by Paula | Feb 27, 2018 | Anorexia sucks, Our ED Story, Uncategorized
It wasn’t the woman’s thinness, or her choice of a small salad that gave her away. It was HOW she was eating, or rather not eating: she poked aggressively at her salad dozens of times, spreading its contents around and around before raising a tiny forkful to her lips; she wiped her fingers and mouth repeatedly with a napkin to remove any trace of grease; she picked at her food before dropping it back into the bowl or into her napkin. She exaggeratedly went through the motions of eating, while actually consuming very little.
Sitting in Panera, watching this woman out of the corner of my eye: it all came back to me in a visceral rush of memory: all those endless hours sitting at the dinner table with my daughter–watching her struggle to eat. She picked, picked, PICKED at the food, breaking it into ever smaller bits, as if she was willing it to simply disappear. Like all those afflicted with anorexia, she was a maestro at concealing food — tucking it away in unexpected places when we weren’t looking. She demonstrated great ingenuity in her tricks to deceive us into thinking she had eaten more than she had. Sometimes we caught on, other times we didn’t.
We were lucky. We had access to good doctors and therapists; I was able to work from home during much of her recovery; we had insurance that covered the enormous medical expenses; and my daughter was still a minor, so she did not have the choice to evade treatment. Even with all those advantages there was no guarantee of recovery–it’s a marathon with no finish line in sight. But, we were lucky; she did get better after a year of intensive therapy and hospitalizations.
As I write this, it is eating disorder awareness week. It’s a good week to reflect on our own experiences, and to share stories. The following is an excerpt from the NEDA (Nat’l Eating Disorder Assoc) Web Site
NEDA’s theme this year is Let’s Get Real with a goal to expand the conversation and highlight stories we don’t often hear. Our culture has complicated relationships with food, exercise, and appearance.
30 million Americans will struggle with a full-blown eating disorder and millions more will battle food and body image issues that have untold negative impacts on their lives.
But because of stigma and old stereotypes, many people don’t get the support they deserve. Join the conversation and help us raise awareness, bust myths, get people screened, and start journeys to healing.
When I started talking about my daughter’s illness, I was amazed at how many OTHER parents, co-workers, friends, family members, etc. had their OWN story of suffering to tell; they just needed someone else to start the conversation. Let’s get real, and keep the conversation going.
by Paula | Feb 25, 2018 | Family, Uncategorized
Over the past two weeks, we have been mesmerized by an amazing display of athleticism, strength, and grace on ice and snow at the winter Olympic games. A friend observed that the athletes are almost all young, fit and ridiculously attractive. With apologies to my Wisconsin roots–the exception to this observation may be curling–which is essentially bowling on ice.
The Olympics are high on drama: Many of these sports only get prime time coverage every four years – doing well at the Olympics can make a huge difference in an athlete’s career: to maximize this opportunity, they must peak at just the right time and be flawless under the most stressful of conditions. The tiniest hiccup during a critical moment can undo years of training, expectations and hype. Champions deliver when it matters the most, and the others become footnotes in Olympic history.
The figure skating has blown me away – these men and women do things on two tiny blades on ice that would put most of us in the hospital if we attempted them on land. This theory that has been put to the test in recent weeks for many of us in southern Wisconsin, where unpleasant weather conditions have turned many streets, yards and driveways into ice covered obstacle courses.
I performed my own graceless version of ice dancing every morning this week, as I gingerly tiptoed through the ice-covered expanse of our yard to retrieve our morning paper, while hanging onto Cleo’s leash. Cleo is a hunter, and I am ever mindful that an unfortunately timed sighting of a squirrel could easily result in jerking me off my feet onto my well-padded behind, or other less well protected parts of my anatomy.
I may well have qualified for the bronze medal in the front yard ice-dancing event this morning, when I managed to stay upright after unwittingly discovering a patch of black ice that wasn’t there yesterday.
Perhaps we can teach Cleo to retrieve the paper solo. It could work if we can figure out how to disguise the paper as a squirrel.
by Paula | Feb 18, 2018 | Paula Persists
I work for a company that frequently hosts speakers as part of their Diversity and Inclusion program. Last week Jane Elliott spoke to many of us about racial discrimination and implicit bias. This elderly, white-haired, acerbic, sassy, white woman held us rapt for two hours.
Jane Elliott’s 15 minutes of fame arose from an experiment she concocted and carried out in response to the shooting of Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s; an experiment designed to shine a spotlight on the ugliness of discrimination. Little did she know at the time how controversial her experiment would become, and how it would change her life.
