EDRSC
ZINE
VOL
1.,
ISSUE
1.
100% of the proceeds from this zine will be used to fund individuals coming out of ED recovery.
Thank you to all who submitted their beautiful work!
- The EDRSC team
ZINE DESIGNED BY CLAIRE WILLIAMS
come in by MiMi
2
CONTENTS
1
cat therapy by natalie bosco
clay shaped models by mixy
5-6
3-4 sneaky mind by saive
every night i dance with her by s
7
6
to the graveyard shift cashier at jean coutu by elizabeth r.
c o f f e e by lexi kelly
9 - 10
8
anorexia nervosa: a medical dossier by jennifer lee
only for a second though by kaylina kodlick
12
11 - 12
talking heads by anonymous
confessions of a diet rebel by elle
15
13 - 14
recovery begins with a whisper by leina kingdom
awareness mindset by liam fowler
back cover
This publication contains prose and art that depict eating disorder thoughts and behaviors, body imagery, mental illness and hospitalization.
CUMULATIVE TRIGGER WARNINGS We understand that everyone has different triggers and that this zine includes sensitive topics. This table briefly highlights the types of content each page includes, so that you can make the best decision for yourself about which pages you feel comfortable viewing and which you would like to avoid.
come in
Mentions of anorexia, bulimia, admission
page 1
cat therapy
Drawing/animation of struggles with mental
page 2
illness, grief
clay shaped models pages 3-4
Writing about the various motives underlying an eating disorder; mentions of “fatness� as a label, of eating disorder mind, cancer; analysis of societal pressures relating to eating disorders
sneaky mind
Poem about experiencing anxiety
pages 5-6
every night i dance with her page 6
Poem about experiencing a toxic obsession, entrapment, dependence
to the graveyard shift
Poem about purging; mentions
cashier at jean coutu
external judgement on grocery
page 7
purchases
coffee
Using coffee as a meal replacement;
page 8
restrictive behaviour
anorexia nervosa: a
Drawing: hospitalization, childhood
medical dossier
trauma, nutrition labels, food, medical
pages 9-10
drawing of body; mentions of male and female, word “anorexia,” effects of anorexia, word “fat”
only for a second though pages 11-1
2
talking heads page 1
2
Sketches of nude body images
Poem about the relationship of womanhood and body image, use of word “fat”; mentions of family, femininity
confessions of a diet rebel
3 4
pages 1 -1
Narrative about eating disorder recovery and journey with diet culture (gluten diet), working out, and learning self-acceptance; pictures of ice cream and milkshakes
(mentions anorexia, bulimia, orthorexia)
recovery begins with a whisper page 1
5
Story of moment they realized they needed help; Mention restriction, anorexia, description of body, battle with ED voice and rules; focus and mention of numbers
awareness mindset
back cover
Photo of a male body’s torso;
shows outline of muscles
1 Come in.
We drank together in a bar in the Village. We caught up. We hadn’t seen each for 6 weeks, but we caught up on years. Everything we had missed in each other’s lives - having met only 5 years ago.
There was a lot to say. It had taken us 5 years to say it. We shared a sore memory or two. We considered and consoled. We learned we had suffered similar pains, at similar points and, when it came to pick over it, for similar reasons.
I had casually exposed my struggles with eating. Or rather, with not eating. I used the word. I said it. Anorexia. I covered it over quickly with more words, with description of the years that followed. I left it alone. But you heard it, and put it in your pocket for later, for safe keeping.
Then, there it was, all bold and shining, like a gaudy Christmas decoration or a neon welcome sign. You gave it to me - an admission. You too had suffered the same pain. Anorexia, and then Bulimia, the withholding, the purging. All of it laid there before us. And we felt relief and released. A person staring back at each of us who might just get it, who might just know how to come in.
