Speaker 1: 0:00

Thank you for tuning in. This will be episode four of the redacted podcast. On this one, we have an interview with a woman who had suffered with chronic anorexia. Now, this is something that I knew almost nothing about, and I imagine a lot of people have the same experience that they don't know anything about it either. So she was so kind to come on here and share her story and her struggle, and this has really been a lifelong battle for her.

Speaker 1: 0:29

Also, during the episode and during some of our recordings, you might hear some background noise. Our studio's in Industrial Park and we sound-treated it. But I mean, you still can't help it. People are working, people are making loud noises, so bear with us, but I hope you enjoy the episode and thanks for listening. So thank you for tuning in to this episode of the redacted podcast. We have our guest here today who's agreed to come here, and she's under the guise of being anonymous. We have Pamela back there running the audio board. She's been sworn to secrecy. She's getting into some kind of trouble back there, as always. But thank you for coming on and thank you for coming here to share your story.

Speaker 1: 1:52

So when you contacted us, you suffered with what you called chronic anorexia for a lot of years and you enlightened me just in our first conversation, the first time we spoke about it, and you taught me a lot of things I didn't know and you wanted to kind of come on and maybe share some of that and your story with people. And yeah, thank you, we really appreciate you coming. It's not an easy thing to talk about, I'm sure, and it carries probably connotations with it and things like that, but I appreciate you coming on.

Speaker 2: 2:33

Well, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1: 2:34

Yeah, yeah. So why don't we I mean everything always kind of starts with the beginning and just to kind of do it chronologically, so we can paint a picture of who you are and how you came to have this condition? Where'd you grow up at?

Speaker 2: 2:55

I grew up in Southern California.

Speaker 1: 2:57

Southern California, close to LA.

Speaker 2: 3:01

Yeah, about 30 minutes north of Los Angeles.

Speaker 1: 3:04

Okay, very cool, very cool. And what kind of a family did you have?

Speaker 2: 3:12

I had a very odd sort of quirky. I wouldn't even say quirky so much, but they were very reclusive, restrictive family.

Speaker 1: 3:26

Okay.

Speaker 2: 3:28

Very much off to themselves, very strictly religious which not saying that's a bad thing, that just it was a very closed off upbringing. My parents chose to homeschool us and we didn't really have any activities, any real connection with the outside world. It was just the four of us in our little house, sort of intentionally living differently than everybody else.

Speaker 1: 4:03

Were you in a neighborhood.

Speaker 2: 4:05

Yeah, we were in a neighborhood. We just didn't really talk to our neighbors.

Speaker 1: 4:10

So other kids didn't really come over and play with you.

Speaker 2: 4:15

Any interactions we had with kids was them bullying us for being the weird religious kids, so it didn't go well.

Speaker 1: 4:24

Okay, that's tough. I mean it's tough to have.

Speaker 2: 4:29

Yeah, it was a very unusual childhood. I mean, the good thing is I developed a really vivid imagination and have basically lived my life inside my head.

Speaker 1: 4:44

Yeah, Well, and it's kind of like a little bit of isolation, so to speak, and you said you were homeschooled, so that's further kind of isolating. And this is you and your sister.

Speaker 2: 4:59

Yes, I have an older sister.

Speaker 1: 5:01

How much older is she?

Speaker 2: 5:03

She's not quite two years, so we're pretty close.

Speaker 1: 5:07

Okay, okay. And so you were homeschooled and what was kind of your parents' choice behind that?

Speaker 2: 5:17

It was just not being happy with the school system not wanting us to get sort of indoctrinated into a lot of things.

Speaker 1: 5:28

You know, given today's circumstances, it doesn't seem like such a bad idea anymore.

Speaker 2: 5:34

No, it doesn't.

Speaker 1: 5:35

Public schools are just getting weirder and weirder.

Speaker 2: 5:38

Yeah, agreed.

Speaker 1: 5:39

But at the same time, the lack of that social interaction.

Speaker 2: 5:44

Yes, that was, I think. Where my parents went wrong is that we didn't really have connections anywhere else. Yeah, we were just sort of the smaller adults in the house.

Speaker 1: 5:59

Really yeah, so you weren't like, allowed to be kids. Is that good?

Speaker 2: 6:04

No, that was really not encouraged. There was always the idea of like little kid behavior. That was just. It was not good. We were supposed to be able to hold intelligent conversations.

Speaker 1: 6:19

So very kind of intellectual almost in a way. Okay, and was your? Were your parents like highly educated, or I mean just briefly like what was their kind of background?

Speaker 2: 6:34

I mean, my mom was a college graduate, my dad dropped out of college, but he's just highly intelligent, very much self-taught on a lot of issues. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:45

So what did he do for work?

Speaker 2: 6:47

He was a police officer.

Speaker 1: 6:48

Okay, did your mom work?

Speaker 2: 6:51

She was just a housewife. Not that that's a just thing. I have huge respect for housewives but yeah, she didn't have work outside the home.

Speaker 1: 6:59

Okay, and I mean just talking with you and we spoke a little bit before this and just talking with you now, I mean you seem highly intelligent, you speak well, you know a lot about things and you're kind of intellectual. So that's you see where that comes from, a little bit to an extent.

Speaker 2: 7:17

Yes, intellect and just learning about everything is a big thing in my family.

Speaker 1: 7:24

Yeah, yeah. How was it, though so you're? Would you have described it as a happy childhood?

Speaker 2: 7:36

No, it was complicated. My mother had a lot of struggles. She was extremely anxious, extremely depressed, and she self-medicated a lot through food, which was also it was a bonding mechanism. It really was on both ends in my family, like my dad would use these orchestrated family meals that were very rigid as family bonding, but then my mom would sort of turn her binges into what she referred to as girl days that you know she'd get all of this food and then she, my sister and I would have our what it'll, I guess bonding Like a binge eating yeah it was.

Speaker 2: 8:30

We were binging while watching like the type of movies dad wouldn't like, and it's. I mean, it seemed fun at the time, but looking back is very maladaptive Sort of Maledaptive.

Speaker 1: 8:44

That's a good description from that yeah.

Speaker 2: 8:46

You know, it's sort of leaned into a bit of parental estrangement. You know she and dad did not get along and she really wanted my sister and myself to be on her side.

Speaker 1: 9:00

Okay, so there's a little competition.

Speaker 2: 9:03

Yes.

Speaker 1: 9:05

And you said your mom binging was she? Did she have that? Did she have an eating disorder with that?

