Desperate for Help...... and..... PostSecret.....

As life went on and we tried so desperately to get help for you during the first couple years of the illness....I.....the queen of self-help and support groups decided to contact as many organizations as possible to try and learn as much as I possibly could to educate myself. It was very daunting at first not knowing anything about the life-threatening illness that was beginning to take over your life.

This may not have been such a good idea, because one of the first letters I wrote in 2002 was to a place called ANRED (Anorexia Nervosa & Related Eating Disorders). I have posted the letter, but I will tell you it was the worse thing I could have read at that time, so discouraging, depressing, so horrible that it haunted me for years to come. I never forgot those words...


"Experience does suggest that if the person is not ready to change, then nothing can be done to make her change. And as you know, the risk is high that she will not live long enough to experience a desire to change, especially while her brain is impaired by malnutrition".

Around 2005 I then decided to write a few letters to Oprah, since that is the first place I ever heard of the bazaar world of eating disorders in the first place. There was a girl she had on her show several years trying to help her recover to no avail. She ended up dying of her illness, it was so sad. I wrote to probably 4 or 5 total talk show hosts or people in the media like Robin Roberts, Maury, Tyra...etc.   I never heard back from anyone of them. I guess deep down inside I have a small bit of resentment to them all.

Why was everyone elses story more important than ours....? 

Here are 2 letters in which I saved in order to look back on later...like now

After never hearing anything from the media, I gave up on that idea and went on with life. 

         PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.  You were so exited about it after finding it on the Internet. You would beg me to go there every Sunday to check out the new secrets that would change every week. It is a very popular website dedicated to helping a Suicide Hotline save young people. They even have several books with Postsecrets in them that they sell all over.

I even sent one in at one point, which I don't think ever made it on the website. You went crazy making some, yet never ended up sending them in. I think they were still very therapeutic and with your creativity in art you just enjoyed making them.   There was a time too that you got this brilliant idea of having people who were in treatment or  ED hospital programs create cards and send them to you. You wanted to have it dedicated just to people with the same problems you lived with to see if it would be of help. I remember you wrote a letter to Frank Warren (founder of Postsecret)....but never heard back.  You even called some programs, a few were actually interested, yet it never really got off the ground.  You always wanted to help others...that was one of your wonderful qualities.  If you ever saw anyone who was going down the same path that you had gone you would discourage them immediately.

I wanted to share some of the cards you created......some are incredibly powerful

 I am thinking of sending a few in myself..it's very freeing and psychologically cleansing....

I truly miss you more each day.......m