One of The Looking Glass Foundation for Eating Disorders’ Founding Members, Dolores, shares part four of her family’s story as her daughter battled with an eating disorder. In this chapter, their family finds their way to the light of a new dawn and, for the first time, senses true hope for Denise's future.

Denise was severely ill and needed immediate care. As I explained in the last blog post, we needed to leave Canada in order to find the type of care she needed. At this point, she was a walking skeleton. She dressed in layers because her body temperature was so low. Her beautiful blond hair had become so thin.

When we arrived in Arizona we felt optimistic, encouraged and yet still very apprehensive. Denise was ready for the intense months of hard work ahead, but we were still both very anxious.

Upon our arrival we were greeted with open arms and instantly introduced to Denise’s new nurse. While it was impossibly hard for me to say goodbye to Denise, the genuine love and care I could feel from the staff made me feel more confident than ever before that she was in good hands.

While she was in recovery I prayed daily for wisdom for the treatment team and strength for our family throughout this challenging time. It was still frustrating to me that my daughter was so many hundreds of miles away. I still couldn’t believe that the support she needed wasn’t available in our own city, or our own country.

During Denise’s first week of treatment we had no contact from her but we could send her faxes expressing our love for her. This disconnect was very hard for us and yet we had full trust in the team there that they knew what they were doing.  

Over time, Denise earned telephone time and we also set up a schedule for weekly family therapy sessions. While she was on a nasal feeding tube for the first week, it became evident that she was making substantial progress quickly. Even within a few weeks she had her first ‘activity challenge’ on the high ropes course. We could hardly believe this was our daughter considering not many weeks earlier, she wasn’t well enough to even go for a walk.

With each phone call and family therapy session that passed it seemed that Denise had more clarity and was so much happier.

Six weeks into the program, our entire family flew to Arizona to participate in a one-week family therapy session with Denise. The theme of this very spiritual week of healing was “Truth and Love,” and it proved to be a life-altering week for all the families involved.

Before we knew it, we were putting plans in place for Denise’s aftercare – which is an essential part of recovery. Recognizing the gaps in support in our own city, we began looking elsewhere for a therapist and found an incredible one in the Okanagan Valley. So we relocated part of our lives to Vernon and Denise came home and began spending time with Christina, her new therapist.

Over the next few years, Denise and Christina walked through her recovery together but then, all at once, we began to realize one of our worst fears was coming true. Bulimia was rearing its ugly head in Denise’s life.

She had been working the closing shift at a local coffee shop. With lots of access to food, she was allowed to bring home whatever baking was left over at the end of the day. We were completely naieve to what was happening because all we were focused on was being thankful that she was eating again at all.

When we did come face-to-face with the facts, we were terrified. Christina, however, explained to us that this was not a death sentence – we could work through this. Utilizing the tools Denise and our family had learned in Arizona, Denise was able to gradually change her behaviours and overcome bulimia.

Many years have passed and Denise now has her own successfully make-up artistry business. She  lives on her own and is making her way through life in a very positive way. It`s wonderful to see the excitement and zest of life back in her eyes, we are truly grateful!   

There were many struggles along the way and we did what was needed to save our daughter.  Our only enduring source of frustration over this ten year journey, was consistently struggling to find the essential help Denise needed in our own backyard. As I walked this journey, I made some very precious friends who understood all to well what I was experiencing with Denise and our family. I became close with two very special moms, Cindy and Deborah. Bonded by common experience as well as common frustration, we committed ourselves to being a voice for others going through the torment of having a child that is sick with an eating disorder. We committed ourselves to making a change in our city and in our country so that no one else would have to look across a border to receive the support they need to overcome their eating disorder.

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Check out Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of Dolores’ family’s courageous story of hope and recovery from an eating disorder. Stay tuned for more coming soon.

Join acclaimed restauranteur, cookbook author and Vancouver legend, Chef John Bishop, as he ventures back to his Irish culinary roots. This carefully crafted tour highlights the very best of culinary experiences ranging from traditional pub fare to gastronomic feasts. True to John’s passion, we will be sourcing locally produced foodstuffs and meeting with local farmers along the way.

From the spectacular coast of Northern Ireland to the charming, cobblestoned streets in the South, this two week tour offers the best that Ireland has to offer, including stays at the majestic Ashford Castle, grand country estates, and even a lakeside resort. Watch and listen as we weave together the history, culture and cuisine of John’s beloved Emerald Isle. Those with time on their side and a penchant for wild oysters are invited to join us for an optional 4 night extension to participate in the famous Galway Oyster festival.

