You, Me, and ED

America The Beautiful

Have you heard about this new documentary America The Beautiful that just opened in Chicago?

If not, please check out the trailer on Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RqOyJIjO0U

Fixin it

“She has a great job, beautiful kids, everything going for her…why can’t she see it?”

“She doesn’t want to get better, I am sick of trying to make her.”

“Can’t she do it for the kids…it is so selfish what she is doing to us!”?

These are only a few of the things I have heard from spouses and family members of someone suffering with an eating disorder.

As friends and family of someone suffering maybe you have felt the same way, but didn’t express it to anyone.

Yes. It is frustrating to watch someone go in and out of treatment.

Yes. It seems like madness to watch someone in what you see as  “throwing his or her life away.”

Yes. You feel like shaking them and telling them to get it together!

I understand.

A Deep Hole

We use this at the hospital and I think it is applicable to ANYONE!

Chapter 1 of my life: I walked down the street - there is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. It is not my fault. It took me forever to find my way out.

Beautiful Boy

I am currently engrossed in the book A Beautiful Boy by David Scheff.

The book is David’s harrowing journey through his son’s drug addiction. I recommend this book mostly to fathers struggling with a child with an eating disorder. You will be able to relate! The profound and deeply vulnerable insight that David nakedly reveals in this book will be a lifeline for father’s (and mother’s) trying to make sense of addiction…and eating disorders. Eating Disorders, which in my opinion are addictions.

PARIS!

Check out this news from Paris!!!
Taken from a magazine called The Week.

Targeting anorexic images:
The lower house of the French parliament passed a bill a few weeks ago making it a crime to "incite extreme thinness" in magazines, ads, and websites. The bill, thought to be the first of its kind in the world, is intended to fight anorexia nervosa a disorder whose sufferers, mostly girls, starve themselves.

What you can learn from the Jayhawks!

Rock Chalk Jayhawk…KU…Rock Chalk JAYHAWK KU!

If you don’t know what this is, you haven’t been watching the Final Four Basketball Tournament!

Kansas University (my alma mater) took the Title back last Monday night after 20 years of "almosts".

More on helping ...

A girlfriend of mine gave me this quote recently.
I love it.
I hope you do too.
I think it relates well to those of you with family or friends struggling with an ED.

My sibling has an Eating Disorder...

Round and round I have been rolling the answers around in my head to this question I was asked to write about:

How do you help your sibling who has an eating disorder?

Your sister or your brother?

Well, I am not sure there is pat answer here, more of one that works for you and your family.

Hopeless?

I am writing this in response to a comment from Erica regarding feeling hopeless.

Is there hope?

The question I am asked most often.
Is there hope after 16 inpatient treatments?
Is there hope after relapse?
Is there hope for a daughter who has been struggling for 20 years?

Peter Pan

Peter: Well I will not grow up! You cannot make me! I will banish you like Tinkerbell.
Wendy: I WILL NOT BE BANISHED!
Peter: Then go home. Go home and grow up. And take your feelings with you!

Peter Pan is one of my favorite musicals. And I am reminded of it often while working with patients with eating disorders.