A woman’s journey from anorexia to self-love

Interesting how someone can throw out a hurtful, but seemingly innocuous comment, and cause long lasting damage.

When I was 11 years old, I stood outside a boy’s house with my best friend. She, through her giggles, asked the boy if he would ever consider going out with one of us. He looked at her and said “Oh, I would go out with you for sure.” Then, pointing at me, he said, “But I’d never go out with her. She’s too butch.”

Thirty-five years later, I can replay this event in my mind like a movie reel. It became one of several defining moments in my life that led to poor self-image. I love my body now, but to be honest, to this day if I were to ever happen across this man I would likely feel compelled to bop him right in the nose.

A single hurtful comment won’t send someone down the rabbit hole of anorexia, but you will see how it can contribute to an already faltering self-image. Fortunately, Silver & Grace guest post author, Joanna Cake, crawled out of that rabbit hole with a renewed and healthy sense of self.

“I’m determined to at least try to get through this difficult time in a woman’s life without recourse to prescription medications and maintain the body that I abused with anorexia for so many years. It’s tough when you’ve just realised how beautiful you actually are, only to watch the effects of the change take it away before you’ve had a chance to enjoy it.”

That’s what I wrote as a comment on Eliza’s post on Rosacea.

It’s been a long journey, but I’m finally coming to terms with things. Learning how to face up to the ‘stuff’ that made me hate my body so much that I wanted to punish it by starvation.

I think it’s well-known that anorexia is often about control. Things are going on around you which you can’t, so you focus on a process which you can.

And I think that was partly it. But it was also about rejection by some of the most important people in my life at a time when I was hormonally vulnerable.

They didn’t want to be with me, so there must be something wrong with me. It didn’t help that a boy upon whom I had had a crush for the previous five years told me that I had a ‘fat arse’… as we British say.

It was an elephant that was to follow me into every room for the next three decades. I hated it. It stuck out and I considered myself a fat bloater as a result. It didn’t matter how little I ate, how thin everyone else thought I was, my big butt was there proving them all wrong.

After my 20 year marriage finally bit the dust, a new relationship with an extraordinarily patient and special man was the turning point. To suddenly be told every day that you are beautiful and see the lust in his eyes, feel the love in his heart wrap you up and cosset you…. I cannot begin to describe how soothing that balm was.

I began to look at myself in the mirror with a strange curiosity, trying to ascertain what it was that he saw. And, slowly, very slowly, the veil started to be lifted.

After I began blogging, I became aware of a feature called half-nekkid Thursday and this was the vehicle that really brought everything into focus. To expose myself physically after years of enveloping myself in huge baggy clothes that were far too big was a real mental test. But, with a few admiring comments, I began to tap into a narcissistic streak that I had no idea existed.

To know that you are considered a beautiful woman and start to appreciate the features that influence that assessment changes so many facets of your personality. Confidence and self-esteem sky rocket. Of course, you’re still sensitive to criticism and rejection but a protective covering starts to grow from the many compliments – if you know how to accept them, rather than pushing them away and focusing on your own malevolence.

For a few months, I glowed.

And then my Menopause kicked in. I started to notice the patches of saggy skin on my neck and the inside of my elbows. And the taut flesh of my belly suddenly registered the stretching that it had endured through two pregnancies. Previously defined muscles began to become ‘unpumped’ and soften.

Part of me wanted to go back to the exhausting punishment of the physical schedule I had followed but the new me understood that part of getting older is learning to be kinder and more accepting of yourself.

I’m not giving up without a fight, but it will be a battle fought in a less gruelling arena. Yoga, Pilates and tai chi are the way forward. Exercise regimes that work with the body to promote all-round health. A mental relaxation that calms the busy mind to promote inner peace and a physical conditioning that will tone and stretch but not pump and expand.

The old me was frightened and insecure, a little girl trapped inside a woman’s body and desperately fighting it.

The more mature Joanna observes a fabulous figure and will take every opportunity to maximise its full potential whilst gently growing older.

In finally learning to love my body, I have also found that I quite like myself.

More information!

Joanna Cake writes about everything that life has to throw at her at Having My Cake and Eating It Too and regularly contributes to Tighten My Vagina, a site that tries to address the sexual effects of the Menopause.

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