Included in the cost of this trip is a $500 donation to the Looking Glass Foundation for Eating Disorders. Traveling with a purpose - does life get any better?

Click here to download the brochure with itinerary and other details. Click here to download the registration form.

See you in Ireland!

It's that time of year again - store fonts turn spooky, pumpkins become jack-o-lanterns, and people of all ages slip into disguise. It's thrilling to think that with a few smears of make-up and a clever costume, you can become whoever (or whatever) you want. You can even take on the identity of the very thing that scares you most: a vampire, an axe murderer, a ghost, or even a cackling clown. If you're really good, you can convince - or at least impress - the most scathing of skeptics.

Some of us live for the day we can shed our skin and become someone else for a change. For others, however, a disguised identity is the norm. I'm not talking about spies, undercover agents, or even full-time mascots - I'm talking about the anorexics and bulimics that walk and talk among us, often unseen or unrecognized, posing as normal, carefree members of the crowd. They could be teammates in your soccer league. They could be sitting next to you in class or on the bus. They could be your neighbours, co-workers, or friends. They could even be members of your family.

Anorexia and bulimia are diseases of shame and isolation. The person suffering with this disease does everything in secret. This is done out of a deeply rooted fear that, if anyone found them out, they might level the harshest of judgments. So they conceal their bizarre routines of life and let others see only normal, happy humans.

I wore the "I'm fine" mask for years, while in truth I was internally corroding. I put up what I thought was a convincing facade of vivacity and wit, while behind it I waged a war of self-destruction. Beneath layers of baggy clothes and a make-up force field, I was laid waste by the angry lies played incessantly in my head. It was like a Halloween costume turned inside out, with the skeleton on the inside beneath a normal human disguise. I really was the walking dead. Oddly enough, my “I’m Fine” mask was scarier than any of my other costumes over the years.

But thankfully, after my years of recovery, I’m no longer in hiding. I can be my true self again, no masks or disguises. I’m no longer a full-time ghost, skeleton, witch, or zombie. This Halloween, I can put on a scary costume just for fun and laugh, because the rest of the time I’m free and proud to be truly me.

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Alison is a regular contributor to The Looking Glass’ blog, is an eating disorders survivor and is an inspiration to those around her.

By Kelsey Klassen - WE Vancouver
Published: October 10, 2013 1:00 PM

You wouldn't expect laughter in the living room of a family affected by eating disorder, yet it's bouncing loudly off the pale walls.

Sisters and roommates Melissa, 23 and Amy Quinn, 27, are seated next to each other — one on a stool, the other on the window seat of their Burnaby basement suite. They blush when it becomes apparent how loud their parents, Gerry and Nicky, have to speak to be heard from where they are seated, on a couch far across the room.

Melissa Quinn, here with her sister Amy, began suffering from disordered eating at the age of 14. At age 18, she nearly died. She speaks about her journey and how the Looking Glass Foundation helped save her life.

Everyone laughs as they apologize, and then the story of Melissa's survival begins.

A "go-getter" from birth, Melissa excelled at sport. By grade eight, soccer had emerged victorious, leaving dance and figure skating in a spangly heap.

Her family was a busy 21st century paradigm: Amy had a job and Melissa played soccer at night. Dad worked in construction and mom as an office manager. Dinners couldn't always be eaten together; the sisters weren't overly close.

So when Melissa graduated in 2008 and moved to Victoria to play varsity soccer, the family vowed to make an effort to better keep in touch.

But constant contact didn't prepare them for a first semester phone call from Melissa's coach, saying their daughter couldn't play soccer any more. Her eating disorder had taken that away from her.

Melissa was in full denial, but on her last day as a University of Victoria Vike — the day she was officially deemed too weak to play — she had eaten the equivalent of half a piece of fruit, some celery sticks and a spoonful of tuna.

For the team coach, it wasn't the first time she had been forced to make that phone call. For Melissa's parents, the suspicions were all but confirmed when their formerly fit 18-year-old daughter came home in November, gaunt and 30 lbs lighter.

Just beginning to grapple with a disease that had been secretly seducing their daughter since she was 14, the family was set adrift in a sea of best practices: Privacy was a forgotten privilege as someone stood by the open door each time Melissa went to the bathroom; every dinner was taken together; they went for nightly walks to distract her from her obsession. Yet her condition rapidly worsened.

She would find ways to be sneaky and manipulative, and believed everybody was trying to make her fat. By May, Melissa was dying.

After months of electrocardiograms, blood work and waiting for her to be medically "sick enough", her doctor advised them to rush her to the hospital. Melissa wanted to go to her dentist appointment and go home.

