I know you can do this.
No matter how long you’ve struggled. No matter how defeated and beyond repair you feel — there is hope. I know because I’ve been in your shoes. Here’s my story.
My mom died when I was 12.
My mom died when I was 12, just three short weeks after her leukemia diagnosis. The last time I spoke to her was on Christmas Eve.
My mom meant everything to me. She was my safe space, so loving and kind. The kind of mother everyone dreams of having. She was the glue that held our family together, and after she died, we all disappeared in our own grief.
I struggled with restrictive anorexia for three years, withering away until I reached the extreme classification. That’s when the binge eating started. Transition between the restrictive and binge-purge subtypes of anorexia is common, but I panicked.
My entire identity was my illness. My extreme control. My thinness. The obsessiveness had numbed my grief and turned me from “too sensitive” to calculated. Control over food meant control over my world. Refeeding binges were my worst nightmare, and the mental torture afterwards was extreme.
When I finally attempted to recover, I crossed over into bulimia instead. This transition (also common) was the most brutal phase for me, so if you’re here — I get it. Doctors put me on several different medications for anxiety and depression. My weight continued to increase and my mental health plummeted even further.
I battled my mind, my body, and the restrict-binge cycle for years. As time went on, I dove into research articles to find answers, read books, rewired my thought patterns, built self confidence, and reduced binging episodes bit by bit. It was often one step forward, two steps back.
With each step of recovery, I discovered more of my true self. I repaired relationships and said goodbye to others, became social again, discovered hobbies, moved to Munich, Germany, and many more things that seemed impossible while I was sick. It was a rollercoaster of feeling exhilarated and exhausted.
After years of silence about the loss, I developed anorexia at 18.
2011: I counted calories in toothpaste and knew my weight down to the decimal.
2012: I visited a gastro specialist every month for all of my digestive issues.
2014: With bulimia, I rapidly gained weight after starving for so long. I was miserable.
After 10 years of EDs, 2020 was the first year I ate. Every. Single. Day.
It was the first year without a cloud of desperation, defeat, and despair around food. It was the year I got engaged and married. It was also the year I got pregnant.
Motherhood was the one thing doctors had said was impossible while I was anorexic that made me freeze, sweat, and see with new clarity the extent my life was wasting away. Frail bones, seemingly endless and painful gut issues, gallbladder removal, thin hair, muscle cramps, no period, obsessive thoughts, panic attacks, even the threat of death hadn’t made me pause. But the idea of never becoming a mother, never experiencing the relationship I lost from the other side, is what opened my mind to recovery by the tiniest crack.
The positive pregnancy test eight years after that fateful conversation was not only a sign of my son’s life. It was a sign of my life too.
Grieving is the healing. Grief is never gone and the journey never ends.
After healing my eating disorder and becoming a mother, I finally dove into the grief that had eaten away at me. I’d developed an autoimmune disease, and this time recognized that the trauma and grief I tried desperately to control for 20 years wasn’t going to stop ringing my body’s alarm bells until I faced it.
I went to therapy (again), read books, journaled, worked with a grief coach, and more to figure out what was “wrong” with me that I still struggled so much 20 years after her death. I wanted to find a remedy. What I learned is that you can’t heal from grief and be done with it.
After decades of hate and sorrow over the fact she died and believing the narrative others told me about myself — too sensitive, too anxious, too sad — I surrendered. I slowly befriended myself and my grief.
Now, instead of dominating my life, my grief is a companion I keep close. This sucks, I know. I wish there was a simple and easy way to fully heal from grief, but befriending it instead of despising it is what changed me, my perspective, and my life.
There aren’t words to describe how much I miss my mom. I always will. I grieve the secondary losses too — a female role model to guide me and instill confidence, the impact on my health, facing graduations, my wedding, the transition into adulthood and parenthood without my mother by my side, never getting to be her friend. She’ll never meet my husband, or my son, or me as an adult. All of these things are heartbreaking, but they don’t break me anymore.
Food freedom & a joyful life despite trauma are possible.
Now, as a certified coach with a degree in psychology and a love for research and neuroscience, I’m here to help you release control around food so you can reclaim control of your life.
Life can be beautiful, even amid the gunk and grime that grief and issues with food and body image force us to crawl through.
After years of opening up to doctors, therapists, family and friends, I know how sharp the sting is of feeling misunderstood, disrespected, or getting obvious and unhelpful advice from people who’ve never experienced traumatic loss or felt crazy around food. It’s impossible to grasp until you’ve been through it. I’m here for you, and I get it.
My mission is to turn the pain, suffering, and loneliness I experienced into something positive for others. I do this work to honor everyone who is starving for love, understanding, and a small semblance of control.
