frozen.oranges

wait, the redesign wasn't a joke??!

2009-03-03T01:21:00.003-05:00

NO, it wasn't!

A year ago Saturday, I officially bought the www.frozenoranges.com domain. On one hand, YAY, we all know I love anniversaries like none other. On the other (as it is only a one year buy) this means that I am running out of time to redesign as I'll be transferring my blog to Wordpress.

The transfer is going to be between 11p and 1a tonight (03/03/09), at which time my site will be down for maintenance. When I get it back up, it will officially be on Wordpress (and hosted by moi, not Blogger) but, frankly, will look like crap. It is temporary while Bill (my coding wiz) and I get together the new template, probably another week or 2.

I'm really excited about it and, so far, pretty happy with my design. I can't wait to finally have it up. I have been dying to redesign for months now.

I appreciate you're patience. Love you all!

so yummy, so yummy.

2009-03-01T11:12:00.003-05:00

It's Sunday. It's been a very long week, I'm exhausted, and am running on somewhere between 2 and 4 hours of sleep. I'll cop out and post this really amazing video for you all. Enjoy, and happy March!

(Warning: do not watch if you're currently high or on acid.)

Yo Gabba Gabba! (There's a Party in my Tummy !)
by Materialiste

meda event: "panel of recovery"

2009-02-24T16:11:00.001-05:00

MEDA held a very successful event last night called "Panel of Recovery." It was basically as it sounds: a panel of people who had an experience with eating disorders. There was a father, an ex-MEDA intern who was recovered, a recovered woman (one of my readers, Jen) and her husband. They were all very beautiful and hopeful stories.

The father's story (and his delivery) were scarily identical to my father and what he would say. The content, his body language.. if you were there last night, you met my dad and how we would talk about the process of my recovery from his point of view. Seriously.. it freaked my mom and I out.

If anything effected me last night, it wasn't so much the speakers as it was the reaction of the audience to their stories. There was a young couple across the aisle from me, probably somewhere in their early 20s. At some points, the girl would nod in agreement with the speakers' experiences and start to cry a little, and her boyfriend/husband (whatever) would put his arm around her and ask if she was doing okay. It was really beautiful. I get really excited when I see such supportive significant others like that. I always felt so lucky to have that kind of support throughout my recovery, as well. I know how hard it must be for boyfriends and girlfriends to watch someone they love go through that process and how easy it would be for them to give up. I see that all to often as well.

The turn-out was really great. They place was full with families and friends alike. My mom said she had wished something like that existed while I was struggling. It probably did, but you never know about it until you have to really get involved. Now we know.

Last night gave me some great ideas on how I want to write my story and a lot of motivation to just get it done already. I'm such a procrastinator, but I know I could be doing so much more of what I want if I would just get this one speech written.

communication is key.

2009-02-23T01:36:00.001-05:00

For a relationship to work (to thrive, to grow), there needs to be communication. One lesson I have really had driven home in the past two years is how necessary communication is to maintain a healthy relationship, be it with a friend, a significant other, a roommate, or a family member. We all know this, but it can be difficult to really get a grasp on and it takes a lot of work. For any of us that have really put time into it, we know how much stronger a connection grows between two people when things are being talked about rather than kept to oneself. It feels great when everyone's on the same page, doesn't it?

Somehow, we seem to think that because we live within ourselves, there doesn't need to be communication. That would be considered "talking to yourself," which is wrong and makes you look like a crazy person, am I right? ..I'm so not. Talking to yourself is not necessarily talking out loud, although, that's also rather healthy for you (despite it not being a societal norm). Making out our concerns towards ourself and our lives is much easier for us to work out audibly than it is visually, like how "thinking out loud" is often necessary to really work through a thought.

With body image issues, especially eating disorders, there is a strong disconnect between the mental and the physical. Hunger/satiation cues are lost and confused and our body's needs are silenced to what our mind thinks we need. I often told my treatment team I felt like two people trapped in one body, which I now realize were the physical and the mental. Both were screaming bloody murder for things they needed and drowning each other out. Can you imagine if that's how you and your best friend tried to solve a problem? No one will ever be heard and no one's needs will be met.

I stumbled over a really beautiful blog tonight. It's called "letters to my body " and is written by an anonymous actress who struggled through years of Hollywood's poking and prodding at her body image and has decided to bring communication back where it matters. I thought it was such a genius idea. I can't believe this isn't used in treatment programs.

We need to start learning how to talk to ourselves again.

the more you know.

2009-02-22T13:54:00.003-05:00

An interesting statistic, in honor of Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2oo9.

Treatment of an eating disorder in the US ranges from $500 per day to $2,000 per day. The average cost for a month of inpatient treatment is $30,000. It is estimated that individuals with eating disorders need anywhere from 3 – 6 months of inpatient care. Health insurance companies for several reasons do not typically cover the cost of treating eating disorders.

Courtesy of the South Carolina Dept of Mental Health.

meda events in honor of EDAW 'o9.

2009-02-19T19:12:00.004-05:00

Hey, boys and girls. I've received a few e-mails looking for more information on MEDA's upcoming EDAW events. For information, please visit the Events page at MEDAinc.org. (If you click on the "FLYER" links, you'll see the flyers I've drawn up for the events.)

For a quick overview:

Monday, Feb 23

Panel of Recovery at Holy Cross College, Worcester MA

Exactly as it sounds, there will be a panel of speakers discussing their experiences with eating disorders.

Thursday, Feb 26

"The Thin Line" at BB&N High School, Cambridge MA

A one-woman performance (approximately 30 min) of an eating disorder, as seen from the patient, her best friend, her mom, and the "man" himself. A Q&A will follow the performance.

I, myself, will be working the Panel of Recovery event. I hope to see some of you there!

Feel free to e-mail myself for anymore information that may not be covered here or on the MEDA Events page.

messing with clean slates.

2009-02-17T10:08:00.004-05:00

"Yeah, well, you're fat!" A pretty big burn for a second grader to deliver to a fourth grader. She looked a lot like me at her age: slightly runt-ish in comparison to the other kids with a very short stature and the kind of measurements that make your friends feel the need to grab your arm and tell you, "Oh my god, I could just like.. snap your wrist." That used to scare me. I thought they would actually try; kids love to experiment.

The fourth grader - and healthy, strong tennis player - made a face. "Am not!"

"That wasn't very nice," I said to the second grader, questioning myself. What am I promoting by saying this?

"Well, she is!"

She wasn't. But if she was, why is that still a terrible thing to say? If someone decided to comeback at me with, "Yeah, well, you're skinny," I wouldn't feel particularly offended. I am. It's a fact. I keep wondering where "fat" went from an adjective to the worst "f word" you could say around a person. Why has it become such a horrifying thing?

I couldn't help but wonder if the reason was because we teach children that it is. By me saying, "That wasn't very nice," I was really only enforcing the fact that calling someone "fat" is an insult. But she meant it as an insult, so, as the adult in the room, I had to tell her that wasn't appropriate to talk to her peer as such.

The line in body-image vocabulary is not a straight one. It's so frustrating to find where to draw it. It seems like every word is insulting to someone. Are we trying too hard to protect everyone from saying the wrong things?

holla atcha hallmark holiday.

2009-02-14T15:51:00.000-05:00

If you're single, hey, me too! Enjoy the candy ;)

this $%#& is bananas.. b-a-n-a-n-a-s.

2009-02-13T09:11:00.001-05:00

I've had a lot of cramps and pains. I've been having mini-anxiety attacks, which I haven't had in close to a year. I've been exhausted. My memory's been shot. I was unaware that these could be caused by low potassium intake.

I've been very aware of my heart, to say the least, since it started to occur to me what I had been doing to my body. It has shrunk a bit from starvation. Though I have had little to no symptoms of orthostasis in a long time (which was far better than expected), I still need to keep an eye on my electrolytes.

Potassium is a very important electrolyte for the heart and the brain. It occurred to me - since running out of my best source (yogurt) - that I don't have many others left. I went through my kitchen the other night and checked the nutrition labels on all the foods I've been eating; no potassium to be found. I grabbed a Gatorade (75mg/bottle) and added a can of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup (90mg/can) to my dinner. (Don't worry, Mom, I've picked up some good ones since.)

The average potassium intake (K, if you will) an adult needs in a day is somewhere between 2,000 - 5,000mg, from what I've found. Per usual, different websites/sources give different information. I didn't even know where to find it. I know bananas are pretty well known for their supply, and I knew yogurt had it because my doctor said that's probably what was keeping my potassium in a healthy range (*phew!*).

Heart complications in eating disordered patients are (according to my doctor) often the result of a potassium deficiency, a condition called "hypokalemia." Symptoms of this condition can be irregular heart rhythms, muscle weakness, constipation and fatigue. With eating disorders, it is extremely important to keep up with blood testing to make sure that electrolytes are within healthy range.

For more information, these are a few good sites with effects of the definciency and some great sources where you can find potassium. Honestly, I was pretty surprised to see some of the places it's found. I would have never known it was in mushrooms or watermelon.

omg, that's so bad for you.

2009-02-11T18:39:00.033-05:00

Ahh, one of my favorite lines. "Don't eat that! That's so bad for you!" Unless you're my nutritionist or my mother, I'm probably not going to listen to you when you say this. (Warning: this unfortunately does not apply to all mothers..)

Two facts I learned from treatment: 1) there are NO "BAD FOODS." 2) Everyone has different nutritional needs and not all bodies need or shouldn't have one thing over another. The exception to this is the obvious stuff like, everyone probably needs protein and fruits and veggies and basically your general food groups.

I need carbs. Lots of 'em. My brother, on the other hand, needs to greatly control his intake due to the 'betes. (Um, that would be "diabetes" for people that don't know me, my family, or Wilford Brimley.)

I digress.

My point is that when I eat a donut, I really don't need people telling me, "Oh man, do you have any idea how bad those are for you?" They're not. I can eat whatever I want. It ain't good if you eat 12 a day. There are no "bad" foods. Everything that your specific body can physically handle is okay in moderation.

On the contrary, I may have taken this too far. I eat a lot of junk food lately. Now that I am at a point where I freaking love food (and.. I do), it's time for me to start focusing on actually balancing my intake correctly. Especially in my family where high cholesterol is common, I do need to keep an eye on it.

I think that's a difficult thing to do. Coming up on "full recovery," it seems no one really cares what you eat as long as you're eating. That's all great and well. Yay for anything with calories! I was happy that I could eat whatever my poor, little, deprived heart wanted. And, okay, I still can. I just need to work on balancing out that junk food with the good stuff. I've gotten better, but damn I love my junk food.

Man, I really hope I can raise my kids with good nutritional values. That seems like such a difficult thing to do without pushing to one extreme or another.

happy birthdayy to bloggggg. (kenya believe it?!)

2009-02-08T00:25:00.000-05:00

[special thanks to bd for helping me actually get this done.]

pledge for positivity.

2009-02-07T09:03:00.000-05:00

I'm a wee bit miserable lately. Finances, the weather, a lack of respect from a certain authority member who shouldn't have authority.. I bitch and I moan. I drive my friends crazy (I'm sure) and I know I'm driving my mom nuts. My brother constantly mocks me for my attitude, which makes me worry that this is the way everyone actually sees me.

That's not the person I want to be and it's definitely not the way I want to be known. I apologize for the pity parties and the occasional buzz kill.

Here is my goal for February. Kick the attitude. Nothing is that bad, I know that. Things are as good as I make them and I've seen proof of that in the past. Maybe it's my attitude that's keeping me from finding what I've spent 6 months desperately searching for.

So, no more bitching about my finances. Yes, Mom, that means no more "I can't afford ___." I'm sure there is something better to focus on than the frost-bitten Northeast, which is inevitable and out of my control for now. I'm also going to work harder on not letting people - even those who are directly disrespecting me - have such an effect on me. It's not worth my time and all I can do is steer clear and work even harder to get out of there.

Hey.. 58 days until Opening Day. That is less than 2 months, guy. What better sign of warmth being around the corner do we need?

ruining self-confidence, one pixel at a time.

2009-02-06T23:39:00.004-05:00

**This was an extremely poorly written post written in a hurry and on a night when I was angry, too tired, and a little communicatively inept. I'm going to try writing it more.. eloquently at a later time.

ladies & gents, our society.

2009-01-31T12:37:00.002-05:00

Man, I can't wait for my beautiful, innocent 15-year-old daughter to think that this is the way she needs to dress for school. I'd like to think I'll be able to raise her with a little more confidence, but you know how kids get tangled up in societal-induced peer pressure.

The following is just absolutely terrifying. The photos are from the newest issue of Teen Vogue. Yes, Teen. This is what they're admiring and aspiring to. (God, I hope I'm lying.)

Credit to Jezebel who, by the way, is absolutely hilarious with their captioning.
Click the plasticized model to our left for the full article.

By the way, as a professionally-trained retoucher.. they ain't real. The boobs, the tan, not even her make-up was that flawless.

And on the last day of the month, I hit my promised 10th post. Holla!

vote for MEDA to get $25,000!

2009-01-30T17:52:00.002-05:00

Via Betsy H, MEDA's office manager:

VOTE FOR MEDA TO GET $25,000! Through their partnership with Virgin Unite, Virgin America wants to support organizations focused on youth education and the environment, such as the Multi-service Eating Disorder Eating Association (MEDA)! Virgin America is gifting $25,000 to Virgin Unite to support these organizations and $25,000 to a Boston cause of your choosing based on your votes. Submit a non-profit cause that matters to you and be automatically entered for a chance to take your revolution global and fly across the world.

Vote here!

Thanks!

stop, drop and roll.

2009-01-29T21:54:00.000-05:00

If (god forbid a million times) I were caught in a burning building, I know the rules: stop, drop and roll. I got it. It sits, stashed away in the back of my mind. But, should the alarm sound, I know all the right steps to take.

All through treatment, we are told that "relapses happen" and to always be prepared. They can be sneaky little bastards and hit you between the eyes before you even know what's happening. I have fallen victim to this many times, as have many people I know. It's too easy to miss all the red flags if you don't know to look for them (and, even more so, if you don't want to look for them..).
Learning the red flags (i.e. smoke) and knowing what to do when you see it coming (i.e. drop it like it's hot) is extremely important. However, I feel that treatment all too often enforces that it stays at the front of our mind at all times. I strongly believe that this is the reason I continued to lapse and relapse. When you constantly think about it and "know" it's going to come, it will. I didn't start to really recover until I thought it was possible that I could live the rest of my life without another relapse.
I used to get into slightly intense "debates," if you will, with one of the Walden counselors (M). One day, she was asking me about how I was holding it together so well. I told her that it wasn't really something I think about anymore since I let go of the assumption that I'll eventually crash-and-burn. She voiced her concern about me not being prepared if I'm not always ready for a relapse. See, I don't think that's true.

Don't get me wrong; this takes a lot of time and work. You do need to know that it can happen and it takes a long time to really recognize a red flag and what to do when you see one coming. It should certainly stay in the front of your mind until it becomes almost an instinct.. the same as being mindful of meal times until your body learns - on its own - that it is hungry/satiated. No, it's not as cut and dry as "stop, drop and roll," like we learn when we're three. This is something that needs to be learned, internalized, continuously repeated so that it's ingrained in our out-of-our-own-control-ed minds. There is a lot of emotional work behind this.
However, you have to also know that full recovery is obtainable. If you prepare yourself to have an eating disorder for the rest of your life, no matter how hard you fight, then you're probably going to have an eating disorder for the rest of your life. I had to let that idea go and realize that I could, in fact, go on to live completely free of a disordered life before I really began to move towards it.

i'm mrs. "she's too big, now she's too thin."

2009-01-25T13:46:00.000-05:00

I've been telling people I don't want to do my H&I speech until I'm more - how did I word it before - "visually appropriate?" In speaking with my MEDA "advisor" about this a while ago, she told me (per usual) I'm being too hard on myself and to just do it. I'd be worried about the fact that I've heard of speakers getting ripped apart for telling their story of being recovered and not "looking" recovered. I want to be taken seriously. She told me, "Maybe write that into your story."

She makes a good point. I think too much emphasis is put on physique when it comes to recovery. I think the point is being missed and it needs to be addressed. I'm skinny. I'm just a tiny person - always have been, always will be. Am I underweight? Yes. Is anyone worried about it? For the first time in my life, no. Weight is merely just an unfortunate side effect (sometimes, yes, a symptom) of an eating disorder. None of my doctors or family members or friends (as far as I know) are worried about my weight any longer because, mentally, I am very healthy. That's what counts for recovery.

It seems strange that I should be afraid to tell my story because I don't "look" fully recovered. What's even more strange is that I felt like I wasn't sick and didn't need to be in treatment because I didn't "look" sick (enough). A lot of people in treatment aren't too thin. Some are "normal" or average weights, some are overweight. Sickness is not necessarily determined by the way you look, and health shouldn't be either. Of course, it plays its part. You cannot be emaciated and healthy, you cannot be morbidly obese and healthy. But you also never know the circumstances of someone's weight. I think it is just a ridiculous way to live, feeling like my level of recovery is constantly being judged by how I look.. and not by doctors or family and friends, but solely by friends that I've been in treatment with or people looking to me as someone who can prove that full recovery is possible. It's frustrating and really not worth my time.

I am actively working on restoring my weight. It takes a very long time and is difficult after what my body has adjusted to, but that doesn't mean I should put off a great opportunity because (as I've been told from experience) it could take me another year or so to get to where I need to physically be. I'm not going to let someone else's judgement (who does not know me medically or personally) lead me to waste valuable time that could be spent doing something that means a lot to me.

sharing is caring.

2009-01-22T11:18:00.000-05:00

Fainting, seizures, heart monitors, plans of suicide.. EKGs, EEGs, echocardiograms.. How often do you hear about these things in relation to your friends (assuming you're under 70)? How often do you hear "ER"? I hear them a lot, especially lately. These are people I know and love, whom I've lived with and shared way too much personal information with.

I sat next to a good friend of mine from Walden at dinner Saturday night. I met her in PHP just over a year ago now, which is strange, as it feels like it's been years. As she talked, I looked at her face and thought, If I were emotionally removed from this community, it would send a chill down my spine to think of the things she's done in her past. But, I'm not. And it didn't.
I'm not much phased by any of it anymore, which is odd knowing how those who haven't experienced it, personally, are so overly shaken by it, it seems. This, of course, is not to say that I don't care. I care very much. I care every time I hear a friend is going to the ER or back to treatment. I care every time I receive an e-mail or Facebook message from someone I've never met that wanted me to know s/he is going to treatment for the first time and was hoping I could settle their nerves about what to expect.
I think the difference is that I no longer worry. Worry is wasted energy and, let's be honest, it doesn't help anyone. Action and care help, worry does not. Maybe it's because I know the routes or because I know that everything will turn out how it's meant to. I can support someone, but I cannot save them. They have to save themselves and, when they're ready, they will.

