Tag Archives: family

the boy who wanted to kill his brother

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(guest post by duane scott)

He’s not a tall boy, I notice, and so thin.

Almost sickly. His arms look like a boy half his age.

We’re in Canada at a boy’s retreat and my heart goes out to him so I look him square with empathy because I’m ready to hear his story, whatever it might be. Because there is healing in the telling, in the opening of one’s heart and mouth to give voice to the fears residing there.

Fear exposed is fear crippled, so he opened his mouth and began.

“It started a year ago… and it nearly ended one night in the emergency room five months after.”

Twenty boys sit quiet, listening.

“I have a twin brother. He’s the popular one. He’s more accomplished. Girls liked him better. I think my parents did too. And I hated him for it.” …

(for the rest of this post, and a giveaway, follow me to Duane Scott’s place HERE?)

What drove me to my eating disorder (over at Prodigal Magazine today)

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Funny how being thin is so important until you realize it accomplishes nothing but hunger.

I wish I’d known this before I tried to starve myself to death.

I wish I could have known how good and beautiful I was in spite of my mushroom-cut and big-rimmed plastic glasses. In spite of my pastor-dad who was never home and my homeschooling mum who didn’t like herself and in spite of my thrift-store clothes.

But I didn’t.

It’s hard to be nine and to feel like you have no one, and it’s even harder to be 13 and to nearly lose yourself. To see the shock on nurses’ faces when they marvel that you’re still alive and then to run a hand through your hair and find your hair in your hands.

But maybe it’s all about being hungry.

Because hunger is something you feel you deserve.

If we feel unloved as children, we begin to think we deserve to be punished, and hunger is a knife that cuts deep.

I don’t want my children to ever go hungry.

But how do you convince your daughter that she is worth more than the world, or you, or your interpretation of God could ever describe? How do you help her see love in the mirror, past the freckles and the wide eyes and the stringy hair which she inherited from you?

My mum didn’t know how lost I’d become until she lay down one night beside me, as I slept, and couldn’t find me. All she found, instead, was bone.

And she cried at the moon, at the stars, at the faith she’d accepted in university because no one had ever told her that she was loved, growing up. So how could she tell me?

And we wonder where God is in all of the hard until we realize that it’s only in the hard that we can find him…


(Follow me here, to Prodigal Magazine, for the rest of my story, friends? Love you.)

Thin Birthday (Poem by ManicDDaily)

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On one birthday when she was very thin,
he brought out, after much whispering,
a half-grapefruit set upon a platter.

It was their birthday cake platter–wooden,
painted with blue ribbon swirl, holes put in
careful spaces along its perimeter.

The lone half grapefruit balanced in the place
for cake; a pink candle centering its face
like a faded, twisted cherry, stretched out tall.

He looked at her with such worry, not
(she thought) for her condition, but to please.  What
to give a child stuck in rigid refusal?

She’d disdain cake, she’d groan (he knew), oh Dad.
So, for her to weep, to get so very sad,
was quite unfair.  I wanted to give you

something you would take, he said, as they sat
out in the car and he awkwardly pat
her arm, reaching for something flesh and true.

 A little about me – My real name is Karin Gustafson, and this poem is from my book Going on Somewhere.  I blog as Manicddaily at http://Manicddaily.wordpress.com.  I have three very different books out.  One is a children’s counting book called 1 Mississippi which was written and illustrated by me (with tons of elephants); one is a book of poetry, Going on Somewhere; and the other is a very fun novel called Nose Dive.  Nose Dive actually also deals with issues of appearance and self-esteem, but from a comedic perspective.  The books are published by BackStroke Books and are all on Amazon.

when beauty pursues you (guest post by elora nicole)

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i wrote the majority of my eBook in a week during the summer.

i knew immediately what it was i would be writing about – all spring there was this recurring theme of pulling the little girl inside out of hiding. allowing her a voice, a chance to speak to me and an opportunity for me to listen.

it’s a hard lesson to learn.

through these exercises, i came to accept my broken relationship with food and how memories of my past fueled these tendencies to binge.

pairing these two things together took 25 years.

25 years of turning to food for comfort.
25 years of hiding my emotions in a milkshake.
25 years of fearing God instead of falling into an intimate trust.

it was reading a book in which the author stated that our feelings and habits toward food begin as early as four years old that i broke.

sitting in my counselor’s office, i whispered the words i think i have an eating disorder and she began telling me that the method of survival when i was younger – my life jacket that got me through the day – had now become my straight jacket.

in other words, what gave me relief from pain before was now keeping me from experiencing true freedom.

and when i shared with her that i remember hiding in the food pantry shoving as many cookies in my mouth as i could muster, she smiled.

“of course you did. it’s how you found love. but now you have resources to fight it.”

and i do fight it. daily.

it’s been proven that the very dendrites sparked at the moment of hunger are the same dendrites sparked and used in moments of rejection and despair.

slowly, these automatic reflexes are trading out for normal ones. i know where to go now – i know i can call a friend, know i can whisper weakness to my husband.

even more: i know how to listen to the little girl.

here’s the thing – for so long, my response to emotional pain of any kind reflected a life lived numb. i’d silent her pleas for attention, my heart growing cold to the tiny finger raising an objection.

writing this book was a small step in giving her a voice.

it’s not long and it embraces the messiness of my past few months of healing. but this is why i feel it’s so important – i’m not healed completely – i still struggle and i still have days where i fight the voices telling me i’m not good enough. it only takes a second – whether it be words read or a conversation overheard – for me to reach for numbing agents.

but God.

it’s in these moments i cling to grace and remember the words of a wise friend – baby steps count, elora. always.

and i turn from running, take a deep breath, and let Beauty wash over me one more time.

buy elora nicole’s new eBook, ‘When Beauty Pursues You,’ here.

take the “child-you” to Jesus

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i stopped sleeping the night my parents came to visit.

i don’t know why i stopped sleeping except for the memories that accompanied them. memories of decades ago, memories of sitting in my bedroom feeling very alone, memories of mum and i throwing things at each other and dad forcing me to see a counselor and i’m not even sure which memories are true anymore and which are made up,

for anorexia will do that. make things up until you believe them. it will tell you you’re beautiful when you’re skin and bone, and it will tell you God doesn’t love you and your parents want you to be fat and the only one who can understand you is your disorder. so you cling to it until it eats its way into your soul,

and you’re stuck, two decades later, unable to sleep for the memories.

and i spoke to a therapist about this, about the anxiety that comes from communing with a family that i know loves me, that i know would die for me in a heartbeat… and how to overcome, the disorder which still manifests itself through insomnia and obsessive compulsive disorder and fear?

“you need to take the child-you to Jesus,” he told me. “you’re trying to have needs met by your family that weren’t met as a child, and while those needs for affirmation and acceptance and emotional connectivity are good and fair, only Jesus can truly meet them.”

then, he told me, “you need to be the adult-you with your family.”

and so, i’m working on taking those needs to Jesus: asking him to be the protector i always longed for, the one to love me so tight i can’t breathe and then, to love me some more because i’m needy that way. and i’m working on accepting the family he has given me with all of its memories, and to appreciate the kind of love they are able to give, instead of demanding more of them than they’re able.