Speaker 2: 9:12

It was never diagnosed. But it is very obvious to me, knowing what I know now, that, yes, she definitely had a eating disorder.

Speaker 1: 9:22

What like binge eating or overeating? It's what would you call it.

Speaker 2: 9:25

I don't know what specific diagnosis they would have put if it would be binge eating disorder or compulsive overeating, but something in that end of the spectrum.

Speaker 1: 9:36

Was she overweight then?

Speaker 2: 9:37

Very yes. And that unfortunately led to a lot of physical issues. She had a lot of joint pain, she had heart problems, she had gut problems. She, by the time I was like seven or so she was more and more becoming bed bound and, just you know, taking insane amounts of pills that never seemed to really help.

Speaker 1: 10:04

That's pretty severe if she was like bedridden.

Speaker 2: 10:07

Yes, and it just it snowballed and got worse and worse and worse throughout the rest of her life.

Speaker 1: 10:15

Geez. Well, it's tough to. That's tough to. I mean we model so much of our behaviors after our parents and I feel like in some way, shape or form, sometimes you go the opposite way, Like if you, if you, had a parent that grew up drinking a lot. Some people swear off of drinking, so it's funny how much impact that has, and especially you and your family, because you guys were really in a microcosm.

Speaker 1: 10:50

Like I mean that was its own little ecosystem and you didn't have a lot of external influences. Now were you? Were you not allowed to really socialize or see other kids or play with other kids? Or was it just you didn't, you didn't want to?

Speaker 2: 11:12

We wanted to, but there wasn't much opportunity. And when we did, we didn't know how to.

Speaker 1: 11:20

It was just like socially awkward or very.

Speaker 2: 11:25

You know, we had all these grammar rules that were drilled into us that the we would then pass on to the other children, thinking that's what you're supposed to do Someone says something wrong, you correct them, and that did not make us very popular.

Speaker 1: 11:39

That's always fun at parties, yes, and yeah, it's a tough one but that's a very real kind of I mean, that's that paints a picture, because, yeah, I mean that's, that's tough when you're a kid, like you don't want to be corrected on the way you're saying something.

Speaker 2: 11:57

Yeah, we just want to play. We just thought that's what you do and more and more our family just became a family that you wouldn't really you wouldn't like send your kids over to our house. Because as mom got sicker, a hoarding problem sort of took hold and that was another thing that just snowballed like it started off. Just you know, there's a lot of stuff, we have way too many books, but then it was, things were just not being thrown away and there were piles of things everywhere and everybody had a bunch of collections and just everyone had their own little hoarding pile.

Speaker 2: 12:40

Yeah, Multiple piles and boxes of things that were never unpacked. And then you know there was animal hoarding, and that leads to its own set of very distressing issues. Like cats or we had cats, we had dogs, we had rabbits, we had birds, we had turtles, we had fish, we had lizards. Yeah, it was a lot.

Speaker 1: 13:08

Wow, that's it was. I mean, was the house messy, or was it?

Speaker 2: 13:16

It started off okay and the older I got, the sort of the messier the house got to the point. You know, once I was in like high school age, you know we had infestation issues and large portions of carpet were gone. Yeah, it got very, very distressing. Yes, it was horrifying the house. You can. You can spot it from the street that this was the harder house. You could smell it as soon as you opened the door.

Speaker 1: 13:51

Yeah, and that kind of it almost snowballs.

Speaker 2: 13:56

It very much does.

Speaker 1: 13:58

Because you get that which leads to less social interaction, more you know, being kind of an outsider stigma.

Speaker 2: 14:06

Yes.

Speaker 1: 14:07

Things like that. So that's, but you lived in the same house until you moved out, or we moved around True era Delta.

Speaker 2: 14:16

Some actually spent like three years, from like 10 to 13, in Tennessee and then went back to California and that was our last move and we stayed in that house for quite a while.

Speaker 1: 14:29

Okay, okay, so kind of within this, now that we have a picture of that life, how did the, I guess? When do you remember the anorexia or the thoughts of that or that kind of a condition, like what's your earliest memory of that starting?

Speaker 2: 14:52

I mean my entire life I was very focused on looks and wanting to be pretty and wanting to be girly. You know, I would strike poses as soon as I saw a camera anywhere around. I had a lifelong dream of being in show business and singing and dancing. So that was sort of there from the beginning and I do not know why this is stuck with me for so many years. But when I was seven years old I saw this commercial for a light beer. Just you know, lots of beautiful people dancing around on the beach and then the tagline, because if you don't watch your figure, no one else will.

Speaker 1: 15:36

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:38

And that just I don't know what it was that just struck a chord with me that if I wanted to be acceptable, desirable, a part of that fun world of dancing around on the beach, then I needed to be thin and like. I immediately started my first diet, which, at seven, didn't really mean anything that you know, I was asking for the light versions of whatever I'd been eating before. But it's.

Speaker 1: 16:10

I mean, a seven year old doesn't know how or shouldn't have to cause. You're still growing, your body's still developing. I mean you need the nutrition, the calories.

Speaker 2: 16:21

Right.

Speaker 1: 16:23

And that's so striking and kind of just even thinking about your story here, paired with you know this more isolated upbringing and you know, you see this. I'm just envisioning you seeing this light beer commercial with this. You know popular, pretty people all having fun and kind of longing for that. Maybe in some kind of way it's I don't know it paints a bit of a picture that you can see.

Speaker 2: 16:55

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:56

And that's. It's sad in a way to kind of have to think about. But so that started going on when you're seven, and then when did I guess you or anybody else realize that this was a problem for a young girl?

Speaker 2: 17:19

I mean, it took quite a while for me to see it as any kind of a problem. It I had started to pick up on the fact that the way my family ate wasn't really normal, so I was trying to figure out what the right way to eat was and just didn't really have anywhere to go with it. And add on to that at the time one of my mom's doctors had for some reason felt the need to diagnose me as having the same type of body as my mom and that that meant that I was doomed to always struggle with my weight.

Speaker 1: 18:03

So a doctor, your mom's doctor.

Speaker 2: 18:06

Yes.

Speaker 1: 18:06

Diagnosed you with the same type of body as her.

Speaker 2: 18:10

Yes, which made? No sense Cause, as you said, my body hadn't even developed yet. He just somehow looked at us and thought oh yeah, that's the same body type. That's going to work out exactly the same.

Speaker 1: 18:22

Wait, you know, that's really fucked up. Sorry, I mean, that's, that's fucking your. How old are you then?