It's hard when you form these relationships. You grow to learn these peoples' stories and to love them during some of the hardest times of their lives. Meanwhile, you're fighting for your own. I just hope people are able to find where to draw the line so that they don't lose sight of what's most important: their own recovery. You can't be much of a wall to lean on if you can't even hold yourself up.

smells like change!

2009-01-20T08:00:00.001-05:00

In honor of our newest president being sworn in today, I would like to present you with this really adorable letter sent to Mr. Obama by one of the country's younger concerned citizens.

Now, you may think this letter was written by a cute little 7 or 8-year-old, but no. It was apparently written by my 26-year-old brother, Jayme. Way to disguise your boy-writing.
(Coming up: Jayme's "angry" comment calling me an idiot!)

For more childrens' letters to our new president, check out Jezebel! You'll laugh, you'll cry.. you know how it goes.

Here's to the start of a new era.

the taste of her cherry chapstick.

2009-01-18T11:20:00.002-05:00

"I'm really critical of my posture, it makes a big difference," Perry told Tarts at Thursday night's Critics Choice Awards in Santa Monica, Calif. "And I try to suck my belly in. Everyone should do that whether you're on a red carpet or not. Even if you're just going out to dinner with your boyfriend you should try and suck it in."

This is a quote from Katy Perry, via FOXnews.com (and my brother, who keeps me updated on sweet ED-related news stories). I like her. She's got spunk. I like her edgy-type pop sound. But, seriously, this woman has a doll. She clearly has some influence on younger girls.

Does this scare anyone else??

a plug & my work.

2009-01-16T22:55:00.007-05:00

Hey, girls and boys. I'm determined to stick to my "10 posts per month" quote, despite having fallen a little behind for this month. It's alright; there is still plenty of time! Things have been crazy and my schedule is filling up quick. On top of work and my internship at MEDA, I have also been offered a teaching gig for an elementary school's after school program. I'll be teaching little kids how to knit, and I'm wicked excited about it. I start next Friday. I'm also auditioning for a show on Sunday, sweet lord.

Anyways, MEDA's first event (with me on board) is coming up and I've completed the flyer for it. Not gonna lie, I'm pretty proud of it. If you're in the area, you're more than welcome to attend! More events coming soon, and I'm sure you'll hear all about them.

[The image is a little small. If you're interested and can't read,
shoot me an e-mail and I'll send you the PDF.]

water challenge.

2009-01-08T11:21:00.000-05:00

Dehydration can be a huge problem with eating disorders and, actually, the human race in general. It can cause serious health problems including (and in my specific case) chronic orthostasis. Far too many people not only come nowhere close to how much water they should be drinking in a day, but don't even know what the required amount is.

Water has always been a huge problem for me. I was required to drink a large amount of Gatorade while I was in treatment, and still try to keep up with that regiment. My friend - a far more active and healthy human being than myself - found a website today that calculates how much water you should be drinking in a day. I thought it would be interesting to challenge myself to drink that amount - 51 oz - which is far more than I do drink in a day. This is just a one day challenge. Baby steps.

Here is the website if you would like to join me: Hydration Calculator.
(The site asks for your weight. If you don't know the number, just plug-in what you think a rough estimate would be.)

Fact: if you feel thirsty, your body is already dehydrated.

so this is the new year..

2009-01-06T01:35:00.001-05:00

Happy 2oo9, everyone!

Hope you all have a great new year. I personally spent my new year with some good friends, hot cider (mmm) and.. quite a bit of Guitar Hero, actually. I had to work the following morning, so that kind of sucked, but yay for holiday pay!

Big things are in store for this year. First, let us reminisce over the fact the one year anniversary of my discharge from Walden is approaching. This, of course, means that, for the first time since 2oo6, I will have gone one year without treatment. That's pretty kick ass, not gonna lie. I actually got to catch up with Kyle for a bit tonight who, one year ago this time, was fighting his way through the day program with me. He's doing pretty well and seems to be pretty happy these days; always a beautiful thing to hear.

As some of you know, via Facebook, I started my internship with MEDA today. It's going to be pretty fantastic, for sure. The run down seems to be that I'll be mostly in charge of design work (flyers and whatnot) which is amazing because I'll actually get to combine my interests and I'll get to use my work for portfolio. I'll also be doing some clerical duties (which I love in some sick way), hopefully getting to do some presentations (e.g. school health fairs), and.. apparently a little acting? I can't even put my excitement into words.

I also seem to be getting little pushes from people to start up my Hope & Inspiration story. For those who don't know, H&I is an open forum at MEDA on the first Saturday of every month. A recovered speaker shares their story and opens themselves up for Q&A afterwards. Apparently, after doing so, you also have the option to become a group leader at MEDA, which I pretty much dream of.

I guess I should get started on writing it so I'm prepared when the time comes. As I told someone today, I would like to wait until I am a little more "visually appropriate" before speaking. Somehow, people don't take as well to recovery stories spoken by someone who doesn't physically look the part. And, from a patients' eyes, I can understand where the skepticism comes from. So.. I continue to work.. and eat.

Before I head to bed - which I am crazy overdue for - here are some goals for the new year:

minimum of 10 posts per month.
completing my redesign by Frozen.Oranges' 1 year anniversary (2/o8).
some serious work on time management (which will help the above two a lot, as well).

to 2oo8.

2008-12-31T11:17:00.002-05:00

Here's wishing everyone a happy, healthy new year!

If you're in the Boston area and heading out tonight, please be careful on the roads.
See you all in 2oo9!

i would be merry.. but i'm Hebrew.

2008-12-25T14:56:00.004-05:00

Until I was about 4 or 5 - when my brother started going to Sunday school - my family wasn't very well-educated about our religion. So, for those magical couple of years, we hung stockings and joined in all the reindeer games. There was one Christmas where my parents used a package of all kinds of flavored Lip Smackers (back before they had all that glittery, sparkly gloss and their flavors only ranged from vanilla to peppermint to bubble gum) to stuff my stocking. I was so excited and the smell those chapsticks always brings me right back.

I love Christmas and, regardless of your religous beliefs, today is December 25th and it is Christmas. With that said, I hope it's a good one, no matter how you're spending it. I wish you all happy holidays and a healthy new year.

To my girl, Becky, and all others who are spending their holiday inpatient:

I know it's hard. I know it's hard enough to fight at any point of the year, but especially during the holidays. I hope you all get to spend time with your loved ones. Push yourselves so that, next year, your holidays can be spent without restrictions (of any kind) and being with your families.. not your doctors (as much as we love.. most.. of them).

I love you all. Hang in there. <3

Karen: So what's this big news, then?
Daisy: We've been given our parts in the nativity play. And I'm the lobster.
Karen: The lobster?
Daisy: Yeah!
Karen: In the nativity play?
Daisy: Yeah, *first* lobster.
Karen: There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?
Daisy: Duh.

kids don't think like us: barbie.

2008-12-23T21:44:00.002-05:00

I have been mulling over the idea of this for a while and (once again) Jezebel finally inspired me to come out with it. For as far back in my adult life as I can remember, I have been swamped with the idea that Barbie is a terrible influence. She "sets unrealistic standards" of being able to carry out any and every job in the world and having a gait so fragile, she would have to walk on all fours... if she was real. (She's not, by the way.) This used to upset me. How could such an idea be used for a child's toy? What are they trying to teach?
I don't know about you guys, but when I was playing with Barbie dolls, as far as I was concerned, I had a pretty little doll that I could dress whatever style I wanted and she had fun tiny accessories. (I always loved things that were far smaller than what the item should be, or crazy over-sized.) She would go shopping, she would go to the movies, and, occasionally, she would end up horizontal on top of a genitalia-less Ken. (Come on now, we've all done it.) She was just a woman that I could drive around in her hot pink car when I was years from a license and one that I could learn how to french braid on (although, Cabbage Patch dolls were far easier to learn with). I never looked at her and thought I wish I could look like that. Her little cone-like boobs were never something I dreamed of someday growing. Oh, and I hated that I couldn't put her in a split or move her arms that much. She was plastic; woman-shaped (I used that phrase loosely, of course) plastic.

This society seems to be looking for anything they can use as a scapegoat for all the mental anguish in the world. Halo inspires kids to shoot up their school, Barbie pushes little girls to purge for her "figure," right? I don't buy it. I'm sorry. If anything, maybe they're the last straw. And, while I don't agree that kids should be playing violent, bloody video games, there has to be a foundation for the kind of mental state it takes to bring a gun to school. A child with a healthy mental base and upbringing knows that shooting is wrong and it's just a game. But this is besides the point.
We're adults. We know so much more, obviously, than we did as children. Their innocence, their lack of analysis and psychological information.. they see shapes and colors, toys and activities. I haven't taken a child's psychology class, so - if you have - please correct me if I'm wrong. I can't possibly imagine that a little girl (or boy - I don't judge) will pick up his or her first Barbie doll and think, "She's perfect. If I don't look like this piece of plastic, I am ugly, misshapen, and a horror show to the human race."
Sure, we could use more shapes of Barbie. A bigger Barbie, a "plumper" Barbie (I'd model myself after that one); yes, I think these should exist. A lot of other dolls come in all kinds of strange and unrealistic shapes, too, though. Dolls aren't really meant to be anatomically correct. They're meant to be toys.

I don't have a history of anorexia nervosa because I played with Barbies. I never once associated any of my toys with my undeniable quest for emaciation. Now, I don't want to assume this is the case for everyone. Maybe I'm wrong.
Would any of you in an way associate toys or childhood activities with your illness?

[P.S. I just noticed that my last post was my 1ooth of 2oo8. Woo!]

live from mass.

2008-12-17T01:48:00.004-05:00

I always find it rather amusing the comments I end up with while on a minor blogging-hiatus. People seem to take the opportunity to skim back through my older entries and I get e-mails about comments on posts that I assumed were buried months ago. I like it; it's a nice reminder that just because I wrote a post upwards of a year ago, it's still affecting someone.

I have a job. I am working and, while I'm still looking for more to do, it feels pretty good to be worn down again. Shortly after writing my last post, I hit a wall and freaked out a little. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with myself. Of course, Mom is always my #1 reality check and I got a grip and did what I had to do. I'm, of course, making it sound a lot easier than it was, but that's not really important anymore.

I really want to write more. I was all up on my posts in November and then everything kind of piled up, but I'm back! Just try to contain yourselves.

Hope everyone's holiday season is running smoothly. Hang in there; it's supposed to be a happy time of year! The level of depression during the holidays makes me sad. I love this time of year. I wish, for the sake of the season, everyone could just let it go for this one month. What could it hurt? I believe, as we speak, my city of residency is getting it's first actual snow of the season. I hope it sticks :)

where my life at?

2008-12-10T12:05:00.003-05:00

I always feel guilty when I don't write for long periods of time (i.e. 3 or more days pass without a post). I've been feeling really unmotivated about everything, lately, and generally unproductive with my day. Unemployment doesn't look good on me.

I've been kind of a physical mess lately. I spend most of my day in my pajamas, I go to bed between 3 and 4am and wake up between 11 and 1pm, I'm basically living off of Boost and ice cream as I'm financially very afraid of going to the grocery store (chill out, mom.. it's a slight exaggeration), I've been having some f-ed up dreams lately that are really screwing with my head, and I'm struggling to let stupid things go that I shouldn't have in the first place. Oh, and I find myself really missing my glasses in a most desperate kind of way.. especially when my career of choice involves me staring at a computer screen for absurd amounts of time.

The good news is, I'm doing FAR better with my status than I was 2 years ago when I was in this position. Nonetheless, I could be doing better.

So.. here's to positive thinking and getting my ass off this damn couch.. and getting in touch with my school about jobs that are actually in my industry and could help me far better than throwing myself into retail suicide. I'm going to fine.

"i eat 33,000 calories a day."

2008-12-01T12:30:00.002-05:00

Okay, I'm on a pretty hefty weight-gain meal plan, but there is a line to be drawn.

We have all seen them on Lifetime, or whatever; the so morbidly obese, they haven't been out of their beds in over 10 years and needed a forklift to get to the hospital when their body finally couldn't take it anymore. So many people sit and think, "Wow, what fat, lazy, disgusting people. How could you do that to yourself?" and can't seem to change the channel because it is just so amusing to watch people who can't get their life under control. In all fairness, these people put their lives on tv, which is totally their choice.

I never really felt much compassion for them. I mean, I didn't sit and mock them or anything; I didn't feel much at all. Just people on TV and something to watch. Most people just talk about how they love food and can't seem to stop and would like to lose weight, but don't really sound too determined.
Last night, my friend and I came across a show called, "I eat 33,ooo calories a day." It was different. They weren't talking about how much they loved food; they were talking about how addicted they were to it. One man is a self-confessed binge eater who has no idea how to stop. One man was in complete denial and said he had everything under control and only ate two meals a day. When they showed him his day's intake in a buffet-style spread, he refused to believe it, but couldn't sit in front of it for more than 5 minutes before he almost mindlessly began attacking it.
I was really intruiged by one woman, Jackie, who was approximately 500 or so pounds and was on a very dangerous slope. She talks about how she would sit down with a plate of food and nothing else existed for that time. It was as if she were in a "trance" while she was eating and would feel a sort of high for a very short period after before crashing into this intense self-hatred and guilt. I know that trance. I was in that trance every night of my spring semester, freshman year of college.

I always find it really interesting how much the eating disorder is really not about the number on the scale; that's just a terrible side-effect. We gain weight, we lose weight, we binge, we purge, we starve, we hate. An eating disorder is an eating disorder, and it's so painful to watch someone else experience the things that you have.

I wish I could talk to Jackie.

recovery without knitting? how dare you.

2008-11-28T20:46:00.001-05:00

When I was 7, my gramma taught me how to knit. I had little half-completed projects hanging off needles all over the house. I didn't have the attention span for the length of a scarf, let alone anything much more involved. Little did I know that this skill would play a huge role in my treatment from a life I wouldn't even see coming for another 11 years.

I always joke that recovery isn't possible without knowing how to knit. If you don't know how, don't worry, you can still recover from an eating disorder. That doesn't mean I don't highly recommend learning, though! Every treatment program I went through, most everyone was knitting or crocheting. There was even a boy when I was on Alcott who really wanted to learn because everyone else was doing it, so a few girls taught him. He spent the rest of his stay on the EDU knitting with extra yarn and two pencils. How no one had a spare set of needles for the poor boy is beyond me.

There's something amazing about knitting to me; it is the one and only activity in my entire life that I can do and not pay attention to it. I can keep my hands busy and pay full attention to other things going on around me and, above all else, not be anal about it. Mistakes and slipped stitches make it "all the more special" and counting rows takes the fun out. For really intricate patterns, I'll write them down so I don't have to keep thinking about it, but for the most part, I just go with it. That's sort of a huge deal for me considering how I beat myself up for everything else I do, from my artwork to washing the dishes correctly.
It also calms my anxiety which, in turn, calms one of my worst OCD habits. By keeping my hands busy, I can't use one of my worst behaviors. That was also a great excuse to be allowed to knit during groups.

Today, I stumbled over a really cute blog run by a group of recovered / recovering knitters. They have chosen to take their skill and use it to encourage recovery in a really adorable way. I love what they're doing and I would love to get involved with a project like this. Check out their blog here.

So, here's a little audience participation for ya:

has knitting (or crocheting) played into your treatment? ( surveys)

it's that time of year.

2008-11-26T20:48:00.000-05:00

It is dark, dreary, and the daylight hours seem to taunt us with their very limited presence. And with the freezing temperatures sweeping in, the holidays are upon us. Family, food, and - for many of us - poking and prodding in very emotional ways.

It is no coincidence that treatment admissions are crazy right now, nor that my inpatient and residential admissions both fell in this season. So, is bottoming out avoidable? Well, yeah, of course. If you know that this time of year is difficult and possibly triggering for you, you have to face it prepared. DBT skills are huge if these months are as rough for you as they have been for me. Make sure you have some prepared if you know what works best when you're getting overwhelmed or anxious.

Also, there are some great tips from NEDA to keep you grounded and well-prepared for the holidays.
Just click on "How to Negotiate the Holidays" under Holiday Tips.

There's a lot to be thankful for.
Hope everyone has a fantastic holiday :)

the great facebook outting.

2008-11-25T21:17:00.000-05:00

In about a one hour time span, I receive an e-mail from my brother with the link to the following Newsweek article, and my Google Reader informs me of two new posts by Rachel and Jezebel about the same article.

[Click here for full article.]

In short - as you can read the article for full detail - what used to be a very secretive and underground community is now becoming very public in an almost "flaunting" nature on one of the largest, most popular social-networking sites: Facebook. Groups are being produced where people can join and share tips and "thinspiration" in what is commonly known as a Pro-Ana community.

The controversy seems to be in whether or not it's better to have it out in the open rather than so secretive. I, myself, am a member of one of the more popular Facebook groups to ban this kind of behavior, as it is, in fact, against their terms and conditions; the groups promote self-harming behaviors to themselves and others.

To the common, logical thinker, the immediate reaction is most likely that this is a disgusting and disturbing situation that needs to be closely monitored and banned wherever possible. It is, don't get me wrong. However, I find myself torn.
I did it. I know a lot of girls I was in treatment with did. We knew the sites, we had the notebooks, printouts of tips and pictures of hauntingly emaciated celebrities and models. It's terrible, especially to people who have never felt so lost in their own mind and so uncomfortable in their own skin that you felt physically imprisoned in your own body. People who have never experienced an eating disorder, first hand, don't know that feeling. The people on these Pro-Ana/Mia webites.. they got it. Please note, I am NOT in any way shape or form condoning these behaviors or promoting these websites. I am just saying I understand why they're out there. It's a support system, when some people have nothing, no matter what they promote.

Is it better to have a harmful support system than to feel completely alone? I know just as well as anyone who has fought an addiction that you cannot get help until you are willing to receive it. What can you do until that point? The world of an eating disorder is tricky.. fragile.. pressuring.. and fucking lonely, support or none.

