Loved one: 

Dear (partner, caregiver, parent, sibling, friend, teacher,
person I care deeply about),

I have an eating disorder. Eating disorders are complex illnesses that are mostly misunderstood in our culture, and because I care deeply about you and our relationship, I want you to know more about my experience and how you can support my healing by helping to create safety around me.

My eating disorder stems from a combination of many things unique to my story and lived experience, however, there are some simple things that you can do to support me. Because we live in a culture that is obsessed with thinness and health (and wrongly equates the two) restriction of food is something that perpetuates my illness. I am working very hard to give myself permission to eat all foods and to trust my body above all else to guide that process. Unfortunately, this technique can seem ridiculous to so many people around me. Not because it isn’t a vital part of our healing work, but because we are taught, some of us from a very young age, that we need to control, restrict, and shrink our bodies. That we need to be rigid and instructive and punitive with food. I am learning to understand how harmful this has been for me and my relationship to food and my body. Some of this may resonate with your own experience.

Some things that I would feel grateful for you to consider and implement:

Please do not talk about food using moralizing language. This can come in many forms and in my own process of recovery I can recognize it more and more, but it takes time to start to see it because it is so normalized in our culture (but that does not mean it isn’t harmful). Some examples include: “Today I was good because I had a salad at lunch”, “Oh let’s be naughty and have some cake”, and “Ugh, I have been so bad lately eating all of this junk”; You can even start to recognize it marketed on food; for example “guilt-free” food products. There are much more subtle ways this can happen too if a person is operating under the idea that our food choices are an example of our worth. This false idea is rooted in racism and white supremacy. Food is food. Let it be that. Please do not talk about dieting or restriction in any form. And though I do understand that we all have our unique healing journeys, comments about managing food for health can be cumbersome to me (ie “my doctor told me to cut back on x because of y”). I understand that everyone has their own ideas about food and healing, but if you could keep those to yourself it would help me to heal, especially in the early stages of my recovery. In my own process, I have been learning that our health is vast and complex and impacted by many many many things, and food is one small part of this complex picture. For my healing, manipulating food for an outcome is a very harmful concept, because it was the foundation of my eating disorder.

Please do not talk about your body, my body, or anyone’s body. At all. Because we live in a dominant culture that promotes and perpetuates anti-fat bias and thin privileges, comments about bodies are typically rooted in delusional ideas about how bodies are “supposed” to be and who gets access and who gets denied. Fat bodies and thin bodies are actually equal and both worthy of love, happiness, pleasure, and access. I am working to accept my body as I re-nourish it, I am working to accept that I am not here to control my body, and this is vital to my healing. You might have feelings come up as you witness my body grow and change, and I encourage you to get support for your feelings from people who are committed to healing, fat liberation, and HAES models. But at the very least, do not comment on mine or anybody else’s bodies. You have no idea what I or anyone else is going through. I would love for you too to heal. Not many of us have been able to access peace with food and our bodies. It is very difficult but very worthwhile work.

I would also love it if you could be an ally for me, and when you hear people talking about food and bodies in these harmful ways you could disrupt it by saying something. I assure you, you are not just helping me but others in the space who are needing and wanting deep healing.

Please understand that my recovery is a complex, grueling, painful, and chaotic process. Please do not make assumptions about my eating disorder, my body, or my choices. It’s so difficult to recover from an eating disorder because of lack of access to good and effective care, anti-fat bias, the cultural obsession with thinness and the pervasive lie that it can be sustainably and healthfully achieved for anyone, and diet culture, healthism, and the moralization of food that is insidious.

Because my eating disorder arose as coping to things that were overwhelming to my system and outside of my control, agency within my own process of recovery is very important. I need to learn to trust myself and my process. I will reach out to you if I need your support or input, and please otherwise allow me to be in my process while continuing to do the things that we love and enjoy together. Doing your own work to understand my process is the best thing that you can do for me, and I understand that for many reasons that is not always possible, and so at the least you can please respect the needs that I’ve outlined here.

Thank you for taking the time to read and take this in. Giving voice to my process helps me to decrease shame and loneliness, things that my eating disorder thrives on.

I have included some resources below that might be helpful in illuminating more of my process.

With Gratitude and Love,