HOW

How could this heart hold so much pain?

More pain, it felt, than there are children in the world.

How could your blind eyes and weak mind crush such a perfect little bud?

How do I stand after each fall, and then find my way back to you for more?

How can I ever learn to heal knowing that you cannot - but try to love you still?

How can you look and smell like my mother, but swallow me like a lion and scar me like an iron?

How can I learn to love myself enough to lose the numbing pain and feel myself breathe again?

-Dana Andrews

"How" is a poem I wrote in 1993 when I attended a Psychiatric day program facility on the west coast. I was suicidal. I wondered how I could love my own children when my mother couldn't love me. I wouldn't allow myself to recognize that I adored my children beyond comprehension, because my parents had no feelings for me.

I was a brilliant wreckage. At the program intake, I was told, "But you don't LOOK depressed." My nails were polished, my makeup skillfully applied and my outfit coordinated down to the socks. I was the perfect, intact image on the outside of the puzzle box; on the inside, I was a heap of detached, disjointed puzzle pieces. I succeeded in decorating the exterior of a soul that was decimated and demolished by a mother whose demons went unchecked. She suffered the same fate as I did, yet lacked the insight and inclination to break the cycle. She was the epitome of Borderline Personality Disorder. What a heinous legacy.

Two cross-country moves left me still seeking what I had yet to find. I faced the reality that neither coast nor the ground in-between could provide my mother's love. The daily care, incessant driving and overall nurturing of our five children left me sleep-deprived and hungry. My insatiable craving for acceptance, love, joy, and validation left me feeling hopeless. In desperation, I turned to a close friend. I entered into a love affair... with food.

Food became my drug of choice, an answer to many things. My overfilled stomach translated into a huge hug. Cream donuts, cookies, and chocolate cake became my closest chums; we were inseparable and loyal. While my mother's heart remained closed to me, my refrigerator and pantry doors were always open. As my hope for my mother's love dwindled, my growing girth was hard to ignore. I was no longer small or insignificant. Soon I found myself routinely and repeatedly binging and purging. For many years binging and purging became a hidden yet new normal for me. An increasing preoccupation with food supplanted my coping mechanism. I finally succeeded. I had replaced my mother with food.

After years of therapy, believing I had finally healed, I wrote Room in the Heart. Helping others to regain their validation from abuse became my passion and my mission. Between my book and this blog, I succeeded in satisfying my need for nurturing others. All the while I failed to satiate my overwhelming hunger to help myself fully recover from the abuse that consumed me while I incessantly consumed massive amounts of food. I longed to be thin because "thin" meant justification for my existence. Being overweight was unacceptable and invalidating. This struggle battered me morning, noon and night. Eating was the only thing that made me feel anything.

The winds of resistance failed to slow my kamikaze mission towards my destination of destruction. I began each day reminding myself that I would not eat, then surrendered to the only lifelong lifeline I ever knew. Binging and purging became as normal as breathing; they were the oxygen that sustained me when all I wanted to do was stop breathing and existing. I hated food for controlling me but loved it for comforting me.

This love/hate relationship needed to end.

My husband and children finally found a way to help me see the reality of my situation. After 20 years neither they nor I were able to take on the sickness that permeated all I was. I could no longer run, hide, or heal myself. The problem lay not in the pantry, fridge, grocery store or bakery. What ailed me was basted into every morsel of my being. I was forced to face the truth in the insanity I had become. I resisted and grieved; I was terrified to realize I was about to sever the tether that held me together for much of my life

I have an eating disorder.

After exhausting all other options, I contacted a well-known program for eating disorders. They were sensitive to and respectful of my issues. They listened, understood and empathized. They offered hope. To them, neither weight nor size mattered. My age and the fact that I was a mother and grandmother held no gravity; eating disorders can affect any of us. One thing that consistently entered into the mix was that neither food nor my being was good or bad. We are valid, and our choices are what ultimately matter.

My treatment has shown me there IS hope for me and many who have an eating disorder. It is an unfortunate and inaccurate fallacy that eating disorders are limited to anorexia; ultimately this prevents recognition for treatment for those who are not visibly restricting their food. What we eat, how we eat, and the rituals and reactions associated with food all reduce us to brittle crumbs leaving a trail of destruction and sometimes death.
More than anything, this program showed me who and what I am and am not.

I am a kind and worthy soul wanting to heal while helping others heal. I am deserving of healthy food that nourishes my body and enriches my life. I am NOT my abuse not nor am I the eating disorder it caused. The only size that matters is the amount of love I hold for myself and others. There is not enough food to fill an empty heart; only people can do that. That is my recipe for healing. Add a heaping helping of happy hugs. No refrigeration needed. Hugs should be warm, heartfelt and served generously.