Do I think that community should be public? No. I have a problem with it being so easily accessible, especially in a predominately high school and college setting where self-esteem and body image are constantly gnawing at these age groups in every day life as it is. Talk about vulnerability. More often than not, Pro-Ana/Mia supporters stand by the fact that eating disorders are a lifestyle, not a disease. It has a very strong, cult-ish vibe. If you ban them, yes, they will still exist. But if they are public, you're just pouring gas on the fire. It's enabling.

This is not a lifestyle. It is one mindfuck of a disease. And I am torn because.. what can you do when people feel like they have no where else to go and don't understand what their own brain is doing to them?

treating from experience.

2008-11-24T02:27:00.002-05:00

Over at GreyThinking, an interesting topic has been raised. Here's a little summarizing excerpt from her entry:

How do you feel about being treated by someone with an eating disorder history?

I’ve always felt very strongly AGAINST seeing a therapist who had an eating disorder herself. I think part of that is related to the competitiveness of the eating disorder (not that I think SHE will be competitive, but that I will be), but I also think part of it is about objectivity. I don’t know if you can be completely objective having suffered from the same thing yourself. I’ve never really wanted empathy. Maybe this is weird of me? I just have a thing about people with eating disorders guiding others with eating disorders. It’s the blind leading the blind. I want to work with someone completely removed from the eating disorder world.

Before this, she raises the obvious point that a large part of our community is hugely interested in pursuing degrees in psychology and nutrition (guilty). This, of course, is based on the fact that we are drawn to what we are exposed to.

Now, my therapist is absolutely incredible. I don't know what it is about him; he has never personally struggled through an eating disorder, nor did he ever imagine that he would even be in the field. He was just lucky he had a psych degree to fall back on after his first career choice [in sales] did not pan out.

However, there were two women that really played a huge part in my recovery. One was my best friend from college, who had recovered herself. Her role was very important because I was unable to fully accept recovery until I could see that it was possible, which she showed me while sitting on my hospital bed one night last fall.
The other was a counselor at one of my treatment programs. I knew, long before she was able to tell me, that she had recovered. Many of the counselors were very good, but she knew how to communicate with us on a different level than most of the other doctors. She knew how to talk and how it felt and how to word the things she said, as she had experienced it all. Nothing was more comforting than being able to talk to someone who really knew what it was like.

I am hoping that's how people will feel when I am able to get more involved, personally, with others' recovery. I want to be in treatment, but from the other side because I feel like I could make such a huge difference having gotten through it. Patients have such a difficult time trusting doctors as it is; I think it would be easier if they knew where they were coming from. No matter how good of a therapist you may be, you can never get into someone's head. Someone who's already experienced it is already there. That is as trustworthy as it can get.

Now, GT raises the point that treating patients may be risky to both the patient and the provider based on how recovered s/he may or may not be. I do not believe that anyone who is not absolutely fully recovered should be treating anyone, as I would think it would be detrimental to both parties' recovery and treatment. I assume that goes without saying. You cannot help anyone until you receive the help you need, first. I would hope employers would double check information like this before hiring treatment staff? I don't know how that works, but wouldn't any treatment center - eating disorder, drug, alcohol, etc - check for a background history of behaviors before allowing someone to treat others for it?

What are your thoughts on it? Would you prefer to be treated by someone who has never personally had ED in their life, or someone that totally gets what is going on with you and the way your brain works from the inside?

my favorite week is in the making.

2008-11-22T23:09:00.002-05:00

I know, I know.. it's about 4 months away, but the planning has begun and I'm trying to get a head start. I didn't do anything for NEDAW last year because I tried to get something together too last minute. I don't have a clue what to do this year, I just know that I definitely want to get involved.

The cool this is that by the time the week (the final in February) rolls around, I will be volunteering for MEDA. So, more or less, I will have to be directly involved, which is awesome. I can't wait to see how I can help.

What have you done in past years to get involved?
Any thoughts on what you would like to do for NEDAW 'o9?

unite ED bloggers, part ii.

2008-11-21T23:24:00.002-05:00

I'm being asked these two questions a lot and I figured I should probably just put the answers out where everyone can see them. So, here ya go!

The group is secret. It does not appear in search results, nor will it be seen on your profiles. For those of you who aren't ready to "out" yourselves as an ED blogger (or an ED connection, in general), I can absolutely respect that and you will be safely anonymous (besides, of course, to the other group members).
Friend me to join. As the group is secret, I don't believe the link on the previous post works. Therefore, you will have to find and friend me on Facebook (as well as send me a message with your blog address) and then I'll invite you. I can be found on Facebook by searching Emily Sam. I don't think there are many others, but I'm CDIABU '1o.

Any other questions, please e-mail me so I can easily get back to you. I'm really glad there's so much enthusiasm about this group! There is currently rather low activity, but I'm hoping we can all use this group in the way that I'm intending it. I suppose we will see.

Thanks, guys :)

the goal: unite ED bloggers.

2008-11-20T09:00:00.001-05:00

I have created a group in the one place that is almost guaranteed to house the majority of the computer-owning human race for us to group up: Facebook. I thought it would be nice to associate a face with the writer and content, and to be able to communicate with each other about what we write, what projects we're working on, and what we're doing for the community outside of our blogs.

The group currently consists of myself (obviously), Carrie, Laura Collins, Harriet Brown, and my love, Kiersten. It is a closed group, so please request an invite and either leave me a comment on here or shoot me a message on Facebook with your name & blog. I will, obviously, not accept anything but blogs written in a pro-recovery nature.

[Blogging for [ED] Awareness & Recovery]

dr. roy g. biv.

2008-11-19T02:20:00.000-05:00

In my Text/Type/Layout class, we spent a night being lectured on color. I am not ashamed to admit that I was absolutely loving every second of it. However, my nerdiness is beside the point.

All the colors were broken down into emotions and "reasons" that we seem to relate to different hues in different ways. For example, purple (or violet) is associated with royalty and nobility because wayyy back when, the only way to achieve purple dye was extremely expensive and only royalty could afford it. They would wear purple robes, as it was a sign of wealth. I believe, more specifically, it came from some sort of sea creature and they could only collect the dye in tiny amounts at a time.. but I may be mixing up my stories.

A lot of thoughts kept popping into my head throughout the class, relating - of course - to the treatment world. We discussed how orange is a color that tends to evoke hunger in a person. (Ah, and suddenly, my blog takes on all new meaning, doesn't it.) It is also an "approachable" and optimistic color. Red is also associated with food as many of the most appealing foods are some shade of red. I'm the kid that picks through the Skittles and the Starburst for all the red and pink ones, I'll admit it. And we all know the best fruits are red. Come on, now.

Blue, on the contrary, tends to turn the mind off to food. This is mainly due to the fact that there is no natural food that is colored blue. (And no, blueberries are actually purple.) There is bleu cheese, but that only further backs up my point. The only natural foods that show any hint of blue.. are rotting. If blue makes you hunger, you've got a different problem on your hands.

I find yellow to be one of the most interesting hues. It is strongly associated with anxiety, which I can understand. You almot get anxious just looking at it, especially if it's used to color a font on a white background. Damn, I hate when people do that.. (heh). It also symbolizes caution and awareness, as well as intellect and concentration. Probably a good classroom color, besides that whole anxiety thing.

You have really got to wonder if someone takes all of these things into consideration when they put together a treatment center. Maybe the dining room should be painted orange. Maybe there shouldn't be blue or yellow anywhere. Purple tends to have a spiritual and contemplative feeling; that might be a good one. Maybe that's why treatment centers often go with one-flew-over-the-cukoo's-nest white (new Crayola color), because then they don't have to think about all the effects colors might have. Who knows.

Just something to think about.

strange side-effects.

2008-11-18T01:06:00.001-05:00

Does anyone else ever get the strange (and most likely irrational) fear that your poor eating habits may have rubbed off on your pet..

Just me? Oh well..

a spoon full of sugar.

2008-11-13T12:06:00.002-05:00

I know how the world thinks of prescription drugs, believe me. There are far too many who believe meds are a sign of some sort of weakness. "I shouldn't need pills to be happy." Well, unfortunately, many of us do. They're looked at in a very negative manor, but here's the breakdown: not all brains are optimized for pleasant means of living. If you have an eating disorder, there is a very good chance that yours is one that is not. They've showed proof of anorexia on brain scans. Mental disorder or not, there is a physical side to every disease.

I, myself, have a chemical imbalance. It runs in my family, it is not my fault, and I do what I need to in order to enjoy my life the way I deserve to. The imbalance leads to anxiety, panic, depression.. That means that twice a day, I need to take a stabilizer so that my brain can make the right amount of serotonin, just like anyone who needs a pill to keep their blood pressure down. It's all body chemistry.

I know they suck to take. My T & NP will be the first to tell you that I really blow at taking my meds, but I can tell you that my life has become much more livable since I've learned that going off of them or being erratic about it is the worst idea possible. I have very minimal anxiety and haven't shown symptoms of depression in almost a year, now. It's a tool, and it only works if you use it properly.

Now, I am no doctor. I do believe medication is a very necessary tool for recovery from any mental disease/disorder*, but I also know that not all people respond the same to prescription drugs. This is something you need to discuss with your doctor. They are also not a miracle fix. I remember, a year ago, telling my NP that I was still in a lot of pain, to which he responded, "Well, of course.. you're still human." If a pill numbs you out of pain, it's going to numb you out of every other emotion, as well. If that's the case, you should probably get off it immediately. It's all about trial and error.

A resource you may want to start with might be somethingfishy.org - a list of some of the more common scripts, what they do, common side effects. Of course, you should be careful about the urge to self-diagnose yourself, as I've had problems with in the past. This should, again, be discussed with your doctor above all else.

*there are currently no prescriptions to treat eating disorders.

medication can be used to treat the symptoms that usually accompany EDs,

such as anxiety/panic disorders, depression, ocd, bpd, and so on.

another hungry american.

2008-11-09T11:05:00.002-05:00

I've been bitching and moaning for a while about how I can't afford groceries. I have even recently been denied food stamps because I "make too much," which I find amusing seeing as how I still couldn't afford groceries. And now, here I am, laid-off as of thirty-four hours ago with hardly enough money to my name to pay my first cold-months heating bill.
Yes, I have a lot of opportunities to bring in a little income. I have retail (god, help me) which are all hiring for the upcoming holiday season, I have my temp agency which could have me work by mid-week, I'm not worried about that. My roommate works a job with an authoritative position that I don't have the qualifications for and makes in a week what I used to make in a night.

Let's revisit the part where I'm recovering from an eating disorder. Am I the only one in recovery who doesn't have ample income? I'm pretty sure I'm not, especially with the economy being as it is. It ain't right. My insurance covers my medication, my doctor can even write me a prescription for boost, but I'm on my own for food? Just think about how ridiculous this is for a second. It doesn't even make sense. One of my friends [from treatment] has resorted to dumpster-diving. His therapist is just happy that he's eating. This is what we've come to.
We have to go through treatment (hospitalization, in some cases) because we're not feeding ourselves, but once we're out, we're left on our own whether we can afford it or not. There has to be a way around this. If a doctor tells you that you have to take your medication every single day and it is absolutely necessary to your health, they will find a way to help you afford it if it isn't covered by insurance.

I wonder if I could start something: a non-profit that helps people recovering from eating disorders to get nutrition when they can't make ends meet. I don't know how it would work; I know there are a lot of technicalities that go along with that. I could figure it out. If anyone has any ideas, I'm open to them.

there's gotta be more to life..

2008-11-06T01:18:00.003-05:00

Jenni Schaefer wants to know, "Are you truly alive?" I will admit that my initial reaction to this entry was that it seemed a bit cheesy to place a tie between the power of an election and how well a person is doing in their eating disorder recovery. However, as I read to the end of her post it hit me that, in lives like ours, it's all tied in.

She writes:

Sadly, I can’t remember much about other historical events that I have lived through. I was so sick with my eating disorder that I was not truly present in this world.

I sat for a minute and thought this through. There are not only bits and pieces from the last couple years that I can't recall or remember in varying inaccurate accounts, but there are events I remember quite vividly, right down to the detail of not having much feeling based on what was going on. Even if I remember something that was going on, I didn't necessarily have an emotional reaction tied to it; the affair was kind of just happening around me.

This was the most powerful election year for me in twenty-two years. I have only been able to relate my emotional experience of hearing that Obama had officially crossed the 270 cut-off to those that come with that Game 7 walk-off homerun; that absolute split second when you realize, "We just took the World Series." It's that feeling, and then we'll say we topped with winning the WS a second time.. in the same season.. and then Obama is announced as our 44th president.

And let me just say, I watched the Red Sox win their 2oo7 World Series from the cold-tile floor of the EDU's common room. There was an awkward kind of "woo" moment and we were all promptly sent to our beds. I didn't feel much for events happening outside of the hospital; not many of us did. I was so much happier watching the counts come in from my friend's couch, school work on the table in front of me, and a bowl of ice cream in my lap. That is how history should be shared.

from patient to doctor.

2008-11-02T15:02:00.003-05:00

Things I find amusing: last year, I was a [legit] hospital patient on Halloween. This year, I was a doctor. It was an easy costume, complete with Fisher Price equipment. I was cute, not gonna lie. Let's see if I can pull up a picture here..

See? Cute. Of course - and, I'm not sure why - I looked like I was 12 that night for some reason.. I think it's the poor bang-cut that I gave myself (they were way too long) and the lack of eyebrow waxing. They seem to bring me right back to the awkward years pretty quick. The sword, by the way, is my friend's. She was a pirate. I cut her out for her own privacy.
I handed out Pop Rocks to my (very few) tables. That seemed to get a pretty good response, especially from the early college range where it feels like a "throw-back" to them, even though Pop Rocks were before their time. Whatever, as long as they were happy.

Now, to return the costume and get that much-needed money back. I'm keeping the scrub pants though. Way too comfortable.

How was everyone else's Halloween?

more responsiblities than a year ago..

2008-10-30T14:25:00.004-04:00

Everything is sneaking up on me again. I may have done a bit of procrastinating, I'll admit. Sometimes, I miss the way things were on Alcott; my room & board were not costs I had to worry about, I didn't have to be anywhere, there were no deadlines, and I always had a minimum of 4 professionals around to help me sort my head out. Not to mention, I'd kill for one of those blueberry muffins I used to have for breakfast every day, but that's way besides the point.

On the other hand, it's so much more fun to run my own life. There is so much going on and coming at me from so many different directions. It's going to be a great month. Maybe you guys could join me for some of it?

NaNoWriMo: or National Novel Writing Month. If you guys are writers (which, I have an inkling that most of my readers are..), you should absolutely get involved. Try something new, find a new sense of accomplishment, challenge yourself. It's a novel in 30 days, it's not intended to be a best seller. The point is to know that you can bang out 50,000 words in a month. No one even has to read it. So what the hell are you waiting for? The word count starts in less than 36 hrs!
[If/When you join, find me and my writing buddies on the site: emsr18]

NaBloPoMo: for those of you who are not fiction writers and don't have an interest in giving it a shot, I know many of you have no problems with blog writing. This is a bit different, but still a fun challenge if you would like to take one! Just a blog post a day.

The 2oo8 Election: I will be going "home" on the 4th to vote. I hope you are all registered and voting. This is the most involved I have ever been in an election, besides the fact that it's only the 2nd one that I can vote in (there is no reason that under-18ers shouldn't be involved, even if they can't vote!). To be honest, I'm a little freaked out about what may happen on Nov 4. Some of the things I hear right now are making me sick, but this isn't a political blog, so I'll stick to the things I am informed about. Here's an e-mail that I think all woman should consider.

MEDA: I am in the midst of setting up an interview with them to join their winter/spring volunteers. I am so excited about this. It may just be a volunteer opportunity, but you never know where that can lead. It's all about getting your foot in the door.

Finances: The rooming situation, the job situation.. it's all slowly falling into place. It's also completely - once again - proving how everything comes together when it's supposed to. It's a process, but it always works out for the best and I'm no longer worried. This upcoming month may be the end of my rough patch. We'll see.

Finally, I've had this idea rolling around in my head for a while about an ED Blogger's Meet-Up of some sort. It would be something that would have to wait until the new year, of course, but I've been thinking about it. I'll post more about that later.

"some days, i think art is the only thing that saved me.."

2008-10-27T22:32:00.000-04:00

I was reminded a little while back that I was interested in collecting samples of art therapy from other readers and was considering searching for more submissions. Shortly after I had the thought, I received an e-mail from a 30-year-old woman, Shawna, who was intrigued by my earlier posts on art and recovery.

She was first diagnosed with AN at the age of 14. She recalls two relapses since then (one at 17, in which she was hospitalized, and the other three years ago, where she was placed in an outpatient program). She has her MA in Art and her work is incredible. The meanings are almost too intense to put into words, which I suppose is the true power that comes through art. She even says she often has trouble discussing the art and explaining the meanings to "academic types."

Below are some of the pieces I found particularly powerful from her site.

"Soul Escape"

"Friend"

"Refugee"

"War Goddess (sculpture)"

I want to post so many more.

If you would like to see the rest of Shawna's art, her website can be found here.

If anyone else is interested in sharing their art therapy works, feel free to send them to me over at emmy@frozenoranges.com.

happy anniversary. it's a big one.

2008-10-24T02:54:00.000-04:00

The mission is simple: keep my head above water until January. When the new year rolls around, I'll graduate, be done with the show that I'm co-assistant directing, and be let go from the photographer position I'm holding at the portrait studio for the holiday season. Then, and only then, would I be able to calmly retreat from my life and receive help for my most recent and dramatic rock-bottom spiral. Just three more months.

The red-flags were surrounding me like land-mines. I had dropped all my meds, I was processing all of the nutritional numbers, but none of the nutrition, I was isolating, and the anxiety attacks.. oh, the anxiety attacks. But, like we do, I ignored them all. Nothing mattered but the ultimate goal: hold onto to my (imaginary) control.

There were three factors that played into aborting my oh-so-genius plan. The first came on October 19th, the day that I would be told I was not only no longer above water, but I was already drowning. I called Brie, my unfortunate partner in crime, having an unbearable panic attack at work. Without delving back into the details, she insisted I go to the ER. I told her I had to work, but didn't last long when I got back inside. My mom took me to the hospital shortly after.

