When writing Lying in Weight, I listened to many stories of devastation and hope. I heard about relapses and slips, hard work and ultimate triumph. As I compiled each chapter, I imagined how readers would receive the stories, as I interpreted them.
My book tour, which ended a short while ago, left little to the imagination. I met people from all walks of life, gasping at horrific statistics, laughing at ridiculous thoughts, crying as they told me about their daughters, mothers, grandmothers, stepmothers, sisters, friends -- and themselves.
I met a 40-something mother in Boston who is, for the first time, getting help for anorexia; a teen from a therapeutic boarding school In New Manchester, Vermont who cried as she told me about her mother and sister (both have anorexia) and her fears of going down the same eating-disordered path; a young woman in Milwaukee who whispered to her boyfriend -- after I explained the five categories of men who partner up with women who have eating disorders. "You’re the rescuer kind," she said. And he grinned in recognition.
I talked to a graduate student in molecular biology at the University of Chicago, who told me how it pains her to see her middle-aged, anorexic mother drive a car, the elder’s thigh is so thin, pressing on the accelerator. What vexes the daughter, with all her smarts and insights into genes and DNA, is how little she understands about her mother’s vicious disease. She sees her mom’s bony thigh, pressing down hard on the accelerator. Where is the elder going as she rides through midlife?
Nowhere, the daughter tells me, "She’s never going to give up her eating disorder."
There was psychologist Lynn Stern in Pittsburgh, the only one in the area seeing patients with eating disorders, who sent me her fabulous workbook. There were TV anchors, radio hosts, and reporters turning the tables and asking me (usually the interviewer) the questions.
And the 65 people who came out to Joseph Beth books in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, to welcome their local author home. Some knew me when I was very sick. I can still see their faces after hearing me talk, a mixture of joy, disbelief at how far I’ve healed, and pride in who I have become.
The stories go on and on. And I weep sometimes at the tragedies that seem beyond hope.
But then I hear the healing tales. A woman in the Small Stones bookstore in Milwaukee came up to the table where I was signing books. In her hand, she clutched a shopping bag with my book. A Post-it note took her straight to a page on which she had highlighted the following passage.
“We never expect an alcoholic to go into a bar and have a beer, just one beer, three times a day. Never more or less," I had written. "So why do we expect a woman with an eating disorder to eat three meals a day, not too much, not too little.”
"Now I get it," she told me as she spoke about her 26-year-old daughter, who has anorexia and is living at home. The daughter is getting help. The woman and her husband are doing something -- they're getting smarter about the disease.
As I continue to make my way through real people’s lives, stocked full of terror, pain and incredible triumph, I understand more clearly the purpose of putting my heart and passion into writing Lying in Weight. It's about changing lives. And that engenders a profound catharsis. I realize that I have put my own life out there, on paper, computer screens, radio, and TV. People are gaining from my effort, which is a wonderful metaphor in a society fixated on fat, where everyone is trying so hard to lose.