Speaker 2: 18:31

I was probably 10 when he said that.

Speaker 1: 18:35

You're 10, you're obviously probably pretty thin, I mean, I think, it's a normal, fairly normal 10 year old. Yeah, you've been dieting for three years, so you're 10. And were you there and the doctor just kind of like, oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:53

Yeah, he was just fucking. I don't know, he was interesting man.

Speaker 1: 18:59

That couldn't have helped.

Speaker 2: 19:00

It did not.

Speaker 1: 19:01

That could not have helped, geez.

Speaker 2: 19:05

And so, yeah, I had all of that already going on in my brain, and that was around the time that we moved then to Tennessee and away from that doctor Jesus. Away from that doctor, but also away from everything else. You know we would already been isolated Now we were living out in the middle of the country. Complete culture change. You know, california to Tennessee. There was no warming up for that, it was just. Everything is different now.

Speaker 1: 19:35

And that was Tennessee in the in the 80s.

Speaker 2: 19:38

This would be the early 90s.

Speaker 1: 19:40

Okay, it's not the. It's not the Tennessee we know today where all the hipsters went and moved to. It's a little different, it wouldn't be the area that the hipsters moved to.

Speaker 2: 19:50

This was very much backwoods. You know a long distance in between. Every house, everybody's got acreage and stuff.

Speaker 1: 20:00

Oh, okay.

Speaker 2: 20:01

It's just very beautiful, but it's very much a.

Speaker 1: 20:05

But a big change.

Speaker 2: 20:06

Yes.

Speaker 1: 20:07

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:09

And at that point, yeah, the dieting really ramped up. I the only thing I really knew about dieting is what my mom had identified calories, as they're the things that make you fat. So obviously you just try to have as few of those as you possibly can. And I started working out and I got.

Speaker 1: 20:33

At 10 or 11.

Speaker 2: 20:35

10, 11, yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:36

Like you have to consciously work out. Yes, you weren't outside playing.

Speaker 2: 20:40

No, I was outside playing all the time, but then I would come in and do a workout.

Speaker 1: 20:44

Oh Jesus.

Speaker 2: 20:46

So you're like outside playing soccer, playing on the slide, the swings, and then yeah, I was riding my bike all day, but then I would come in and jog. It was. You know, strange things make sense to you when you're young and when you've got a disorder. So that was life for quite a while.

Speaker 1: 21:07

And then Well, and does some of this seem to be triggered by stress? Like you said, you moved and it kind of ramped up. So this isn't necessarily a goal or something like that. It's maybe partially a coping mechanism.

Speaker 2: 21:27

It's very much a coping mechanism. It just disguises itself as a goal. I couldn't do anything about the rest of the situation. I couldn't make my family move back to California. I couldn't make kids like me. I couldn't yeah, I couldn't do any of that, but I could.

Speaker 1: 21:48

Control what you eat.

Speaker 2: 21:49

Yeah, for the most part, you know to some extent. You know there were like family dinners. I would just make sure I had a really small portion and everything else I was pretty much in control of.

Speaker 1: 22:02

Did anyone? I mean back in that kind of 10 to 13 range. Did anyone say anything like you need to eat more or why are you taking such small portions, or my mom was exasperated that I was so focused on it.

Speaker 2: 22:19

She was a bit concerned. My dad, if anything, was happy that I was watching my weight because he didn't want me to end up like mom. And he's very into fitness, Like. He eats a lot, he loves food but he's a runner, he's very active. You know his side of the family is the fit family.

Speaker 1: 22:41

Okay, Well, and that's I mean, that kind of dichotomy.

Speaker 2: 22:46

Yes, my parents are complete opposites.

Speaker 1: 22:48

It's actually long been a mystery to me that they wound up together, but Were they and this just kind of strikes me visualizing that were they older when they met?

Speaker 2: 23:01

A little bit Like they wouldn't be by today's standards, but back in the 70s they were, you know, older to be getting married.

Speaker 1: 23:12

Okay, yeah, just I mean, between the homeschooling and everything, it just seems like maybe something an older couple would have, they also just. Decided on, but maybe that maybe have a more old fashioned sensibility. Maybe that's what bonded them. Maybe, yeah, so you know you went through this time 10 to 13, nobody's saying too much of anything and you go through your teens just kind of. I mean, were you having health problems then Were you what you would consider underweight through your teens?

Speaker 2: 23:57

No, I got a little bit underweight, like around that 11, 12, 13 age. But then I got into figure skating and obviously if you're going to be out on the ice for hours, you need food and I felt like that was something that was worth fueling. So my weight became fairly normal. I was still very concerned about it. I still watched it and tried to control it, but it wasn't as obsessive and it wasn't dangerous.

Speaker 1: 24:34

Yeah, maybe I mean watching what you eat is a good thing. I mean, you can't just indiscriminately put everything into your mouth. So some management and restraint and things like that, that's a good thing. And through your teens it didn't seem like a problem, through your late teens anyway, right, okay. And then when did it kind of become to where I mean yourself or somebody was like okay, this is unhealthy.

Speaker 2: 25:08

Well, so around 16, I had to kind of accept that I wasn't actually going to ever do anything with figure skating. So I gave that up and tried to find some other way to focus my energy. And it went back to that lifelong desire to be in showbiz.

Speaker 1: 25:30

And I had no idea how to do that.

Speaker 2: 25:36

It was very much not what anyone in my family did. It was frowned upon and I just felt very yes, I felt really helpless to actually pursue that. I wasn't going to be able to get into college because, you know, as my mom's illness had grown, the actual schooling, part of homeschooling it sort of gone by the wayside and really most of my life at that point was taking care of her.

Speaker 1: 26:11

So you're not getting. I mean, she's not helping with your education. You're still homeschooling and now you're basically just taking care of your sick mother.

Speaker 2: 26:20

Yes, okay, and it just the only thing that I could think to do to move towards my goals was to get that like Hollywood body, which, you know, in the 90s that was the heroin chic, scary skinny.

Speaker 1: 26:39

So Scary skinny heroin. I like that.

Speaker 2: 26:43

So yeah.

Speaker 1: 26:44

Good description.

Speaker 2: 26:45

It's at that point really, it got so out of control and it was strange, the things that seemed to make sense to me, Like I had this idea that, okay, if I get all the food groups, it's fine, so I'd have like a bite of each food group and then we're done, and I'd exercise all day long. And I remember being frustrated wondering how people in Hollywood could do this. Like, if you have to spend all day exercising, how do you ever film or record anything? But it just it seemed to be what I had to do because, to my perception, my body was not changing.