Her heart rate was 22 beats per minute; her parents were terrified. In the hospital waiting room, two ambulance drivers and two nurses with a crash cart never took their eyes off her. Melissa's organs, memory and speech were failing.

Gerry took two months off work so he and his wife could spend shifts with Melissa through that first hospitalization. They were quickly becoming experts on the disease insiders nickname Ed.

Melissa was in Langley Memorial for a month, St. Paul's for eight, Vista House for another four, and then she attempted to go back to school.

It wasn't long before she relapsed, however, and found herself in a Victoria psych ward for seven months, under the care of Dr. Cliff Duncalf.

"I was so anxious to go back to school that I did everything in a rush," Melissa says, somberly. "I thought [the eating disorder] was just slowing me down; I was ticked about it. Until I saw Dr. Duncalf and realized that this was my life."

Eventually, she was given a choice: back to St. Paul's, or off to Woodstone, a new residential treatment facility — the first of its kind in Canada.

She didn't want to return to St. Paul's. While it had saved her life once, she had seen people there for their third and fourth times and it scared her. She couldn't picture it being any different for her.

And her parents were skeptical — every time Melissa had been far from home, she had gotten worse. But they had seen progress under Dr. Duncalf, and trusted his advice. So they placed all their faith in a facility that hadn't even opened yet and Melissa became one of the first 10 patients to check into the Looking Glass Foundation's tranquil Woodstone retreat.

"Our mantra was, 'Would you leave your child here?'" says Looking Glass Foundation president and co-founder Deborah Grimm.

Grimm and two others — Dolores Elliott and Cindy Dobbe — whose daughters had eating disorders, had all been forced to send their children out of country for treatment. At an expense of $1,200 to $2,000 a day, some even had to mortgage their homes to do so.

They came together to create a level of service that didn't previously exist in Canada, and formed the Looking Glass Foundation in 2002. It began with summer camps and support groups, and in 2010, grew through fundraising to include medically supervised, round-the-clock residential care.

"We finally found a beautiful property on Galiano Island, which had formerly been an inn. We had raised enough money that we were able, with assistance, to buy it. All the way along we were trying to have a conversation with the government. Eventually, a relationship was created and the light bulb went on. Everybody could see that this was a win-win. We started with 10 publicly funded beds with the knowledge that there would be 10 out-of-province and other funded beds down the road. We're in that process of expanding our services."

Care at Woodstone focuses on young people, ages 17-24, who suffer from anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or eating disorders otherwise unspecified, and centers specifically on early intervention.

"Eating disorders have the highest rate of death of all mental illness," Grimm cautions. "We're a hand to hold in the moment you're trying to find your way."

Having completed the program in September of 2011, Melissa is now two years recovered.

While the competitive environment of university-level soccer is what propelled her disorder into overdrive ("your push ups are numbered, your sit ups are numbered, and your timing is known to everyone"), it began slowly and insidiously, years earlier, around body image issues, fad diets, graduation. Melissa turns to Amy and admits for the first time that it was also partially wanting to be like her "beautiful, skinny" older sister.

The triggers are personal and, in some cases, chemical, the disorder rooted not in aversion to food, but rather serving as a quick fix for an under-stocked emotional toolbox.

"I know I can be anorexic and I know where that gets me and not being like that is still really scary. As much as I've been out of treatment, it's still hard, the thought of being completely... normal?"

She avoids mirrors and goes to therapy twice a month (sometimes once a week when she starts feeling the call of Ed), but she's working at a restaurant part-time — something she never thought she'd be confident enough to do again — and studying business at SFU.

And she's gone back to Woodstone a number of times to speak at the house. "I'm so passionate about it because I never had that. Being in St. Paul's and seeing the people who were there again and again... You never see the people who get out. That's why I felt so negative about it a lot of the time — it was either you're in the hospital or you're dead. No one lives with an eating disorder, right? [But] you can get better and live a normal life. It's not rainbows and butterflies, but it's possible."

“This is a family disease,” my father told me solemnly, “so we’ll treat it as a family.”

This was one of the first conversations my parents and I had after they finally confronted me about my eating disorder. I don’t remember much about the other conversations, but this one I recall vividly. I remember feeling trapped somewhere between paralyzing fear, tentative relief, and fiery defiance. I simultaneously hated the offer of help that I needed more than I knew, and longed for the love and support that I felt I didn’t deserve. Struggling to put this overwhelming inner battle into words, I looked my parents square in the eyes and said, “Okay. But it won’t be easy - I’m going to fight against you every step of the way.”