This experiment also impacted my life. I have vivid memories of the day in 6th grade when the entire school was told that brown-eyed kids were trouble-makers and were less intelligent than the blue-eyed kids. Brown-eyed kids would sit in the back of the classroom, eat last for lunch, sit in a designated area of the cafeteria, not be able to use the playground equipment outside, and so on.
I was traumatized. I was an extroverted kid who loved school, and wanted to be part of everything. I didn’t understand, and went through the day alternating between indignation and tears. To this day, I remember the one blue-eyed friend who invited me to still sit with her at lunch–because the new rules were stupid; but I also remember the blue-eyed ‘friends’ who quickly bought into the concept of their own superiority, and gleefully taunted this brown-eyed girl.
There are many examples and videos of this experiment, including on the Oprah show in 1992. It is chilling to see how quickly the designated superior group started asserting their privilege–calling the ‘others’ names, and finding examples in benign behavior to justify the inferiority of the other group. Sadly, we absorb these messages about our superiority or inferiority just as quickly. The third-graders that were dubbed as superior (if only for the day) in Jane’s original experiment, did markedly better in their school work than they had done just the previous day. Conversely, kids dubbed as inferior did worse. The power of expectations cannot be overstated.
Was the experiment cruel? As a brown-eyed girl, I feel qualified to say that Yes it was. Although, it was no more cruel than the taunting I experienced earlier that same year, when exercising my brand-new ‘right’ as a girl to wear pants in school. Discrimination, in doses large or small, educational or otherwise, is cruel.
Was it effective? The experiment quickly became controversial and triggered many uncomfortable discussions of race and discrimination. It definitely gave my white, middle-class classmates and I a small taste of what it is like to be discriminated against, based on a physical characteristic over which we have no control.
In Jane’s original experiment, she put a collar on the ‘inferior’ kids so they could easily be identified. At the end of the day, after a discussion about the real purpose of the experiment, and the nature of discrimination; the kids were eager to remove their collars. They ripped them off, they stomped on them, they hated those dang collars – those symbols of their repression. If only it were so easy in real life.
by Paula | Feb 3, 2018 | Paula Persists
I was once called a bully at work. A sensitive co-worker did not like the angle of my head while I typed on the computer. She thought my posture was overly haughty — which is pretty funny, given that the angle of my head while typing is determined by the location of the sweet spot in my trifocals, versus any desire to intimidate. In this case it was a a misunderstanding that could be readily sorted out. Of course, not all bullying charges are that benign.
I am currently reading “Fire and Fury” about the D’s administration, which supports the growing mountain evidence that an uninformed, self-aggrandizing bully is in charge. If the book is to be believed, the level of dysfunction is even greater than it appears. The 2016 election gave The D the ultimate bully pulpit.
By now, The D has turned on the courts, the press and the justice department. He believes anything he says is true, simply because he is the one saying it. Victims or media outlets that publish or speak the truth are labeled ‘fake news’ or simply called liars. How can we reason with those who distrust science and knowledge, and are motivated only by power lust and greed? How can we seek justice from those who simply do not care about the welfare of others?
A bully lacks empathy for others. At its extreme are monsters such as Dr Larry Nassar, the physician who molested young gymnasts for decades, under the guise of medical treatment, without consequence before the sheer volume of accusations could no longer be ignored. (The victim count is currently 263). Many others in authority were complicit in covering up his crimes. Much suffering and tragedy could have been averted if the first girls to speak up had been believed. Instead their truth was ignored and their misery was compounded by being called liars and being forced to choose between continued abuse or giving up their gymnastics aspirations. These girls trusted the adults in their lives, and the adults sold them to the devil himself.
Leadership qualities can be used for good or for evil: Hitler was a charismatic and effective leader, and a despicable person without regard for human life. Many otherwise normal people were charmed by his message and persona and chose to ignore or minimize his dark side and rabid anti-Semitism. Similarly, many Americans and Republicans, caught up in The D’s vortex, have chosen to disregard The D’s ‘dark side’, racism, and incompetence.
Due to a variety of bizarre circumstances, The D finds himself in a leadership role that (I think we can all agree) is well above his capabilities. The horrors of this administration mount daily.
Larry Nassar abused small girls for decades before the truth prevailed and he was held accountable for his actions; but not before leaving a legacy of suffering. How much longer before the truth that is under our noses about The D is believed and he is held accountable?
It is something to ponder. Perhaps I should also ponder getting a new pair of glasses, lest I offend someone as I type this post.