I was fine - and no one was particularly shocked - but this one wasn't getting past the two big guys (see also: drugs & therapy). I had appointments set up with each of them very shortly after. Of course, the morning of those appointments (and I mean the morningest part of morning), is when factor two actually came along. I was still full-blown on my "must please everyone else before saving my own life" path until this point, but there was really only one person that could've slapped me in the face the way that I needed to realize what I was doing to myself and everyone around me. And he did. And I was starting to realize that I didn't have it in me to finish everything I'd started anymore and I wouldn't.. until I went back.

Factor three wasn't so much a factor, because it was slightly against my will, but I saw the men. I figured, perhaps they'd let me get away with some low-level outpatient for the next couple months. However, my thought process was changing and I realized I wasn't going to make it strongly through the next three months at that point.

That afternoon, my mom and I found ourselves on the 5th floor - "upstairs" as some like to call it. And there you have it. It's my one year anniversary of the day I finally officially decided to kick the shit out of this thing and was admitted to the EDU. I can't believe how much a person can change in a year.

My head's in a lot of different places right now. This has been weirder for me to recall than I expected. I guess it was kind of an intense experience, looking back on it..

just meat and potatoes.

2008-10-23T12:00:00.001-04:00

When I think about what I can do to change how the world looks at itself, I always get tripped up by 1 minor detail: self-image has been tripping us up since the beginning of time. You can blame it on the models and MTV and "today's standards" all you want, but "today's standards" centuries ago were the same. Women were literally breaking their ribs for "skinny". If you think about it, though, we are always moving forward. As I've learned from the following e-mail, we are improving. We have more information than we've ever had before and we're using it.. and, more importantly, we're talking about it.

I received this e-mail a few days ago from a faithful reader, and one of my biggest fans of 22 years. She's one of the most beautiful people I've ever known and it meant so much that she shared this story with me. I knew weight has always been a problem in my family (does anyone's family not have that problem??), but this was a story I had yet to hear.

Hi Em,
I want you to know that you and your generation are so fortunate to have nutrition know-how. When I was growing up, [I had] a mother that only worried about getting food on the table, and food that she was used to in europe. I didn't have a clue as to what to eat or fats or sugar or anything. My mother was so frustraited with my being "SO FAT". I was so unhappy and lonely in grammar school. Everyone validated the fact that I was different. That's where i developed my humor and kindness and always befriended the people that were not as cool as the beautiful ones who lived off their attractiveness. I never could figure out what they had. They were not kind. They grouped together. So i guess that was a good thing to have: to rely on what was inside of me.
When I got into high school, [my sister] Jeanie was married and she put me on a "diet," or "program" as they would call it today. I started to lose weight and I ate only what she told me to eat. I can remember being at a girlfriends house and she offered me an orange. I actually called Jeanie to see if it was allright to eat it.
When I got married, there was a period when i was in my 30s that I lost a lot of weight and my hair got long and i was "HOT". I can remember being out with Grandpa and we loved to dance and I would catch the looks of the guys sitting at the tables and all I could think was, "I'm the same person as i always was. Where were you then... BASTARDS (I'm still angry). I went to dances at school and would be excited, but all the time knowing that I would have to keep walking around the place so i didn't look like a wallflower. What hurt was when my parents would ask if I'd had a good time and I lied and said "yes".
Anyway, as I said, the girls today have wonderful information at their disposal. Some have eating disorders or whatever, but their problems come from different directions of their life. I know today it isn't about" food".
I hope they have programs in the schools for girls and boys that come from a busy home that have no time to check what anybody is eating and their only company is a computer or a game thing and snacking.
I think the food pyramid was upside down then. Oh wait... we never had one. Just "meat and potatoes".
[my gramma, Natalie B, age 69]
[edits made with permission.]

I guess we sometimes take our progress for granted.

welcome back, october.

2008-10-21T11:41:00.003-04:00

I wonder if I'm the only one that isn't just reminded of how I felt at a certain point of time (by a certain event or song, or just by how someone is reacting to me), but I feel it all over again as if it is physically happening to me at that exact time. So many songs have such strong emotions attached to them that I can't even listen to them. Even if the emotion is a good one, sometimes, it's actually too strong and I just can't handle it when I'm not in that mind-frame.

Weather is huge for me. That's one of the reasons I love summer so much is because of the emotions that it holds me for me. I've been through some pretty rough times during the colder seasons (besides your average case of SAD, but that never helps much). Anniversaries come easy to me because there is a direct emotion attached to dates and seasons. It's one of those weird things that I can just kind of feel. Of course, this leaves me with reminders for anniversaries of things you wouldn't even think to mark, but it leads me to rock at birthdays and vet appointments. The anniversary of my accident is May 24th and the anniversary of bringing home my baby boy (of the feline variety) is October 12th.

Three days ago was the anniversary of my last day at PortraitSimple, before I took medical leave. I had such an absurd panic attack about the fact that I could possibly - accidentally - kill myself that my mom had to bring me to the ER so I could be reassured I wasn't on the verge of a heart attack. There, of course, was no way of getting out of that one without a little extra hospital time. I called my manager and told her I wouldn't be coming back for a while. My next anniversary is in three days.

The emotions attached to this time of year are confusing for me. The past 3 years, I've been in treatment around this time, or at least was approaching it. Last year is the time that really stuck and everything that came with that is rushing back to me, now: how it felt to want to starve myself (for the record, I can feel the emotion; it doesn't mean I feel the urge to do so), how it felt to know that I was going to be forced to drop my whole life, my job, my education that I was so close to finishing, how it felt to know that I was letting everyone down that I loved, how embarrassing it would be to tell my friends that I'm going to have to go back to treatment. At the same time, the weather is frighteningly similar right now as it is to the end of the winter when I was finishing up my treatment cycle at Walden. Fuck, that felt good, but it's confusing to feel that emotion at the same time as those that came with the beginning of the process.

This is going to be an interesting winter for me.

friends don't let friends "fat talk".

2008-10-16T00:54:00.005-04:00

As an advocate for body acceptance, I think this is a beautiful thing. (As a graphic designer [student], I have a crush on this video.) That aside, I think it needs to stop. The week is almost over, but it should continue on. Not just "fat" talk; all weight talk. Fat, skinny.. what does it matter?

On the other hand, where are the lines drawn? "Fat" and "thin" are just describing words. What makes these words lethal is that they also double as judgmental words. When you say something is thick, or soft, or yellow, you are describing them with fact. All of these words are adjectives and yet, at some point along the timeline, "fat" became a word that you can't say with judging, simultaneously. Is it too late to change that?

thanks to a.s. for finding the above video ;)

let there be light.

2008-10-12T13:54:00.003-04:00

Sometimes, I really enjoy reading personal blog entries [on ED blogs] that are actually about the person and not their illness/recovery. I like to know who I'm reading about and I know that eating disorders are not all that you guys are. It's not all I am, either.

In my last entry, I briefly mentioned something about my religious beliefs. Recently, this is a topic that has come up quite a bit with some people in my life, all completely unrelated. I finally decided to gather all the chunks and pour it out, essay style. If you have an interest in religion and other peoples' thoughts on it (or you just really love reading about me - whatever), feel free to read and comment.

..on Yom Kippur, it is sealed.

2008-10-10T15:15:00.003-04:00

Yom Kippur (Yome Key-pour) was yesterday, marking the end of Rosh Hashanah and the Jewish "Day of Atonement". Ahh, atonement. How do we atone? Well, the Talmud says that we atone by abstaining from sex, bathing, moisturizing, eating, and wearing leather shoes. Now, this brings me around to a piece I've been working on about how outdated I feel most organized religious practices to be, but I'll save that for another time. I believe the shoes I wore yesterday were not leather, but they were suede. Sorry, God.

All besides the point. Why do we abstain? Because it is about denying ourselves pleasure on a day that we should not think about ourselves, but others and how we've wronged.. the world. So, we fast. Now, I'll save my rant for another day (and, probably my other blog), but come on now. When we now know what food does for the body and how much we need it, we still give it up for a day because we're sorry? And for what?

No, it is not required that you fast. In fact, it is even forbidden for young children or those who would be put at some sort of *AHEM* medical risk by doing so (i.e. my whole family). But, can't we atone while still nourishing ourselves? It's not just a pleasure; it's how we live. Should I sit and think about what I've done (which I shouldn't atone for only one day a year, if it was that awful) and deny myself oxygen? ..Isn't denying ourselves food for 25 hours (yes, 25) really putting anyone at some sort of medical risk, healthy or not?

jumping the fence.

2008-10-08T10:23:00.002-04:00

One of my best friends - who had finished her last full treatment experience just before I had started mine - asked me one day, "Is it strange that I really miss the hospital sometimes?" I didn't even have to think before responding that I did, too. It's kind of like an old camp memory; it was controlled, it was structured, it was comforting. There was no skimping on meals, or parts of meals, or buying and preparing groceries. I also loved that I could knit all I wanted without worrying that I was blowing off something else I needed to get done.

Even some of the hardest times I went through aren't things that I look back on with any form of regret. There were some really painful moments, obviously, but I made it through them. I, of course, could have lived without the writhing-in-pain from refeeding, the prison-like shower stalls, and having to ask permission *every time* I had to use the bathroom, let alone the fact that they would stand there and listen. Come on now, treatment can't be totally cool..

I do, however, really miss the environment in the out-patient programs. I wish there was some way - without 3 under- and post-grad degrees - that I could go back to be on the other side of the process. I kind of loved the end of my treatment cycle, when I was so done with being there and could no longer emotionally relate to my group, but was told how much I had helped them as I "improved" (for lack of a better word). That's all I want to do.

I'm not sure what it is about the hospital environment, but I love it. There must be a way to be apart of it without an MD.. or a wristband.

wow, have you put on weight?

2008-10-05T21:21:00.000-04:00

Tonight, I was talking to my friend about how I was trying to gain weight. He asked me what happened that I had lost so much and - being open about what I've been through - I told him I had been working on recovering from anorexia. After explaining (the short version, of course) and telling him that I was now working hard to pull my weight (literally) on the physical end, he replied with, "Wow, I had been thinking you'd put on a little weight."

"Really?"

"Yeah, it looks like you've gained a few pounds!"

That, my friends, totally made my night. I felt like most women seem to feel when their friends tell them, "Wow, have you lost weight?"

Does anyone else wonder why the number of women trying to gain weight doesn't balance the number of women trying to lose? That always bothers me.

a burning torch that's turned upside down..

2008-10-01T23:40:00.001-04:00

"Quod me nutrit me destruit."

Class, raise your hand if you know what this Latin phrase means? WHOA, chill out, I said 'raise your hand'! Okay, so you've all been doing your Latin homework, apparently. Good for you guys. Now, raise your hand if this phrase haunts you.

Me too.

For those who don't study Latin or an infamous, terrifyingly-tragic web community, the above phrase translates into, "What nourishes me also destroys me." Often used in association with fun - yet destructive - lifestyles (drugs, sex, and rock & roll?), this is also the unofficial motto of the pro-eating disorder community. So, as that is how the phrase is most commonly found, I thought it would be interesting to delve deeper into its origin.

This particular line actually has no known author or source within classic Latin literature. It is a spin-off phrase that comes from "Quod me alit, me extinguit," which means, "What feeds me, extinguishes me," or "Qui me alit, me extinguit," meaning, "Who feeds me, extinguishes me." The second one gives a much different meaning to the overall idea. This was first printed on a portrait of a student (believed to be Christopher Marlowe) of Corpus Christi College (Cambridge, UK). A few years after the portrait was estimated to be done (1585), Shakespeare wrote the play, "Pericle, Prince of Tyre," in which the line appears in Act II, Scene II.

It's nice to associate the phrase with something other than starvation. Maybe we can spread the concept.

Sources:

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Latin-2145/Source-Question.htm

http://www.inrebus.com/index.php?entry=entry071111-001717

apples & honey.

2008-09-29T23:29:00.003-04:00

It's the high holidays, folks! Well, for about 1.3% of your beautiful country, it is. For those who don't know what this means, it is that the two most important holidays in the Jewish faith have arrived: Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (Yome Key - Pour.. not Yahm Kipper). If you just said - or plan to comment - that you thought Chanukah was the "most important Jewish holiday," just e-mail me. We'll talk later.

Moving on. For those who do not know what these two holidays are, they are the Jewish New Year (5769) and "our" day of repentance, respectively. They are also the days of seeing the entire hometown congregation for the first time since you moved out of your parents' house, shvitzing in the local synegogue for two hours, sneaking Tic Tacs around the back row, and having a silent party in your head when they sound the shofar because you know that means the service is coming to a conclusion.

Unfortunately, the holidays (like the other 98.3% of the population's) come with stress and part of that stress always involves food in one way, shape, or form (no pun intended). Tonight, my mother received the infamous, "You gotta put some meat on her bones! Girls these days don't eat enough!" To which she replied, "Oh, haha! Believe me, she knows.." and we semi-awkwardly walked away. This duo has a wide range of responses along those lines.

Less than being part of our society, it's a part of my history; Jewish women must be sure that all other people of the world are well-fed. Truth be told, I would probably still hear lines like that even if I were at the weight I am working towards. I take about as much offense to comments like those as I do to any Jewish person telling your average "big nose joke". I think it's mostly because of the generation that is commonly trying to feed every not-as-hungry-as-she-thinks person; they were raised in a different time when eating disorders were never spoken of. Of course, I think that specific time ended with the "baby boomers" generation, but that really only reinforces my point.

I'm starting to realize that as much as comments about other peoples' weights and eating habits can really frustrate me, the people who makes those comments are ignorant to that. We have two choices of how to deal with that ignorance: express our discomfort, or let it roll off. Not saying anything and then being frustrated about it is like hating our president when you didn't vote. I'd prefer to let it go. There are more important things.

..Like enjoying our sweet new year.

L'shana tova :)

another way to look at it.

2008-09-25T11:36:00.000-04:00

When I was on my high school gymnastics team (5 years ago, good lord), the first two weeks of the season were spent doing a torturous level of conditioning. I was extremely out of shape and far from flexible. In fact, I was easily one of the least flexible on the team. I never thought I would have been able to drop into a full split. Our coaches would push us until we thought our muscles were going to rip and just as we hit that point, we were told to stretch just a little further.

If you don't challenge yourself past what you can already clearly do, that's as much as you'll ever be able to do. That is the sort of the mindset I kept during the whole refeeding process. I would eat until I absolutely didn't think I could finish any more of my meal, and then I would force myself to take just a few more bites. It's all about pushing past your limits.

When you're in recovery, doing only as much as you (think you) can will never be enough. You've always got to take one more step past that point. That's the point where you learn new things about yourself.

I had a split by the end of that season.

enough about my disease, tell me about yours?

2008-09-23T13:48:00.000-04:00

For those who don't know, I am not the only one in my family living with disease. My senior year of high school, my father was diagnosed with scleroderma. He was given medication, chemo, and limited other sources with little success. The disease is so new - and so rare - that no doctor seems to really know what to do with it right now. At least, that's been the case for the last couple years. Everything that happened was "expected," and anything that wasn't happening yet wasn't something that we could expect or not expect.

As the disease progressed and we were told there was nothing much else to do, my parents took matters into their own hands and did all the research they could. Then, my dad found Jane, a woman who had reached about the same critical level of his illness and opted for an experimental stem cell transplant. The process was long and involved, but my parents eventually relocated to Waterville, ME for the duration of the procedure (approximately 2 months).

Since the procedure - almost 2 years ago - my dad's condition has been up and down (currently up, but with irreparable damage). The transplant is exremely experimental, so results may (and absolutely do) vary. However, more and more people are being diagnosed with Scleroderma, and more and more are resorting to stem cell transplants.

Below is an article my mom sent me this morning. The news "just keeps better and better."

[Click the article to read on at cbsnews.com.]

For more information on Scleroderma and getting involved, visit The Scleroderma Foundation.

For information on helping raise money for experimental-transplant patients,

visit the National Foundation for Transplants.

walden west.

2008-09-23T02:05:00.003-04:00

While I was a patient at Walden - within the past year - there was talk of the program opening a treatment center out in western Massachusetts. Until now, there were no convenient treatment options for anyone living out that way.

I have recently received an e-mail from Walden Behavioral Care to announce the official open house of the new center in Northampton, MA. The Northampton site currently does not offer inpatient options, but provides adolescent and adult PHP and IOP programs.

For more information, check out the site here: Northampton Open House.

losing someone else's weight.

2008-09-20T23:58:00.000-04:00

Brick walls are pretty sturdy. You can lean all up on that for days, weeks, years and it ain't comin' down. Punch it, kick it, there's no give. People.. well, people are more like.. not walls. We've only got so much support in us before we come down and need to pull away to protect ourselves.

Everyone wants to believe that the people we love unconditionally will have an unconditional amount of support to them. When we're most in need, we can be quick to feel betrayed or deceived by the strength of a relationship when the person we need the most has to remove themselves from the picture. It can be extremely painful when we realize that we not only have nothing left to fall back on but ourselves, but that the people we feel we would take a bullet for might not do the same for us.

Unfortunately, I've been on both sides of the track. I think, unless you have been, it becomes much more painful for people on either side to understand the idea of needing to walk away before we've lost so much support, we can't even hold ourselves up anymore. On the inside of the disease (addiction or otherwise), it can feel like we don't have enough of our head together to depend on ourselves, which - of course - leads to a strong (and, often clinging) dependency on others. On the outside, it feels like we're being spread too thin and don't have time to take care of ourselves.

People tend to lose a lot of patience for those who aren't willing to help themselves. It's hard to stay active in someone's life when all they want to do is continue to hurt themselves. It's even harder when you've put more energy than you thought a human being could possess into removing yourself from that kind of lifestyle. It's a sticky situation, but we all know that you cannot help someone who isn't ready to receive it. Some may see it as selfish, and if that's the case, then we need to learn how to be a little more selfish if it means keeping our own health and stability in check.

In the end, we can't really care for anyone - emotionally or phsyically - until we're taken care of; that goes for everyone, no matter which side they're on.

reality [show] check.

2008-09-18T23:31:00.000-04:00

Extreme Makeover, What Not to Wear, The Swan, even The Biggest Loser (since the realization that it was less "becoming healthier" and more "doing whatever it takes"). You know the names. These are the names of reality TV shows that all share a similar bottom line: "Don't like yourself? We don't either. Let us help you fix it." Now, that may seem a bit Extreme, but let's be honest; one of the above titles even encourages rebuilding your entire body via plastic (and other such) surgeries. These are the ideas that women (and men) are filling their heads with, whether it's for some prime-time amusement, or to get the feeling that someone else is living their reality dream. (I know.. the irony.) Let's not forget the children of these men and women that are plopped in front of the TV while their parents' think it's just mindless entertainment during dinner. Psssssst! Hey, parents! Your kids are ingesting this crap!

