Our Journey with an Eating Disorder....

Little Girl was my daughter's nickname from the time she was twelve years old, she was determined to live up to that name if it killed her and it almost did!

She was a dancer from age three, she loved it and for thirteen years was her life. She never got to spend much time with friends because she was always practicing or classes, then she found karate and loved it too. Little Girl was written in big letters on her uniform, pictures, etc. She seemed to enjoy activities that took her away from the "real world" and had lots of exercise and competition. As with dancing karate took hours of practice...

In her Karate competitions, she ate to get through and then go back on diets to help her be smaller next time...she won most of the time so could not see what was wrong with what she was doing. She loved competition and I feel that the Eating Disorder to her was a competition on being that skinny person.

In dancing, dancers are taught that the smaller the better - real small! I remember when my daughter were trying to lose enough to get into a size 3 because she was finally down to a size 5, still she felt fat (in her mind). I remember the diets, the diet pills she got from friends and quick trips to the bathroom to rid her of the food she had just eaten.

Her friends used to watch her and they got to where they could tell when she was going to pass out from hunger...then they would rush her someplace to get some food for her...they knew what she was doing and didn't know how to help except to get food for her when she would let them.

Her eyes were so sad because she only saw that "Fat" girl instead of herself. I remember her senior pictures how everyone commented on her "sad eyes". I also remember the trips to the hospital when she stopped breathing, and the tears because she thought she was so ugly, my beautiful "Little Girl".

My daughter has since then gotten help but I still get worried when she talks about her weight, she's had two children now and was watched real close but she also wanted to be a Mother. I wonder if I will ever stop the worrying about her???

My daughter and I have talked and the one thing that sticks in my mind is that the reason she says she didn't talk with me was because she didn't want me to understand or help her because she wanted to get the weight off and wanted no one to stop her!!! No matter how sick or close to dying she got.she is 5'6" and got all the way down to 100 lbs before she stopped and let someone help her. When she was rushed to the hospital because she wasn't breathing, it hit her that she wanted to be skinny not dead!!