Anita Johnston - Eating in the light of the moon: how women can transform their relationships with food through myth, metaphors & storytelling

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Table of Contents

To my mother,
Emilie Anita Green Johnston
And my daughters,
Liana Anita Orenstein
Ariel Emilie Orenstein

Daylight is one thing,
moonlight another.
Things take on a different look
beneath the moon than beneath
the sun. And it well might be
that to the Spirit the light of
the moon would appear to yield
the truer illumination.

Thomas Mann

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge those who assisted me in the growth of this project: Mary Moccia and Nada Mangialetti, with whom I cofounded the Anorexia and Bulimia Center of Hawaii, for their help in providing fertile ground for sowing the seeds for this book; Gail Cannon, for sharing my vision during germination and giving shelter to fragile seedlings; Dale Gilmartin, for providing poetic inspiration and encouragement so the roots could take hold; Sharon Dougherty, my transcriptionist, for helping to create a structure strong enough to support expansion; Marian Miller, for sharing personal and professional insights that provided the nourishment for vigorous growth; Dick Rapson, a seasoned gardener, for introducing me to Faith Hamlin, my former agent, who could envision blooms before by buds appeared; and Jim Ellison, for editing out the weeds with a keen eye and an open heart.

I would like to thank Norma Jean Stodden, Patty Kincaid, Velvalee, Marilyn and Morty Orenstein, Mare Grace and the women in my New Moon group, who all visited my garden from time to time and provided me with much appreciated encouragement and support. And I would like to express my gratitude to Roger Jellinek, my agent, and Lindsey Hall and Leigh Cohn at Grze Books for showing me the rainbow after the storm.

Most of all, I would like to thank my husband, colleague, friend, and lover, Steve Orenstein, who was with me every step of the way to help cultivate my vision, pull out the weeds of doubt, provide an endless supply of editorial and technical support, and give the warmth, light, and love all things need to grow.

And last, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to all the women who over the years trusted me with their stories and helped me to understand what it takes to truly nourish oneself and come into full bloom, especially those who have given me permission to use disguised versions of their stories in this book.

Preface

My interest in disordered eating evolved out of my clinical work with womens issues in therapy, those issues related to the experience of being female in our society today. Disordered eating emerged as a struggle prevalent among women. As more and more girls and women with eating disorders came to see me, I found myself fascinated by them because, contrary to what I had been led to believe by my colleagues and what much of the literature had indicated, they were not terribly difficult, resistant clients but some of the brightest, most talented, most creative people I had ever met. This, however, was not how they perceived themselves. They saw themselves as incompetent, worthless, and unattractive. Intrigued by this discrepancy between my perception and theirs, I listened carefully to their stories.

By offering up their life stories for scrutiny, these women were hoping to find some clues, some answers, to the origin of this mysterious obsession that consumed their lives. One woman would tell of the abuse she suffered from her father, while another would describe a father who encouraged her and applauded her every accomplishment. One woman would describe an alcoholic mother who was preoccupied with survival and had little nurturing to give her while another would tell of her experience with a doting, sometimes overprotective mother. There were women who suffered the loss of a parent through death or divorce and women whose families remained close-knit units. For every tale of woe there was a tale of a life with few apparent hardships.

While no particular pattern emerged from the details of their stories, I began to notice an underlying theme, a certain flavor to their diverse experiences that remained constant. The common thread seemed to be a pervasive sense of not quite fitting in, of not quite seeing things the way others did, of being a misfit.

I learned that as very young girls, these women were bright and gifted and had an exceptional ability to perceive subtle realities. More often than not, a woman who struggled with disordered eating was once a girl who saw the invisible, who read between the lines, who sensed when things were not right. She noticed when people said one thing but did another. She could discern certain patterns of behavior and anticipate what was to come next. She knew when someone was being insincere or dishonest.

Her family, for one reason or another, did not appreciate her gift. They did not want to be confronted with discrepancies in their behavior or to address what seemed to be odd concerns or avantgarde ideas. They did not want to deal with her ultrasensitivity to emotional undercurrents, and at times they were threatened by her precociousness. Whenever she spoke the truth or questioned what was going on, she received a very clear message (often nonverbal) that this outspoken and questioning behavior was not okay and even dangerous to the stability of the family.

Since this childs survival depended on fitting into the family, she had to find a way to dim her light so her parents wouldnt be overwhelmed, so her brothers and sisters wouldnt feel jealous and reject her, so serious problems in the functioning of the family wouldnt be revealed and result in its possible disintegration. She collaborated with the other family members by taking a position that something was wrong with her perception, that something was wrong with her. After all, no one else in the family saw things the way she did.

As she searched for something to distract her from her discomfort and to diminish her perceptions, the girl began to feel the first stirrings of her obsession with food.

She may have been a young girl who intuited from her mothers behavior that her parents marriage was a loveless one. This frightened her so much that she ate compulsively in an attempt to stuff down the truth that threatened to tear her family apart. Even though she suffered greatly from school yard taunts about her weight, at least she was able to keep this secret from entering her awareness on a daily basis and from being revealed to other family members.

She may have been a girl who discerned that in order to please her ambitious, workaholic stepfather, she needed to squelch her natural artistic tendencies. She discovered that keeping herself in a constant state of hunger could distract her from any need for creative expression that might cause conflict between them and interfere with her achievement of the goals he valued. Although her anorexia eventually created much concern and distress in her family, at least she was able to maintain her much coveted connection with him by hiding this differentness from herself as well as from him.

She may have been a girl gifted with beauty, intelligence, and lots of friends who noticed that her single mother withdrew affection whenever she became excited about her social activities and that her older sister acted resentful whenever she was successful academically. She discovered that having a problem with food kept their feelings of jealousy at bay because they would no longer be threatened by her perfection. Having something with which to struggle enabled her to join their aint life tough club and reduced the chances of their rejecting her.

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