Nonsense aside, there's a fairly newer reality TV show brought about by our favorite after-school-special channel, Lifetime. How To Look Good Naked, hosted by Carson Kressley (of Queer-Eye), puts a new spin on makeovers.

I watched this show for the first time, yesterday, slightly skeptical about the fact that it would be anything different than all the others: "it's a bad cut for you, your clothes are too shlumpy, you're clearly not cool." I was pleasantly surprised. For one, the makeover almost comes as an afterthought in the show; it's more of a gift to liven things up (and what woman doesn't want a free makeover?) after all is said and done.

The show starts off with a woman telling her story about how she's lost her confidence, she feels ugly, she feels worthless, in one way or another. There are tears, as there are in an unfortunate number of stories where women must confront how they actually feel about themselves. Then, where you'd expect the host to have a team of makeover artists and fashion experts pop out of the bushes and yell, "LET'S FIX YOU!," Carson had her strip down to her underwear, and pointed out everything amazing about her. Then, he had her stand in a line up of women that range from sizes lower than her to sizes larger than her and have her pick out the one who she thought she looked like. They always seem to shoot too high, don't they? Already, you could start to see her attitude change.

By the end of the show, she was struttin' the runway in rockin' langerie and her pre-teen daughter was telling her how proud of her she was. Okay, so the way I worded that may have taken away from the point I'm trying to make, but it really was a beautiful thing. She even looked 10 times more amazing, because you could see the confidence she was carrying. It was probably the most incredible esteem-transformation I've ever seen in an hour (or, if you include all the time it took to film it, 12 or so hours?).

It's sad that only one woman can be on the show at a time. They should make it into a group situation. Like.. America's Next Top Healthy Model. I know, nerdy and cheesy; I get like that sometimes.

If only it were so easy for those of use who have transformed a disease to look like we just don't like ourselves naked.. or clothed.. or.. at all.. At least there's a way to start. Baby steps, right?

back online & rockin'.

2008-09-16T19:37:00.001-04:00

Hello, my beautiful, faithful readers!

I have my lap top back and I'm rearin' to go!

A few surprising things happened while I was unable to update:

1) A few new readers commented that they were glad I was offline for a while so they would have time to start reading "from the beginning".

2) My fan count on Facebook went from 73 to 98. (If you're on Facebook, you can find F.O here.)

3) I watched a disturbing amount of dvr'd episodes of Scrubs..

It's a beautiful thing to see the good word ("recovery," in this case, not "Jesus") spreading. Thank you guys!!

I'm working on big things for F.O, right now. An intense redesign project is in the works, as is integrating my hat project with the blog. I know it's slightly ambiguous, but I think I'll leave it there for now.

Anyways, more to come ;)

blame apple.

2008-09-04T23:44:00.003-04:00

I regret to inform you that the macbook pro is in the shop and, therefore, F.O will be on a short haitus; approximately 5-7 days.

I have about 4 entries in the works and I promise to be more on top of updates upon return.

Love you all :)
emmy

caution: our restaurant sells calories.

2008-08-31T00:21:00.005-04:00

At work, we have we have this pb pie. It is unbearably fantastic and I wish I would get one every shift I work, but - alas - I can only afford so much food and I try to put my limited income into the more necessary stuff like, you know, protein and vegetables (damn you, health). However, it's hard for me to keep from wanting to lick one whenever I have to compile the deliciousness for a table of mine.

"Oh, man, I'd kill for a slice of this right now."

Without fail, about 3 consecutive times now, the response to this has always been, "Ugh, do you have any idea how many calories are in that? Like, 1200, at least."

"Oh.. then, I should probably be eating about 3 of these a day. Thanks for pointing that out."

No one usually knows how to respond to that, which is even funnier. The weird thing is (besides the obvious fact that people need to raise my awareness to the caloric value every time I say I want to eat the pie, of course) is that two of those times weren't even women. It's sad, but I find that surprising.

Why do people think it's so important to put that out there, especially when you don't know who you're talking to? It drives me insane when people say things like that, knowing how they can effected. Maybe I'm over sensitive about things that people say because of what I've been through and seeing how words can destroy a person from the inside out. You can't expect everyone to know just what to say and what not to, but come on, that's just strange.

[Side note: no one comments on the caloric value of the pie when my (male) manager decides to throw a slice into the blender with 2 scoops of ice cream and a bit of whole milk? Of course not. ...Genius milkshake recipe, by the way.)

"fat is not a feeling," it's a visual.

2008-08-25T13:57:00.000-04:00

I need as wide-spread involvement with this thought as possible.

I have been working with a doctor (actually working with her, not as her patient) in the area who is interested in treating anorexia. I found her on Craigslist looking for a digital imager who could help her achieve a goal she has in mind for something that has never been done before. I've brought up my skepticism to her about the ideas, but I'm also interested to see where it goes. My goal, as the recovering, is to keep her up to date with reality checks about certain aspects of the project.

The general idea is that pictures are taken of patients and then manipulated to look as overweight as they "feel". Now, hold on a second.. the point is not to show these images to patients and be like, "See, this is not what you look like!" The point is to give patients a visual to describe how they feel, so that they can show someone what they feel like when they see themselves differently than other people do.

The more I go into it, the more skeptical I feel about it. However, I think about groups that some treatment centers do with body-tracing and how helpful that can be because it's visual. Maybe there aren't enough visual outlets in treatment. Yes, so much of it needs to be about emotion, and feeling, and the deeper stuff, but the fact of the matter is that, to the patient, there is such a visual aspect that maybe it isn't addressed as much as it should be? I'm not sure.

The bottom line is, if a doctor asked to take a photo of you ("you" being the recovering anorexia patients) and to manipulate you to look "heavier," how would you feel about that? Do you think it would help? Do you think it's just an absolutely disgusting idea?

I can't decide if I think it might be interesting to try or if it has the potential to make things much, much worse. Or, even, if it's overall irrelevant?

everyone's a little disordered... sometimes.

2008-08-19T16:13:00.001-04:00

"Can I start you folks off with a plate of our famous guacamole?"

"No, thanks, I think we're all set to order. Honey, why don't you start."

The gaze shifts to the 9-year-old girl sitting in the back corner of the 6-top booth. She apprehensively peers around her grandparents at me and immediately shifts her eyes back to the menu. "Umm," she began, then took a stalling sip of her Diet Pepsi. "I think I want the Original Steak Fajitas, but I have a question."

"Sure! Shoot!" I could feel her discomfort, but there was something more than just a fear of speaking to strangers. I focused on her, curious.

She continued, slowly, "Is there a lot of fat on the steak?"

I felt my face twitch in an oddly questioning manor; I tend to have a difficult time controlling my facial reactions. "No, there's no fat on the steak at all. It's a great cut," I answered, putting my server-face back on.

"Okay.."

"You also get your choice of beans with that: refried or black?"

"Which ones are better for you?" she directed at her mother across the table.

"Black."

"Okay, I'll have the black."

I took the rest of the family's orders, snapped my notebook shut, and shuffled off to a POS.

The thought of the little girl remained in my mind. I was a little picky-eater once upon a time, too. So was a girl I grew up with and she doesn't have an eating disorder, now. A lot of kids are picky eaters. A lot of people are picky eaters, or have strange habits, disordered habits, even.

My radar is always on for little red flags like that. I can't help it; I've lived it for so long. But, like I talked about in my post about whether or not to take a stance when a huge red flag is raised, how can you ever actually know what is going on with someone? When is it even considered "disordered" or even "worrisome," for that matter. What if this was your own child? I suppose that would be different..

At one of my appointments with the nutritionist in Walden Residential, I fought my right to use a straw in order to get my daily fluids down easier. She told me that the use of straws was against the program's rules because it was a "behavior." I didn't understand why. It wasn't a behavior I ever used, it was just easier to get liquid down with a straw and if they wanted me to stay hydrated, it would be a fine idea. "'Normal' people don't use straws," she said.

"They use them every day. What about in restaurants? You can't get a drink without a straw in restaurants."

"Well, yeah, but that's just restaurants. I mean, people don't keep them in their houses; they don't use them at home."

"Yes, they do. My mom keeps them in her house, my friends have them, I keep them in my apartment.. why else would they sell them in the supermarket?"

"Well," she started to get defensive, "everyone has a little bit of an eating disorder." End of session.

Doesn't that make every everyone's "somewhat" disordered patterns "normal"?

I hate when I become confused by my own blog entries..

8th grade science.

2008-08-16T11:00:00.000-04:00

i stretched out on the couch - "my" couch - as i half-absently listened to him run down his list of reality checks, raising awareness to what my life has become in the absence of my old, destructive lifestyle.

"i mean," he continued, in his sarcastic, driving-the-point-home tone, "you haven't been using any behaviors, have you?" i snapped back into real-time. behaviors, i mulled. i repeated the word in my head a few times, waiting for the definition to register in my brain. what kind of behav--.

"oh! i didn't know what you meant at first," i finally responded. "it's been so long since the word 'behavior' has even been brought to my attention, let alone having one be used."

"then, i make my point." his point was that i was living life, not - as the saying goes - "just surviving." i was out, i was working my ass off to pay for my newfound lifestyle, i was nourishing myself to be able to work my ass off for 40 - 50 hour weeks, i was spending time with my friends. i was taking back what belongs to me. it felt pretty damn good. what felt almost as good was knowing the faith and trust that my treatment team had in my stage of recovery. he knew i was fine and i know what it sounds like when he knows i'm not. i hadn't heard that tone in his voice since last october.

as i headed out the door of his office building and onto the sidewalk, a feeling in my legs drew my eyes downwards. i was wearing my favorite running shorts, which seemed to cover more surface area when i first bought them.. approximately 8 years ago. with each step, the shock of my sole hitting the pavement sent a wave up through my leg, resulting in what is known as "jiggle" to woman-kind. it's physics, i thought. action, reaction. i couldn't help but smile to myself; it was such a simple concept! i have mass, i have weight, i have a body that properly reacts to physical laws of nature. how could this have ever upset me? it's such a beautiful thing.

fine, you can keep a LITTLE anorexia..

2008-08-13T17:15:00.002-04:00

I watched her go back and forth, I watched her breakdown, watched her get shipped off to the R-place and the ER. Death threats, fainting, a nearly-collapsed lung.. I remember. I wondered if there was an ending; if I would ever get to see my girl rise above. At her worst, I was doing alright. At my worst, she would be doing pretty well. Not since freshman year of college were we actually ever in the same stage of recovery.

One stormy night in November, this girl trudged up through the storm-induced Connecticut traffic to visit me on the EDU. One of the RCC's newest success stories, this was not the girl that I would sit with in my dorm room with combatting hunger with a shared loaf of Italian bread and water. There was blatantly so much more to her this time, physically and emotionally. She was more human than I'd ever seen her before. She was happy.

We sat and talked on my bed for as long as visiting hours would allow. She told me all about the RCC and how they finally got through to her on a level that her other treatment centers never could. She explained how all the other centers would tell her, "Just make it to 105 and you'll be fine. We'll let that be your ideal." She hit 105. She hit it several times and relapsed each time. I found it interesting that she has a good 5" on me and I have also been told that I will be fine at an "ideal weight" of 105.. which, is low for me.

Finally, at the RCC, someone told her that your body will know when it hits it's "ideal weight". There's a shift in your whole chemistry. Everyone has a different "ideal" just like everyone has a different body. Only your body knows where that is. She continued to work and gain and reached 120+ when she finally told her doctors that she was there. They put her on maintenance that day. Since then, yes, of course she has had some difficult times, but she's pulled out of them and happily maintained her weight by eating when she's hungry and whatever she wants.

So, why are we allowing patients to "give less" than 100%? Why is 85% of "Ideal Body Weight (IBW)" what legitimately determines anorexia? Why not 95%? 105 is not my IBW, but I've been told that I can "stop there". I don't want to stop there. I want to stop when I'm at my Ideal Body Potential. If that means 115, 126, 132, then that's where I'll stop.

If you're going to be a treatment provider, then treat me. Why are we cutting corners??

[This entry began as a comment in response to Laura Collins entry titled, "Why not 100%".]

hungry as a lion.

2008-08-12T11:33:00.002-04:00

Odd realization, via Facebook and conversations on Alcott: I know a lot of people in the ED community that were born Leos. There was actually a group of us, when I was on Alcott, who's birthdays ran July 28, 29, 30, and 31.. out of 22 people and 365 days in the year. One of the ex-roommates that has been through the old apt has an ED and was born in the midst of the Leo time period. According to Fbook, there are apparently quite a few more who were born within this time.

I have posted about this before, but more on the level of "time of year". However, there seem to be a lot of connections between Leos and people with eating disorders.

A little piece on Leo characteristics pulled from zodiac-signs-astrology.com:

Leo Strength Keywords:
- Confident
- Ambitious
- Generous
- Loyal
- Encouraging

Leo Weakness Keywords:
- Pretentious
- Domineering
- Melodramatic
- Stubborn
- Vain

Leo and Independence:
Leo is very independent but they need something to control and someone to admire them and appreciate them. They are fully capable of being greatly successful on their own but they are much happier if they have an audience and a following of people who look up to them. They would prefer not be alone.

Leo and Friendship:
People are attracted to Leo's zest for life and their warm spirit. They have the ability to lift up one's spirits and provide encouragement when times are rough. Their enthusiasm attracts people, Leos are social butterflies, not because they want to be but because people always naturally gravitate and surround the Leo. Leos are very difficult people to not like, they are usually fairly balanced, realistic people (?). They never dwell on the past and they will think you are strange if you do. Some Leos might be too caught up in themselves and be very self-centered but they are never too self-absorbed to help anyone who needs it. They pamper their friends and treat them well. A Leo is the ultimate friend. They do not hold a grudge and they are very forgiving. They have respect and understanding of people's differences.

Alright, so I see a lot of things in there that, oddly enough, seem very opposite of some common characteristics of people with eating disorders. However, some of these characteristics can show through an eating disorder in different ways. Sure, I wouldn't be immediately inclined to say that a person who constantly beats themselves up for the sake of insecurity is "confident," but I have yet to find a person with an ED who actually lacked confidence. Confidence in ED patients is kind of like the color on scratch art paper; you have to find it by scratching the black surface with a pointy wooden stick. Or.. something. More so that it's always under the surface and always looks different, you just have to break the the barrier, first.

Any thoughts? Especially from fellow Leos?

(Really random, partially-related side note: Brie & I share a Leo birthday ;)

organizing my life..

2008-07-31T09:24:00.000-04:00

I'm here, I'm alive, and I have a number of partially-written posts to be finished.

•

This past month has been really insane, and I apologize for ill production. This post-college lifestyle is taking some getting used to, especially where I am not used to working more than 25 hours a week and I have been pulling 40-50 hour weeks. I may have to start scheduling in blog time, as opposed to jumping on my Blogger Dashboard when I have the energy to, which is rarely as of late.

•

I have received comments from people on a few occasions about how I may not let my readers into my life as much as it seems. Well, readers, you asked for it:

•

My job means feeding people, which is ironic and often raises the question of whether or not I'm okay to be doing so. We have been through this; I am mentally "okay" to be doing anything. Yes, serving - once upon a time - tipped the scale (no pun intended) and send me into my first stint of residential patientry. (Not a word.. should be, though.) Anyways, the bottom line of this is that I spend hours and hours on my feet, get teased by my managers for needing both my knees wrapped at my age, and eating more Mexican food than a white person should probably eat. I tell people I'm surprised I haven't turned Mexican, but I'm Jewish, so turning time is probably much longer than average.

If you live in the Boston area, I highly recommend you come down to Margaritas, grab some food, and sit in my section :) I'll even give you a sombrero.

•

Consuming-my-life topic #2 has been my apartment search. I don't think I've ever discussed it on this blog, but it's all up on my more personal site. Bottom line, I found one, was approved on my birthday (turned 22 on Mon, 7/28!), and am moving in this weekend. Yes, talk about last minute. My mom will be here in an hour to help get this whole apt shoved into tiny alcohol-branded boxes from the packie down the street. So. Freakin. Excited.

•

CML topic #3 is working on going back to school. I'm meeting with my original admissions counselor on Monday about being *re*admitted into the Graphic Design program. The good news is, the process should be faster this time around because they already know me there. Apparently, there is also a rather large discount for students who return to complete a different program. This time, however, there is no parental help, financially. I have to learn about loans and payment plans and all that good stuff. I'm scared about going back, especially because I am only doing the part time program (approximately 18 months) so it will take over a year to complete, take up time that I could be doing shows, and possibly hurt my income. On the contrary, it will definitely help my income in the long run because finding GD work is a million times easier than finding photography work right now. It seems like *everyone* is looking for a graphic designer.

•

So, that's that. I promise I will be back on a more regulated posting schedule after I am moved in to my new place. I appreciate your patience and I hope you're all doing well!

•

Peace out.

a new perspective: callisto.

2008-07-10T09:07:00.007-04:00

My first willing participant has stepped up to the plate. I have received e-mails from this reader before and I really appreciate her offering up her artwork for my blog. She's extremely talented which, mind you, is not the point of recovery-art. I don't want anyone to be deterred from sending me the work they've done because they're not "an artist".

Here is what she had to say:

I've never done art therapy for my anorexia. I draw a lot, though, so I went and did a bit of research on art therapy for anorexia and then looked through my own work and, wow, it was quite an eye-opener. I noticed that I tend to draw delicate things chained, bottled or tied up, and a lot of elaborate designs that look tangled, but don't touch. I'm not sure what this means, but it's interesting to look at my own work with this new perspective. I usually draw things without giving it a second thought. Now I'll be contemplating, "What the hell was this supposed to mean, anyway?" I'll have to talk to my therapist about this, and maybe she can shed some light. Thanks for giving me the idea of using what I already do to help myself.

"faerie in un bottle"

"capture me"

"let me go"

Sometimes, I think the way an artist titles their work is just as intruiging as the work itself, especially in this case. The last two drawings she did are titled "Capture me" and "Let me go." Isn't that just the epitome of an eating disorder.

Thank you, Callisto.

rediscovering the passion.

