Abstract
In this chapter, I narrate my experience of struggling with and then seeking treatment for an eating disorder, which was exacerbated by the stressors of stay-at-home parenting and my life in academics. I explain how taking both psychological and spiritual perspectives on my eating disorder enabled me to recognize its paradoxical nature as the thing that simultaneously barred me from being my fullest self and signaled the small voice of my soul longing to awake. In conclusion, I name how practices of parenting—attention to breathing and physical and emotional cradling—along with greater participation in the sacramental life of the Catholic church have contributed to my recovery and growing ability to see myself as beloved by God.
“Awake My Soul” is the title of a song from Mumford and Sons’ 2009 album Sigh No More. This song has served as an anthem for me in the process of recovery from an eating disorder.
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Notes
- 1.
The sacrament of Reconciliation is a sacrament of healing and one of the seven sacraments celebrated in the Catholic church. It is also known as the sacrament of penance or confession. At the time I was growing up, it was common practice for children attending Catholic schools in the Twin Cities of Minnesota to partake in the sacrament of first Eucharist in second grade and the sacrament of Reconciliation in third grade, around the age when it was believed children were gaining the intellectual capacity for moral judgment. For more on the Catholic understanding of the sacrament of Reconciliation, see Catholic Church, The Catechism of the Catholic Church (Citta del Vaticano: Libreria Editruce Vaticana, 1994), paragraphs 1422–1498.
- 2.
I do not think it was coincidental that the “sin” I chose to confess was related to food, particularly since I was a rule-abiding child who feared getting in trouble more than just about anything else in life. In her compassionate and insightful self-help guide and memoir, Sunny Sea Gold explores how food can function as “the good girl’s drug.” See Sunny Sea Gold, Food: The Good Girl’s Drug: How to Stop Using Food to Control Your Feelings (New York: Berkeley Books, 2011).
- 3.
For more about the Emily Program, which operates in Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington, see their website: “Emily Program,” Emily Program, accessed January 11, 2017, https://www.emilyprogram.com/?utm_source=StarTribune&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=CPC&_vsrefdom=p.11228.
- 4.
This phrase comes from clinical psychologist Mary Pipher’s best-selling book Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (New York: Ballantine Books, 1994), 12. While I am critical of the “girls in crisis” discourse that Pipher employs in this volume, I do agree with her assessment that despite advances in gender equality, girls in the U.S. still grow up in a culture that reflects to them their status as second class citizens who simply are not as human as boys are. For more on the cultural discourse of girls in crisis, see Sinikka Aapola, Marnina Gonick, and Anita Harris, Young Femininity: Girlhood, Power, and Social Change (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), especially chapter 2, “Reviving Ophelia: Girlhood as Crisis,” 40–55.
- 5.
In two other essays, I write more extensively about my experience growing up Catholic, the dawning of my feminist consciousness, and the aspects of Catholicism that continue to save it for me. See “The Tensegritous Experience of a Roman Catholic Feminist,” in My Red Couch and Other Stories on Seeking a Feminist Faith, eds. Claire E. Bischoff and Rachel Gaffron (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2005), 165–173 and “Saving Religion,” in From the Pews in the Back: Young Women and Catholicism, eds. Kate Dugan and Jennifer Owens (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009), 152–159.
- 6.
Courtney E. Martin , Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body (New York: Free Press, 2007), 5. In a journalistic look at the problem of body hate, eating disorders, and exercise obsession in her generation, Martin names a central dynamic in this complex of issues as the pressure young women feel not only to do everything well, but to make it all look easy as they do it.
- 7.
This is one key aspect that elevates my binging and grazing tendencies, which many people have, into a full-fledged eating disorder. Food was my primary coping mechanism, my primary celebratory treat, and my primary relationship in many ways. Using food sometimes for emotional reasons is not unhealthy; using it all of the time to meet emotional needs is unhealthy. Other aspects of my experience that played into my diagnosis include: the secrecy of my eating habits and the resulting shame and depression that followed in their wake; the way in which my self-image was so closely tied to my body and weight, so that a good day was one when I saw a certain number on the scale; the intrusive thoughts I had about food throughout the day; and my sense of powerlessness in the face of the drive of the eating disorder to maintain its stranglehold on my life.
- 8.
This notion of burying the true self is akin to the phrasing used by Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan in Meeting at the Crossroads, who describe the way that they saw girls’ selves “going underground” as they entered adolescence based on their four year research project with students who attended an all-girls private school in Ohio. See Meeting at the Crossroads: Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992).
- 9.
Carol Lakey Hess , Caretakers of Our Common House: Women’s Development in Communities of Faith (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997), 148. In my personal and academic development, Lakey Hess’s chapter on eating disorders was revolutionary. In my work here, I aim to do what Lakey Hess recommends, that is, to retell my story “in light of the courage her resistance demonstrates rather than in terms of its pathology” (148). It is this sort of counter-narrative that leads to healing.
- 10.
My dissertation research focused on developing a theological anthropology and religious education pedagogy that were responsive to the realities of young women and supportive of their further growth as women of faith. See my unpublished dissertation, Toward Tensegrity: Young Women, Narrative Agency, and Religious Education, Ph.D. diss., Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 2011.
- 11.
