When I first started writing this blog I’m not sure I had a clear purpose, but I knew I had a strong feeling that I needed to write down the things that were consuming my brain. When I say consuming, I mean just that; I was struggling to think of anything but what had happened and how it had happened. When you are going through something difficult no matter what it may be of course you think about what is happening a lot, and as you get past something difficult I think it is normal to reflect on what you went through a lot. However, I think this process can be different for everyone. I needed to talk about what was happening, I needed to run my thoughts by people and I needed to do that often. I was lucky because I had people around me who would listen. I probably took advantage of their willing ears, and I can’t say I was the best friend about returning the favor at the time. Although I can say I try to be that person for others now. The point is writing things down, for me helped me to release them from my brain. It helped me to let them go and move on to other things. That is a good thing I think. I am pretty sure most therapist’s will tell you to find a way to release the things that consume your brain and hinder you from moving on from an experience. So I am grateful I was able to take the time to write some things down and start working on focusing on other things. However, that doesn’t mean I never think about these things again. I was just able to let them go enough to move forward from the experience. But I do not want to forget, I need to remember the things I learned and the way we were changed by the experience.

I have written about many of the things I learned during this process but lately I have found that I am “accidentally” finding myself slipping back into some of those old habits that I now should know better about. The things that I believed were healthy before. The things I didn’t understand the way I do now. Why does this happen? Why do we remember some things that seem of zero importance but sometimes forget things that are crucial for us to remember? I can sing every word of Guns N Roses, “Welcome to the Jungle” but I can’t remember the Algebra I learned in 10th grade to save my life! Have you ever run into someone at the store who runs up to you and says Hello and knows your name and you can’t for the life of you remember why you know them? So you try to ask open ended questions hoping for clues, something to jog your memory! Why? Why does this happen? The brain is a funny thing, and sometimes I feel helpless to it’s ways. However, it hasn’t been all that long, and there are so many things around me that seem to be trying to reprogram my thinking.

Earlier this month was the 4 year anniversary of my dad’s death. It is just another day, but for me I always dread it, it makes me think more of that time, the things I did, the things I chose not to do. I miss my dad everyday but that anniversary is still difficult for me. However, my brother is the opposite, it’s just a day to him. It doesn’t spark any extra thoughts or feelings at all. Neither reaction is wrong but I wonder why some people are more affected by things like this than others? Why does a date make my brain start re thinking all these things? Could it be that they are always there, I just push them aside so I can function? But on that day I allow them to come back, so I make sure I don’t forget? I don’t ever want to forget the times with my dad but would it be so bad to forget this terribly sad time? But I can’t forget that, because it is part of our time. It is part of his story. I want to remember all of his story. Even the sad part, because this experience is part of who I am today. My dad is a part of me and his memory lives through me. I don’t want that to leave, so it is good to remember, and at times I need to think about all of these things, but I can’t let it consume me.

Let’s face it, diet talk is everywhere, we are constantly bombarded with reminders of our imperfections and it’s almost impossible to escape. I have made some purposeful changes to try to keep my own mind focused positively. I have adjusted my social media, I unfollow any over zealous fitness sites, and I follow body positive sites or body acceptance, however you want to say it. I hide friends on facebook who like to post a lot about their diets. It’s not that I don’t want to be their friend, I will look at their page at times I just don’t want to see everything about what they eat and why. I don’t want to see that anymore than I want to see who they vote for or why they dislike whatever politician they dislike. I don’t discredit their freedom to post whatever they want, it just doesn’t interest me, it’s not why I like to be on social media. This is something I learned from our experience and I have found it helpful for me. So I try to filter but it’s hard sometimes. It is everywhere, and it is something I had been focused on before, so it’s hard to let it go sometimes. Life has a way of continually reminding me. One example is that our youngest daughter has switched to a vegetarian diet (something I thought would never last and it has been almost a year now). Also, my sister in law rarely eats carbs, and is a fairly regular diet talker, but she is my sister in law, we eat together every week! I don’t want to avoid her, I enjoy her company. One of my few coworkers is starting a specialty food business that caters to people with special diets and she often brings food for me to taste. I don’t mind this really and her food is for people with medical issues. This isn’t really a problem it is just another example of food talk that swirls around my life. Try as I might, diets still seem to surround me! So yeah, sometimes I slip and complain about my belly. Sometimes I forget and start dreaming of special diets and exercise plans that I want to believe will make me feel better about myself. That I want to believe will fix all my problems, even though I know this is simply not true. Sometimes I forget what really matters.

Most recently I bought my husband a birthday card, on the front it had a picture of a slice of pizza and an ice cream cone, it said “What happened to pizza and ice cream parties?” On the inside it said, “cankles and slow metabolisms happened!” Kinda funny right? I bought it without thinking twice, until it was passed around the table for Caitie to read. I can guarantee you one year ago, there is no way I would have bought that card! Is it wrong to think that is funny? No of course not, but is it really all that funny? No, of course not. So am I forgetting or are we just far enough along that it’s okay to forget sometimes? Is that healthy or is that just opening a door, even if it’s just a crack, for a return of disordered thinking? Or is it just progress? To be honest I’m not too sure.

Last week I spoke to a mom who’s daughter has recently been diagnosed with anorexia and is just starting her treatment. As we spoke and my heart broke for her and the fear and frustration I knew she was feeling. Those feelings and memories flooded back at me remembering like it was just yesterday. I tried hard to listen and not talk to much about my own experience except in ways to help her with hers but it was hard and I’m not sure I succeeded. Every child is different and every path to recovery will be different. I do remember, when I was that mom, just being grateful to hear others stories and know there could be another side, so I try to be that when I talk to other parents. I can say honestly there is another side. Recovery is possible, and there is life after anorexia. However, we must be on guard because if I can forget, so can Caitie. If I am struggling to keep the right things coming into my head, and if I have to work hard to direct my brain, how must it be for her? Caitie copes in very different ways than me, she doesn’t like to talk openly about it to anyone who will listen, she won’t initiate a conversation about it, but she will talk if asked! She is also willing to talk to others who are experiencing some of the things she experienced, and has done so many times. She wants to help others and she is passionate. She just isn’t big on bringing attention to herself, she worries more about what other people might think, while I’m difficult to keep quiet. She is more private and guarded about what she has been through, which she has reasons for due to her experiences which of course were entirely different than mine. I was just the loved one, the care giver, she lived it, felt it, and had to do the work to fight it! I am so proud of her so maybe that is why I talk about it more, she still has reservations about others judging her actions, and has had some negative reactions when she has opened up, so that is difficult to cope with. It causes a person to be more careful about who they open up to about their story. We all handle things differently, and that is how it should be I suppose. I guess what really matters is that we keep trying to be better. That we remember that it won’t be perfect, and sometimes we will forget, but hopefully more often we will remember and keep trying, keep working, even when it’s hard, or sad, or frustrating.

So this is me today, trying to walk that fine and wavy line of remembering, but not letting the memories consume me, without forgetting what I have learned, and staying focused on what really matters, without being distracted by the outside bombardments of what others think are important! Oy! Okay well no wonder it’s feeling like a struggle, life is a struggle, but together somehow we can get through. Hang in there my friends, I am rooting for you as I know you are rooting for me too!

I have been away for a while, no good excuse just haven’t taken the time to work on it as I should. With that being said, there are a few housekeeping items I would like to first address. In my last blog I spoke about my own personal issues with food and how I try to cope with them now. I would like to clarify, in no way was I trying to claim I had and or have an eating disorder. There is a big difference between having a clinically diagnosed eating disorder and practicing disordered eating. It is my opinion (and in no way am I claiming to be a nutritionist or eating disordered expert or professional) I just have developed this opinion from the things that I have learned and experienced since going on our families journey. It is my opinion that any person who has ever been on any type of diet has practiced disordered eating. So most people have done it at some point or another. That is just the world we live in. The diet industry has so much money invested in dieting and has convinced people so effectively that being thin is the only way to be healthy and arguably, happy that most everyone has at one time or another been on some sort of diet. And diet’s do not equal healthy eating, they do however equal disordered eating and they can in some people directly cause a person to go from practicing disordered eating to having a clinically diagnosed eating disorder. So in my opinion diets are dangerous. My point is that my last blog was just a discussion about how learning what I have learned has changed my own personal attitude about food and body image and what healthy eating really means and what a healthy body really looks like, and it isn’t always thin. Now that I have that out of the way, I would like to catch everyone up on life with our family.