Speaker 1: 27:27

And Did you think you were overweight? Yes, at the time, absolutely so you would look at yourself. I mean, what age are we talking? 18.

Speaker 2: 27:38

I guess 17, 18, 19 is in those years that started.

Speaker 1: 27:41

You'd look at yourself in the mirror. How much do you weigh at this point?

Speaker 2: 27:45

I don't know. We didn't even have a scale, which is part of why I couldn't see any solid proof that I was losing weight. I just was looking in the mirror and it looked huge, take a guess. I mean, I think at the beginning of it I probably started around like 115, 120 maybe, and then that just it was going down and down, and down and I couldn't see any change at all.

Speaker 1: 28:14

But you were losing weight probably.

Speaker 2: 28:16

Yes, absolutely, like you know, I was coming up with crazy excuses that you know my clothes must have stretched out in the washer, which is not a thing.

Speaker 1: 28:26

It's the opposite.

Speaker 2: 28:27

But somehow I believe that.

Speaker 1: 28:29

but it's like between that and looking in the mirror. Like it's, you're almost trying to convince yourself that you are overweight and you do need this.

Speaker 2: 28:46

Yeah, and it's I mean.

Speaker 1: 28:48

That's a.

Speaker 2: 28:50

That's something I think people don't fully understand how real body dysmorphia is Like. It's not just that you can see it in the mirror, you can see it when you look down, you can grab it Like that weight that's not there, is. It seems physical, it really seems real.

Speaker 1: 29:11

Yeah, it's like your mind's playing tricks on you.

Speaker 2: 29:13

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:15

Wow, that's powerful, that's really powerful. So what was the? What kind of happened from there as you continued to lose weight?

Speaker 2: 29:28

Well, at this point it became impossible for my family to miss really well. Actually, I say that my parents sort of stayed in denial about it for a decent amount of time. And then my sister, who had gone away to college, came back for Christmas and she just went straight back to my mom and was like when were you gonna tell me that her anorexia had gotten out of control?

Speaker 1: 29:57

So they were aware there was something. And then sister comes back and she's like what the hell?

Speaker 2: 30:04

Yeah, where's the other half of my sister?

Speaker 1: 30:07

Oh, geez, and.

Speaker 2: 30:10

I'd get. My mom was very vocal and my dad he doesn't like to get into heavy emotional stuff and this was just. It was frustrating for him. He was concerned. It didn't know really what to say, or do I remember he took me aside one time and told me that I was getting very windstroll and I just said thank you.

Speaker 1: 30:33

Windstroll yes, I don't even know that word Wayfish, oh okay. It sounds so poetic. I know it's a strange way to express concern. Yeah, it's like a very emotionally blocked yeah, Not like hey, I'm worried about you. Like looking windstroll. Exactly, it's like a 18th century author or something. So they eventually sought to either talk with you about it or get you some help. It's I mean they would. They wanted me to get help.

Speaker 2: 31:10

I didn't think I needed help. I honestly thought that I was overeating, I thought I was huge, so I knew there was something medically wrong with me, but I just thought I had some sort of condition. You know, at this point my period had stopped for a long time. My hair was falling out, I was cold All the time, like that's.

Speaker 2: 31:36

Another thing I don't think most people realize about anorexia is you are so cold. It is. If you were cold from the inside out, it would be, you know, 100 plus degrees, and I'm bundled up and just freezing. My hair was falling out, I was covered in bruises that never healed, like nothing ever healed. And so I I convinced myself, and so I convinced my mom to take me to an endocrinologist, thinking you know some, something's wrong, I've got to get some medicine or something. And he just took one look at me and said she doesn't need medicine, she needs pot roast, as far as that went. And he did recommend that I go to an eating disorder clinic, but I just I wouldn't have any of it. For one thing they wouldn't let me exercise, and that wasn't acceptable. And then there was one day, and I do not know what caused this, but I saw myself without the body dysmorphia.

Speaker 1: 32:44

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2: 32:47

Yeah, it was the oddest thing. I walked past one mirror, saw myself the way I always see myself, walked towards another mirror and all of a sudden, I actually saw what I look like and it was terrifying.

Speaker 1: 33:02

What did you think?

Speaker 2: 33:04

Well it's. I mean, the thought I had at the time is, you know, I'd been going for the Hollywood body and I had achieved it, but unfortunately it was Gollum. It was just, you know, every bone, everything was sunken in. And it, going back to what you were saying, that it's like you're trying to convince yourself that you're overweight. I kept looking for it. I'm like, no, my perception can't have been that off. And I remember, like, looking down, and I saw like, oh, I have a saddlebag C and I grabbed it and I realized, oh, no, that's my hip bone. Okay, wow.

Speaker 2: 33:42

And so I tried to convince myself, okay, we can fix this. And I started running through my head of what I could let myself start eating and I finally convinced myself, okay, I can have an extra bite of lettuce, that's how we'll start this journey back to health. Wow. And so, you know, I went and I took that one extra, like teeny, tiny little bite of lettuce, and that sent me into such a panic that I then went and made myself throw up. It's like, okay, I give in. I told my mom, okay, get me in some place, I'll do it. I don't know how this is going to work, but I gotta do something.

Speaker 1: 34:27

Wow, I mean that's. I think that that shows the depth of how powerful this was over you. And I mean, maybe something people don't realize is how strong and maybe addictive conditions like this could be Like, even to the point where you're looking in the mirror and you're not seeing reality. Body dysmorphia you see it, you decide to try to fix it, and then it's extremely difficult to handle. It throws you into a panic. That's powerful.

Speaker 2: 35:12

Yeah, it was surreal, honestly yeah no, it sounds like it.

Speaker 1: 35:21

And then that was you kind of threw up your hands and said I need help.

Speaker 2: 35:29

Yeah, I said, okay, I give up, and she contacted the first place that you know popped up on a web search and I dedicated myself to getting in as much dieting exercise as I could before I went to this place where they were going to make me gain weight and, like in between you know, the body dysmorphia popped right back up. So I was back to seeing myself as fat and I really thought that I would go in and I'd tell them what I was eating and they'd say that I ate too much and send me away. And that was not the reaction at all.

Speaker 1: 36:10

Yeah, that's how kind of out of touch of reality you were with this condition.

Speaker 2: 36:16

There's an intense denial that comes along with anorexia, especially when you're first really, really sick.

