Stories

Why I Can Now Thank My Battle With an Eating Disorder

I still remember the day I forced myself to throw up for the first time.

I was sitting at home on the couch watching my favourite TV show at the time ‘Home and Away’. I was 13 and there was a young girl on the screen not much older than me who was anxious about her weight. It had just been someone’s birthday on the show and there was a giant chocolate cake in the fridge which she took to her room and engulfed. Ashamed, she quickly ran to the bathroom, stuck her fingers down her throat and forced every last bit back up again.

As ridiculous as it seems now, it’s like a light bulb went off in my mind that day. I thought to myself, ‘If she can eat delicious sweets and still stay thin by forcing herself to throw up then, that’s what I will do too.’ And so I did. That day lead to me to an extremely lonely 10 year battle with bulimia.

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What Carolina Panthers’ Dance Team Auditions Taught Me About My Power

By Candace Doby / 25 Comments

I stood in line with 150 other girls who wanted the same thing I did—a spot on the TopCats dance team to cheer on National Football League’s Carolina Panthers from the sidelines. Nineteen and 21-year-olds listened to tryout music in their earphones and spun their perfect, spray tanned, sequin adorned bodies into pirouettes as they practiced their first-round routines.

They appeared as though they had been dancing their entire lives unlike me who had only taken jazz classes one month prior to auditions. This observation simultaneously scared me and made me curious. I decided to explore the latter by asking the girl in front of me how long she had been dancing. “Since I was four,” she replied.

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Turn Your Broken Dream into a New Beginning

By Sheridan Voysey / 33 Comments

The call to my wife’s cell phone came on Christmas Eve, 2010. ‘Hi Merryn,’ the voice said, ‘it’s Emily, from the clinic.’

That Christmas was shaping up to be a Christmas like no other. Just a few days prior we had been given some news that we never thought we would receive. After ten years spent trying almost every means possible to start a family—including special diets and courses of fertility-boosting supplements, prayers for healing and chiropractic sessions (you’ll try anything), numerous rounds of costly IVF treatment, an agonizing two-year wait on an adoption list, followed by even more rounds of IVF—we had been told that she was pregnant. Pregnant! After a decade of raised and dashed hopes, we were finally going to have a baby. We could hardly believe it.

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Facing The Thing That Scares You the Most

By Kavetha Sundaramoorthy / 19 Comments

What about yourself makes you feel so ashamed, so scared, that you would go to any length to hide it? The one thing that you think you’ve succeed in forgetting, until it returns to haunt you again in some unsuspecting moment. I know it’s in you, because it’s in all of us; just under a different name.

Maybe yours is called a childhood memory, or an affair that you are hoping will never re-surface, the guilt that won’t fade away, a compulsive habit that you are trying hard to control… Or maybe it’s your sexual identity or the gnawing sense of emptiness in your marriage. Whatever it is that you are running away from, you are not alone. You’re probably wondering how I am so sure. I’m sure because I ran away from it too.

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How Today’s Priorities Impact Your Future

By Betsy Talbot / 28 Comments

Seven years ago I was living in suburban Boston, Massachusetts with my husband and wondering how we were going to make it work. We were both traveling too much for our jobs, and our time together was almost nonexistent. When we were home, we were overwhelmed with the task of taking care of a suburban house while living a mobile lifestyle. It was exhausting, and we were on the brink of personal and professional exhaustion.

Something had to give.

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Lessons from 15 Months of Unconventional Travel

By Josh Rock / 17 Comments

I’ve spent the last year and a bit wandering around the globe and exploring this wondrous thing called life. Through 26 flights, I’ve managed to circle the globe twice, and touch 5 of the 7 continents.

The journey led me to scuba diving for a month straight with whale sharks on an island in Thailand, to hitchhiking may way through an African country, to being paid to make sand castles on the beautiful Australian beaches, and almost having a foot amputated in Asia. It’s been an incredible experience. I’ve learned about the world and myself more than any book, teacher or person could tell me.

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The More We Get Together

By CJ Renzi / 27 Comments

In the course of our courting, there were frisbees-a-flying, beers-a-flowing, big bad barbeques, and more than a smattering of smooching and cuddles. Being together was easy and always.

We married in 1997, healthy, happy, and excited about our lives. All that we wanted was to be together and continue the fun and goofiness that attracted us to each other in the first place. Simple enough, seeing that we were getting married and all, right?

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How to Deal With Difficult Transitions

By Anne - Sophie Reinhardt / 32 Comments

Transitions: we all face them. Bigger ones and smaller ones, they’re always there. Whether it’s the end of your time in kindergarten, starting a new job, going away to college or simply realizing that your favorite brand of chocolate is not available anymore, life never stands still.

Divorce has been my latest mountain to conquer and it’s been by far the most difficult one to date. Nothing, not even a 14-year long battle with anorexia, can prepare you for the shock and the pain of admitting that your marriage is dead.

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Wanting to Be Stationary

By Nancy Sathre-Vogel / 16 Comments

“I would love to do what you’re doing!” “I so wish I could figure out a way to quit my job and travel like you.” “You’re living the life of my dreams!”

I used to get messages like those on a regular basis. Nearly every day I got an email from yet another person who looked at our life as though it was the ultimate – the pinnacle of aspirations. And it WAS a good life! Together with my husband and children, I was riding my bicycle from Alaska to Argentina. All told, we pedaled 17,285 miles through fifteen countries. Our journey took nearly three years.

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The Five Words That Changed My Life

By David Loker / 42 Comments

I thought that it was never going to end. Wake up. Brush my teeth. Drive to work. Sit at my desk for eight hours. Count the hours from the moment I sit down: Eight, seven, six… Drive home. Make dinner. Eat. … Sleep. Wake up. The truth is, at that point in my life, nothing brought me joy any more. I hated waking up. I hated going to work. By the time I got home, I was so drained and frustrated that I got little joy from my family.

Having a small child left me with virtually no time for myself, and so no hope for recovery from the torture of my mind-numbing job. The only escape I found was the make-believe world of video games, into which I’d dive at every opportunity. As days turned to months, and months into years, I was starting to give up hope. I thought that this must be my lot in life: I was destined to sacrifice myself in the service of others. Although I was dying inside, I held on as best I could in the name of duty.

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The Terrifying Question We Should All Ask Ourselves

By Trent Hand / 54 Comments

I started out very excited about this job. After living and searching for work in Antalya, Turkey for 6 months, including 2 months as an English teacher to children, the opportunity of working for an American company while in Turkey was all I hoped for. Maybe the pay was only $1800/month, but after the exchange rate, this put me in the top 10% of earners in my city. I made 4x the amount of money my fiancée did working almost half the hours. I should have been happy.

I wasn’t.

The first three weeks were exciting. Learning about new products, sales procedures, getting to know the other new starts in my class; all things I truly loved. The job itself was a work-from-home customer service position and I didn’t mind the work. The people calling in were by and large friendly, the company benefits were decent, and the hours were not bad either. Even so, every day I had to drag myself to my desk and start the day.

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