Caitie is doing well, she is physically still healthy. I will say that once she hit the one year mark of not being in any sort of treatment facility a new issue popped up, anxiety. When she first started to have episodes, we were concerned that possibly she was falling back into old habits of the eating disorder, we sent her to the doctor and he ran all the blood work and checked her heart, and her weight, but all was good. He explained that she has been working hard to do the things she was taught to do in therapy and keep her body healthy but the reason’s for why she got sick in the first place can still be there. So on the bright side things were coming up in her mind, things that maybe before she handled by restricting her food intake or by over exercising, but now she knew not to cope that way so she wasn’t, and that is great! However, she still needed to cope so… how do you do that? Well, her body chose anxiety. If you have never had an anxiety attack count yourself lucky. They feel like you are certainly about to die. I have not had many but I did have one (ironically) while I was still in the hospital after Caitie was born. I became very overwhelmed by the thought that this very small baby was about to be sent home with me, and all of her needs would need to be met by me, and that any mistakes in her care would be my responsibility. I suddenly felt very unprepared for this responsibility and suddenly the walls felt like they were falling in on me and my chest was sinking and I couldn’t catch my breath and my heart was racing and I was sweating. I was in the hospital and it was the middle of the night, so I called for a nurse and she helped me to calm down and assured me all would be alright. I will never forget that feeling, it was awful and it was an anxiety attack. Now, I had a pretty good reason to be having that attack and I didn’t have another until much later in life, so it was never really discussed again. Caitie however started to have these attacks almost daily and they would pop up at random times for no clear reason. She went to the emergency room a couple of times convinced she was having a heart attack, every time the diagnosis was the same, anxiety. So she spoke with her therapist who recommended some medication and some life changes. She had to look at her life and decide if some changes might be in order. She choose to start attending a different church than the one she had been going to since she was a baby. This was a difficult decision but one that seemed it may help so she is trying it out. We were also able to make some arrangements for her to live in a different place where she wouldn’t be alone as much, a place with some roommates. This may bring with it new challenges but for now it is a good decision to work on moving forward toward feeling better. Also, she has accepted the medication the doctor has prescribed. She is not super excited about meds and is trying to only use them as a very last resort so we will see. These things are trial and error, sometimes figuring things out as you go. So as I have said in the past and will say again, recovery is a journey, a road with twists and turns and corners that you can’t always see around. You just have to keep going, and you might get a little off track or the journey might take you on a trail you weren’t expecting to travel. Stopping with your feet in the mud however is not an option. You must keep moving, keep working, accept the mistakes and try not to repeat them but be able to forgive yourself when you do. Just keep going, like the saying goes and this one is a favorite of Caitie’s, ” It will all be better in the end, and if it’s not better then, it’s not the end.”

As far as the rest of us go, we are trucking along as well, Chris is lucky enough to get to work with Caitie at Yearout and he is very busy with his job and continuing to manage all of our rental properties. Amanda is in her second year at Florida College, she is working hard and growing into a very special young lady. Taylor is in her second year at Del Norte, trying hard to live up to the shadow of her big sister while working to blaze her own trail as well. I have been working a more full time position in real estate, I am a transaction assistant to a high producer here in the Albuquerque area, while working to do some of my own real estate deals as well. It’s nice for things to be normal, the same issues and concerns but not the kind that make you question everything you have ever known before, and have you fearing for the people you love the most lives. Those kinds of issues change you forever, which brings me to the next thing I would like to discuss.

Last week I received a call from a friend who I had not heard from in ages. It was good to talk to her, but as soon as I saw her number come up on my phone I had an idea of why she might be calling, and it wasn’t just because she missed me! She had a friend who has a son that she was quite certain has an eating disorder. She told me the story and asked for my advice. She is not the first, and I hope she won’t be the last. That is why I write this blog. Not because I feel the need for extra attention, not because I want people to feel sorry for me or Caitie, but because there are so many people out there who are struggling with these issues, and so many of them don’t know where to turn. I will always be grateful for the people who knew more than me that helped me to understand what was happening, who helped to direct us to the help we so desperately needed. I feel it is my responsibility to try to be that person for someone else. Again, please don’t think I am an expert, I have no schooling, all I have is my experience and the things I have learned from it. I have received many calls from people looking for advice. I can’t say my advice has always been enthusiastically received by everyone, but most have at least been grateful for an ear that reassures their worries, or gives them hope for a better future. Trust me I am not trying to heal anyone, I always direct them to Eating Disorders of New Mexico for treatment, and I always give glowing recommendations for Eating Recovery Center in Denver. I do recommend a doctor first, however I am also aware that many doctors are under the curse of diet culture and some do not understand the seriousness of eating disorders, and often times people who are really struggling with eating issues can be mistreated or told many things that can make the issue much worse from a doctor. I just know that is a place where someone who is looking for help will need to begin. However, sadly it might take a few tries to find a doctor who really “gets it” and doesn’t just automatically either tell you to start a diet or tell you that you are indeed too skinny but just “eat more” and it will be fine. Not everyone who has reached out to me has even had loved ones with eating disorders, some have reached out who have loved ones with serious mental issues and just have never felt like anyone understood how difficult that can be. Just to be that ear, someone who has been through some stuff, that is why this blog exists. It has helped me to process through some difficult things but what it has done the most is open a door to people around me to know that I am not afraid to talk about the hard stuff. That I am not afraid to challenge what I thought was true and to admit when I have been wrong. Lets face it people, life if messy, but it doesn’t get cleaned up by pretending it isn’t there! Nothing changes if we hide our truth. I like the changes in me. And believe me I am changed, and that is okay, we are built to change! God made us to change, and to grow. This is our purpose. I for one like the changes in myself and my family. We are still messy, but we are trying to clean as we go, and keep traveling this winding road. Sometimes I look back and I cringe at what I see, but sometimes I don’t, and I know what I want for the future is for things to keep getting better. So this is me today, reminding you that I have been through some stuff, and there is nothing you can share with me that will scare me away. I probably can’t fix it, but I can listen, and I can be there. I hope that has been clear in this blog. If it wasn’t before, I hope it is now. Call me message me, whatever, I got your back and I will listen. Now understand, I will tell you the truth of what I think, so if you don’t want to hear that you might not want to reach out. On the other hand, I know I am not always right, so if you ask for my advice and choose not to follow it, that’s okay too! We all have to take our own journey, I can’t take yours and you can’t take mine. I can cheer you on as you go though, I’m pretty good at that!

Learning is a wonderful thing, we are blessed by our ability to learn and become wiser each day. It’s fun to know new things and learn new lessons, and when we do learn we want to share our knowledge and teach it to others! It makes us feel good and it is enjoyable to watch others grow and learn as well! As a mother most of the time I spend is teaching and sharing with my children lessons of life and learning. This is what we do, it is our purpose! As I have expressed in earlier blogs, I have had guilt over what Caitie went through with her anorexia, not because I think it was all my fault, but because I taught her things that were wrong. I as her mother, the one who is supposed to be protecting her from harm, teaching her and guiding her, keeping her safe, I helped to lead her to a path of horror. I did not do this alone, and I did not intend to hurt her but none of that matters now because she was hurt. Now as much as I hate that fact, I can also say that I have learned a great lesson! I learned that what I thought was fact, was actually fiction. I learned that so many things that are presented to us as truth are often just made up facts. Made up to make money from our insecurities. It has worked, people will do most anything to have the perfect body, the beach body, the fit, tiny, socially acceptable body. Before, when all I wanted was to have that body, I believed, I drank that kool-aid up! I dieted, I starved, I cut calories, I cut out entire food groups, all in the name of health. I was doing all these things while raising my sweet young impressionable daughters. I hated my body and they saw me hate my body. I complained about wanting to eat cake on their birthdays, I was disgusted by my cravings for bread, I regularly talked about earning my food through exercise, I talked about “bad” food and “good” food, and my kids heard it loud and clear. When they were growing up I never forced them to eat all of their food, never; why? Because I didn’t want them to learn to over eat, I didn’t want them to struggle like me. Again, I didn’t mean to cause harm, nobody ever stopped me from saying or doing these things, actually it was quite the opposite. My friends and family were doing and saying much of the same things, everywhere you look it is there. Television, magazines, movies, and now social media. You get it, you all know this right? So why am I writing about it? Obviously, it hit my daughter hard, she ended up developing an eating disorder, but I have three daughters, the other two are okay, so no biggie right? Why make such a fuss? Here’s the thing, as I have learned and the more I continue to learn, I am more and more aware of how deeply ingrained this philosophy of skinny healthy is in our society. Now that my family is in a place of recovery, and working hard to stay recovered,(and I say my family, not just Caitie because we are in this together.) I am finding the bombardment of diet culture baloney in my face more and more and it is frustrating. Frustrating because I know how triggering it can be for Caitie and others who struggle with eating disorders, frustrating because it’s not true! I have learned something new and I want to share it with you! It is freeing and wonderful! I want you to know it too, and not just know it, but believe it, for the truth is a wonderful thing. So, here is my truth.