Come in
by MiMi
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2
Cat Therapy
by Natatlie Bosco
••••••••
3 Disclaimer: I know having an eating disorder is a very difficult thing to battle. These excerpts are only here to help guide you when you are wanting to get help and stem from my personal experiences. Professional help is important in this situation and you should not have to go through this alone. Being called fat is not something most people will like being called, our society has shaped us into clay models that say, fat is bad, skinny is good. We have let them model our clay into whatever shape they want us to and that’s why we go to measures to be what the sculptors want us to be. If someone has called you fat, you have to realize there are two ways to react. It’s natural to get mad and think they are right, but is their opinion a fact? Is it a known fact or is it an opinion? It is an opinion because it is from their lens based on preconceived notions they received. Just like one person can love the president and the next will count the days for the next president. Neither opinion is a fact, but a perception they took on from family or the news. You can take their criticism as a fact or an opinion. If you take it as fact, the problem will be that you may take it to heart and try to change yourself according to their lens. This does stem from not feeling worthy about yourself if you see others’ views as a fact to how you are. I have personally struggled with this and I understand that when you value someone’s company, you also value their opinions. If you really did feel that sense of worthiness, you would not take the other's word as a knife to the heart. First ask yourself this simple question and if you feel the need to change yourself because of a comment, that means you’re letting yourself go metaphorically. This will take time because you will have to strip away society’s labels of what good and bad are. What you have to remember is society’s labels are all based on opinions, opinions that change all the time. You don’t have to be shaped though, because the beautiful thing is, you are the clay. No one else can be the clay, but you can decide if you’re going to let yourself shape the way you are or let another person decide where your arm should move or what shape you need to be. I think this is the cool thing. They aren’t living on your clay, so what gives them that right to take away your clay? What’s fun anyways about being the same size as every clay figure in the art studio and the same design, doesn’t that make it boring. You bring your own colors to the modeling clay.
4 Let us dive into what your motive was for being in this eating disorder mind. Notice I say, eating disorder mind because we become attached to this label. For most people who struggle with an eating disorder, it doesn’t have to just do with wanting to be skinny. If this were the case, there wouldn’t be therapists specialized in eating disorders, trying to find out where this all started. You wanted to be skinny because of something else. Maybe you were told to diet because of a sport you’re in or someone around you told you to lose weight. Don’t stop here, though, there is a deeper issue to this. It isn’t just simply, » my coach told me to lose weight, so I spiraled into an eating disorder. » For most of the reasons, you weren’t wanting to lose weight for yourself, it’s because of an external person or force. Sometimes we feel a strong attachment to something and feel we would do anything for this thing. You love track, so even if you got told to lose weight and clean up your diet, you would. These diets can be restrictive though and it usually won’t just stop here. You know why? You aren’t losing weight because you want to, you’re losing weight for an outside validation of some sort. People don’t develop eating disorders from wanting to generally be healthy and not only focusing on losing weight . They want to feel more energized and happy, internally, not just for the sake of losing weight for another outside force. You have to keep asking yourself, why do you want to lose weight? Why has that thing made you so attached? What does that have to do with your internal state? Is that to actually make you happy or others around you? This eating disorder wasn’t brought up just because of your inner world, the outside world has impacted you in some way. You felt that being skinny would equal happiness and happiness would equate to security in everything in life. It all stems from a fear of the unknown. Being heavier, you thought, would mean society would be less likely to accept you, your peers , your parents, your passions. It didn’t stem from simply, losing weight is just for me. In my case, losing weight was because I didn’t want to be rejected from my peers and fit in, but even deeper I thought,’’What would my classmates think if I were heavier? ‘’I needed something to control, and couldn't control my classmate’s reaction. You may feel you need control because you can’t control anyone else’s reactions.
Clay Shaped Models
by Mixy
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sneaky mind
by Seive
•••••••••••
Anxiety is paralyzing
My body picks on everything
As a big burden
My body doesn’t know how to rest.
My heart races, my chest
Weights too heavy for my weakened body.
Restlessness is paralyzing
My mind slowly dives into
The pool of negative thoughts
And toxic cycles that were patiently waiting for me.
I am forceless.
I am powerlessly
Watching the whole scene
Unveil in the most familiar manner.
Sneaky mind that plays me
For a fool.
5
6
I am in love with her and she cannot be mine.
I am tied too much to the life I have to run away with her,
But still she begs for my company each night.
I love all of her complexities,
Every part of her appeals to me, and scares me.
When I cry she has her hands in mine.
When I laugh she is in the corner of my eyes.
Is it cruel to keep seeing her?
If I sway with her I will never take the lead.
Some days I hope I may follow her home,
Count path stones and follow her rhythm.
Choosing her would be selfish and cruel,
Abandoning everything I have built up just for her.
Yet she is determined, and magnetic.
When I believe she has finally grown tired of the dancing,
She appears again with that soft touch,
Tracing my spine with her boney fingers.
Counting each vertebrate and reminding me of her company,
I want to break away, the dancing hurts too much.
It’s a habit to follow the steps of the dance,
Even as I try to find a way to stop.