Lakey Hess’s chapter “Your Daughters Shall Prophesy: ‘Safe-houses’ for Raising Girls in Families and Communities of Faith” in Caretakers of Our Common House is an excellent example of this. Also informing my thinking here is the insightful argument made by pastoral theologian Christie Cozad Neuger that we should not be surprised that women suffer from depression in a culture that denigrates women. See Neuger, Counseling Women: A Narrative, Pastoral Approach (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001). Similarly, I would argue that we should not be surprised when girls have eating disorders in cultures that have such limited and limiting visions of women’s bodies as well as limited and limiting notions of women’s agency.
- 12.
This language resonates with the image used by Cheryl Strayed in her memoir Wild as she describes herself as “the woman with a hole in her heart” on the morning before she begins her three month hike alone on the Pacific Crest Trail. See Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (New York: Vintage Books, 2013), 38. Strayed’s use of heroin and sex with random men to attempt to fill that heart hole is akin to my use of food for the same purpose. But as Courtney Martin so astutely observes in Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, this hole is one that calls out for a spiritual solution. See Martin, “Spiritual Hunger,” in Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, 250–270.
- 13.
Hess , Caretakers of Our Common House, 148.
- 14.
Cf. Genesis 1:26–27.
- 15.
The concept of existential anger is from Sandra Schneiders, “Feminist Spirituality: Christian Alternative or Alternative to Christianity?,” in Women’s Spirituality: Resources for Christian Development, ed. Joann Wolski Conn, 2nd ed. (New York: Paulist Press, 1996), 50. According to Schneiders, existential anger is “not a temporary emotion but a state of being. Members of oppressed races and classes know this experience well. Waking up in the morning angry and going to bed at night angry, especially for a person who has been socialized to women’s responsibility for keeping peace in family and community and who has learned from childhood that a good Christian does not even feel, much less experience anger, is a personally shattering experience,” 50–51.
- 16.
See Thich Nhat Hanh, Silence: The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise (New York: HarperCollins, 2015). Mindful breaths are those where you pay attention to the in-and-out flow of breath, possibly silently saying to yourself, “Breathing in, I know I am breathing in. Breathing out, I know I’m breathing out. (In. Out.)” See Hanh, Silence, 43.
- 17.
As a testament to this trend, see these two blog posts: (1) Phil Reinders, “Twice (a Month) - the New Normal?” Network, May 17, 2012, http://network.crcna.org/pastors/twice-month-new-normal, and (2) David Odom, “RIP, Average Attendance,” Faith and Leadership, August 21, 2014, https://www.faithandleadership.com/rip-average-attendance.
- 18.
We are prepared in our society, at least in part by heavily edited “reality” television and sensationalized news, to train our vision on the dramatic. (Perhaps that is one of the reasons that parenting can feel like such thankless work; there is nothing dramatic about the mind-numbing sequence of feed, change, and put to sleep that seems to govern so many of our days.) Unfortunately, this is to our detriment, as we may cease to pay attention to the much more mundanely miraculous events that make up our days.
- 19.
I want to be clear that I am not arguing that eating disorders are sinful, at least if we approach sin narrowly as defined by individual morality. What I do claim, for myself and myself only, is the way in which my eating disorder had been an impediment to a more fulsome relationship with God.
Bibliography
Aapola, Sinikka, Marnina Gonick, and Anita Harris. Young Femininity: Girlhood, Power and Social Change. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Bischoff, Claire. “Saving Religion.” In From the Pews in the Back: Young Women and Catholicism, edited by Kate Dugan and Jennifer Owens, 152–159. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2009.
———. “The Tensegritous Experience of a Roman Catholic Feminist.” In My Red Couch and Other Stories on Seeking a Feminist Faith, edited by Claire E. Bischoff and Rachel Gaffron, 165–174. Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2005.
———. “Toward Tensegrity: Young Women, Narrative Agency, and Religious Education.” Ph.D. diss., Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 2011.
Brown, Lyn Mikel, and Carol Gilligan. Meeting at the Crossroads: Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992.
Catholic Church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Citta del Vaticano: Libreria Editruce Vaticana, 1994.
“Emily Program.” Emily Program. Accessed January 11, 2017. https://www.emilyprogram.com/?utm_source=StarTribune&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=CPC&_vsrefdom=p.11228.
Gold, Sunny Sea. Food: The Good Girl’s Drug: How to Stop Using Food to Control Your Feelings. New York: Berkeley Books, 2011.
Hanh, Thich Nhat. Silence: The Power of Quiet in a World Full of Noise. New York: HarperCollins, 2015.
Hess, Carol Lakey. Caretakers of Our Common House: Women’s Development in Communities of Faith. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997.
Martin, Courtney E. Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body. New York: Free Press, 2007.
Neuger, Christie Cozad. Counseling Women: A Narrative, Pastoral Approach. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001.
Odom, David. “RIP, Average Attendance.” Faith and Leadership, August 21, 2014. https://www.faithandleadership.com/rip-average-attendance.
Pipher, Mary. Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994.
Reinders, Phil. “Twice (a Month) - the New Normal?” The Network, May 17, 2012. http://network.crcna.org/pastors/twice-month-new-normal.
Schneiders, Sandra. “Feminist Spirituality: Christian Alternative or Alternative to Christianity?” In Women’s Spirituality: Resources for Christian Development, edited by Joann Wolski Conn, 2nd ed., 30–67. New York: Paulist Press, 1996.
Strayed, Cheryl. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. New York: Vintage Books, 2013.
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Bischoff, C. (2017). Awake My Soul: Mothering Myself Toward Recovery. In: Bischoff, C., O’Donnell Gandolfo, E., Hardison-Moody, A. (eds) Parenting as Spiritual Practice and Source for Theology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59653-2_10
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