You don’t have to be skinny to be healthy. The BMI scale that has been used forever to calculate if you are at a “healthy” weight is a lie, it was never meant to be used as a “one size fits all” scale. And lastly, and this is a good one, if we all ate the same foods, and exercised in the same way all the time, we would still have bodies of different shapes and sizes. We aren’t meant to all have the same body, our creator made us different and that is wonderful! Why do we love to celebrate our differences in every other way except for body type? We have been trained to believe that wanting to eat, really at all, is somehow wrong? And it’s only okay if you are already skinny or eating the right food. That is sooooo messed up!! Right? I mean I know on some level we know that is ridiculous but seriously think about how we praise and recognize and celebrate how wonderful it is when someone is strong enough or has enough willpower to restrict, resist, and not eat. As though being thin is the best thing a person can accomplish! Here is what I think, we are so much more than our bodies, and if we spent the kind of time trying to better our inside self as we do on our outside self this world would be a much better place. I saw this quote recently and it really says it all, “Sexy does not come from the shape of a body, but the fire in a soul” J. Iron Word. I want to have a sexy firey soul! The other day my friend texted me to tell me that she had lost some weight, she had set a goal to be a certain number by her birthday and she had accomplished that goal. I felt conflicted about how to respond, I have known her since high school and we have yo-yo dieted for years, and I am certain she lost that weight by not eating. So I said to her, “if losing weight made you feel better, than good for you, but I think you are beautiful at any size because of who you are.” She liked it, because we are worth more than a before and after picture! Look I’m not trying to bash people for wanting to eat healthy or exercise more, I love to exercise, it truly helps my mental health, I feel better when I run or work out. I just believe now that if we simply pay more attention to our bodies actual needs and follow those cues that we can still be healthy! I think I have blogged about the kidscook motto before, it goes like this, “eat food, real food, with variety and moderation.” If I feel hungry, I think it’s a good idea to eat, and I pay attention while I eat, so when I feel full I stop eating. Some days, I eat kinda a lot, and other days I don’t. It sounds silly, but it had been years since I have allowed myself this freedom with food. It actually took some getting used to, for so long I had told myself, only this much, only this many calories. I had to almost relearn how to know when I was hungry and when I was full. Guess what, I gained some weight. Seven pounds. That’s it, 7 measly pounds, I have one pair of pants that are kind of too tight to wear now, but besides that nothing has changed. My blood pressure is better than ever, my cholesterol is perfect, I can still run over 4 miles and maintain under a 10 minute mile. I actually have more energy for running because I eat carbs! No I’m not winning any races but I could care less, because I feel great! I can do real push ups no knees on the floor, I can squat jump and do deep lunges, and I even survive through burpee’s. My husband has no complaints, because guess what? Turns out he loves me for my firey soul, not my perfect body!

I recently posted this quote on my instagram, “To help a girl’s self-worth don’t tell her she is beautiful. Teach her she is more than beautiful. Don’t just reassure her that her body looks great. Teach her that her body IS great. When we stop giving beauty the power to make us, we take away its power to break us.” Lindsay Kite. I want to re claim my power, and I want to teach it better to my girls now than I did when they were small. I want to share this, because people don’t know, we have been force fed the diet culture lies for so long now that it seems like the gospel, and to preach against it, seems like a terrible thing. But what I have learned is not terrible, it is wonderful. Not everyone wants to hear about your diet, not everyone who is overweight is unhealthy or lazy, any body can be a beach body, and everyone struggles with something.

Although what Caitie went through was horrible, today we are better for it. Every one of us has learned something valuable about life, and we all hope to use that knowledge in a positive way. Caitie is doing great, and more and more she is being able to share her knowledge with people around her who need an understanding and knowledgeable heart. It is amazing to see her share that knowledge and heart. There are some people who still really don’t understand, usually those people choose not to understand, and sometimes you just have to walk away from those people. Even though that is hard, it is also a good lesson in life. Not all people are your people, even if they used to be your people…. people change, and that’s okay. This is where my head has been lately, I hope I did not offend, that is not my intention. I just want to share what I know now, I hope it will maybe help someone to see things a little differently, maybe just re evaluate when you see some skewed truth from the diet culture and just let yourself be free!

We made it! One year ago today, Caitie was checked out from Eating Recovery Center in Denver. It was not the end of her journey by any means, she went straight into outpatient treatment in Albuquerque when we returned home, but here we are, one year later and doing good! Several people she met during her 2 month stay have returned, so we are so grateful and proud that our journey has been different! It’s a little ironic that I sit here writing today on a snow day in Albuquerque. Rare and few between. It’s ironic because the weekend I went to Denver to pick up Caitie was the snowiest weekend we had during all the times we went! It was 3 degrees, and snowed so much I was certain we would be snowed in, but we did make it home, it was an adventure!

I have been struggling as of late with some writers block I suppose. After my visit for family days, I couldn’t remember the next month! To be honest, I think Caitie was on her own much more during the month of January. So I guess that was why I struggled to remember it! Both of her sisters have January birthdays, it was the height of district basketball play of Amanda’s last season. I do remember very vividly that the constant feeling of needing to be in more than one place at a time was excruciating during this time. No matter what I was doing, who I was with, I constantly had this pull in my heart that I was needed somewhere else. It was a miserable feeling but we just had to push through. Chris and I celebrated our wedding anniversary on 2/3, and then he left the next day for his turn at family days. He went alone, looking back now I wish I had gone again so we could have been together. Those days were so intense and scary and informative and it is quite the roller coaster ride. He handled it well though and certainly returned with a new understanding of this monster we were dealing with, and how serious it all can be. I must say, I am so grateful for his time there because Chris returned with a true determination to fight for his girl. He was humbled by the enormity of it, but not afraid to do whatever he could to help her get it behind her. Chris has truly been a leader for all of us in facing this straight on! I have to tell you, I was worried about this with him, he was raised in an environment where sometimes mental health and therapy was viewed fairly negatively. I wasn’t sure he would get on board with what was needed. But not only did he get on board, he led the charge. Nobody was better at sitting us all down and talking about the hard stuff than Chris. I think Caitie and I both were surprised by his openness and willingness to get into it, but that is what was needed. If you don’t deal with this difficult stuff, the real reason for why we are facing this struggle, how can you heal? And when one person is sitting there willing to go deep and get into the hard stuff, it makes you want to follow!

Before Chris went for family days, Caitie was moved to the outpatient program offered there. They moved her into an apartment on the “campus” with three other young women from the program. They still attended treatment 7 days a week for 11 hours per day. So all of their meals were eaten still together in the facility except the nightly snack, but the snack was provided in the apartment and they still ate it together and had to finish in the 15 minute time period. The difference was once they were at the apartment they were free to go out and do things around town if they wished. None of them had cars, but they became quite proficient with uber. It granted a little bit of freedom but still many restrictions. Of course in the apartment they could also use the bathroom whenever they wanted at night. Seems like a small thing but take away some basic freedoms and you will see how much you appreciate them when they are given back. As I think back on this time, I think about how much I just hated all the rules that were put on Caite, and I felt it so unnecessary to punish her for this disorder that wasn’t her fault! But now, that it has been a full year since she has been there, I can assure you those things have played a huge role in Caitie’s staying on the right track in recovery. Her vivid memories of the pain of refeeding, the frustration of having to wait for a bathroom to be unlocked, and only at certain times. The rules of non activity, and only being allowed selective outings. She relives these things and often when we are talking about her struggle to stay on track, to remain at a healthy weight range, to not allow other peoples food choices to affect her well being, we talk about those memories. Her “why” per say for never having to go through that again.

After Chris returned I decided to take a weekend trip to visit, and kind of last minute I invited her best friend Jessica to come along. Jessica had been one of the few people besides family that Caitie had felt comfortable with telling about what she was going through. Jessica was trying very hard to understand it all, although it was difficult for her. Jessica agreed and we surprised Caitie with her visit. It was fun to see Caitie so happy, and for the most part the weekend went well. We went on a dinner outing and that was very difficult for Caitie. All this time she has only been eating with other people suffering from some sort of eating disorder or her family. This was her first time to try to eat again with someone whom she had shared hundreds of meals with in the past. (They were high school friends so had lunch together all the time.) But now it was different, and although the meal was most definitely a struggle, it was good to practice. Her days in extensive treatment were going to come to an end very soon. I think the reality of that set in during this weekend visit. Not that we weren’t all very excited to bring Caitie home, and she had come so far and seemed so close to full weight restoration. But the reality of taking this on ourselves. Of us now being responsible to make sure she was getting enough to eat, and to know if there were problems. We had failed so miserably at that before, would we fail again? What if Caitie decided she didn’t want to continue on her own? Would we know how to convince her to stay healthy? The program in Denver had been so good, what if the program in Albuquerque wasn’t? There was only one option, if it wasn’t a good one we would be out of luck. The fear of it all was intense. Nevertheless, after this weekend visit, we were told that Caitie’s team had decided she was ready. She would be discharged on a Monday, February 19th, President’s Day. Chris’s parents wedding anniversary. I already had the day off from work, so I went to pick her up by myself. The day after I got into Denver it started to snow, and it did not stop until we left on Tuesday morning. Her last day would be that Monday but she was required to do a full treatment day, so they didn’t leave the facility to be taken back to the apartment until 7:00pm. A shuttle drove them back and forth from the apartments, so I met her at the apartment so we could load up all of her things. She had her luggage, and a box of all the items they had taken from her when she came from the Acute hospital. The extra blankets, and pictures, and heating pad. We loaded her things as it was snowing away! Her roommates were excited for her and sad to see her go. However, they were also excited that I had a car and was willing to drive them somewhere without having to pay for a uber. So, we took a trip with her and her three roommates to Michael’s, so they could buy yarn for their knitting projects! I know that this was a real snowstorm, because even the Denver folks were not out driving around. The roads were dead and we were the only people at Michael’s at 8:00 p.m.! It was crazy but fun, I sure am glad we didn’t get into an accident though. I am native to New Mexico, I don’t have much experience driving in snow! After we dropped the roommates back at the apartment Caitie and I left to stay at the Ronald McDonald house. We had stayed there so many times over the past months and Caitie had never seen it. Here is the crazy thing. It is the first time I am now with Caitie, we are responsible now for her meal plan and I screw it up immediately. The roommates went back to the apartment for their nightly snack. I had no snack for Caitie. It was late, the roads were a mess, and I did not have a plan! How could I have not already thought of this? We ended up stopping at a Circle K near the Ronald McDonald House and bought water bottles and Caitie got a granola bar or something. She struggled with what to pick, but she found something. Then it suddenly hit me, we would be driving home the next day. What would we eat. Fast food restaurants were certainly a big fear for Caitie, but what else do you eat when driving 6 hours home? I was immediately convinced that I was going to fail my daughter. Mothers guilt is a real thing. It consumes the heart. Rational thinking does not always win when this is overtaking the brain. But guess what, we did fine. We went to Starbucks for breakfast. We bought a little extra for a snack. We found a Subway for lunch, and made it home for dinner. Was it perfect, not really, but it worked. Was I completely panicked that we didn’t get enough calories? Yes. Did I think one day wrong would ruin everything? Yes. Was that right? No. This is what I try to learn, none of us are perfect, we just have to keep moving, keep trying, keep fighting for what matters. Sometimes that will be enough. Sometimes it won’t, but as long as we get back up, keep moving, keep trying, and keep fighting for what matters we will be okay. The next few months of trying to meal plan and make sure she was on track were a mess, but somehow we got through it. I will write more about that next time. Because it is a whole other story.