Every Night I Dance With Her.
by S
•••••••••••••••••••••••
sickle me down with that sick shame; bursting and banging out each beat of my heart
for the sixth time this week, i catch you eyeing the purgatives in my cart
perceiving all of it from my perception of your watch.
my teeth feel coated with the fresh spleen of self-judgement oozing out;
a replasing scratch of a scythe to my subdued graceless guts
leaving my finger burning from the reminder of remaining foul insides
stripping layers of baggy slips down to reveal my throat choking up
whispers of watered down whys. taking plunges into deep end walls filled with just droplets of water
i’m still swimming a current with waves whirling against me
fighting for trying to pull together each loose thread in hopes i’d be
stitched into a perfect yarn ball instead.
pleading to finally win against all the waste i’ve spent years injecting
racing against the rummage of which i’m becoming.
were you expecting a delicate nymph instead gracing tonight’s checkout line?
rosey glittering sequins illuminating from her maiden smile —
tough luck sir, my gums ooze nothing but day old bile.
amid this late night hour are those who go out to find life for themselves
then fools who lurk in envy asphyxiating any lust for it at all
swallowed whole by your own sense of self, despite you swallowing it down
rejecting any glimpse of inner fulfillment from morsels of fullness
before ejecting everything all up in return.
can i allow myself to ask you to look at my fumbling face?
peering straight inward to the crux of my gaze —
for if you stare closely enough i swear that there is still
a speck of glitter that sparkles in my eye.
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c o f f e e
by Lexi Kelly
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9
10
Anorexia Nervosa: A Medical Dossier
by Jennifer Lee
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11
Only For a Second Though
by Lina Kay
talking heads anonymous my eating disorder voice
is the voice of my mother
my grandmothers and my aunts
the voices of the women in my life whose words are a room full of broken furniture
that catch my knee and cut my forearm as I squeeze through
their stinging reprimands bruising my wrists
my eating disorder voice
is a chorus
a concert of femininity and a proclamation of womanhood
singing to me
that my fat body is a caveat to my gender
so I ask for forgiveness for knowing that I am fat and being fat anyways
because when I ignore my eating disorder voice,
it tells me that I don’t deserve to feel like a woman
if I don’t even care about feeling like a woman
my own voice
is soft and wavering
it is ice for the bruising
a gentle reminder that I am allowed to be who I know I am
12
Confessions of a diet rebel
(or the day I decided to commit to recovery fro
Because winter is already here, I have been thinking about ways to approach this time of year with a positive mindset and attitude towards my body. I know that some of my friends and family will follow detox, cleanses, HIIT training, and other diets to get “summer-body-ready”. I know that I will face diet talk, comments about my food, about my body, and it might be difficult to find an answer to all of them (if any).
During my recovery journey from an eating disorder, I have learnt a great deal about the diet culture, self-love and self-acceptance, and have realized that as long as I try to fit into other people’s bodies, I will never live my own life. I want to share with you some of the things I learnt, so that we can welcome summer and make the most out of it!
The diet culture we live in is telling us that there is such a thing as a perfect body. It “worships thinness”, “promotes weight loss” and “demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others” as Christy Harrison, an anti-diet registered dietician and intuitive eating counsellor puts it.
Even if we don’t talk about diets anymore — because most of us have realized that they are not effective — we are now obsessing over healthy living. Don’t we all know that one person who is avoiding gluten to “lose weight”, or the one who is exercising intensely after the Christmas break or avoiding even the Diet Coke because “sugar is bad for you”. While those behaviours are labelled by society as “healthy”, they may lead to a lifestyle that can become very dangerous when adopted in an excessively rigorous manner.
Here are a few reasons why I stopped listening to those so-called healthy tips:
• They are the first steps down a very slippery slope that may lead to an eating disorder. Restriction is a main characteristic of anorexia. Endless cycles of restrictions and binges are characteristics of bulimia. Orthorexia, although not well known, is linked to the obsession over healthy food. There are many forms of eating disorders, but all are influenced by the weight stigma promoted by the diet culture.
• Those behaviours prevented me from engaging fully in my own social, professional and personal life, by forcing me to stick to a strict diet and exercise schedule.
• Those behaviours deeply rooted me in the diet culture: they lower my self-esteem, self-confidence and overall mental wellbeing. I was constantly comparing myself with so-called perfect bodies and bought into the marketing of “healthy” foods that made me doubt what I ate.
• The sacralisation of healthy lifestyles shames certain types of bodies. Although this issue is being spoken of a lot more, and celebrities such as Taylor Swift, Demi Lovato and Jennifer Lawrence are starting to speak about their own issues with disordered eating and weight stigma, body shaming is still very much present in our societies.
13
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om ED)
The word “healthy” has been deprived of its original meaning which is “possessing or enjoying a good health and a sound and vigorous mentality, conducive to good health”. A quick Google search of the word gives plenty of results such as “healthy recipes for weight loss”. Somehow, weight loss is associated with being healthy. But what about having a strong mentality? What about feeling good about oneself? What about enjoying life?