Speaker 1: 36:23

Yeah, and people would almost think it's a choice, and I mean to maybe some extent it is, but it seems very out of control that.

Speaker 2: 36:36

I mean it is, it's Wow and it's interesting because I did make the choice to do all that stuff. I just didn't really understand what the choice was. Again, I thought, oh, I just need very, very little food. That's just the way it is.

Speaker 1: 36:55

So what was? What did treatment look like?

Speaker 2: 37:00

Well, this first place was a disaster, to put it lightly. It was, I learned later, absolutely infamous in eating disorder circles for being utterly corrupt and just out of control.

Speaker 1: 37:18

What was this in California?

Speaker 2: 37:20

Yes.

Speaker 1: 37:21

Like Southern California. Yeah, okay, what kind of area.

Speaker 2: 37:25

This is around the Oxnard area.

Speaker 1: 37:26

Okay around Oxnard. In this place eventually became famous.

Speaker 2: 37:31

It's infamous. Yeah, it's infamous. I mean it was at the time. I just I didn't know, it was just you know, it was the first place that popped up. So that's where I went and I mean there would always be like a few good members of staff who wouldn't last long and they would frequently like issue a warning as they went out the door like they're lying to you, you're not safe here. If you can't be anywhere else, be somewhere else.

Speaker 1: 38:01

And this is an inpatient longterm.

Speaker 2: 38:04

Yes.

Speaker 1: 38:05

Okay, is this just eating disorders?

Speaker 2: 38:09

Yes, this was a purely eating disorder facility.

Speaker 1: 38:12

And not just anorexia, but all eating disorders.

Speaker 2: 38:15

Yes, all eating disorders, it's, I think. The majority of patients typically are bulimic, and then you'll have a small number of anorexics and a small number of binge or compulsive overeating, just because that's the disorder that, while being the most common, is the least common to actually seek treatment for.

Speaker 1: 38:36

Okay, Is this like a just a big facility or like a more of a residential style complex? Yeah, it was residential style. Okay.

Speaker 2: 38:45

So just this. You know little building in the middle of town, non-descript. You wouldn't know what it was driving by, but and you can't leave or you can I mean it's. What they always said is you can leave, it's just the door will lock behind you and you're considered AMA and okay, you know, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:07

So against medical, yeah, yeah, okay. So how did you feel about that? So this was your first. I know you'd said you'd gone through more impatient programs. This is the first one. What are some of the, I guess, the treatments that they administer? Like, how are they? How are they trying to help you? I?

Speaker 2: 39:33

Wouldn't say anything at this particular facility was trying to help anyone other than themselves and their pocketbooks. It was actually very abusive, you know, and they had a lot of like the standard stuff that you see everywhere, a Lot of which is also not helpful but possibly well intention, like you know, like do body tracing, which is supposed to help you see yourself realistically, but it's actually very triggering. And there's also, throughout Eating disorder treatment, this really big focus on Food rituals are behaviors like trying to make you eat normally, which, to me, is confusing. First off, you got people who are just trying to get nutrition in nitpicking. You know what order they eat are little things like that doesn't seem wildly helpful. In fact, in particular with anorexia, where there's so much of a focus on trying to be good and perfect, someone standing over you saying you're eating wrong is not Not great.

Speaker 1: 40:46

That seems, actually does a count like counterproductive very much so.

Speaker 2: 40:51

And then the additional problem to that is, what's normal varies across cultures, across your family. You know, I've seen one place where a girl was getting yelled at because she turned her fork upside down. But she was from South Africa, where you turn your fork upside down.

Speaker 1: 41:12

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2: 41:13

So there was just this.

Speaker 1: 41:15

Was that a treatment facility?

Speaker 2: 41:16

Yes. Jews and it could just be you like a combination that the person who's monitoring the table thinks is unusual, and you get in trouble with that. So it's. That is just, overall, a very strange thing that exists across most of eating disorder treatment. This place in particular, though it yeah, there was a lot of things going on that were not treatment in any way. Everybody was just just drugged out of their minds and they were handing out crazy Diagnosis, like I think every third person had multiple personalities.

Speaker 1: 41:58

Really.

Speaker 2: 41:58

Yeah, which is a really easy thing to convince someone of if they're already, you know, malnourished, so they're not thinking clearly. Now they're all drugged up and the eating disorder does kind of feel like you're living with someone else in your head.

Speaker 1: 42:15

Yeah so it's very, it's a very interesting experience, I gotta say so to go back, maybe a little like so you know, they're handing out people mental health meds? Yes, basically to, for whatever reason, maybe just to keep them chill.

Speaker 2: 42:35

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 42:37

And you said at the beginning that the facility was mostly bulimic. Yes and Just quickly, like I mean, I know you, that's not the condition you have, but what is the kind of, I Guess, the difference between what you have and bulimia? Like the main points of it.

Speaker 2: 42:58

So with anorexia you pretty much just don't eat. It's Frequently comorbid with compulsive exercise. You do have Sometimes purging with anorexia, not always, but typically not. The binging bulimia is more of the binge purge cycle, okay, which it can also come with compulsive exercising.

Speaker 1: 43:20

That can be a method of purging okay, so then, in your experience, most of these clinics are bulimics. For the most part, yeah is that the most common eating disorder?

Speaker 2: 43:35

No, the most common is definitely just binge eating or overeating. Okay that's so common that we don't even really see it as a Disorder for the most part in our society.

Speaker 1: 43:46

Okay. So then you go through this treatment. You get out how, how did it work? How do you feel?

Speaker 2: 43:57

it's. You know I had put on enough weight that I was, you know, medically considered safe. Okay, still underweight.

Speaker 1: 44:06

But what did? What did you weigh? Maybe when you came out, if you remember?

Speaker 2: 44:12

I didn't give me a number. I was probably somewhere around 90 pounds, wow.

Speaker 1: 44:20

And they considered that good, like an improvement.

Speaker 2: 44:23

That was the definite improvement from where I came in.

Speaker 1: 44:25

Yeah, Wow do you remember your lowest weight? Then Um.

Speaker 2: 44:30

The lowest I got was somewhere in the 70s and You're. You're 18 at this point as I would have been 20, 21 somewhere in there 70 pounds.

Speaker 1: 44:42

And how tall are you?

Speaker 2: 44:44

I'm just under 5, 4.

Speaker 1: 44:46

Okay, wow, so you get out and You're better than when you went in. Then then what happens?