I can’t even imagine how this must have made my parents feel. Their eldest daughter, once so bright and eager to please, appeared to be declaring war against them. The stakes? Her life. What they didn’t seem to realize - and what I couldn’t seem to express - was that I felt like a captive of the merciless enemy they proposed to fight. I was a prisoner inside my own head, watching myself slowly starve and exercise to death but unable to stop, no matter what I tried.

What most people don’t understand is that an eating disorder isn’t a choice, misguided or otherwise. It isn’t a phase or a fleeting affair. It’s a disease that, like addiction, traps its victims with a host of lies and impulses that they cannot control. It consumes and controls every aspect of life until nothing but those horrendous lies remain. Though it may slip in unnoticed. sooner or later it progresses to a point where its consequences cannot be ignored. The “drug” of anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders no longer provides a sense of relief from whatever pain it used to numb - it becomes the source of the pain, only now it’s a pain that nothing else can relieve.

And yet by the time my disease had reached this point, long before my parents confronted me, I was powerless against it. I wanted to stop, but no matter what I tried, I couldn’t. I would wake up in the morning with the most iron-clad determination to eat like a normal person, but by the end of the day I would have failed miserably. I, who could apply myself brilliantly to any other task, simply could not overcome this irrational fear of gaining weight, of eating, of losing control.

This is what lay behind my words that fateful day of confrontation. It wasn’t that I wanted to rebel against my parents’ love and concern, nor that I had no desire to get well. It was that, deep down, I knew that I was powerless against my disease, and it would take so much more than this fateful conversation to beat it.

That was nearly eight years ago. But miraculously, my recovery since then has culminated in health and happiness, freedom from the agony of anorexia for the past four years. How? Through the support of a family and a few incredibly patient health practitioners who finally came to understand the true nature of my disease. Through my own personal admission of powerlessness, but not helplessness, for I had to take responsibility for my recovery even after I surrendered control. Through active surrender of my food, body weight, and exercise, trusting that the balance lifestyle I’ve learned through those who support me will sustain my body at the shape and size it’s meant to be. This disease is one I cannot fight alone, but with help, I can be free.

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Alison is a regular contributor to The Looking Glass’ blog, is an eating disorders survivor and is an inspiration to those around her.

One of The Looking Glass Foundation for Eating Disorders' Founding Members, Dolores, shares part three of her family's story as her daughter battled with an eating disorder. They say the darkest moments come before the dawn, and it rings true in this story of her family's courageous pursuit of hope.

This next season was full of our family’s most arduous days where we were walking on eggshells not wanting to upset Denise. The home atmosphere was overflowing with tension, and simple conversation was guarded.

Summer included many trips to different doctors’ offices for weigh-ins, lab work and appointments with a psychotherapist.  Denise was spiralling into a very dark hole and we felt helpless.

I slowly learned about “negative self-talk” and started being able to understand that she had a voice inside telling her not to eat. I learned that the tempo and loudness of that voice is all-consuming and that it was all that she could hear.

As bizarre as it may sound, this eating disorder had taken over our daughter’s life. As time marched forwards, I continued on with a stiff upper lip and we spent many hours, days and weeks in fear of the worst.

Denise was now on a waiting list to have an assessment at Children’s Hospital. All she was told as she waited was, “Maintain your weight.”

Denise was trapped inside a world of her eating disorder and it was taking complete control of her thoughts and actions and getting the help she actually needed seemed hopeless. We didn’t know if such help even existed.

Six months later, Children's Hospital called and finally we thought that things were going to start turning around. They wanted to admitted Denise as her condition had deteriorated quickly but still there was no bed. Denise isolated from her family and friends. There were only 3 beds in the whole province and they were full.  We took a number and waited.

Denise’s weight loss continued to spiral down.

On December 12, 2000 a bed opened up at Children’s Hospital and Denise was admitted. Two weeks went by and Denise had a slight improvement and was even allowed to come home for Christmas Eve.

Finally, seven weeks after she started at Children’s Hospital, Denise sought to recover. She had researched many treatment facilities that could help her overcome this life threatening disease. She told us, “Eating more food was not going to fix the problem, I really want to get better but I need more therapy.”  She wanted more than she could be offered at Children's at that time.

We heard her plea for help and began a conversation with a treatment center in Arizona. Seven weeks after arriving at Children’s Hospital, we signed Denise’s discharge papers and got on a plane with her to fly south.

Arizona-bound, Denise slept most of the way. I spent every moment of the plane ride cherishing the time we had before I would be giving her the last hug and kiss I would get to give her for quite a while.

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Check out Part 1 and Part 2 of Dolores' family's courageous story of hope and recovery from an eating disorder. Stay tuned for more coming soon.