kors.

Two bins of Sephora makeup.

Prozac, citracal calcium, D-3 – bottles of them - and daily vitamins for her anxiety, osteoporosis and vitamin deficiencies that stemmed from her eating disorder.

One beat up, highlighted and note-filled King James Bible.

In 2010, Page was faced with a decision that 24 million other Americans are burdened with, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. She could continue hiding her ED from her family and friends for just a little longer. This way she could start her first semester as a junior at her dream college, pursuing her dream career in communications and marketing. On the other hand, she could confront her problem. Stop hiding it from her parents and the ones she loved most. She could take the semester off and heal her body and her heart. She could give up on her battle for physical perfection and save her own life.

That August, Page was confronted with her golden opportunity to find help. Because of the great divide that anorexia inflicted in her family, Page’s parents set up a family therapy session. They were completely unaware of her eating disorder and were hoping to get to the root of the problems they were all facing. The first time they met with the therapist, he interviewed them and asked Page if she had an eating disorder.

“I imagine he came to this conclusion because I had all the signs. However, my parents didn’t know what these signs were at the time. I remember taking a deep breath and turning to the therapist and my parents and saying ‘Yes, I do have an eating disorder, and I want help.’”

That August, Page began three months of intense treatment at the Healing Connection, a rehabilitation center in Rochester. Anorexia had so greatly destroyed both her physical and mental being, making her recovery here “like a living hell.”

The main facility is small. The walls are painted red as a means to induce the feeling of hunger, with a whiteboard ornamenting one of the walls. The hard-backed chairs sit in a circle in the middle of the room. The floor is covered in rough, old carpeting that had seen better days, much like the patients that have worn it down.

This main area leads into another portion of the room – about the size of a typical middle-income family room - where there sits a wooden kitchen table that seated 8.

Patients were isolated to this room most of the time, unless they were in art therapy or meeting personally with their therapist. The room always smelled of the Progresso soup cooking in the attached kitchen.

Food was served on colored trays with the entire food intake for that meal placed on the top. In addition, a typical meal for me would often consist of a big bowl of disgusting soup; a main dish of chicken, beef, or fish; a vegetable; yogurt; a Pop Tart; a grain side - rice or pasta- with a butter shot; and some kind of dessert. They would always give them their fear foods for a snack in the afternoons, such as chips and dip, apple pie, Jello with whipped cream, or in Page’s case, ice cream.

Three drinks were placed next to the tray. Page was never allowed to drink just water; she always had at least two juices and milk.

Patients were monitored by therapists for the entire duration of the meal, which was never longer than 45 minutes. If Page could not complete her meal in time, she received points against her which prolonged her time in rehab – an occurrence that happened often. She also could not place her hands down by their sides or under the table because they would assume she was hiding or dropping food instead of eating it.

The patients would play games or sing songs at the table to distract them from the eating process. Many times, Page only left a few minutes towards the end of her eating period to eat the majority of her food. The other girls at the table would cheer her on, motivating her to finish everything on her plate.

“Forty-five minutes may seem like a ton of time to eat, but I usually would take about 2 hours to eat a meal that size because I would drag it out and eventually distract others enough that I could just throw it out and not eat it. My stomach had shrunk so much because of this that consuming all this food at one time literally caused me such abdominal pain that I’d be keeled over crying after every meal.”

While she was feeling sick and “wanted to die,” she would be forced to sit in the hard-backed chairs after every meal. Patients would go around the room talking about how each person felt about that meal. It was always worse when Page did not complete her food in time, becoming “a wreck thinking how I’d never make it out.”

Fortunately, Page did not have to face her battle alone. She was surrounded by several other girls going through the same mental and physical war that was necessary in order to overcome an eating disorder. These girls inspired her to keep fighting.

“There is something about our bond that people who have not been through rehab wouldn’t understand. We were there for each other during our darkest moments. We cried on each other’s shoulders. We lifted each other up and helped to push through each day and each meal. I know that we will forever share this bond and will always be there for one another.”

They were not the only ones who helped her to overcome her greatest fight. While Page started to find herself again and feel more like a human being, rather than “the robot [her] eating disorder had transformed me into,” she also began to mend the bond with God that anorexia had so selfishly torn apart.

“During my ED, I felt extremely far from God. It was like a wall that stood between us. My ED had blocked my vision of who I am in Christ and who He made me. As I began recovery, I started regaining my vision of my purpose in life and His love for me become more evident than ever. I see now that He truly did raise me up from my deathbed and saved my life, because He loves me so much.”

There is not a moment that goes by that this renewed faith does not shine like the sun. Every morning when she wakes up, Page begins to have conversations with God as if he is an old friend, not some invisible entity in some far off land. Before every meal, she gives thanks to Him and expresses her love and gratitude not just for the meal she is about to eat, but also for the loved ones she is fortunate enough to be sharing it with.

“I don’t have the type of relationship with God where I just pray to him when I want or need something, but rather every single day I wake up and talk to him throughout the day. He is my best friend. I know it seems weird because He isn’t here in earthly form, but he lives in my heart. Through seeking Him about all areas of my life, I have a clearer sense of direction. I am overwhelmed everyday by His love for me and wish to share that love with others.”

It is this same love and persistence that has reshaped her career and life goals. She still studies communication and rhetoric at Nazareth College and still plans to work with media, but with a renewed purpose.

“I want to help others. I want to change the status quo that the media portrays concerning body image. I want to encourage girls that they don’t need to change their body to fit society’s expectations. Instead, they need to change society’s expectations to fit their bodies.”

While searching for a job post-college at an advertising firm, Page also plans to write a book about her experiences. She hopes to travel around the country helping girls who are in the same position she was in just two years ago, and offer them hope.

“I want them to know that in order to get through this, they need to turn to God because He is the ultimate healer. Everything else in this world is a temporary healer but he is the only one who heals the deepest wounds of the heart through his incredible love.”

It is a cold December evening. Page walks slowly into her dim-lit bedroom, swapping her blouse and dress pants from Saks Fifth Avenue with an old 5k marathon shirt and Forever 21 boxers. She sits down on her queen-sized bed, encompassed in pillows and stuffed animals from her long distance boyfriend. Her iPhone lights up with a new text message from her best friend. She ignores it.

She opens her 2007 HP laptop and opens her internet browser to her blog entitled “Hope Renewed: Surviving an Eating Disorder.”

She begins writing a new entry. This is not the average, lengthy blog post about an encounter with a rude nurse, heartbreak over a friend with a newly uncovered eating disorder, or celebration about her boyfriend’s anticipated proposal. It is not an academic piece from a communications class about the media’s portrayal of beauty.

It is three lines long –the shortest post of her entire blog.

"Replace perfectionism with persistence. After all, in recovery and life, it's persistence that really pays off. Forget about perfection."