OCTOBER 17, 2003 | SHORT HILLS, NJ

There's a reason for why I'm sharing this with you. As I mentioned in My Anorexia Nervosa essay, there are many factors which contribute to an eating disorder. For me, my lack of control in regards to the many times I moved for my Father's career, changing schools, having to make new friends, moving houses, enduring a strict upbringing with very little exercise in personal decision making, I chose to focus on the one thing I could control: my body and it's intake of food.

Over time it becomes an obsession and as we see in this entry, it's only been 3 years since I was first made aware of my body, and the Voice has become incredibly stronger. I have to let you know that by no means was I overweight. I was 16 at the time and yes my body was changing - I was softer, growing slight curves - but these changes were/are normal. It is called puberty and what should be seen as an incredibly wonderful and exciting transition into a woman.

There isn't ONE sole person to blame in my story. There are just way too many factors - all of which I plan to tackle. However, Society doesn't make it easy for us to love anything BUT the image of perfection. Also, growing up in an NHL Wives Room, I was constantly surrounded by gorgeous, expensive, put-together women. A tribe of trophy wives, if you will. So, my idea of being anything less than one of them, once I started to become a women, was devastating.

The point here is that one's weight doesn't dictate whether someone is cool or not. Also, we tend to focus on the way someone looks VERSUS what is going on inside. For example: someone with an eating disorder, although visible to others as we slowly disappear physically, it's our internal organs (our heart, our brain, our kidneys, our liver, our nervous system, our endocrine system, etc) that are the ones dying inside.

THE LACK OF CONVERSATION ON THIS PARTICULAR PART OF THE ILLNESS DRIVES ME MAD both amidst professionals and those who are ill. We need a MAJOR re-shift on our idea of BEAUTY, and move it towards the idea of HEALTH. That is all for now.

p.s. I hated New Jersey.