2008-07-09T17:00:00.002-04:00

a few days ago, over on the new f-word forums, rachel asked me something i was surprised to never have answered before: "Have you found that art therapy has helped you considerably in your recovery?" i'm not sure why, but as soon as i read this, it was promptly followed by a flashback of groans and desperate pleas against art therapy group that i would hear on wednesday nights. it was certainly not a favorite amongst my treatment group, but i loved it. i was forced to pick up a drawing utensil - in a safe environment - and reconnect with something that was once such a huge part of my life.

here was the response i gave to rachel:

i've been drawing since i was a little kid; i always loved it. however, as my eating disorder took over, it became extremely difficult for me to do any form of art. everything i did was "useless", "terrible", "talentless".. i would become so incredibly angry with myself at a crooked line, an imperfect curve.. i eventually stopped drawing altogether. i couldn't deal with the absolute self-hatred that came with doing something i once really connected with.

through art therapy, i was able to rediscover myself and my love for drawing again. i used it to practice letting things go and working on my irrational strive for perfectionism. if i messed up a line, i would be immediately inclined to crumble the paper and trash it, but i started to force myself to stop, look at it for a minute, take a deep breath, and continue with my ideas.
the more i was able to do it, the stronger i felt myself becoming in my fight against unfounded ideals. i began to really fall in love with drawing again while i was inpatient, and as i continued through the rest of my treatment at walden, art therapy helped me grow so much in so many ways, let alone reunited me with an old passion.

i wrote an entry that started to go into this a long time ago. it was actually about a friend of mine from treatment who helped me work through art therapy when i was first fighting it.

i found it odd that most everyone hated art therapy so much at walden. i never knew if it was just that they weren't the drawing types, or if they didn't feel any emotional connection to a cray-pas, or if it was the same reason it was so difficult for me to keep my sheet in one piece after my hand would slip on a wrong angle. only one other friend of mine was really into it, and rightfully so. kiersten has quite the talent and i'm hoping she might be willing to share it more.. *hint, hint*?

what were your experiences with recovery through art therapy? if you hated it, how come?

it all came out, just not in words.

2008-07-07T19:50:00.003-04:00

i finally had the chance to take shots of the stuff i've done in the hospital and "digitalize" them. they're not as straightforward and/or eating disorder related as my last entries were, but they were part of my recovery. i either drew them specifically for an art therapy group, or on my own time to help hold myself together.

for some reason, during the export, my images always lose color. i haven't figured that out yet, but these are slightly duller than the actual drawings.

[for those of you who aren't Jewish, this is a "chai".]

[it means "life" in hebrew.]

if anyone else has art of any form (drawings, collages, writing pieces, HIPAA-friendly photos**, etc) that they wouldn't mind sharing, i would love to see them. and, with your permission, i'd love to do a post sharing what other people have done to help them use art to work through their recovery.

you can e-mail them to me at emmy@frozenoranges.com.

all rights will remain yours.

if it makes you more comfortable, you could even send me a post of your own blog featuring your work, and i will simply link to that post.

6 going on 26.

2008-07-02T00:43:00.003-04:00

[the following post is in response to a facebook note, posted by kathleen, called "high heels for babies? yes, it's true." in case that link doesn't work (due to facebook's privacy controls), here is the note:

Read the article below and take action if you'd like.

The designers of Heelarious are American and can be reached at: sales@heelarious.com
www.heelarious.com ---you can check out the story behind the shoe
If you do contact the makers of Heelarious shoes, please do so with tact and respect. They are most likely not going to respond to contempt or vehement language...so please be compassionate if you choose to write them a letter.
I encourage you to talk with those you know whom have young girls...if it's not Heels for babies, then it's lacy black underwear for 9 year-olds...have a discussion, raise awareness, and begin a discussion.
Kids need to have their role models talk to them about this stuff before the media does.
peace, Kathleen

Heelarius high heels for babies go on sale
By Rupert Neate

High heeled shoes designed specifically for babies have gone on sale.
The tiny stillettos, called Heelarious, are intended for babies up to six months and come in hot pink, black and leopard print.
Britta Bacon and Hayden Porter, the American inventors of the footwear, said the heels are only for show and will collapse if any pressure is put on them.
Christopher Cloke, head of child protection awareness at the NSPCC, said: "This is part of a worrying trend of inappropriate clothing being marketed at young children."
Miss Bacon said she hit upon the idea for the shoes while walking to her daughter Kayla's 4th birthday party. She said: "It would have been hilarious if I could have brought Kayla to a party in high heels when she was a baby."
The $35 (£17.80) shoes, which come in six different styles named after the inventors' children, are on sale at over 50 stores in America, Canada and Switzerland. British parents can purchase them from internet retailers.
In April supermarket giant Tesco was criticised for launching padded bras for girls as young as seven. The "bust-booster" bra, which costs £4, was sold alongside vests in the supermarket's seven to eight-year-old range.
It was the latest embarrassment for Tesco, which in 2006 removed a pole dancing kit from sale after being accused of "destroying children's innocence".
Asda was also condemned for marketing black lacy underwear to nine-year-old girls.
Last year the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said children were being psychologically damaged by inappropriate "sexy" clothing and toys.

Story from Telegraph News:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2115077/Heelarius-high-heels-for-babies-go-on-sale.html
Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence.

If you require any further information on permitted use, or a licence to republish any part of the Site (or any Content), please email us at syndication@telegraph.co.uk, or contact us by telephone on +44 20 7538 2921, Facsimile: +44 207 931 2867.

alright, now hold on. first and foremost, for the record, the following is strictly my own person opinion. kathleen, i have the utmost respect for you and what you stand for; i do want you to know that. however, I feel a slight reality check is necessary.

let's look at the facts, which begin with 2 woman thinking it would've been funny for a baby to show up to a women's party in "heels". It's really just a baby outfit with a little sense of humor. of course, everyone's initial reaction is "heels = sexy clothing.. add in babies = WRONG", but have you really thought about it? c'mon, you have to admit they're kind of cute and it is a funny concept. they're not meant for walking in and - here's the important key - they won't be in them when they *do* start walking. now, if these ladies decided to invent "training heels", our society would have just lost substantial amount more of my already dwindling respect; that would just about level out with decking your child out in makeup for the little miss 6-going-on-26 beauty pageant*, which i despise for a million different reasons. not to mention the physical health problems that come with young girls wearing heels. no, scratch that.. that come with anyone wearing heels.

however, this is not what the creators are selling. they're selling a funny gag idea for a baby's party outfit that the baby won't even remember by the time they can walk.

as for the rest of the article, yes, now i'm disturbed. padded bras and black lacy underwear for children????? now, i know there's something in the water that's been starting girls' periods as young as 7, but come on now. this is really too ridiculous to even be upset about. obviously, if someone thinks this is okay to market, we're not dealing with a full deck. and where do we start dealing with a problem like this? yes, the perv who wants to help pre-pubescent girls get it on is certainly a good starting point, but i'm inclined to think there's a bigger problem when there are parents buying this stuff for their daughters.

have you ever tried to think about the verrry beginning of time? like, where the earth came from, what set off the big bang theory, what was there before.. thinking about things like that makes my head actually hurt because the human brain does not have the capacity to think that broadly. that's kind of how my head feels when i try to think about all the damage in our society that needs to be corrected.

*the "little miss 6-going-on-26 pageant is not a real pageant.. it's just meant to stand for how i see the idea of all children's pageants. i mean, seriously, have you seen those girls?

oh, texas..

excuse me, miss.. there seems to be an elephant in your personal space.

2008-06-29T14:23:00.004-04:00

fellow blogger and a mother of a young recovered (i believe?) anoretic, came upon a sticky situation a while back. while shopping with her daughter, she noticed another girl - same age - shopping with her mother as well. the girl was frail and emaciated-looking (from what i gather of her post), which is enough to make your only-human mind jump to judgement as it is. the tip-off, however, was that she was apparently desperately trying to convince her mother that she was, in fact, a size 7 and that the dress she wanted would fit her body. long story short, she made the decision to pull the mother aside and offer her a little awareness. (click here for the whole story, in harriet's words.)

on more than one occasion, i have heard a close loved one of mine say, "i saw a girl in class/the mall/my gym today who looked so painfully skinny. she was obviously anorexic." this drives me insane, as i've openly voiced to the closest of these loved ones. first of all, you could be the closest loved one in the world - attending years of doctor's appointments, reading all the books amazon could offer, sitting through treatment intake after intake, even being talked to extensively by the person him/herself - but if you think all it takes is looking at a person to tell, you still really don't get it.

second of all, people who appear underweight to emaciated may be anorexic. they may also have thyroid problems. unexplained weight loss is also a symptom of cancer and arthritis. my brother became rather thin before he was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. there's a reason treatment intakes usually last at least an hour. if all they had to do was see how a person looks, a small percentage of ED patients would be unpacked within 30 minutes and a much larger percentage would not even be accepted into the program. have you thought about that: how many people we probably walk by each day that look perfectly "normal" to us and probably have severe weight problems? i digress.

my feelings on the matter are as follows: i, personally, believe it's best not to say anything. please know, harriet, i respect your decision to do so. however - and i hope you do not take this to offense - i know that if i were that mother, i would have been very upset by a stranger overstepping my personal boundaries and making assumptions about my family's mental well-being. this is less towards you and more to the other parents who are wondering if and when they should step forward and say something to others, themselves.

the fact of the matter is that if someone is ignorant enough to miss that there is possibly a serious problem with themselves or someone they love, no stranger outside of that wall would certainly be able to break that boundary. it is really unfortunate how this disease goes unnoticed often for far too long, but it can rarely go any other way. people cannot seek help until they are willing to accept that they need it; this goes for both the patient and their families.

now, if this is a close family member of yours or a friend/friend's child, that's a different topic and that is based solely on your relationship with them. but for a completely random person in the store who has only known you for 30 seconds, tops, you don't know what is going on with that family or person. i mean, for all you know, that girl could have just been kicked out of treatment for the 6th time. it's far too large of an assumption to make with less than all the facts.

a little extra cushion.

2008-06-24T00:54:00.003-04:00

two very close friends of mine were married this past weekend. starting on friday night, it was rehearsal dinner, to breakfast and lunch at home, to wedding night, to hotel brunch sunday morning, to dinner with the bride's family sunday night, to breakfast with the groom monday morning, to a pizza dinner monday evening. meal after meal after meal. it was fantastic.

i hadn't eaten this well in a while, so i was hoping it would do me some good. my moment of truth came while i was driving over to meet my roommate at an apartment we were checking out. now, bare with me; this is not an incredibly gripping tale, but it was huge for me.

i had an itch on my ribs, while i was in the car. these are usually my least favorite to scratch because i might as well be scratching the bone itself. it's painful where there's nothing but thin skin between bone and your fingernails. but, today, there was not just skin; it was squishy. there is padding building up over that bone and, if you know me at all, you know i wiggled a little.. by myself.. alone in the car. i'm pretty sure i even squealed a bit.

the fantastic part is that, because i've been eating so much and so consistently, i'm used to eating that often. i've been hungry constantly the past couple days, like i used to get when i would hit a growth-spurt as a teenager. i've been snacking more and eating larger meals. it's awesome. i think i've got myself on a roll and i can thank my friends' wedding weekend for that, i suppose.

i see my new RD (registered dietician; aka nutritionist) for the second time on wednesday morning. i'd say this sets us off to a good start. maybe i'll be over trips by my birthday. i mean, come on now.. what 22-year-old weighs as much as a 12-year-old.. and still looks like one. time to grow up.... and out.

does this wii make my butt look big?

2008-06-16T13:15:00.004-04:00

before seeing any articles on the subject, i saw a commercial for the new video game, "wii fit." my first thought was, this is something i would be far more inclined to do - daily - rather than the workout mode on DDR. i've got to be honest; the concept is pretty kick ass. people love video games, especially those that they can interact with. in fact, it seems people would much rather be indoors staring at a 5o" screen than out being an active member of society. so, why not make the people happy and let them play video games all day, but keep their bodies moving? i can tell you i would be more inclined to exercise if i had a video game that let me do aerobics, yoga, and strength training - as i pleased - all in one day.

so, wii fit basically rocks, right?

well, hold on. before you jump into your mii personality and get your balance training on, wii needs to evaluate your physique, via bmi. this equation, (mass/height)^2, is how to determine whether you are underweight, "ideal", overweight, or obese. if you're a clinician - or have spent so much time in ED treatment that you might as well be one - then you know the flaws of this measurement. it is a very loose guideline for physical health. the measurement also does not take muscle mass into consideration. 2 men of equal weight and height, 1 perfectly fit and well-built and 1 rather overweight, will have the same bmi. (please, correct me if i am wrong, here.)

unless you are discussing this with a doctor or clinician, no average person should be left to read their bmi if they've never seen it before (or if they already have a weight complex..). however, the wii leaves you alone with it and has left a perfectly fit and active 10-year-old girl telling her parents she needs to lose weight. so, what to do here?

i am completely in favor of a video game that helps you workout and stay active. it's the same as watching a home workout tape (without the 80s workout outfits that drown out the music). if you're going to play video games, you might as well keep yourself moving (to a healthy degree, of course). but is it necessary for the game to know your physical stats? perhaps, to make sure that the workouts are appropriate for your build and to track your progress in terms of muscle improvement. i haven't played the game, so i don't even know if it does this.

however, should children be playing this game? is there a way that the game does not have to tell you your bmi unless your age is 18+? is it even necessary in the first place?

at this point, i don't know what else to think. i'm more confused about how i feel about the game than i was when i started blogging about it. feel free to share your thoughts, especially if you've actually experienced it.

this is an odd entry..

2008-06-15T11:09:00.005-04:00

laura collins, author of the blog "are you 'eating with your anorexic?'" has posted an entry of frustration that i can greatly connect with. i find it aggravating when dieting and eating "disturbances" are immediately seen as eating disorders. are we over-diagnosing? ..are we under-diagnosing? perhaps, i've missed the point. but i'm confused and frustrated, nonetheless.

on a completely unrelated note, i am so freakin' excited about food today. i'm going home for father's day and my mom said we should make my favorite cupcakes ever* just for the hell of it. then, we're going out for an early dinner at the mandarin restaurant in my home town which has the best chinese food i've ever had in my life and i've been craving it for about 2 weeks now. can't. f-ing. wait.

i love father's day. oh, happy father's day :)

*for the record, the picture on that recipe page

looks nothing like the recipe will come out.

it should look more like a tie-dye cake.

and.. now back to your regularly scheduled, "i'm not actually 4-years-old" f.o writings..

neda con 'o8.

2008-06-13T21:13:00.004-04:00

i dream of the day when i can get this e-mail from neda and book my flight out to the conference. i've received this e-mail for the 3rd time and i would really love to go.

maybe by the time i can afford to up and fly out, i'll be speaking at it. hey, nice to dream, right?

click here for more information, in case you aren't subscribed to their newsletter. everything is in there from topics and talks that will be covered, to the logistics of travel and accommodations to how to get involved with the conference itself (my dream).

if you have the time (& money) and have any connection to the eating disordered world, get the hell out there and enjoy it for me, too!

has anyone ever been, or is anyone planning on attending this year?

got bone loss?

2008-06-11T23:22:00.003-04:00

my therapist has recently informed me that it's is much more likely for women who started their behaviors between the ages of 13 and 18 to become osteopenic/develop osteoporosis than those who started after. (for the record, i do not have written evidence of this exact statistic. do not quote me on this. do the research.) this, of course, freaked me out, considering i really began in high school. it also made me a little angry at the unfairness of the fact considering.. i didn't know i was doing it. dammit, disease, you sneaky, selfish bastard.

i always knew i should have a bone density scan done. i haven't gotten one yet, but not because i'm scared; i am just really terrible at setting up appointments. (if you know me at all, you know i'm not all that fond of picking up a phone for the important things.) however, i'm a little freaked now, i'll admit. i'm holding on tightly to the fact that from birth until about age 15, i would go through a gallon of milk in 2 or 3 days; all that milk-drinkin' must count for something, right??

i would love to see how this age thing plays out. i am not sure i have enough readers who have been scanned to get an accurate representation on this, but let's give it a shot. take the poll:

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if you are like me, and have made the poor decision to have a scan done yet, maybe it's time to think about looking into it. it's a scary thought; i am fully aware. but it's going to be a lot scarier if it's not caught now and worked on. osteoporosis is not curable or reversible, but it can certainly be slowed and treated. better to catch it sooner rather than later.

.:. t.w.l.o.h.a .:.

2008-06-04T19:36:00.003-04:00

so, i did the only thing i could. i joined the street team.

i am finding that more and more people are learning about twloha, which i find to be a beautiful thing. before this cause was started, the subject of self-injury was far too taboo and greatly misunderstood. honestly, it's the first time i've heard the term "self-injury" separated from "suicide" under a supportive name.

for those who have never heard of this cause, it is about raising awareness of depression, addiction, self-injurious behaviors, and suicide. it is a strongly music-influenced group, which i think is really cool and probably does wonders for reaching those who really need the help.

if you are any kind of supporter for eating disorder awareness, far too often these situations go hand-in-hand. i strongly recommend you get involved.

you can check out the whole site @ www.towriteloveonherarms.com.

what can i do..

2008-06-03T17:31:00.001-04:00

all i want to do is help. i have been through so much and experienced a lot of trial and error that i feel like i am in a spot where i could really make a difference. it's all i want; i've said this. people aren't learning the proper coping skills early enough, so too many of them are finding their own paths: starving, purging, cutting, burning, smoking, drinking..

when it comes to eating disorders, i have received so much guidance and counseling that i have a starting point. i've seen the foundations, i've seen the paths, i know how to talk to others suffering and i'm a few years of medical school short of being an ED-specialized licsw. (ok, slight exaggeration, but i've been given good feedback on the way i help others when it comes to that.) i'm not saying i know everything about ED recovery, but i know where the starting point is.

the other day, my friend told me she had a fellow employee that admitted to cutting herself and i thought, "oh, been there, how about..... well, what if you....." and i realized i don't know what the hell to do. i was never helped. i was never guided. i was never in treatment for my SI behaviors. yes, self-destruction all comes back to the same points: outlets, control, and coping mechanisms. but, for some reason, i draw a blank. i'm being pretty hard on myself for it, which, we all know is in my nature.

the weird thing for me is that, as possessive as i was about my AN, i was aware there were other people around me hurting themselves in the same way. there's a whole community of eating disorder support. it's not all positive, but there's a community. when it came to SI, it was about being alone and being the only one. i didn't want to share it, i didn't want to talk to anyone that "knew what it was like"; it was mine. how do you get into that? it took me four years and being crazy in love to finally let someone break in and i just.. quit. i quit cold, and i quit for the wrong reasons. i was lucky that i went through a lot of unbelievable growth since then, but i was never given replacement tools until i went into treatment for AN.

i didn't want any. you like it. it grows on you. it grows into you. how do you break that wall??

should i accept that maybe i can't help everyone that takes a path that looks like the ones i took? because i can't. we don't learn life lessons to keep them to ourselves; that doesn't make sense. i should have been a psych major.

to be continued..

sticks and stones.

