Stories of Healing: Jenna
Jenna grew up in a world only knowing that people who existed in bigger bodies were required to hate them and began dieting at a young age. She struggled with restriction and binging for years without recognizing it as a problem because she thought it was simply what she had to do. Then she found Rock Recovery. She joined Rock’s Bridge to Life body image therapy group with the help of sliding scale financial assistance and gained the community and empowerment she needed to heal. The community of women she encountered changed her life and, since graduating, she is now walking in freedom.
I grew up with two parents who both struggled with their body image, and only really knew a world in which people who existed in bigger bodies were obligated to hate them. My dad was known to say that my sister and I could be anything we wanted to be in life “…just don’t get fat like me.”
I used to look forward as a kid to when my parents would announce that they had broken their latest diet because it almost always meant a trip to IHOP for bottomless pancakes. When I started to gain extra weight myself in puberty, I was very quickly inducted to “the club” and learned things like how to count carbs on Atkins, what “people like us” are and aren’t allowed wear, and how many times I needed to walk around the block to “earn” another cookie.
As I grew out of puberty and left my hometown to go to college, I began a pattern of restricting all food intake during the day and then binging on junk food in secret at night. I thought nothing of this pattern - these behaviors were just me doing “what I had to do” as a person who lived in a larger body. I started each day on a diet. It’s just that by the end of each day I had failed, and then vowed to start it again the next day.
When I was a sophomore, I went out drinking after not having eaten anything that day, and ended up in the hospital and mandatory counseling. It was there I got my eating disorder diagnosis and began my recovery journey.
An academic at heart, I tried to think my way out of it. I read any book I could get on the subject, researched why and how eating disorders start and how they take ahold of us. I participated in many programs and talked through many thoughts with many therapists. Though I made steps forward over the years and certainly knew a heck of a lot about eating disorder theories, lasting recovery and peace in my body remained elusive. When I moved to DC in the middle of the pandemic, I found myself back in a pattern of dieting, binging, and deep shame around my relationship with food. Most of all I was furious with myself that despite all I had done to tackle my disorder, it was still not good enough to win the battle.
I reached out to Rock Recovery in the fall of 2021 desperate for something I could do to receive support while maintaining my full-time job. As a young professional, I did not have the means of losing the opportunity to work and spending lots of money on care, and my insurance did not provide coverage for anything other than hospitalization for eating disorder treatment. But I did know that my eating disorder was slowly stealing my life from me and I was tired of fighting myself, by myself, on a daily basis.
Rock Recovery met me at my lowest point with professionalism, understanding, and grace. I joined the Bridge to Life Body Image group and it gave me something that no book on eating disorders ever truly could: a community of support and empowerment. The thoughtfulness around group guidelines, inclusivity, and accountability created the ideal environment for me to be vulnerable with the parts of myself that were wrapped up in deep shame and challenge the parts of my eating disorder that I was still holding on to. Having been fighting myself, by myself, for so long, suddenly I was surrounded by a group of people who supported and understood me and challenged me to reconsider my worth being tied to my body size. We set weekly goals and cheered for each other when it went well and cried with each other when it didn’t. I knew deep in my soul that these beautiful people were worthy of love no matter their size, and they helped me learn that I was, too. I was no longer alone on this journey – and that was the missing puzzle piece in my recovery.
Rock Recovery helped me finally replace my destructive patterns with life-sustaining self-compassion and self-care. I am no longer in an active fight with my body and feeling pleased to just exist, before you today, in whatever shape my body is currently taking. I am now applying to MBA programs, have joined a few sports leagues, and am thrilled with my newfound time and space not devoted to hating my body or losing control around food. Most of all, the generational trauma stops with me and I am putting an end to the lie that we need hate our bodies by default.
I owe this experience and my life to Rock Recovery and the generous donors that make it possible for them to provide these services at a manageable price. I absolutely could not have made this progress without Rock’s support and the community of women they have created through their programs. I’m also not sure I would have received any support at all if not for Rock Recovery’s existence and their accessibility to people at any point in their recovery journey and regardless of financial status. “Grateful” and “Thank you” don’t even begin to cover it – but I will say them anyway because they are the best words I have. I’m so grateful to Rock Recovery and thank you to all those that support this amazing organization that helps people like me heal.