This is way off the topic of this site, but some of you may be interested in the story of how my daughter finally – after ten long years – gave up her anorexia and returned to health and happiness.
She began her own blog on Psychology Today. The Daily Mail picked this up and printed a story about it (not totally false but with inaccuracies and a “tough love” theme which was certainly not how I saw it). Then ABC and other sites took it from there and finally I wrote up my own brief version for the Guardian’s CommentisFree. This has gone up today and is open for comments for 3 days only.
Oddly enough they (like the Mail) invented a headline that was way off the point. They wrote “The greatest challenge for the parent of a child with an eating disorder is holding onto the person in the grip of the disease”. Holding on? I would have thought it was fairly obvious that I was never trying to hold on and indeed that I thought this would be counter-productive. You cannot hang on. Anorexia takes them away.
I was also practicing Zen throughout all these ten years. I have no idea whether it helped, but it certainly encouraged me to accept what was happening and to “let go” rather than to “hang on”.
Tags: anorexia
April 15, 2010 at 12:51 am
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June 8, 2010 at 12:24 pm
My observation is that recovery from anorexia is a ‘real challenge’…is there a standard approach or are all ‘anorexics’ individual?
I can really identify with the application Zen ‘as a parent’ – hanging on to things is a recipe for stress and exhaustion, and damages relationship to self/others – lost a twin daughter (stillbirth 15+yrs ago) and no getting away from …’it is what it is’…. -also a god-send in dealing with her (now teenage argh!) sister.