On Being a Mom with an Eating Disorder

It's hard to identify myself as that. A mom with an eating disorder.

But it was true for 8 years. And in truth, eating disorders can be managed and dimmed, but a part of it will always live inside of me.

I was 15 years old when I started restricting. I spent the next 25 years vacillating between restriction, bulimia, binge eating, and orthorexia. 

And now I have three daughters.

Recovering from my eating disorder was extraordinarily difficult to do with young kids. But it was even more brutal living with it with three young kids.

I was anxious, irritable, impatient, disgusted, and furious in some combination almost all of the time. When I binged, I was miserable and my kids felt it. The harder I was on myself, the harder I was on them.

I love my kids so fiercely that it hurts sometimes.

But that love couldn't make up for what I was feeling inside. The guilt of being a mom who couldn't get out of my own way.

It's a strange thing, to recover with kids. You're tending to them but you're also tending to your own inner child. You're healing and discovering yourself while changing diapers, cleaning out lunchboxes, folding laundry, and trying to raise other good humans without throwing your own shit on them.

It's exhausting.

I can honestly tell you that recovering from an eating disorder was the best thing I did for myself, to be sure--but also the best thing for them. I am by no means perfect, nor am I free of anxiety around parenting, but I am not drowning myself while trying to keep three other humans afloat anymore.

Moms with eating issues--I see you. I feel you. It's fucking hard. And you can do it. Keep showing up here. Little by little, you can do this.