2008-05-23T22:50:00.005-04:00

"talk about addiction. i've finally broken all of 'em.
this is the first time in my life i don't feel fragile.
you can't turn back after that."

i'm honestly a little surprised by the person that i said this to for the first time, but i've been thinking it for a while. every time i overcome something that sucks, my skin becomes a little thicker. and now, it would take a lot more than a few petty words of disapproval or rejection to tear me down. i'm a fuckin' beast.
[there isn't a doubt in my mind that one of the infamous events going on in my life right now continues to reinforce this, no matter how violent it makes me want to become..]

i've realized i am more independant that i have ever been; this is as solid as i've ever stood. if there was a time for what i'm working on... this is it. this new chapter's reading pretty well, actually.

umm, no shit?

2008-05-19T10:50:00.004-04:00

a new and recent study shows that childhood anxiety disorders may worsen the later onset of anorexia.

is it just me, or is this statement as blatantly obvious as, "people with the black plague may be more prone to death"??

nowhere to go, but up.

2008-05-17T16:16:00.002-04:00

i consider the diploma that i received today my closure to the past 4 years of my life. according to the school, it was only for going through their photography program. for me, i feel like it was a really appropriate way to conclude everything that i've been doing since walking away from westborough high 4 years ago this month.

it took me a long time to get past the fact that i would not have 4 consecutive years at one school like the rest of my friends did. i felt rather inadequate for a while and it was difficult to work through that. i spent a lot of my time being babysat in treatment centers and hospital rooms while my friends were out doing what we're expected to do. it was hard to think that i wasn't any less of an 18-21 year old during that time, which i realize sounds beyond ridiculous.

now, i would say my experiences were something i can be pretty happy about going through. my time at dean was undeniably life-changing. the progression of my disease certainly would have gone differently had it not been for being there and i think it happened just as it needed to. while i was struggling to keep myself together in california, i can't seem to remember anything negative about that trip. i was rewarded with the feeling of being accepted into a great program at a 4-year institution, even if i ended up turning it down. and CDIA.BU... well, there really couldn't have been a more perfect time for that to come along. as for everything else that has become more than common knowledge, i am far from ashamed that i have spent so much of the last 3 years fighting my demons. in fact, i have never been more proud of myself in almost 22 years that i have gotten to this point exactly how i did. i wouldn't take a second of it back for anything, because i'm finally being rewarded with the life that i never used to think i deserved.

the fun facts my mom loves pointing out is that, out of high school, i wanted 3 things so badly that i strongly believed i would never have: to attend BU, to live in the boston area, and to graduate college with the same class i graduated high school with. i got it all in my own way, just as i've always done things. it feels pretty damn good.

so, here's to the end of another chapter and to the beginning of a new one.
i am so proud of all of the people that i have watched grow in the past 4 years in all of their own ways and i am proud to see the amazing things that many of the people i love are headed for.
thank you to everyone who had my back through the worst and best of it (and some of you don't know who you are, but i'll be sure to let you know). there are really no words for what it means to have you in my life.

congratulations to the class of 2oo8.
no matter your age,
no matter your definition of "graduation",
no matter how you got there.
no excuses, no regrets.

i'm alive! promise.

2008-05-09T20:17:00.002-04:00

dear readers,

thank you for your patience. i know this is probably the longest i have gone without updating since, well, february 8th. the past 2 weeks have been the final 2 weeks of my photography education at cdia-bu and i have been cramming to finish my practicum client's final deliverable (that can be viewed on my personal blog) and getting together everything that was owed to the school for my gallery show and archiving. it was probably the most stressed i have ever been in my life.

on top of all else, i snapped a few days ago - something i haven't done for as long as i can remember. "why" no longer matters. i have gotten it out of my system to the people i owe my life to and i actually feel no desire to go back into it. ahh, the magic of letting things go.
now, i didn't go into it with my mom. she called, asked me if everything was ok (she "feels" me), i said i didn't want to talk, and we hung up. however, she's discovered a new way to bring my spirits up. we don't have to talk, she doesn't have to know what's going on, but it's officially a no-fail solution. even if it doesn't make me suddenly feel fantastic, you can't help but crack a smile... or die, laughing.

she sends me videos, like the ones i'm posting below. and we end up finding more and sending them back and forth even if we don't say anything else... for at least an hour.
next time you're going out of your mind and are running out of coping mechanisms, open up this post (and grab a snack). i *dare* you to tell me it doesn't make your day just a little bit better.

(this one's my favorite.)

how was there nothing about kitten videos in my dbt workbook...
oy, my roommate's cat just took me over. can't...actually see the screen anymore. i should go :P

my beautiful mommy...

2008-04-28T00:07:00.004-04:00

...has a quote that has become more than famous under my parents' roof. "we're all gonna blow." i have been subjected to these four little words since my first memories and, after a while, they started to irritate me. i don't know if it was more the fact that she said it after every stupid fact of society that was announced, or that there were so many stupid facts of society to follow with it.

well, mom, here's your time to shine. such hard proof that "we're all gonna blow," it is actually all i could think of when i stumbled over this website. and now, my friends and devoted readers, i am convinced there is no stopping it.

this is the cover a new children's book that has come onto the market. look how excited the little girl is about her stick-figure mother with big boobs surrounded by sparkles and butterflies. but WHY is mommy so beautiful? i'm so happy you asked. it's because mommy had plastic surgery!

that's right, kids. mommy wasn't beautiful before, but thanks to a special "doctor", she's not only beautiful... she's socially acceptable! and if you're 4-7-years old, you can learn all about her surgery and understand why, one day, you won't be beautiful either unless you go under the knife!

the floor is all yours, mom. and, by the way, thank you for raising me on "goodnight, moon" instead.

direct from jezebel's self-help section.

2008-04-25T17:17:00.003-04:00

jezebel created a list of 25 things "all women should learn to do already". it was a fantastic list and i would like to share a few that i very strongly agreed with:

Tell the truth.
I can't make it tonight. I have a date. I'm interested in your ex-boyfriend. When you cheated on your husband it really disturbed me. You should maybe look into taking responsibility for your actions. "I would like to put a hit out on your therapist." I know, it's not easy. But isn't that kind of sad?

Take nothing personally.
He didn't do it to hurt you, and if he did, that's fucking weird. Humans are self-obsessed, that's the only reason you think this is about you, when it's really about something that has left people much smarter than us befuddled for millennia now, so you might as well focus on what you can control, which leads me to...

Eat.
Praying and loving are good skills to have, too, but if you can't nourish yourself without experiencing a complex range of guilts and fears and anxieties, you need help.

Break up with someone before you cheat on them.

i think women should also learn how to take more responsibility, in about 10 different ways, but that's just me. let's be honest, though, women love excuses. anyways, head to jezebel's site to read the whole article.

addorexia.

2008-04-22T11:00:00.000-04:00

i don't eat as much as i should, but it's not because i am afraid of food, or consumption, or gaining weight. i don't keep up with my meal plan because i don't want to fucking get up. having to buy food... having to actually stand at the stove and create something... oh god, having to wash everything afterwards? fuck that.

here i am, all this time, thinking i am the laziest person in the world. on top of not putting food together, i don't bring my rent to my landlord on time because i have to walk across the street to get there. when i don't have to be at work or school, i don't leave my room until about 3pm... if then. what a shitty feeling. i thought it was purely laziness.

i was diagnosed with ADD when i was in 7th grade. i self-diagnosed myself at age 12 after watching the similarities between my dad and i starting when he was diagnosed 5 years before. my teachers, like i do now, thought i was just lazy as hell and refused to believe that i had ADD. low and behold, i was properly diagnosed and put on medication... that i never took. i was inconsistent and i was young and medication did nothing for me. ritalin, stratera, concerta... none of it will work if you don't take it as prescribed. (ritalin just blows, though.) i gave up freshman year of high school.

lately, i am thinking, "i am never going to want to do anything. i don't want to work, i don't want to go food shopping, i don't want to walk into the other room." it never occurred to me that these were symptoms. i always thought that my symptoms were only that i couldn't concentrate during class.
apparently, my dad is just as awful. if he is off his concerta, he won't do shit, which is really rough on him because he is literally killing himself if he doesn't get up and move around. but on it, even with a fatal illness, he gets up, runs errands, goes for a walk, gets work done around the house... it sounds so simple.

i am talked to my NP yesterday. we have been talking about how to get my OCD under control, and the topic of trying ADD meds again has come up quite a few times. i talked to him about concerta, because whenever a medication works really well for a parent, it typically does just as well with the child. i am also starting to hear that ADD meds can help with OCD. anyone else know anything about this?

i need. to get off. my ass.

[disclaimer: "addorexia" is not a real diagnosis. it's not even a real word. i made it up, just like "drunkorexia" and "wannarexia". don't use it... you'll make a fool out of yourself.]

back and forth. forever.

2008-04-18T11:18:00.004-04:00

[i apologize if you know what the title actually comes from. take it for the meaning of the post ;)]

there has been a question going through my mind for quite a while, now. it started screaming at me when a met a girl that came into my life and, finally, kc hit me with an e-mail suggesting i blog about it without even knowing it had been lingering around me for a while.

the question: does full recovery exist??

don't lie to yourself; we've all wondered at some point or another. so, what's the answer? are we destined to go back and forth the rest of our lives, having Ed taunt us every now and then, whether or not we resist? what measures recovery?

first of all, yes, i believe full recovery exists. i also believe that even if you don't, you need to pretend you do because you can only do as much as your mind believes is possible.
i had to deal with the question, "how is this time going to be different?" many times from friends and family who watched me get my spirits up and hit rock bottom again and again. especially after going into residential for close to a month and a half and walking out feeling like i was on top of the world. my weight was up to it's highest ever and i had all the motivation in the world. how could people believe that there was an end when i came crashing down within weeks and ended up right back in resi?
i felt amazing. i felt healthy. however, i decided to keep it in the back of my mind that my eating disorder might always be there and i would have to deal with that. the important part was knowing that i had the skills to deal with whatever feelings and urges might arise, and that's what kept me in recovery. i accepted the possibility that i might relapse once in a while for the rest of my life and that that was ok.
what made this time different? this time, i stopped accepting that my life would always have disease lurking in the background and started training my mind to prepare for a life without numbers holding the control, or at least thinking they have a say in everything i do. as i always told my groups, your mind only knows as much as you tell it. if you keep telling yourself the same things, even if you don't believe it, the mind will begin to ingest that information. we can train our minds to believe anything. i am living proof.

there are two sides of recovery: physical and mental. physical is obvious; recovery includes maintaining ideal body weight, as determined by your team, good labs, eating well (including eating things with no real nutritional value once in a while), etcetera.
mental is a little more complicated. mental recovery comes with ultimate radical acceptance, having solid coping mechanisms, letting. go., realizing what life is really about... i'm sure we could all go on and on about what makes mental recovery. it also depends on the individual, as most things do.

so, if we have to ask how we "measure" recovery, it's not there yet. you just know. mentally, i know i am done. there is not a single molecule inside of me that questions the content of food other than, "i need protein... yogurt would be good" or "i need chocolate... i'm gonna grab a pack of ring dings." (i fucking love ring dings.) when i'm frustrated or angry, my eating patterns don't change. numbers aren't flying through my head all day and i only think about food when it is time for a meal or snack. there is no tiny voice in the back of my head that even tries to sway my decision... he's dead.

it is possible, and don't you dare let a single soul tell you otherwise, no matter how many years of medical experience they have. just know that it takes trust, it takes honesty, it takes breaking your own rules and boundaries, and it takes hard work. but if you've been in it, you know how much work it takes to hold on, too. working on recovery gives you much better results for your productivity.

reality check, via txt.

2008-04-15T10:42:00.002-04:00

at 7:43am, i received a text message from a friend of mine currently on the walden edu:

"my roommate just fell and broke her hip! she just turned 34! my age! reality check."

it's the unfortunate truth.

i am not my eating disorder.

2008-04-10T16:17:00.004-04:00

i was reviewed today by ask and ye shall receive. aside from having a problem with my boycotting of the shift key, it was a rather helpful review. the part i was interested most by was that she was bothered by the fact that i never really let my readers into my personal life. i don't do it on purpose, though it is true. i suppose i have figured that i should stick to the topic and my personal life would be irrelevant. however, this blog did originate as a personal blog about my recovery and i believe that part of recovery is realizing that, as we are repeatedly taught, i am not my eating disorder. i have/had anorexia, but it is not who i am. so, i believe i'll let my readers into who i am without Ed.

50 things:

my name is emily sam.
my birthday is 28 july 1986.
i am the ultimate summer baby. if it's 70º+, i'm in heaven.
i am a reform jew, but my beliefs are more spiritual than religious.
i write in all lowercase for comfort reasons that i can't describe.
i have never been outside of the country aside from 1 day spent on a haitian beach.
i have a crush on every nice guy with an irish or israeli accent.
i love math, but almost didn't graduate hs because i never did my algebra hw.
i am a dropout musical theatre major.
acting is the one thing that is guaranteed to get my lazy ass out of bed any day at any time without complaint.
i was born and raised a bostonian (dis my sox, i dis yo face.)
i believe i was born on the wrong coast - i'm a boston girl with a cali heart.
i have been completely and utterly head-over-heals in love.
my childhood nickname was "beaver" - my dad's side has enormous teeth.
my addictions consist of photoshop, blogging, and performing.
i've acted since i was 5, but i've *never* gotten to do a stage-kiss.
i'm a leo to the core. i love being in the spotlight.
i was bat mitzvahed on 9/18 in the "year of chai" (5760 -> 5+7+6= 18).
my motto to live by: "everything happens for a reason" has never failed me.
there is one thing nobody knows about me.
i would rather cut off a limb than learn about history.
i have 2 tv crushes: jim halpert (the office) and jd (scrubs).
i love hospital shows (scrubs, house, grey's...).
i try to use every last scrap of tp or else i feel like it didn't get to fulfill its life purpose.
i'm pretty sure i was a cat in my last life.
i'm a massage whore and i'm not ashamed.
nothing makes me happy quite like a good summer storm.
i love my handwriting.
i would kill to be in a dance class again.
i fucking love pie.
i'm scared that i will be forced to settle.
i don't agree with "PC", but i am always appropriate in mixed crowds.
i am emetophobic.
i have no idea what i'm doing after i graduate in less than 40 days.
i love flannel pj pants like nobody's business.
creative, spontaneous romance wins every time.
my cat is my baby and i love him beyond words.
when i go through a major life change, my hair goes with it.
i've been dying my hair since i was 12. name a color, i've done it.
i believe that just because our "love trends" may consist primarily of men or women, no one is 100% gay or straight. the only thing you can be 100% of is human.
i find working out utterly boring.
i really suck at swimming.
i can't wait to have the money to spontaneously skip town for a few days.
if it's butterscotch, i love it.
9 years ago, i thought my grandfather died because i prayed too hard for a snow day.
in general, women annoy me. i'm very attracted to how simple men can be.
i wish normal body functions weren't something people had to be ashamed of.
whenever i learn something new about life, i imagine myself teaching it to my child.
my imagination is far too involved to ever watch horror movies.
one of my life goals is to have the money to send someone to ED treatment who needs it, but is denied by insurance.

maybe she's born with it, part deux.

2008-04-08T15:14:00.003-04:00

it has been one week since my previous post, maybe she's born with it, maybe it's photoshop. i'm excited to tell you that it has been my most well received blog post since the birth of frozen.oranges, and i would like to take the time to respond to the comments posted on this entry.

the response i heard the most of was that, despite what goes into a magazine photograph and whether or not people know how far from reality it is, these advertisements are still taken as comparisons. on top of that, why would these be the photos portrayed to advertise a product if anything "less" was good enough? the portraits of these airbrushed-to-"perfection" models is what society is telling us is the standard of beauty. and i absolutely agree that this is absurd.

it's true that how fake it may be doesn't matter. it would be like a skincare company making an ad where that giant close-up of a face was on minnie mouse. they wouldn't do that because it's not an "accurate" representation of what their makeup can do for you. they want you to think that you should have perfect, flawless skin and their product can achieve that. we all know that there is no makeup that can make your skin that flawless, which runs me into my endless motion of where to aim my anger.
the digital art world is giving our society an unrealistic standard of what we're supposed to look like, and based on who? who was it that said, "extra flab on arms must be spliced off in photoshop, skin must be blurred to be blemish free, and breasts must be perfectly symmetrical and perky in order to be considered worthy of your title as 'woman'." i'm sure it started as, "you can look like this if you wear our product!" but has undeniably ended as, "if you don't look like this, you're worthless... so buy our product!" thanks, assholes. you've single-handedly destroyed womankind's self-esteem.

which brings me to my other side of the argument... why are woman allowing themselves to fall victim to these farcical ideas? this is not a rhetorical question; i want to hear your answers to this. the fact of the matter is that we are responsible for the way we feel about ourselves. no one else. we can blame society for the way we look at our bodies, or we can take responsibility for our own feelings. as a recovering anorectic, i know what it's like to compare myself to those in the media. i had the "thinspo" scrapbook (and still technically do... it's buried in my closet and i'm planning on burning it when it's nice enough outside to really sit and watch it burn). however, with all that skinny, blemish-free, perky breasted media i'm surrounded by, i now look at it like i see any average woman on the street; acknowledge it as a human form that has no personal connection to myself and move on. society does not choose for me to hate my body, i choose to love what i look like. i have broken out, dry skin, but i take care of it and move on. anyone who cares enough to have a conversation with me is looking at my face on the whole, not at the zit over my left eyebrow. (if anything, they're probably more worried about whether or not i'll notice the one on their right cheek.) people often tell me, "wow, you need to go tanning." nope. you don't tell me what i need for my body, i do. i may be close to transparent, but i also have healthy, skin cancer-free skin. i also love that it makes people laugh when i joke about being transparent. i look exactly how i'm supposed to look and i believe i wear it well. the standard for beauty should be to wear your natural features with confidence.

now, running in my track some more, this doesn't make what the advertising companies are doing right or acceptable. however, we're all the human society has; without people, there wouldn't be a society. we make the rules on standards, not the magazines. the employees, the readers, the photographers... all groups that are made up of human beings with insecurities. so change it.

i would like to clarify that, yes, i see retouching as a form of art like any other. yet, the point we miss is that art exists to make a statement that cannot be put into words. i will never use my art to make the statement that the human body is not beautiful as it was created and i am in strong disagreement with those who do. expecting that i go into digital retouching, professionally, i do not do so without the goal to reshape the industry. as i wrote in my portfolio artist statement, my ultimate goal is to help other retouchers to understand that - while it may be our job to fine-tune a frame to create what is most visually pleasing to the eye - it is not our place to reform the human body in a way that is to be depicted as what is expected of our society.

maybe she's born with it, maybe it's photoshop.