I have crammed quite a bit into this blog, so with that I will sign off this time. I am so very grateful for this anniversary, we are still fighting and holding our own! It hasn’t been perfect, but we all know that expectation is ridiculous! Thanks for reading, and always supporting me and my family! It holds me up more than you know! Here’s to one year down!

When I started this blog, I had a plan. I wanted to tell my story from start to finish, or at least to present. As I have done a bit of that, I have not completed this task. This entry however, is going to be a bit of a break from that journey. I do apologize for such a long time between posts, I don’t really have an excuse, just life I guess. So we celebrated the holidays. It was very nice to be home and healthy. Caitie posted a beautiful blog of thanks to family who helped her during her time in treatment. She has an amazing way with words, it is a gift. As wonderful as it is for her to be doing better and for our worries to be much relieved, I couldn’t help but to be aware of how different things still continue to be. I’m not sure exactly how to express what I am thinking, I know we have been changed, I know that is part of life whenever you have life events either happy or sad, however something about this was different. I expected the usual holiday stress, figuring out family, making everyone happy, probably some extra concerns around food due to so much of the holiday revolving around eating and things. What I didn’t expect was how much other people’s actions would affect our ability to cope. What I didn’t expect was the almost PTSD type worry about Caitie and really everyone else! Yes, since we have learned so much about eating disorders I am much more aware of what disordered eating/thinking looks like and how the diet and exercise industry has warped our minds into believing that if we aren’t thin that we are some how flawed and must change. I have been noticing a lot lately how very hyper sensitive I am to others eating habits, exercise plans, coping mechanisms. I just hate seeing how caught up so many of us are about fixing something that doesn’t necessarily need fixing. It’s everywhere, and especially at the holidays! And now that it’s January, forget it! All anyone wants to talk about is their new diet! I’m sorry if it’s rude but, I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR STUPID DIET!!! Why you ask? Because I don’t believe diets work, I believe they cause more harm than good. I believe we can be healthy at all sizes. And I’m tired of the constant and unending focus on weight, and body type. Okay, I went on a bit of a tangent there, this isn’t what I meant this blog to be about at all! I will come back to this.

Lets talk about how we are right now. Here’s the thing, eating disorders stay, they manipulate, they lie, they warp your mind, they make you believe things that simply are not true! They don’t only do that to the person afflicted, they work into the minds of everyone around that person, those who care about their well being. I recently started thinking that maybe Caitie had lost some weight. I convinced myself that I was mistaken. Then some other people mentioned to me that they thought maybe Caitie had lost some weight. I was surprised how quickly I made excuses, how easily I found reasons for it to be alright. But the idea was there, “Is anorexia back?” Do we send her away again? At family days they said to send them back immediately if they lose any weight whatsoever! But she is doing so well! She got all A’s and B’s this semester, she was able to petition to get her scholarship back, she is working part time and excelling at work! She is going out with friends and having fun! She has tried her hand at dating again, and although that hasn’t gone as well as she would have liked. She is out there doing stuff being a normal 20 year old kid! So, we choose not to go all crazy about it. We just talked, and here’s the thing. This road called recovery, it’s not paved, it’s not straight, or flat, nothing about it says “easy”. So, here we are 6 months since Caitie has been released from any “hospital type” treatment and we are still figuring it out. Working this path, fumbling along and praying for the best, but expecting the worst. I felt so conflicted about this time, so unsure again about our decisions of how to deal with this road, questioning always and wishing I just knew the answers. I guess we will just have to keep on going and see how things progress. We will keep watching, keep talking, and keep fumbling along. I mean what else can we do? I will say this however, one thing happened this last weekend that has really caused me to think. Caitie and I went to a Del Norte High School Alumni event together. She was invited to attend because she is a past winner of the Del Norte Alumni Scholarship. The alumni were meeting and they had invited some past winners to check in with them and see how they were doing and to try to see if they could give the committee some insights about how to reach out to current Del Norte students. Caitie did not want to go, but she agreed once I agreed to go with her. She was surprised to see that there were 5 other past student winners there, most who she knew. All of the students talked about their college experiences so far. One student was an education major, who was going into physical education, he was coaching the JV soccer team at Del Norte and was hoping to work there when he graduated. He had recently been on a trip to Japan with his church youth group. Another was about to leave for Kansas to go to seminary school to become a preacher. Another student who had just graduated was a refugee who had decided to go into pharmacy to try to help other refugee’s who didn’t have access to healthcare. Another was a double major in engineering and had just completed an exchange program where he got to spend a semester in Iowa. All of them were impressive and it was nice to hear their success stories. Caitie told her story, she talked about going to Eastern and joining a sorority. She said she missed home and was now going to UNM and living on her own and majoring in Psychology with a minor in Art. She talked about her hope to be an Art Therapist. She did not talk about her eating disorder. I understand that, if she doesn’t want to share she shouldn’t have to….. However, I think this is the step of recovery that she is missing. Caitie thinks her time in treatment for an eating disorder is a failure, that it is something she should be ashamed of and hide. What I think she is missing is that her ability to recover, and to continue to fight this illness that is trying to break her is her greatest accomplishment to date! She is a survivor! She did not let anorexia take her life, she fought back, and she is winning! This is nothing to be ashamed about! This is a praiseworthy accomplishment! She is a fighter! And her story can and does inspire. Why? Because we all go through crap, we all struggle at times, and when you are in it, sometimes it can be overwhelming and feel like you will never get out or over whatever it is that is stopping you. It helps to hear stories of people who overcome. Even if their trouble isn’t your same trouble, the idea of beating the thing that is trying to bring you down is something to feel good about! Something to be proud of. People will fall, what is important is how you get back up! I wish Caitie could see it this way. And to be honest until she does, I’m not sure she will be able to say she is 100% recovered. Everyone struggles, and many people let those struggles win, they stall and stop some from achieving their hopes and dreams. People who are strong enough to keep going, people who use their experience to help others and improve on themselves, who grow and work on getting better each day. Those are quality people! Those people inspire, and make a difference in this crazy world! That is my girl, and I couldn’t be more proud. I see it, and I pray that someday, she will see it too.
Is this struggle over? Probably not. Are we done? No. However, are we quitting? Absolutely NOT! This process is working us and none of us know what to expect next or if we will do it right or wrong. But what I do know is that we will keep trying, keep going, keep fighting, and hopefully be better for it every day.

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.

