I have been thinking about what I wanted to write about this time for awhile now, it has just been so busy, I just couldn’t sit down and actually write it! So before I begin to write about what is swimming around in my head, I must tell you about our past weekend. It was Thanksgiving. Probably the most stressful holiday there is for a person with an eating disorder. And if you remember, it was the day before Thanksgiving last year when we were told that Caitie would need to go to an Acute hospital for treatment. When we were told not to allow her to drive and to try not to let her be alone for long until she could be admitted into the hospital because her heart was weak. This year could not have been more different and trust me when I say we let every moment of her health soak in, and we rejoiced. This year, all five of us, (and some extended family) ran in our traditional Thanksgiving 5k, and after we had a family hug of thanking God for our being together and able to complete such an incredible task. Tears were shed this year, but only tears of joy. So if anyone is reading this and worries that recovery is too distant, is too difficult, or unattainable. I am here to tell you, recovery is possible! There is hope, and it is oh so worth all the hard work to get there. This is not the topic I have been thinking of the last two weeks so I will move on to that but it is interesting that we just finished Thanksgiving and I am going to write about “re-learning” to eat with Caitie. The irony is strong!
If you have ever had children you know that from the time they are born, pretty much everything revolves around when, how much, or how often, they eat. If they are happy, sad, tired, content, it all revolves around food. Yes, sleep is big with babies, but everyone knows when the baby is full the baby is much more likely to sleep through the night or have a good nap, and then they are much more likely to be happy and content! From the time they are born up until they are teenagers really! You also learn very quickly as a new parent that it is mostly impossible to force a child/baby to eat. So that being said, where we are in the timeline of my posting, Caitie had been hospitalized since the 1st of December and we are now into the first week of January and up until this point we have not been allowed to be with her when she eats. It had been over a month since we had a meal with each other. Well, during our family days visit we were told that was about to change. My mom and I had been invited to have dinner with Caitie in the center. We would not be eating with all the other residents, they would put us into a private area just for Caitie my mother and I. I was actually really excited at first, I missed being able to eat with Caitie. But, I was also really scared! I mean they did not want us together during her meals up until now, clearly it was an important event that if it went wrong, it could go very wrong.
The day before our meal Caitie ordered our food, she was given menus each week to choose from, that fit her meal plan. It was a bit like being in a hospital when they have you on a special diet and give menu’s to choose what you want within that diet plan. One of Caitie’s counselors came to see us before dinner and explained some of the “rules”. Meals were timed, we would have 30 minutes to eat our dinner. Because Caitie was expected to eat 100% of her meal, it is strongly encouraged that we support her by also eating 100% of our meal. She also told us to please avoid talking about the food while eating. Because meal time is already extremely stressful for the person with the eating disorder, distraction is actually a useful method to help get the job done. She said that often times the girls will play mind games during meals, just to help get them thinking about other things besides the task at hand. Remember the process of re-feeding really is the complete opposite of a diet. In the world of diet culture, distracted eating is highly discouraged! Here it is a useful tool to help the residents eat what they need. It sounded easy enough, although I was worried about my mom, she never eats 100% of her food! She carries plastic baggies in her purse so she can sneak leftovers away without having to bother a waiter. It was time for dinner, they took us to a private room across from the dining room with a table and chairs and not much else. Our food was on trays and looked very similar to hospital or school cafeteria food. We had stuffed zucchini, a cornbread muffin with butter and some yogurt with fruit for dessert and water. Caitie had pretty much the same thing but she also had some chocolate covered almonds. All three of us were able to complete 100% of our meal, although Caitie did use the entire 30 minutes to finish, and she was clearly very aware of the clock and focused on getting done by that time. Remember if she did not finish she would have been required to supplement with an ensure shake after the meal. We played a game where we tried to name movies from different genre’s, like name Disney movies until you can’t think of any more, or romance movies, etc. We weren’t very good at it with just the three of us but it was entertaining to try. I was surprised how difficult it was to not talk about the food while we were eating. It’s fairly common to discuss how you like your food or what is happening with your food while you eat. Such as, “wow! this is hot.” or “I wish this was cooked more.” or “I try not to eat bread regularly.” Or whatever, but I did have to consciously think to not do that. It was good to be together and eat but obviously it was anything but normal. I wondered if eating with Caitie would always be like this? Would we ever feel normal at meals again? I had no idea of what to expect at that time, it certainly felt like we still had a very long road ahead of us. I couldn’t help but think about the fact that this is what Caitie had been doing six times a day for the last month. Of course we had skipped the part where the group gets together after a meal and talks about how they are feeling and how they got through the meal. They talk about how they handled their behaviors and how it made them feel or how other people’s actions may have affected them. “Behaviors” are something that people with eating disorders often struggle with during meals. “Behaviors” would be techniques that are often used when eating, to slow down or help control the flow of eating. Things like cutting food with a fork and knife, that can commonly be eaten with your hands, like a sandwich, or chicken nuggets. Also, maybe drinking large amounts of water, or chewing for longer than really needed. Stopping from using these “behaviors” is part of recovery and difficult to give up. I couldn’t help but think again about how similar this was to when we had babies and everything revolved around food. Everything in her life was about food right now, and yet we were trying very hard to not talk about food. You can understand why this time was frustrating and confusing. We wanted so much to just be able to fix it, but it was much more complex than and easy fix. So, I just had to hope that this, just like having babies,(not that having a baby isn’t nice, it can just be stressful) would get better with time. That someday, everything wouldn’t be all about food. That she would grow, (and yes, I literally mean grow.) She needed to get bigger, to take up her God given space in this world. I had to hope that over time, that along with her physical growth would come her mental growth and maturity. That she would learn to discover her worth, realize she deserves to be here and be seen! Somewhere along the way as she was growing before, she had missed that lesson, I suppose. Maybe she had forgotten? Or had this world, the harshness and confusing times of navigating social anxieties, social media, crummy boyfriends, and even well meaning family that might have guided her path in the wrong direction, had all that just muddied her brain? I don’t know, I will never know for sure why this had happened. I guess it doesn’t really matter, except maybe to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The parallels, the irony, the confusion of it all. At that particular point in time felt overwhelming and almost un-surmountable. They told us at the family days that recovery was possible and to not give up hope. So we were holding on to that hope. But it was hard, we were tired. That same weary you feel when your babies are small, and sleep is rare and never complete. We were living that all again, but my baby was 19 years old and the end road was not clear. However, we had made it through one meal together, nothing bad had happened. More meals would come, new challenges to navigate, eating in restaurants and eating with people who don’t know “the rules”. Figuring out her own meal plan and holding herself accountable without a group of people to discuss it with after each meal. All these things would have to be figured out, navigated and problem solved. They also told us that the road to recovery would not be at all like a straight line, it would curve and turn and flip you upside down over and over and over again. They did not lie.
Supermom? 