Christina's Army

February is the most romantic month of the year. Love is in the air, on billboards, and on all social platforms. A month in which pink can be found in the perfect shade of glitter and aisles are filled with heart-shaped boxes of chocolate-coated-oxytocin.

Which makes it quite paradoxical that Eating Disorder Awareness Week co-occurs in this unbridled month of love. And even more boggling is that it’s only assigned a singular week, when most of the folks I know have an unhealthy relationship with food. It’s also an ironic polarity that the month of love ends highlighting that we have normalized self-loathing. Packaged in attractive ways, body dissatisfaction has become an epidemic that we have simply accepted, at the expense of our very own happiness, health, interconnectedness.

My daughter has an eating disorder. She’s 8 years old. Though it has nothing to do with the way she feels about her body image. And that seems to baffle people and yet I don't think it’s that strange. It has become common practice to use food to manage our anxiety and feelings of nervousness. We numb ourselves, build walls, self-medicate and experience addiction with food. And even more perplexingly, we moralize food. We view and categorize food as either good or bad, decadent or guilt-free. However, food is none of these. Food is a privilege. 

When I first discovered I was expecting a girl, I vowed never to let her enter into the dark world of collegiate dancing; where an athletic body is synonymous with a lack of commitment and dedication to the performing arts. A moral and physical failure to the craft and culture of dance. A rabbit hole that took me nearly a decade to crawl out of. Emerged, I felt more like a prisoner of war rather than a renewed woman or a model of self-love that one may envision.

And while my daughter never stepped foot in a dance studio, she did develop an eating disorder. An eating disorder that I didn’t even know existed until I became her mom. An expression of her autistic profile.

The shame around eating disorders is palpable. Which is confusing since the data around the sources of poor body image is pretty clear. Here is what I know: Shame leads to isolation and isolation prevents people from accessing the care, support, and recovery they need and wholly deserve. This is called a barrier.

Additionally, therein lies the shame double standard that applies to parents of children with selective eating. A similar and non-helpful notion that arose in the 1940s held mother’s responsible for their children’s autism. And while the theory of the “refrigerator mother” is outdated, when it comes to eating and pediatric feeding disorders, caregivers are placed in the blame seat.

What is helpful is normalizing that bodies and minds are diverse and subsequently so are our food choices, preferences, and rituals around eating. Body acceptance is not enough. We need to celebrate body diversity and learn how to healthily honor food and the trifecta of nourishment that it provides to our body, brain, and soul. By creating happy neuro-associations and memories around eating, we rewire our brains and our hearts.

Life is hard and beautifully unfolding at the same time. I never would have imagined being grateful for the soul sucking clutches of an eating disorder. But if it prepared me to be the mom that my children needed, which it did, then I’m at peace with it. Maybe it's because I'm no longer 20 years old and invincible. Perhaps, it's the heaping serving of perspective that life has indiscriminately placed on my plate. But life is short and I am committed to finding joy in my every day. And that starts by being careful in what I consume, and I’m not referring to the edible morsels on the tip of my fork.

We know this isn’t exclusively a teenage girl issue. This is an everyone-is-impacted and no-one-is-immune societal issue. And it should serve as no surprise that weight-based shaming is the number one form of bullying our children face, regardless of body mass index or body composition. Thinspiration and trauma are served to us all on algorithmic platters for our psychological consumption. 

So, to combat this crisis, I have formed an army.

Yes, an army. 

And I’m in the process of recruiting.

As  soldiers in my army, our mission is to unabashedly love our whole selves - bodies, aging or young, fragile or healthy and minds - all kinds of minds. 

In bootcamp, our first task is to write or rewrite our narratives, penning our own scripts of resilience and happiness.

In hand, our weapons of choice are: piping bags, a dependable gluten-free flour mix, and empathy served in bulk, because we are blast-baking our way through to recovery.

Our kitchens are our battlegrounds. As we turn the unhealthy coping mechanisms and dangerous imagery that land on our Pyrex plates and are force fed to us into fundamental building blocks that build a positive food experience. 

Baking, cooking, and coming together in communion is our not-so-secret military strategy.

And since learning to love ourselves extends beyond what we put in our mouths - it is what we consume on television, social media, and images earmarked solely for us - we will commit to picky eating.

Stylish, sensory friendly, adaptive uniforms are available, though not mandatory as we respect everyone's choice making abilities and individuality.

The stakes are high and lives are at risk. However, united we can defeat disordered eating, one 350 degree confection at a time.

My grandmother once told me, “Chrissy, aim high and you won’t land low.” So, let’s aim our supportive whisks to the sky and blast through unhealthy eating behaviors and annihilate the barriers and disparities of eating disorders.

There’s no I in army and “we want you.”

So, who’s with me?

Frankly Christina 💋