Family Days is a three day program. Wednesday through Friday 8:30- 3:00 and 4-5 is set aside to visit and or meet the staff. My mom wasn’t comfortable with the idea of staying at the Ronald McDonald House so we got a hotel, that offered a discount for family members attending. Family Days includes both the adult program and the youth program. On our first day the groups were combined so the family members we met had both adult loved ones and adolescent. There were probably over 100 people in the room on our first day. The second and third days we were separated so the groups were much smaller. I was grateful my mom was with me, she still had doubts about if we had done the right thing by admitting Caitie to this facility. It was just such a foreign idea to all of us, and it still felt as though Caitie was being punished, and in some ways that was what was happening. She had to follow the strict rules, and yes, she was miserable, she had given up her whole life to fight this one thing. To us at that time, it all still seemed so extreme. Like we were over reacting in some way, even though every medical professional we spoke to told us that was not true. After these three days we never felt like that again. The things we learned, and understood after these days made us fully understand what we were dealing with, and how serious it really was, and why all this was necessary. I hope I can impart even just some of what I learned those days, because still today there are people who know us, that I know still think we “over reacted” to Caitie’s situation. They don’t mean to be judgmental of us, they just don’t understand. I felt the same way, I didn’t know either. But I do know now and I do feel some responsibility to share that understanding. Mostly because every single day I see or hear someone, somewhere passing on disordered thinking toward food and exercise. It is just how we talk now, it is how I spoke regularly, to my children and around them. The diet and exercise community have made us think it’s normal, healthy, and right. They are wrong. We teach people about health all wrong, we have let the “Weight Watchers” and “Nutrisystem’s” and “Jenny Craig’s” and “Atkins” and “South Beaches” and all of these “health” companies that are really only about making money, we have let them convince us that if we are not skinny we are simply not right. We are unhealthy and need to change immediately. This is a lie! Skinny does not mean healthy. Often times skinny means the opposite of health, it means sick. If you think about it, what is the first sign we see when somebody is very sick? Often times, they start to lose weight! Being very skinny is actually a sign of sickness! Not healthiness! Okay, so now you can see how my view has changed, let me try to explain why.
Lets start with some shocking statistics.

* In the US eating disorders are more common than Alzheimer’s disease.

*In the US as many as 10 million women and 1 million men have an eating disorder, such as anorexia or bulimia. Millions more struggle with binge eating disorder and EDNOS.

*Four out of ten Americans either have suffered or have known someone who has suffered from an eating disorder.

*One-half of 4th grade girls are on a diet.

*In one study, three out of four women stated that they were overweight although only one out of four actually was overweight.

*Two out of five women and one out of five men would trade three to five years of their lives to achieve their weight goals.

Source: National Eating Disorders Association, nationaleatingdisorders.org

Here are some eating disorders myths.

*Myth: Eating disorders revolve around food.
Truth: Eating disorders are complex illnesses with biological, psychological and sociological underpinnings. While behaviors associated with eating disorders may begin with a fixation on calories and weight, eating disorders generally stem from issues beyond food and body size. The mistaken belief that eating disorders are about food often compel friends and loved ones to encourage individuals to “just eat” when if fact, the disorder from which they are suffering is incredibly complex.

*Myth: Eating disorders aren’t serious illnesses.
Truth: The mortality rates associated with eating disorders are higher than any other mental illness, including depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Even for patients whose eating disorders don’t prove fatal, there are often severe medical complications associated with starvation and purging that can eventually result in bone disease, cardiac complications, gastrointestinal distress, organ failure, infertility and death.

Here are some other statistics and facts about eating disorders.
According to the American Journal of Psychiatry,
Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses, at approximately 18% in 20 year studies, and 20% in 30 year studies. A woman with anorexia nervosa is 5.6 times fore likely to die than another woman of her same age.

In the 1950’s mannequins were fashioned to mimic an average sized woman. The average hip measurement was 34 inches of both the woman and the mannequin. By the 1990’s the average woman’s hip measurement had grown to 37 inches and the average mannequin’s shrunk to 31 inches.

The average US woman is 5’4″ and weighs 140 pounds, the average US model is 5’11” and weighs 117 pounds. Most runway models meet the Body Mass Index (BMI) physical criteria for anorexia.

20% of people suffering from anorexia will prematurely die from complications related to their eating disorder, including suicide and heart problems.

Among adolescents, Anorexia is the 3rd most common chronic illness.
It causes 12 times more deaths than any other illness among girls aged 15-24.

69% of girls in one study said that magazine models influence their idea of the perfect body.
47% of girls in 5th-12th grade felt magazine pictures influenced them to want to lose weight.
Only 29% were actually overweight.

The top three chronic illnesses in adolescent girls:
1. Asthma
2. Obesity
3. Anorexia

Does the irony of all this hit you like a ton of bricks? #2 Obesity, which is constantly discussed, warned against, all over the media, researched and viewed as one of the worst problems of our youth of this generation. Just think of all the programs guided toward children to fight obesity? NFL play 60, all about getting kids active moving more and as a hopeful result eating less? In health class they learn how to measure BMI, do you think much is discussed if the BMI is on the low side? I doubt it. Every commercial, every movie, every music star, if we can just be skinny, we can be happy. However, #3 Anorexia, barely a mention, a bit glorified in our emaciated models all over the magazines and the internet. Considered strong willed and in control, having what everyone else wants. A great body. How many times have you listened to a model or beautiful actor being interviewed talking about what he/she does to “stay in shape”, what they eat, how they exercise. And how often do those regimens involve cutting out entire food groups and long hours of exercise? Entire television shows that only focus on weight loss and fast! The Biggest Loser has launched the careers of exercise enthusiast with their get thin fast plans, that they have made plenty of money from! Yet, it is killing our children! But I guess as long as they aren’t fat, it’s okay.

These facts, certainly were just the start of molding my thoughts, a change of focus. I was faced with the fact that the truth was that I too had many disordered thoughts and feelings about food and exercise. As difficult as all this was to hear, this was just a tip of the iceberg of information we were given during those three days. The understanding of the huge task Caitie had in front of her. They gave us many talks about great hope for recovery but they were brutally honest about how difficult that recovery would be. The second and third day we were separated from the youth parents and were just with the family members of the adult units. The groups were much smaller and we got to know each other better. The sessions were informative and interesting and hearing other people’s stories was fascinating. It was interesting to see the similarities of characteristics although there were so many different people there. ERC prides itself in it’s innovation of treating eating disorders, they take more insurances than any other treatment center in the country. Let me tell you we were very grateful for that!
One thing that I struggled with, and we are still coming to terms with was that there was a lot of discouragement toward exercise. Especially the repetitive type like running. Caitie had been involved in sports her entire life. Our whole family exercises, it is what we do. Now she has to stop? How? What will she do instead? Then there were all the families. Many stories were shared. Most were not there for the first time. The thought of having to go through this again haunted me! I remember feeling overwhelmed, confused, helpless. Frightened for her future, and for our future as a family. During one of our sessions they brought in a group of residents to talk to the families. There were four girls and one boy. All were there for a second or third stay. They were bright, beautiful, well spoken, and successful. There was a young newlywed, a single hairdresser/dogbreeder, a mother of two young boys, and two college students. They patiently answered our questions and told us about how their stories and struggles. Two of the young girls touched me greatly. One talked about how she really struggles with going out to restaurants, she told us about the thoughts in her head when she looks at the menu. The food that sounds good, the food she thinks is the healthiest choice, the thoughts of wondering what others will think when she orders. The eating disorder in her head that shouts that she is the fattest person at the table and how the waiter will be thinking of course this fat girl is going to order the unhealthy meal and just keep getting fatter. The war going on in her head, just to order a meal, and that wasn’t even going into the thoughts she would need to battle to actually eat it! She said, “I know what I’m thinking and over thinking is irrational, I am aware of that fact, but that doesn’t make it go away. It’s there and sometimes it is louder than other times, and I just want the people around me to be patient, and try to understand even though it doesn’t always make sense.”
The other young lady answered a question about telling other people about her eating disorder, she spoke very eloquently about not being ashamed of it, and actually being kind of pissed off about how society glorifies this unreal standard of beauty. She said if I don’t start talking who will? How will this ever get better? I wanted to jump up and applaud. How brave they all were to sit in front of us and tell their stories. These people were driven, hard workers, good people, just trying to get through this thing that was trying to take them out.
The last day we had a session called knees to knees, this was the only session Caitie would attend with me. My mother decided to opt out of this one, so it could just be me and Caitie. It went like this:

*Group forms a circle

*Two chairs are in the center, facing each other.

*Patient sits facing a loved one

*The patient and the loved one read, or say to each other:

*What I accept about this relationship is: this is a statement of what you accept you cannot change about this relationship and are willing to live with.

* What I value about this relationship is: this is a statement of how this relationship helps you to live your core values in connection with others.

*The commitment I make to our relationship is: what committed action are you willing to take to maintain this relationship?

Obviously, this was a powerful session. I think sometimes with the people we are closest to, we tend to let things go unsaid. You think people just know because they are close to you, but I believe it is important to actually say the things out loud. We don’t always truly know, or there is something inside of us that is trying hard to make us forget. Like a voice yelling loud, making you believe things that aren’t always true. This is why therapy can sometimes good for everyone! It helps us to say things and think about things that often get pushed aside or ignored instead of dealt with.

I can’t tell you how grateful I am to the Eating Recovery Center for having these sessions. It was a life changing three days for me, in more ways than one. It helped me understand what Caitie was going through. It helped me identify my own issues that needed addressing. It helped me see things from a new perspective. And although I just discussed a small part of the things we learned in these few days, there was so much information, I think I should have gone a couple of times! Chris attended the February session and he felt the same way I did when he returned. When it was over we knew without a doubt Caitie was where she needed to be , getting the help she needed to get. And although it was so overwhelming the thought of what was ahead of us, I felt more prepared to take that challenge on, to continue to support my daughter no matter what the future would have in store for her and us as a family.