Speaker 2: 45:01

well, my biggest thing like Backing up a little bit like, even though this treatment center was horrible, I didn't want to leave. Really yeah, cuz this was. It was the first time I could just sort of be me and it was okay. People would find that interesting, instead of in my family, where that would always get some sort of blowback. That's not how you're supposed to be, that's not what you're supposed to be interested in. And it was also was clean. That was a nice change, and so I really I didn't want to go back home like I love my family, but I didn't want to go back to it, and you know what I would Call them like I.

Speaker 2: 45:50

All I hear about is how, you know, there's no clean dishes, the grocery shopping isn't getting done, mom's not getting fed on time. It's just like they just wanted me to come back and step back into that caretaker role and I just you know, I'm, I'm 20, I'm 21, it's it was like a little freedom.

Speaker 2: 46:10

Yeah, I wanted to go have a life and I wanted to Actually pursue interests that I didn't lost touch with, like at this point. All I knew was that I was anorexic, yeah. So it was a big thing for me to not go back to that house and I wanted, I spent a little while with my aunt and then I Went off to live with my grandparents and, unfortunately, I had absolutely no Support system. I didn't have a dietitian to be monitoring the continued weight gain. I didn't have a therapist, I didn't have anything. I was just out there trying to make sense of life With no guidance.

Speaker 2: 46:56

So, you know, obviously, as I'm looking at this, I'm like, okay, I've been on this weight gain plan for a while, no one's weighing me, no one's watching it. I'm like maybe I'm done and I don't know how to properly cut this back. And it just I started cutting back on my own and that turned into a relapse and ultimately, you know, my grandparents got scared when I got scary, skinny again and they wanted me to go back, and so I wound up back in that same horrible facility. Because it was familiar, I thought I'll just go back, it'll be fine there were always a few good people and I got back in that the good people were gone and now the Program director had it out for me.

Speaker 1: 47:39

Really.

Speaker 2: 47:40

Yeah, I was very much targeted, like he turned the whole staff against me before I even got there. He would. Why it's In part, I mean, I think, really thinks guy is very, very, very sadistic. He really seemed to enjoy messing with the patients, like one thing he did all the time is he would specifically put the really, really severe anorexics on this wing that he would then like refrigerate. You know we're already so cold and then he makes us live in the cold In the cold part of the hospital. It was he just it was very messed up.

Speaker 1: 48:27

So you would like turn the air.

Speaker 2: 48:29

Yes.

Speaker 1: 48:30

Okay, was that objective?

Speaker 2: 48:32

that just wasn't the way you felt that was object like other other knowledge that he did, that he thought it was my shit.

Speaker 1: 48:39

That's fucked up.

Speaker 2: 48:41

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 48:43

And he's Because he knows you guys are always cool.

Speaker 2: 48:46

Yes, so it's. I mean in part just he enjoys that, and I Really not sure what else the Motivation was in part, maybe just that I was so severely sick it was easier to manipulate me and you can get more money out of the insurance if I'm there being sick, so it's that entire experience was really awful and it sort of led to me developing Then really severe OCD, like I was just Terrified and trying to control Really like calorie intake. I got this obsession with the idea of calorie contamination, that Little surface oils and things were on everything and that might get into my mouth and that might put more calories in me. And I became cheese a master of manipulating my meal plan where I was technically following it but yet at a calorie deficit.

Speaker 1: 49:53

Yeah, and this is while you're in treatment for the second time you start developing this severe OCD.

Speaker 2: 50:01

Yes. And you think this is a response to that trauma, or I mean, it was the new staff and the kind of it was a response to, I think, a lot of things the Frustration that my attempt to go out and start a life had failed. That was a response to, yes, how horribly I was being treated in this facility.

Speaker 1: 50:29

What's what? Some of the other ways that they they weren't treating you well.

Speaker 2: 50:34

I mean I had a nurse leave garbage on my bed and you know it wasn't just me like everybody Was being mistreated. I know there was another patient who the same nurse went to and asked her to Like write down what was annoying her about what she saw the other patients doing, which was supposed to be, you know, like it was just an exercise for her to work that out and it would just stay between them. But instead that nurse then went and left those sheets of paper on each individual's bed. So now everybody hates this girl and she's Devastated. We're all angry, feeling like why are you knocking on us to the staff? Yeah, it was, it was. There really are not words to adequately describe how messed up this facility was.

Speaker 1: 51:32

What other kinds of things went on there?

Speaker 2: 51:38

It was just, it was endless. Things like there would be groups where a single person would just be put on blast. Basically, the staff would tear them apart and then they would pressure all of the other patients to put in their tinsense and basically just harp on this person about how horrible they were and how horrible they were doing and how they were going to die and they were going to devastate everyone until this person was just a sobbing wreck and they'd be like okay, lunch time, it was just, it was. It was a lot.

Speaker 1: 52:21

So emotionally abusive?

Speaker 2: 52:22

Yes.

Speaker 1: 52:24

Was there any physical abuses?

Speaker 2: 52:28

I mean in the sense of over medicating.

Speaker 1: 52:31

yes, that's definitely so over medicating this kind of emotional abuse and they kind of I mean, like you said, you're in a weakened mental state, which is why you're there, yes and they kind of have you hostage.

Speaker 2: 52:50

Yes.

Speaker 1: 52:51

And there's probably not a lot of recourse.

Speaker 2: 52:55

No, especially you know who are you going to believe, the mental patient or the caregiver? Like that's not, it's not difficult.

Speaker 1: 53:03

And I mean, I think something people might not understand this this is a mental health issue, Absolutely All of these disorders, and if you're not familiar with it, maybe from the outside you're thinking this is an eating problem. Well, no, it's, it's a mental health problem.

Speaker 2: 53:21

Oh, yeah, it's. It affects every area of your life. It food is just the physical thing that you can see. It's the manifestation. Yeah, it's the outlet, exactly.

Speaker 1: 53:31

It's the coping mechanism.

Speaker 2: 53:34

Yes, and that's I mean in eating disorders. You meet lots of people who've run the gambit. They've been alcoholic, they've been drug addict and now they're on food or it can go in other directions. It's just like cycling through trying to find something to help you get through. Whatever it is, you don't feel capable of getting through in your life.

Speaker 1: 53:56

Yeah, and I think that's that's enlightening for a lot of people, because it's it's not understood and to be honest, I didn't, I didn't, fucking. I knew very little about this before we spoke.