2008-04-01T17:44:00.009-04:00

the irony of my great passion for eating disorder awareness and my career choice has come into conversation quite a few times since i have returned to school. i’m a digital retoucher; i take photographs and i enhance them to my liking. i fell in love with the art of retouching when i found it to be an amazing (and healthy) outlet for my perfectionism tick, something i never would have guessed existed.

so, what? i fix colors, make composites, take out sensor dust; nothing wrong there. except that those are not the types of images that i really enjoy enhancing. the most fun i have is in model/beauty retouching; erasing skin imperfections, reforming limbs, smoothing skin down to plastic. i think i find it fun because i do it knowing it’s not real. it’s like building a barbie doll. is it possible that Matel doesn’t care that a real, live barbie would have to walk on all fours because they know how fake it is? i mean, it's just a toy. why don’t people compare themselves to anime? what about disney movies? (let’s be honest – what little girl didn’t want ariel’s crayola-red, perfectly set hair when she threw her head back out of chlorine-treated water?) it’s so blatantly fake, it just seems ridiculous to idolize it.

painters and cartoonists don't get reamed for creating false idealizations. photographs are analyzed and compared to because it used to be a still-frame of real life. now, photography is just as much distorted to please the artist’s eye as any other form of traditional art. don’t trust anything you see. every human being has hair, acne, scars, stretch marks, etcetera. retouching is done for purpose. it is done to create a work of art that is visually pleasing in a still-life setting: beautiful colors, bold lighting, a certain feeling that is set on print for life and never to be aged. how can you compare a human face/body to that?

when you look at a makeup ad and her skin is 98% flawless, it’s about a 20-40% blur layer, and maybe a noise layer to give the effect of skin texture - not to mention 7-30 layers of digital painting and adjustments. secret’s out, ladies: she ain’t born with it. no human is. but that’s not the point of the ad. the point isn’t even to show how good the makeup will make you look (even though they want you to think that). the raw point is to have you associate a beautifully made-up face with their product. that’s marketing for ya. i can’t even gaurentee that those models are made-up with their product, but i highly doubt it. and what’s it matter? those sparse, clumped lashes are just going to be multiplied, thickened, and cleaned up in photoshop, anyways.

take the following image for example. soak in the beauty. then rollover it to see the original. she is a gorgeous girl, but the makeup, the skin, the color... that's all digital airbrushing, folks. and thank god, because i think i would have been freaked out shooting her if she looked like this in real life.

i'm always fascinated when i look at retoucher’s websites with mouse-over before & after images. i try to look at the before, first, to see what i would change. the after usually suprises me by cutting of chunks of skin from thighs and upper arms that i didn’t find anything wrong with to begin with; they looked like human limbs. of course, when you go from the after back to the before, the before is suddenly very unattractive to the eye.

a photograph is a piece of art. sometimes, hours upon hours of work are put into perfecting it to the artist's eye, including the process of taking the photo itself. lighting it with thousands of dollars worth of equipment, finding the perfect location, the right colors, hair & makeup, etc. and then, after all is said and done, the model is frozen in time - never to age, never to be in a different light, never to fade.

it's about the shapes and form, and i love creating them. but i don't see these pictures as people. they're digital paintings that resemble people. no personality, no movement, just colors and shapes that are fun to look at. so really... where's the comparison?

size matters.

2008-03-29T21:10:00.001-04:00

i now present to you another member of my very nutrition-aware family: my brother, jayme.

while his blog usually has no consistent focus around food, nutrition, or his own body specialties ("the 'beetus" as we like to call it), he has graced us with a bit on our nation's obsession with up-selling. we love to up-sell, even when it means pushing abnormally and dangerously large portion sizes that we later like to bitch about when discussing our country's collective weight problems. *sigh* oh well. enjoy :)

jan & aug need not apply.

2008-03-28T13:07:00.008-04:00

laura collins posted this on her blog earlier today and i found it interesting. and... i love charts. (i'm sure you're all shocked.)

i've heard it before that eating disorders are more often diagnosed in men and women born during the summer months. maybe it's because you're born directly into a bikini-body-obsessed world? who knows.

i was born in july; that explains my mild occurrences of dyslexia. good thing i just missed the band of anorex-- oh, wait... well, i'm far from the panic disorder mon-- wait, fuck.

okay, so this chart isn't 100% accurate. don't live by it or anything ;)

media review: thin.

2008-03-27T21:02:00.001-04:00

THIN

by lauren greenfield

"i just want to be thin. so, if it takes dying to get there, so be it. at least i'll get there."

-alissa-

when THIN came out in 2oo6, there were only 5 million documented cases of eating disorders in the united states, as opposed to the 8 millon that are now known of. i, myself, had just become one of the documented cases, and was so excited to see a movie was coming out that related to everything that had come crashing down on me. however, we no longer had HBO by that point in time and i missed out, aside from hearing all about it from the rest of my community.

the things i had been hearing were that it was undeniably triggering; that it was focused more on insurance facts than anything; that it portrayed eating disorder patients as purely dishonest and conniving girls. i was upset with lauren greenfield based on all of these reviews given to me by the other patients in my programs, which was obviously unfair of me. (my apologies, lauren.)

before all else, i would like to express my great concern for anyone who is still in mental recovery from an eating disorder to watch this film. frequently, exact weights are shown, there are many detailed shots of body frames and healing, self-inflicted wounds, and - on top of specific behaviors being discussed - 2 of the girls were shot while using behaviors. it can easily be extremely triggering (as many patients have told me they were triggered while watching this). please, please use your best judgement before viewing.

THIN is certainly a very honest and no-holds-barred documentary. i do think that lauren did a phenomenal job capturing life on the eating disorder unit. more than anything, i was frustrated with the way some things were/are run at the renfrew facilities, but those opinions are based solely off of what i viewed in the documentary and what i have heard from friends who have been through their program; i have never been a patient at any of the three renfrew treatment centers.

the documentary follows four girls (of varying ages and behavior patterns) through their experiences in renfrew's care. the greenfield crew was able to get as up close and personal as to be in the nurse's rooms for weigh-ins, sit in on groups, witness the girls' "private" interactions with each other, and even rounds (the staff meetings where patients' specific treatment plans are discussed). the important part of the interactions, specifically those that would be seen as detrimental to a patient's treatment, is how they were dealt with and watching the girls work through it. at the risk of sounding mushy, it was beautiful watching how some of the girls grew through certain situations and were able to step up and make the decisions they knew they needed to.

i sat with a knot in my stomach as the opening scenes played. i expected a wave of flashbacks to wash over me throughout the movie... and they did, but they didn't effect me in the i-want-that-back type way i thought they might. i expected to maybe feel a little triggered - despite my place in recovery - which, frankly, scared the crap out of me. i did not. and i believe that strengthened my frame of mind all the more. i'm unstoppable, now ;)
what i did feel was... a lot. i felt like i wanted to talk to these girls myself, as if i could hit that magic switch for them and make them suddenly say to themselves, "oh my god, you're right! fuck this, i'm giving up all my behaviors!" i felt a gut-wrenching pain for brittany (15), who reminded me of a very inward-turned version of a 16-year-old i was on the EDU with; neither of them wanting anything to do with a life away from fatally skinny. i felt disturbed by many of the faculty decisions, the most disturbing being that the bathrooms were left unlocked (seriously?!), and one of the nurses telling a patient about 5" taller than me that she should be at 100 lbs when i should be at almost 120... are you fucking kidding me??

ah, wait, there is something 'frew does that walden never did, and i think it's fantastic: body outlines. the patient draws an outline of what s/he thinks his/her body looks like on paper. then, s/he stands in front of it or lays on it and someone else traces them. it's a genius way to give a little bit of insight into our own thought distortion. we asked to do it once on alcott; i wonder if they ever did.

my opinions on the center aside, it was a very well done documentary. i can't image how difficult it must have been for lauren greenfield and her crew to be in certain situations. again, i strongly recommend you thinking carefully about watching if you are in recovery or have any sensitivity around weight. as for parents, friends and loved ones, this is a great look into treatment, but i would also absolutely suggest that you do not draw assumptions about your friend/family member based solely upon this movie. i have bad experiences with people who read and watch eating disorder-related media and consider themselves suddenly well-educated on the subject...

as an approved media selection, you may now purchase it from amazon via the media section on the right side of my blog. enjoy in good health.

rockin' the blender; recipe #2.

2008-03-25T12:57:00.004-04:00

i have another fantastic boost-improving recipe for ya'll. i think this is my best yet. very simple; totally amazing.

chocolate raspberry boost frappé.

8 oz high-protein chocolate boost
4 oz chocolate ice cream*
1 tbsp raspberry jam
1 ice cube
(1/2 cup 1% milk would have been great, but i ran out of milk)

dump in the bullet (or old school blender...i don't judge...), mix it up, stick in a straw. mmmmm.
*hagan daaz sells tiny 4.23oz containers - perfect amount for shake-making. not to mention, cutest. ice creams. ever.

this one's awesome because you can't taste boost at all. it just tastes like a chocolate shake, which is huge for me. nothing turns me off more to a drink than it tasting like someone through a bunch of vitamins in a blender with some Hershey's syrup. *gag*

enjoy!

mixing passions.

2008-03-24T16:11:00.006-04:00

(1) my photography practicum is coming up.

prac·ti·cum (prăk'tĭ-kəm)
n.
A school or college course, especially one in a specialized field of study, that is designed to give students supervised practical application of previously studied theory: advanced practicums in teaching reading.
[German Praktikum, from Late Latin prācticum, neuter of prācticus, practical. See practical.]

it's very similar to an internship; i will be working with a non-profit organization who needs my photographic services for a promotional project of some sort. it begins on april 7th and i will be working with the organization until a week before graduation.
we received a list of organizations on friday: planned parenthood, angell (mspca), and a ton of others that continue to apply for our services each year. meda has never applied, but i'm going to be building a pitch to them over the next couple days.
my practicum adviser said she would get in touch with them to introduce our project while i write my ideas out. she said it's rare for an organization to turn a student down (hey, free promo work!). i just have to find a pitch that avoids anything that may cross the confidentiality line. she said she's really excited to see how i could combine the two passions i have. so am i :)

if they don't need me, my friend and i might apply for planned parenthood and/or the wildlife preservation, but i'm really hoping for meda. i'll let you know it works out.

(2) this is a personal photo project i would like to do. i'd like to collect scales (old, shitty, broken, new...as long as they don't have athlete's foot) and do a smash up shoot. if it comes out well, maybe i can use it for something - if nothing else, maybe my gallery show in may.

if you click above, it'll take you to the craigslist ad.
feel free to pass it on to anyone else
who might be interested in getting involved!

thanks!

heavy dreams.

2008-03-22T22:16:00.004-04:00

my eating disorder used to run my night life. well, it ran my whole life, 24/7...but it loved controlling my dreams on top of everything else. i would struggle to find the connections with the current status of my behaviors to the dreams i would have. from the first night i slept in my own bed after the original go at residential until... wait, it stopped at some point...??

the treatment dreams were nearly every night. the scary part was that i loved them. i was confused by this when i first left residential and was sure i was magically healed (despite having dropped 2 lbs within the first week of discharge and not seeing it rise from there). it seemed to make sense though; i spent close to a month and a half living in this hospital apartment - it was going to stick in my mind for a while.

for the next 2-ish years, they continued. i would dream about the original apartment, houses, dorms, crazy ridiculous apartment settings where i would have my treatment. sometimes, the girls in my dreams were those that i had been in treatment with. sometimes, they were ed-less friends or random strangers my mind build for effect. the feelings in all of these dreams were either horrible fear or ridiculous, homey comfort. it made me miss living in treatment; i would have given an arm to go back. i figured i just really missed it.

it's kind of like this: when you crave a certain food, it's because there's something in that food your body needs. i.e. when women crave chocolate during their period, it's because their bodies need the iron that's in it. (unrelated sidenote: dark chocolate has a better source of iron than milk chocolate.) i think it was kind of like that. i was craving treatment for a reason. i missed the comfort because i needed what it provided me with.

also, for years, i would have dreams where i would be in a cafeteria (typically one that freakishly resembled that of my middle school's) that would have this enormous selection of food. fruits, meats, cereals, ice creams, hot meals, huge drink selection, anything you could imagine that you've ever seen served in any cafeteria. and every single time i would have a dream in this realm, i never wanted a certain thing. none of it seemed to interest me. i was bored by it all and, while i was painfully hungry, none of the options supplied seemed to satisfy what it was i was looking for. (was it an emotional hunger i couldn't feed?...)

the rest of the dream usually included me realizing that none of my friends were in the same lunch that i was. or, that all my friends were there, but no one cared to save me a seat at the table. i'll come back to this one later; i need to ask my mom (master dream-analyzer) what that may have meant.

the reason i thought to post about this tonight was because of a dream i had a few nights ago. the fact is that i haven't weighed myself in about 2 weeks. while i'm under circumstances where my OPT encourages me to weigh myself, i haven't felt the need. i've become so in touch with my body that i can pretty much feel out my weight. i knew i haven't been gaining, so there's no use looking at a number that's in the same range that it has been. so i keep eating all that i can (in healthy terms, of course) and i'll follow my weight again when i see progress is being made.

the other night, i had a dream that i decided to step onto my scale. the number read 30 lbs below what i've been stable at and my reaction was, "well this blows. i should probably go eat something." that's...so me. i think, somewhere in my psyche, i knew it couldn't have been right. first of all, considering how i felt 8 lbs ago, 30 lbs would easily have me on my death bed, if alive. the fact that i felt like i do now certainly says something. second, my reaction was the epitome of my most recent motto, "nothing is worth getting upset about." i saw it, i realized i had to do something about it, and i think i went to eat.

i've decided to not pick it apart and find meaning it. it's more funny than anything that i was like, "[low number] lbs? sucks. do i have any brownies?" i'm pretty sure i was just making fun of myself in a dream. it was almost too obvious that it wasn't real.

my ending note, however, is that i haven't had a treatment dream (or any sort of yearning to be back in treatment) since the middle of january when i was discharged from walden... for the final time ;)

f.o: now on myspace!

2008-03-20T23:40:00.003-04:00

frozen.oranges now has a myspace!
go add me :)

www.myspace.com/frozen_oranges

teen angst 101: dbt skills.

2008-03-15T13:32:00.006-04:00

after reading harriet's most recent entry, "oh for fuck's sake", i started thinking about how often it is that the community of weight-related bloggers rip on these articles that make us die a little more inside. so many stupid things are said all over the internet and there's no stopping it. the part that really angers me is that so many of these quotes we burn are from professionals. whether or not they are professionals in the health field or professional editors, they have an impact on the country that lives in a food obsessed mind-set and they're not thinking before they shove their skeletal foot in their mouth.

there have been many cases in the past month alone where i find myself frustrated by the lack of dbt skills that i've had branded onto each half of my brain. you cannot "graduate" from any form of mental health treatment without really mastering and understanding these skills. now, i was extremely lucky to find that while my parents didn't know there was a formal name for it, they had raised me with some of this knowledge. what kills me is that too many people are lucky to even learn it in their lifetimes, let alone early enough (aka childhood).

let's discuss how imperative it is to spend years and years learning how to use numbers (my math teacher was right; they are everywhere), how to dissect classic american literature (yes...that's come in handy so many times since i graduated high school), and...insert something here that one of my 14 history teachers talked about that definitely i wasn't paying attention to. got it. these are the lessons that form our future, correct?

alright, great, we know how to count our change, read a book, and i think someone once told me segregation is bad (despite the fact that our country still judges you based on race). however, while we were learning that, 100% of the student body was fighting with their family each night, being told that they were worthless human beings if they received an A- or lower (or finished their dinner), were being denied treatment for mental disorders because some parents don't want to admit their child isn't perfect, and/or learning that heartbreak feels as physically painful as having a limb ripped off and then being beaten with it. so, why isn't there a class for that in every high shool? do you realize we have to learn to speak a foreign language before we're even taught how to properly communicate using our own??

we have to take physical and health education; where's my mental health education? is it such a taboo subject because it's not taught to us in school? this is, of course, excluding the psychology elective that teaches bipolar disorder as if it's as uncommon as the black plague.

dialectical behavioral therapy (dbt) should be a 3 year high school course (10-12). raise your hand if you just asked, "dia-what??" one...two...thre- is your hand up? stop stretching, you're screwing up my count...four...five... okay, so about...millions of you. huh. well, if you don't need to be in treatment, why would you need to know this, right? i will bet that the millions of you have needed to confront someone about pissing you off... or you smoke... or your stressing yourself into pancreatic cancer...
dbt is a form of therapy developed by psychologist marsha m. linehan with the purpose of treating bpd. now, it is used for treatment of nearly all mental disorders. however, i strongly believe that the skills being taught in this method are skills that may be more effective if used before the onset of whatever leads the individual to treatment in the first place. there is no person in this world that does not need to know what dbt is.

the dbt skills include:

mindfulness
distress tolerance
emotional regulation
interpersonal relationships

awareness, handling stress, dealing with emotions, communicating... these are things we should start learning in preschool!
on my right side, i've started a list of recommended books. more will be coming. i highly recommend at least checking it out.

now...how do i go about adding real life emotional skills to the K-12 curriculum and possibly eliminating eating disorders (and urges to commit homicide...) before they start?