After Debbie and I left, the next week was the week before Christmas. So we started planning for Christmas in Denver. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we switch off families for Holiday’s, and it was going to be a Christmas with the Elder family. Of course they understood that we would be going to Denver to be with Caitie as much as possible. She had not been there long so we really were not sure how much time we would be allowed to spend with her, but we knew we could not stay in Albuquerque while she was hospitalized in Denver. My brother planned an early Christmas party at his house for us and my mom. We opened our presents to each other and had a nice Christmas dinner and celebrated the best we could. I thought we would stay at the Ronald McDonald House again, but I can’t lie, this thought was pretty hard to swallow. As luck would have it, my dear friend Mary, who I have known since the girls were in elementary school who had moved to the Denver area the year before, called me with an answer to prayers I didn’t even know I was praying. Mary has a daughter the same age as Caitie and she is just a wonderful giving person and I am lucky to call her friend. She told me that she was planning to come to Albuquerque for the holiday and she thought we might want to stay at her house while we were visiting Caitie. Her home is about 35 minutes away from the ERC, it was perfect! So when Chris got off work on Friday we loaded up and drove to Denver. It started snowing as we drove into town. Again we went straight to ERC to see Caitie for the evening visiting hours. It had been about a month since Amanda had seen her, we were all happy to be together and the snow was so pretty, we got to visit with her in the art room that night and it is a big space and we had it to ourselves, it was a good visit. When visiting hours were done we left to find Mary’s house, it had snowed the whole time we were visiting. Snow is different in Colorado, it sticks! The roads were covered in snow and driving was treacherous, it took us over an hour to get there but we found it and it really was a perfect place to stay. We spent the Saturday visiting shifts going back and forth to see Caitie. Between visits we tried to see parts of Denver, which is a pretty cool place. We visited the 16th street mall and we went to the movies We convinced Chris to go watch The Greatest Showman, he isn’t really the musical type but he tried. I will say Amanda, Taylor and I loved every minute of it and it will always have a special place in our hearts. If you have never heard the song “This is Me” it is a great power anthem about loving yourself for who you are. I highly recommend it! Christmas Eve was on a Sunday, we went to church nearby where we have friends who attend, and a couple of Amanda’s friends who live in Colorado Springs traveled over and came to church with us and we had lunch together. It was nice and a fun treat for Amanda, then we went to ERC and visited with Caitie again. We were not sure how the visiting hours would be on Christmas day. They weren’t great, I had hoped they might allow Caitie to come out and spend time away with us, but that was not allowed. We were given one extra visiting shift other than the normal evening visiting shift. It was from 10:00 am to 11:30 am, We got up Christmas morning and Amanda and Taylor opened some gifts at the house, we really didn’t know where we would be visiting, if we would be alone or with other people? We had a lot of gifts but didn’t really know how much to bring or what she might even be allowed to keep? We decided just to bring all three girls stockings, so they could open those together and then bring Caitie her presents. Obviously there were many visitors that day, they put us in a downstairs large room that Caitie said is used for yoga. She had never been in it before, she was not clear for yoga yet. We had to share it with another resident, it was a young mother, her husband and two young daughters I would guess the girls were about 3 and 5 years old, they were there opening presents with her. The room was large enough that it wasn’t uncomfortable but of course we were both aware of each other’s presence. This illness does not discriminate, it can effect anybody at any point in their life. It was hard not to watch those little girls and think about when my girls were that small. That family was doing an amazing job supporting each other and trying to make the best of a difficult situation. I also could not help but wonder if that could maybe be the life Caitie may live someday. Would this follow her forever? Will her husband need to support her through this someday instead of her dad and I? I so wanted this to be the only time, the end of this, I wanted her to just be healed so badly. But at that time, we were far from that place. We just had to get through today, her future was still to be determined.
After this visit we were not allowed to come back to see her until the night visit at 7:00. So we had a few hours to find stuff to do in Denver on Christmas day. We found a neat outdoor ice skating rink with a big pretty decorated tree behind it, there were lots of people there because skating was free! However, we weren’t really dressed for ice skating and it was freezing, the temps were barely in the 20’s. We tried to ice skate but the skates were big and the ice was bumpy, it wasn’t like the movies at all! Nothing around it was open and we needed to use the bathroom, we found one Starbucks that was packed to the gills! We waited in line to use the bathroom and decided to leave. We drove back towards Mary’s house and found a little Chinese food restaurant that was open and had our “Christmas dinner”. We went back to Mary’s and watched a couple episodes of Stranger Things until it was time to go back and see Caitie again. Caitie was still in okay spirits but it was obvious that it had been a difficult day for her and all the people around her. She did surprise us though, she had made Christmas Cards for each of us, they were decorated cute and holiday like, and inside each card she had written each of us a personal note expressing her gratitude for our support and apologizing for getting to this place. We were all in tears and touched by her words. She had even managed to buy us some gifts from the gift shop when she was in the Acute Hospital. It was beyond sweet and unexpected. If anyone ever tries to tell you that people who have eating disorders are selfish, and too concerned with themselves, (and people did say these words to me personally.) let me tell you there is nothing further from the truth. Any person who is suffering personally but has enough caring to be able to try to do for someone else is not selfish! I always knew Caitie had a beautiful heart and going through this with her has just reaffirmed that to all of us who truly know her and love her. Eating disorders are not a choice, mental illness is not a decision a person makes. It is not a cry for attention, it is disease, just like any other disease. No one would blame the cancer patient for getting sick, nor should we blame the person with an eating disorder. However, this is common thinking and one of the main reason’s people who suffer from this disorder don’t want to tell anyone. They are judged and wrongly condemned more often than not. And don’t get me started on the way we as a society view health and wellness, diet and exercise, how weight is constantly associated with health and wellness. I will share my views on these topics as well, but not today.
We drove home the day after Christmas, I was scheduled to return on January 1st with my mom for the week long care giver training that started on the 2nd, the timing wasn’t great because I worked in the school and we were returning from our winter break on the 2nd, but I knew I needed to attend this training. Due to this plan I did not plan to visit Caitie for New Year’s Eve. However, Chris could not bear the thought of her being alone for the holiday and since he wasn’t able to attend the care giver session he decided to return to Denver for the weekend of New Year’s, he went by himself and stayed at The Ronald McDonald House. His truck broke down while he was there that weekend. It was just typical, the one weekend someone is there alone and that is the weekend he has car trouble! Life is just funny like that, luckily he was able to get it fixed, $650.00 later, he learned how to Uber but was able to drive his truck home. He was driving home on the 1st while I was driving there, we actually talked on the phone and were able to see each other and wave as we passed each other on the freeway as he returned home and I drove there. You know, often times you hear stories of families who are going through difficult times, who start fighting or struggling to get along while that happens. I am so very grateful to say that did not happen to us. Yes, it was stressful, and yes trying to manage all the normal stuff plus this was hard on everyone, but we tried hard to stay focused on the big picture, we needed Caitie to get well, we needed to figure out how to help her heal and how to be better for it in the end. The Bible talks about the trials of life and the lessons to be learned from them, if we were to learn and do better we had to focus and learn everything we could to do better tomorrow. Everyone was affected, everyone had to make sacrifices, but we all wanted the same thing. Caitie to be alright, and with that goal in mind our family stayed strong together. I’m so blessed and grateful for this family, the holiday’s of 2017 were not my favorite, but we found a way to be joyful. We were together, we loved each other and that is really what it is all about right?