Speaker 2: 54:12

I mean, I understood mental health, but as it relates to eating disorders, Right, I think most people have the you know lifetime movie of the week version. It's, you know some you know dancer or athlete here's some comment gets upset, goes on a really strict diet for a while, gets too thin, passes out, goes to treatment and then it ends with, you know, a happy family meal and everything's good and it's just. It's not that simple.

Speaker 1: 54:45

And you went through. You went through that facility and then you didn't go back to that facility. You said that was your last time at that particular one, but then you went through a couple others.

Speaker 2: 54:59

Yeah, I, you know, came out of that one so messed up I had to go into a facility that was primarily for stabilization, just to sort of get me back on track.

Speaker 1: 55:11

You came out just mentally messed up when you mentally, physically, at the end of your 90 days.

Speaker 2: 55:16

I you know I had lost weight from the time that I'd gone in. I was not in good shape.

Speaker 1: 55:23

What's a stabilization facility?

Speaker 2: 55:25

That's where, really, they're just focused on getting you medically stable, getting your weight to a point where you're at least safe enough that you can go into a more long term.

Speaker 1: 55:36

It's like a hospital, Was it like?

Speaker 2: 55:38

yeah, it was a little like separate wing off of a medical hospital. They had their own little building for it was all mental health was there, but they had an ED unit specifically.

Speaker 1: 55:49

Oh, wow, okay. So what happened, kind of when you got out of there?

Speaker 2: 55:58

I had to go back home at that point and that was very difficult. Like the hoarding had sort of taken over my room. There were just like boxes and things. It was there was not a good environment.

Speaker 1: 56:15

It was not great.

Speaker 2: 56:16

And eventually, you know, we knew I needed to go back into treatment, but I didn't really want to go back inpatient because I didn't want to do this this going in and then coming out and having to try and resettle myself into some sort of life. So my mom found a outpatient treatment center that I was going to go to and unfortunately, like the first day they could get me in was the day before Thanksgiving. So that was already not a great set of, because you know you go in and then you have the long weekend of still nothing without. Okay, maybe I can touch base, at least meet with a dietician, because at this point I couldn't hardly make myself eat anything. I went in and basically I spent the day there, met with the woman who was to be my therapist and she marched right back to the program director and said you're crazy, this girl needs inpatient right now tonight. Call an ambulance, get her in somewhere. So an ambulance came over.

Speaker 2: 57:33

They took me over to the ER of the same hospital from that stabilization facility that I had been in before, so they could just get me medically approved to go back into the eating disorder program and unfortunately that did not work out.

Speaker 2: 57:54

They came in and started trying to take my vitals and the blood pressure just released and read all zero and my first thought was, oh, there's a glitch in the machine, they'll try again.

Speaker 2: 58:09

But instead I looked up at the nurse and she just had this sort of like oh shit, look on her face. And then she recovered and said okay, well, we know you're alive because you're talking to us, I'm going to go run to Peds and get a manual cuff that will fit you. And I learned later that the electronic blood pressure monitors aren't sensitive enough to pick up a certain level of BP, which is fine because basically, if your blood pressure is that low, you're dying. So that was what was going on, is my body was just shutting down. So instead of going straight to the eating disorder facility, I wound up being checked into critical care and spent the Thanksgiving weekend there getting stable enough to actually go back and go to get more stable enough at that treatment center, all the while trying to find a long-term facility to move to, which we eventually did, and that was thankfully a much, much better program.

Speaker 1: 59:24

This was another impatient yes. And what do you think made it better?

Speaker 2: 59:30

Well, it wasn't utterly corrupt. They were actually trying to help us.

Speaker 1: 59:34

The staff cared.

Speaker 2: 59:36

Yes, for the most part there's some winners and some losers in every facility, but overall they actually had the goal of helping us.

Speaker 1: 59:49

So what kind of things would they do differently? Or was it just like an environment thing?

Speaker 2: 59:54

Yeah, it was mostly environment. We still had groups, but they were actually helpful, actually working towards a healthy mindset, as opposed to you trying to tear us down.

Speaker 1: 1:00:06

Okay, it's about and as I listened to you talk here, I mean, it's not about getting food in you, it's about healing your mental health so that you want to put food in you and I think that might be a misconception. Is you're thinking of this facility of trying to get you to eat?

Speaker 2: 1:00:32

Well, unfortunately it has to be a multi-layered process because, yes, if you're in medical crisis, obviously the most important thing is to get you stabilized, but also when you're malnourished, and whether that's not eating anything at all or you're binging on junk food, your brain is not working. You can't really work on the psychological part until you get some level of stability.

Speaker 1: 1:00:58

Yeah, that does make sense. So you come out of that facility pretty good shape.

Speaker 2: 1:01:08

Yeah, I was doing pretty well it was. I had some sort of a renewed hope. I still didn't know what I was going to do with my life but I'm like, okay, I came back from the brink of death, I should do something with this. And I finally found a really good dietitian to work with and I really credit her with saving my life because she really made me a part of my own recovery. Yeah, she didn't just say, well, here's your real plan and follow it. She asked me what I was willing to do and then worked with me through that. We figured out like a lot of people in eating these sort of recovery, they use the diabetic exchanges because they don't want us to count calories, and she figured out really quickly like I know how many calories are in everything.

Speaker 2: 1:02:02

I'm just going to manipulate the exchange system, Like okay, so you're going to count calories, You're going to agree to eat this many calories, and that was it was really helpful for me. It helped me to maintain some sort of stability but feel in control of it.

Speaker 1: 1:02:20

That's interesting, and I think that's the key to any kind of recovery Making it feel like it's your choice. You're the one choosing to do this. You're in control. I'm here to help you. So she was a great, positive person.

Speaker 2: 1:02:37

Oh, absolutely. I think one of the best things anyone with any eating disorder can do is find a really good eating disorder specialist dietitian.

Speaker 1: 1:02:47

Okay, that's important.

Speaker 2: 1:02:49

Yes.

Speaker 1: 1:02:50

And what other kind of things did you feel like helped you to, I guess, break the cycle, to heal, to recover?

Speaker 2: 1:03:02

Well, something that I picked up very quickly when I was in the treatment centers is that the difference between the people who went out and had great success and started a life and the people who, like me, would just get better come go out, come back in, do what I called the treatment center.

