Behind the Mirror: My Body is Not a Battlefield

Hello Patch Readers! What a beautiful day. 

Doing some random cleaning of my office bookshelf, I found a book that I had started reading over eight years ago. I put it down eight years ago because it was too difficult to read. That certainly wasn't my life and my daughter certainly wasn't that sick.  Pure silliness.  Pure denial in it's finest form.

The book is entitled Andrea's Voice – Silenced by Bulimia. It was written by Doris Smeltzer, Andrea's mother. 

I remember picking it up many years ago after my daughter was diagnosed with anorexia. I don't remember exactly why I stopped reading the book. I am sure, through my fear, that I had convinced myself that my situation was somehow different. My daughter was not that sick and I, as her mother, could make it all better. As Doris shares in her book, I, too, had many important lessons to learn.  Painful lessons about myself.

It was probably a very good idea that I did not continue to read this book many years ago. It would not have had the same impact on me as it did today. With my daughter doing well, I could embrace what I read with the filter of denial gone. My daughter had been gravely ill. It took many years, but she did recover from her eating disorder. For Andrea, the outcome was quite different.

I thank Doris for sharing her journey. I thank Doris for her honesty. I thank her for giving a gift to whoever reads her story and that of her daughter, shared through writings from her journal.

There were many ah-ha! moments throughout this book. I would like to share one in particular:

"Andrea had insisted that we keep her illness a secret. I now understand that this is a demand the illness makes: It thrives on privacy and secrets. Today, I would share my daughter's illness openly and with no more shame than if I were sharing about a life-struggling battle with cancer or some other deadly disease."

Eating disorders are not a fad, they are not a diet gone awry. They are dangerous and they kill. It's that simple.

Ask yourselves this question: When did it stop being OK to be accepting of who we are and how we look? Our bodies serve us well, let's be kind to them. I have a shirt that I wear.  It has a picture of a gun on it with the words "my body is not a battlefield." Why, then, does society continue to wage war against our bodies? We are inundated daily with new fad diets.Think about it. If diets actually worked, would there be so many of them?

Through my daughter's illness, I had to learn to accept my aging body. It has served me well and now it's time to show it the respect it deserves.