Debbie and I left Albuquerque after work on a Friday, it’s about a 6 hour drive to Denver. The evening visiting hours were 7:00 – 9:00 pm, we drove into town in time to check into Ronald McDonald House and go straight to Eating Recovery Center. It was late so nobody was working at the reception desk. The place Caitie was placed was an adult unit so 18 years old and over, so she was one of the younger patients in this particular unit. It was locked but not from the inside, Caitie could leave anytime if she so chose to, however we couldn’t just walk in. Girls were coming down into the reception area but we didn’t really know what to do to get in to see her. Eventually a nurse assistant came down into the reception area. She had us fill out confidentiality agreements saying we would not tell people who we saw in the unit, and that we would not take photos of anyone we saw there. She had us sign in and then took us past the locked door and upstairs on an elevator, we got off and waited for them to get Caitie. There were designated areas for visitors and apparently there were many visitors at that time and they were trying to figure out where to put us. We were not allowed in her room, we were not allowed to walk around the unit without an escort. We ended up in a small room with three chairs and a little side table, we could close the door mostly but not all the way. It was an awkward visit. Caitie told us about how different the rules were there and how sad she was that she couldn’t have many of her personal items and mostly upset about having to turn in her phone. However, day two had been better than day one. Here she was allowed to talk with the other people there, they did group therapy together, she also had one on one therapy. There was opportunity for art therapy, music and meditation. She told us that the rules would loosen up over time as she progressed through the program. For now she was in the highest level of treatment and the rules were quite strict. She told us some things that she needed, warm socks, a robe, and I can’t remember but basically that was all. Just like at the Acute hospital she would be eating 6 times per day, meals were timed and if not finished they would supplement with ensure calorie drinks. Here however, she did not have a nurse assistant with her 24/7, so she slept alone in her room. Bathrooms were locked, they could only use them at allotted times. They called the bathroom “the spa” while we were visiting they announced over the speaker that the spa was now open, she hopped up and went. This was probably the thing that was the hardest to accept for Debbie and I, she couldn’t use the bathroom except when they said it was okay. It is odd to see your child in a place where basic freedoms, like going to the bathroom when you feel the need are taken away. I knew she needed to be there, but what if it wasn’t the right place? Why did she need to be punished? She was sick, not a criminal. It was confusing and painful. My sister in law, Debbie, did a good job of holding my hand that weekend, allowing me to process what was going on without telling me what do so, just being there. If there is one thing I have learned over this past year it is that often we don’t have all the answers, and often we don’t have too. It’s just comforting to know someone is there to support you, even if you are screwing it up. On the weekends the visiting hours were a bit odd, they fit them in between meals and therapy sessions. So we could go in the morning from 9:00-10:30, we could return, 1:30-3:00 and again 7:00-9:00. On weekdays they only had the 7-9 pm visiting session. They were quite strict about these hours and there really wasn’t a good plan for getting in and letting them know we arrived. Caitie wasn’t allowed to go outside on outings at this point so we would wait in the lounge until people who were allowed to go out came down, usually a staff member was with them at some point and they would notify upstairs that someone was here to visit. It felt very disorganized but it did somehow happen. Debbie and I stayed through until Monday so I could meet Caitie’s treatment team. It wasn’t until this meeting that I started to feel like we were doing the right thing having her there. I met her one on one counselor,and her dietitian, the doctor was supposed to join us but he didn’t make it. That doesn’t sound like a great meeting, but the counselor met with me alone first and she listened as I told her our story from my point of view. I told her my concerns about the unorganized feel of the facility and my worries about the rules. She sympathized with my frustrations and explained the rules. Caitie had a very difficult job in front of her. Gaining back the weight for one was going to be painful both physically and mentally. Figuring out how to cope and maintain a healthy lifestyle after treatment was going to be a big job but an important one toward her recovery. She talked to me about the nature of eating disorders, and the way they twist and change the person who is suffering with them. She explained that because of this fact freedom in a bathroom just can’t happen. There is too much risk, of purging, or self harm, or whatever else, even if that wasn’t an issue in the past, with the torture of “re-feeding” it very easily can become an issue. I thought that once Caitie just started eating regular food again she would gain the weight back, and that now that she had been to acute she should be able to do that. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Re-feeding is the complete opposite of a diet. Calories must be gradually added in order to continue the weight gain process, activity must be very limited. Even just walks down the street are discouraged during this process. So here she is, struggling just to get a peanut butter sandwich eaten without feeling bloated and stuffed, and they plan to keep upping and upping her calorie intake so she will gain 1-2 lbs per week. As soon as they see a plateau they know to add calories. Weight and numbers were never discussed, they would not give a number of what she needed to gain, or say if she hits this weight she will be good to go home. They believe this did not help the process. Caitie had been an obsessive calorie counter so I believed this to be true in her case. I will say by the time Caitie was in the end stages of treatment she was consuming close to 4000 calories per day. It did not get easier, it was like Thanksgiving meal every single day. One good thing I can say about that is that her hatred of that time and nightmarish remembrance of that experience has been a motivator for her to stay on track in recovery. She has often told me about when she would lie in her bed at night feeling nauseated and stuffed trying to sleep, her back hurting from so much sitting and lack of activity. Uncomfortable, tired from the constant hashing out of feelings and emotions, what felt like a never ending drama. She felt like she would be there forever, that she would suffer like this for the rest of her days, unsure if she could keep going day after day. Something about feeling that desperate, that kind of physical discomfort, and fear of never feeling better, as horrible as it was, it sure has made her grateful to not be in that place today. They teach a lot about mindfulness there. About really living and feeling your moment, she did that and now when she mindfully appreciates being home, with friends, and family. Mindfully appreciates just getting up and using the bathroom whenever she feels the need. It helps to stay on track, it helps to keep Ed away, on the outskirts and not taking control of her again! One thing Caitie’s team told me in our meeting that day was that Eating Recover Center offers a week long family days educational training for the loved ones of their patients. She strongly encouraged my husband and I to attend. They have them every month and she told us it would really be a good idea to try to attend. It seemed a bit excessive, a whole week of training for bringing her home? Good grief how much learning did we need? I couldn’t help but think of the mom I met at the Acute hospital who had talked about not knowing how to parent, then I wondered if a week would be long enough? She actually recommended that our daughter Amanda attend as well, she said Taylor was just under the age limit. We were unable to figure out how to get Amanda there, she would have had to miss a whole week of school and games, although I think it would have been good for her after going. I attended in January with my mom, Chris went by himself in February. It was the only way we could make it work out with the other girls schedules and work and just life. It truly is the best thing we could have done for our ability to help Caitie. Those days were so hard, hearing other families stories, meeting the other parents, hearing the statistics, the heart wrenching facts of this illness. Each day was difficult, I’ll tell more about that another time though. They know what they are doing there, I think the fact that people really don’t understand eating disorders and don’t really know what they are dealing with is part of the problem of successful recovery. There are so many misconceptions and understandings. Eating Recovery Center understands that, and they offer the education needed for successful recovery. It was impressive to say the least. With all the talk in life about terrible heath care, this place is trying to do it right. Trying to empower families to help their loved ones succeed. I’m not sure, but I believe that if Caitie had not gone to this place that we wouldn’t be in the place of recovery we are in today. Caitie was admitted to Acute December 1, 2017, to Eating Recovery Center December 14, 2017 and was released on February 19, 2018. She was there for Christmas, New Years Eve, and Valentines Day. She started in the highest level of inpatient treatment and gradually worked her way into the out patient program. We brought her home and she started the highest level of outpatient treatment at Eating Disorders of New Mexico, and worked her way into what they call IOP, and then discharged on May 17th, 2018. The day before her 20th birthday. From start of treatment to discharge, (she still see’s a counselor there 1 time per week), Caitie spent 6 months of her 19th year of life treating her eating disorder. Everything else was put on hold. School, relationships, her sorority, time with family, church life, all the things a 19 year old girl should be doing she could not do, during that time. Everything else had to stop, so she could focus her fight on this one big demon, the thing that was trying to take her from this earth. All her strength had to go to fight ED off, to get her life back! Again, I can’t seem to stay focused on one topic today, I want to end this blog here though. There is obviously much more to tell about the two and a half months at ERC. I want to tell you what it was like for her to be hospitalized for Christmas, and New Years. I want to tell you about what I learned at family days. About a weekend visit with her best friend. Then a little about treatment here at home and lastly about how things are now, how we cope, how Caitie has picked up her life again. If you don’t already please follow her blog, she writes about her recovery life now and it is very fascinating to read. https://caitiebme1.wixsite.com/firstloveyourself

I want to quickly thank everyone who has given me such wonderful feedback since I started writing this blog. It has been very encouraging. Feel free to share with anyone you think it may benefit, we certainly are not alone in this battle.

We really had no idea of what to expect during this hospital stay. They asked us to call them when we were 15 minutes away and they would meet us at the door. The drive was hard, Caitie was writing a lot and crying to herself. Her dad and I were just anxious and grateful to finally be getting her help but confused about what it all meant. We called 15 minutes out and two young nursing assistants met us at the door with a wheelchair. Caitie got out of the car and asked the girl if the chair was for her. She told her yes and Caitie got in reluctantly. The hospital was in the midst of the huge medical campus, we dropped her at the door with her things and then went to park in the garage across the street while the nurse assistants took her to her room. She had a lovely corner private room. It had big windows that looked out to the surrounding areas of homes and other medical facilities. She was allowed to keep most of her things there, a friend had given her a heating pad, (a wonderful gift for a girl in her state), she used it regularly. She had blankets and adult coloring books, her laptop and some of her college books. I had been in touch with the dean of students at Eastern and he had assured me that the university would do their best to allow her to finish her classes away from campus. A couple of her teachers just told her they would just give her the grade she currently had in the class and she did not have to finish. Her on line class of course she could finish remotely, and her Biology class and lab agreed to give her the grade of incomplete, which would not count as a fail unless she did not finish her requirements by May of the current school year. There were many rules at the Acute Center, due to the medical state Caitie was currently in and the long road of re-feeding ahead of her, these weeks at the acute hospital were mainly to get her “medically stable” enough to withstand what was in her future. I will say at this current time we did not fully understand that, but we would soon enough. Caitie was never left alone, she was not allowed to even get out of bed by herself, she could not go to the bathroom alone, she was not allowed to shut the door to the bathroom. She could not have a razor that was not electric, she had to eat the food they gave her, if she did not finish she would have to supplement the missed calories with ensure drinks, we were not allowed to be with her during meals. For the first 48 hours of her stay they checked her vitals and took blood every 4 hours. This was to ensure she was tolerating the extra calories they were giving her without harm to her body. She was not allowed to walk anywhere without assistance, the nurse assistant had to put a gait belt on her to take her to the bathroom. She was never alone, a nurse assistant was with her in her room 24/7. Chris and I were allowed to stay with her from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm except for meals, she ate 6 times per day, each meal was timed, breakfast lunch and dinner 30 minutes, morning afternoon and evening snack 15 minutes. Chris and I had made a reservation at a hotel that the hospital had recommended, they gave us a discount because Caitie was in the hospital. We reserved our room through Monday, although we had not made a certain decision about how long we would stay. I was struggling with the idea of leaving her there, how could I just leave my girl? They had told us about the option of staying at The Ronald McDonald House, it was an option for us because she was under 21 years of age. We chose the hotel but even with the discount it wasn’t cheap, do you put a price on saving your child’s life? At this point we really had no clue how much this would cost, or what our insurance would cover? We did know that the hospital was very concerned with making sure our insurance was in place before agreeing to accept her however, weeks in an acute hospital? 24 hour care, lab work after lab work, private rooms, we knew it was going to come with a big price tag. But what do you do? You do what ever you have to do to save your child’s life, that is what you do.