Speaker 2: 1:03:23

Hokey Pokey was whether or not you had something to get better for, and that could be any number of different things. People had family. If they had a line of education, they were pursuing a really good relationship. If you had something on the outside that was worth getting better for, you stood a much better chance. So I started looking. For some reason I would want to stay out of treatment and I went to community college and tried to find places to fit in there, Started studying musical theater and I mean that was great. I had some fantastic experiences, but none of that really clicked. I didn't quite fit in again. I was still very socially awkward. I went from homeschooling to all of my socialization being in mental health facilities.

Speaker 1: 1:04:21

I'm still odd A charm.

Speaker 2: 1:04:26

I'm interesting, but I'm acquired taste. And then one day I was going to a dance class and watching the class before it and there was a girl in there and she moved very differently from everyone else and I was like that is fascinating. She was really cool, but I was shy, so I just stayed to myself and turned out she was going to be in my class too, and still, okay, I just watched her and I don't know there was something interesting. And then, oddly enough, she came up to me after class and asked if I wanted to get together and like, work on choreography. Okay, great, I went over and she was uploading videos of herself doing aerial acrobatics. I was like, oh, that's so cool, I've always wanted to do something like that. And, very much to my surprise, she said oh, I think you'd be great at it, you should.

Speaker 2: 1:05:23

That immediate affirmation, for whatever reason, was enough for me to then go find a class and you know it's a throwaway thing, I probably won't be able to do this, but at least I'll get a good workout and it'll be fun.

Speaker 2: 1:05:40

Instead, I absolutely fell in love with it, like I just ran out to my car, like I need to do this for the rest of my life and that it just became the absolute key, like I started doing classes regularly and like I knew I was onto something. Because when I went to see my dietician and she said, oh, your weight's down Usually that means I've been messing around I said, oh it's. I've been more active because I found this really cool thing I'm doing and told her about it. She said, well, you either have to up your calories or you need to stop. And I was like, well, we're upping my calories, which was that was never anything that I would say, and it just it totally changed the way I looked at my life at exercise, like for the first time I was working out, not because I was trying to burn calories, but because I wanted to be strong enough to do the tricks.

Speaker 1: 1:06:35

Is this? Is this like silks?

Speaker 2: 1:06:37

Yes, it's definitely my apparatus of choice.

Speaker 1: 1:06:39

Okay, I know there's different.

Speaker 2: 1:06:41

Yes.

Speaker 1: 1:06:42

Like apparatus Okay, that's a good one. Different apparatus that you were doing, silks, yes, and you were now addicted to this.

Speaker 2: 1:06:52

Yes.

Speaker 1: 1:06:53

But it as a good, positive thing.

Speaker 2: 1:06:56

Yeah, I found a gym locally eventually that it became, you know my little, like I had friends for the first time. That girl and I wound up being really close and over time I went from taking the classes to teaching the classes and it just it became a reason for me to feed myself and to actually stay healthy.

Speaker 1: 1:07:30

And that's you know. You hear people talk about addiction a lot, and I mean an eating disorder like yours, addiction compulsion hand in hand, and that's when people have addiction problems. It's always they need to find something better than the addiction, something that is worth. You can't just say, well, eat more. You can't just say that, like you can't say, do alcohol, stop drinking, because it's what I like.

Speaker 1: 1:08:05

That's why I do it? Because I'm addicted to it, because it's a compulsive behavior. Or drugs, you know, heroin or something somebody's like. You have to give them something better or they have to find something that's worth it and that's. I mean, that's incredible that you found that and you go to your dietitian and yeah. I'll do it. It's worth it.

Speaker 2: 1:08:28

Yep.

Speaker 1: 1:08:30

So what would you say? What would you say are kind of some things people maybe don't understand about this condition. How would you summarize after your experience? What would you say is like what would you want to educate people on?

Speaker 2: 1:08:51

One of the most important things is that the chronic conversion even exists. You know, most people think of it as something that Like a phase.

Speaker 2: 1:09:00

Yeah, you go through and then you move past and for some people that is all it is and that's great. I am fully in support of that being the most you ever have anything to do with an eating disorder. But unfortunately there is this sort of invisible population of people who never really get better and we get that chronic label and the treatment industry just gives up on us, the insurance gives up on us and everybody just sort of accepts we're just going to sort of live a very limited and probably short life.

Speaker 1: 1:09:48

And you're now in your 40s.

Speaker 2: 1:09:51

Yes.

Speaker 1: 1:09:52

So you're at 30 plus years of struggling with us in some form? Yes, but you're in, probably what you would say is a good place right now, a decent place.

Speaker 2: 1:10:07

I'm in a decent place, you know, after you know, everything sort of fell apart with you know, the COVID shutdowns and everything. I've had to step away from aerial for the time being, which has been really hard, and I.

Speaker 1: 1:10:28

What state were you in with the COVID shutdown? I was still in California, so the lockdowns were. And that closed.

Speaker 2: 1:10:34

It's everything.

Speaker 1: 1:10:35

Yeah, and even after they started.

Speaker 2: 1:10:38

You know letting gyms reopen. It was ridiculous. You know they were making you wear a mask while you're doing aerial, which is wildly unsafe. The last thing you need is less oxygen when you're 16 feet up in the air flipping around.

Speaker 1: 1:10:52

Yeah. So, California is ridiculous with that shit. Yeah, it's, but you're in Florida now.

Speaker 2: 1:11:01

Yes, I've just I've been struggling to find a good place to train here, but it's that's why I'm out here is trying to rebuild my life. You know it's. I know now that it's possible to find something, it's possible to build a life that's worth fighting the disorder for. So that's what I'm doing.

Speaker 1: 1:11:24

That's good. And what would you if you could talk to someone, or if someone's listening that's struggling with an eating disorder, issues like you had? What? What's something you'd say to them? What is if you could give them a little advice? What would you? What would you say to you when you were 13 or 10 or something like that, or 16? What? What could you say to yourself?

Speaker 2: 1:12:03

I think, take the action and pursue life rather than pursuing a look or control. Okay, it's, you know there's. You're starving for something, and it's not food. Yeah, and there's also a truth that sometimes you don't feel hungry because you're so full of what you haven't said and you just need to let that out, find some way you can express that. It's not in words, you can do it through movement, you can do it through art, but it has to get out.

Speaker 1: 1:12:57

That's an excellent way to put that. That's really really good. Well, thank you for coming on, Thank you for sharing your story. It was really educational, really enlightening, and I mean that takes a lot of bravery to come out and talk about. So thank you for that.

Speaker 2: 1:13:17

Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1: 1:13:19

And to the audience. Thank you for tuning in till next time. Stay out of trouble, we'll see you in church. Thanks.