The people at the hotel were very nice, but after our first night Chris got up early and drove to The Ronald McDonald House, there are actually two locations in the Denver area. One was very close but is often very full because it is right next to the Children’s Cancer Hospital in Denver. The other was a bit further away but not by much, Chris visited, got a tour and they explained that they had availability and we could stay as long as we needed. They only charge $20 per night (if you can) and ask you to follow the rules and clean the room before you leave. So we asked the hotel, they agreed to let us cancel our reservation and we moved into The Ronald McDonald House. A place we ended up going back to several times over the next few months. I can’t tell you how grateful we are to this place for the comfort and refuge they provided to our family. If you are ever looking for a charity to donate to, I highly recommend The Ronald McDonald House. When there are so many things to worry about, wondering where to stay and if you can afford it is not something you want on your list.

Confidentiality is a big deal, we saw the other patients, there were both boys and girls, most of them looked young but there were a couple older patients. I remember thinking, wow, they all look like Caitie. So small, so pale, sunken eyes, thin hair, there.. but not all there. Some patients were on feeding tubes but most were not. Feeding tubes are a last resort, it is not the best way to treat them but we knew it might be a possibility for Caitie. Thankfully that was never needed. We were not allowed to talk to the other patients. Caitie was not allowed to talk to the other patients. I did talk to one mom, her daughter arrived the same day as ours and we rode the elevator together. They were from Chicago, she said she would not be back until her daughter was released, like us she had other children and a job, she was envious because we lived so close. She said to me, “There are so many books about being pregnant, but there just isn’t anything to help us know how to parent them, obviously I don’t know what I am doing!” I thought huh? Here I thought I did know, I thought we were doing it right? I thought I had read THE parenting book, The Bible! We had worked hard to instill solid values in our girls, my husband and I, had I really missed so badly with “love yourself?” Did I even try to teach her that? This is the thing really, I didn’t know how much this value, of truly knowing and loving yourself would really change us all in the months to come. It seems so silly, of course she loves herself, I mean we love her like crazy how could she not love herself? Pretty easily actually, so it seems. What went wrong? This was a huge thought and a key to so many things in our future, but for now I couldn’t really worry about that, today we just needed to survive.

We stayed that weekend, and things went well, Caitie got through those first couple of days well, she tolerated her food, but she needed help, they gave her medications to help with her extreme nausea and bloating pains, she slept a lot, probably because they woke her up to take blood and vitals so often but she was doing okay. The nurse assistants were kind and empathetic, one in particular was so very sweet, I truly believe if her and Caitie had met in other circumstances they would have been friends. They colored in her adult coloring book together and compared notes on Netflix series. She helped Caitie feel normal. She needed that. I felt okay to leave her, we went home on Monday after admitting her on a Friday, Caitie texted us daily and told us how things were going, she was granted permission to walk without a gait belt and given permission to walk the hallway with her nursing assistant. She was given permission for outings. Outings were a privilege given to patients who were following the rules. On outings the nurse assistant was allowed to push the patient in their wheelchair outside of the building, they could visit the gift shop in the hospital next door or sit outside by the many fountains in the area. It was nice to get fresh air but it was December in Denver, Colorado, so it was chilly. Outings were a max of 45 minutes, two times per day. Chris and I returned the next weekend with Taylor, Amanda had to stay home because of volleyball. We stayed at the Ronald McDonald house again. It was good for Taylor to see Caitie,to know where she was and being taken care of. Caitie was doing well but had an allergic reaction to something and had broken out in a rash on her cheeks and hands, they gave her lotion to help and that made it worse! Her immune system was low, and it was showing. She was pretty miserable, she struggled with the comfortableness of trying to eat, which she had to do 6 times a day, and she had a rash that was itchy and painful BUT, she was alive, she was responding well to the calories, and she was eating what they gave her to eat. However, I remember feeling very upset about how uncomfortable she was, it is truly heartbreaking to watch your child suffer, and the act of eating was currently causing her to suffer. She tried to put on a brave face for us but she was hurting and we knew it. She still was very limited in what she was allowed to do, so our visit was basically just us hanging out in her room. We started watching the Netflix series Stranger Things, this show will always have special meaning for us, just because of how we started watching it. Watching tv coloring and finishing up some school work were good distractions for the physical pain she was in, every meal caused her pain, and she was eating 6 times a day! It was constant, but she was doing it.

During that weekend visit, a doctor on the unit came to see us, he told us that they expected to discharge Caitie at the end of the upcoming week. He explained that they wanted to discharge her to another treatment center called Eating Recovery Center. We told him that we had hoped to bring her home and admit her to the outpatient program in our hometown. He did not agree with this plan at all! I will never forget his words, he said if we did not send her to another inpatient program that her chances of recovery were statistically proven to be 0%. Yes, that is not a misprint, 0%. He explained that she still had a long way to go with her re feeding and that it was imperative it was done in a supervised medical setting. He also explained that it was time to get to the root of why this all happened in the first place. She needed therapy, and that inpatient hospitalized therapy is the best chance for recovery. So by the time they are talking about discharge, it is mid December. The reality is setting in, our girl will be in Denver for the holiday. Her treatment is just beginning. Being “medically stable” is just the beginning, now the real work must begin. Caitie must gain the weight, and more importantly face the demon inside that got her “unstable” in the first place. Time to face the inner turmoil, the only way to recover to truly get better, to fight the mental liar inside that convinced her she was flawed in the first place. The demon who made her think that altering herself into something unnatural was the only way to feel good about herself. The only way to self love, beauty, happiness. Over time we learned to call this demon “ED”. Sounds harmless enough, but we know better, ED is vicious and relentless, and will not leave her without a fight. But now she is a bit stronger to begin this marathon. She was discharged from Acute on Thursday the 14th of December, exactly two weeks after her arrival. Chris and I could not be there, they helped her pack her things, she took a taxi from the Acute Center to The Eating Recovery Center. It had snowed that morning in Denver and she sent us some pretty pictures of snow covered homes on her way from the taxi. I wasn’t sure if I would be going to see her that weekend, until she called me…

She called her first night, bawling, crying, scared, confused, they had gone through her things and taken all of her stuff. The rules were different at Eating Recovery Center. She wasn’t allowed to have her own blankets, pillows, books, they took some of her pictures (they found staples in them and were afraid she might hurt herself with them), she wasn’t allowed to have her phone except during vary limited hours during the day. She was afraid and was barley allowed to talk to us because she only had her phone for a short time. I was horrified by that call. I started looking up the Eating Recovery Center and found all these awful reviews from Yelp written by former patients. At 8:00 at night from a volleyball game at Monzano High School I made plans to leave the next day to drive to Denver and find out what was going on at Eating Recovery Center. Chris could not take off work that day, so my sister in law agreed to go with me. She had only hours to prepare. I will always be grateful to her for that move, she has an important job and I know it was not easy. I didn’t ask my mom because it was so last minute and her feelings were hurt but I know it would have been too much for her, it was sweet that she wanted to be there though. Her time would come later to hold me up through a difficult time. We will discuss that later. Like I said earlier, what do you do? You do what you have to do. So third weekend in a row, I drive to Denver. Ronald McDonald House is where we stay, and I find out the truth about Eating Recovery Center. What at first seemed like the scariest place I could imagine, ended up being much different than that. It would be Caitie’s home for the next two and a half months, a place that would see her, and save her in more ways than just one, not just her body, but her mind, to teach her the value we had somehow missed. How to love herself for herself. A person who needed to find her worth, the worth we had always seen but somehow forgot to tell her, WITHOUT Ed!