During my journey to recovery from anorexia nervosa, I have come across a new generation of dietetics and nutrition specialists who promote intuitive eating (IE) and health at every size (HAES).
The overall idea is to listen to one’s body, to give it what it wants and needs, and to reject the weight stigma that is dominant in our society.
It is a call to recognize that the current weight standards are not valid for everyone and that weight should not be yet another point of discrimination. This winter, instead of following another diet to be “ready” for summer, why don’t we learn to accept, take care of and love our bodies as they are? Here are a few ways I like to do so:
• Wear clothes that fit my body and that make me feel good
• Eat food whenever I am hungry or thinking about food too much, as it will allow me to take my mind off food and enjoy the present
• Move my body in ways that are comfortable and fun to me
• Eat the food I want!
• Write two things I am grateful for daily
• Talk to myself as I would to a friend
• Feel free to leave a conversation that is praising the diet culture or based around it. I try to change the topic, or simply explain that I do not want to share into diets and body talks
Rejecting the diet culture is not easy. Loving your body is not innate. They are both skills that we can and should learn.
I hope that you can find ways to love and accept yourself, and when you have, inspire others to do so.
Love, Elle
I stand in the shower. A solution of warm droplets and tears trickle down my face, glide over my collar bones and slowly roll down my stomach. I am cloaked by the warm mist of the shower, but I shiver.
A sea of voices echo between my ears, each fighting for their message to be heard. The loudest ones shout out numbers, numbers I have repeatedly witnessed on scales, numbers I have memorized on the back of food packaging, numbers that dictate how much I will eat today, dictate how hungry I will be tomorrow. Others shout out words of punishment for disobeying my strict boundaries I that I do not dare to cross. Beneath the loud voices is a whisper, the kind so faint it blends into the background noise of the running shower. I slide my hand onto the shower knob and turn off the water. I wrap my exhausted body in a dry towel, a towel so big it drapes over my small frame. My wet feet walk across the cold bathroom floor. I sit on the edge of the bathtub. With hesitation, I call out my mother, my voice so timid it barely travels across the bathroom walls. My mother enters, initially perplexed. As she sees my bloodshot eyes swmming in tears, she wraps her arms around my frail body. I weep helplessly into her chest as she rocks me from side to side.
At this moment the loud voices cease to shout, giving way for the soft whisper to be heard. Through my sniffles and tears I murmur to my mother:“It’s time I get help”. In 2017, I developed an eating disorder. After a year of struggle, I finally recognized that I needed help. 3 years later, although I do have my ups and downs, I can happily say I am recovered. To those reading who are afraid to seek help, who are afraid of breaking their own rules, who are afraid of letting go, know that your fear is real. Yet, fear should never prevent you from starting your journey to recovery.
15
RECOVERY BEGINS WITH A WHISPER
by Leina Kingdom
Contributors Natalie Bosco
moonlights as an artist and daylights as a teacher. She is currently working on a drawing series centered around inspiring women in pop-culture, titled “Sensitive Badasses�. She works mainly in watercolour, gouache, and pencil crayon, and her work draws inspiration (pun always intended) from 90s nostalgia, especially the video games, movies, and tv shows of her childhood. Follow her on Instagram @cozytheriveter
jennifer lee
As a third year student in Studio Arts and Psychology at Concordia University, I am interested in the discourses of art therapy and mental illness. Hoping to pursue a degree in art therapy in the future, my body of work focuses on dissecting my painful past experiences as a way of creating vulnerable work to establish an intimate connection with the viewer. I explore aspects of my anorexia, anxiety, depression, isolation, to document a time plagued with these mental illnesses and move forward, creating a voice to destigmatize mental illness. By scrutinizing my own experiences, I produce works surrounding the theme of transformation and growth, in an attempt to finally put an end to this chapter in my life, as well as speak out for these issues. In creating these interactive works, I attempt to put the audience in my shoes and the shoes of many others suffering in silence.
My goal as an interdisciplinary artist is to explore the power of art therapy and share my raw and vulnerable memories in order to form that connection with the viewer otherwise alienated from the work. I am motivated by creative ideas effecting positive change and challenging the world we live in.
mimi
writes things and never shows a soul. She chronically withholds on all levels.
elizabeth r.
is a 18 year old freshman at McGill University studying Psychology and English Literature. Her work has previously been featured in Visibly Affirming and Soliloquie Magazine. When not writing, you can find her listening to Fiona Apple, advocating for mental health support & resources, and purchasing vinyls for her non-existent record player.
To anyone reading this zine, I hope you know that you're loved.
MIXY
My name is Mixy and I have struggled with anorexia and eating disorders in my past. I have overcome anorexia and am writing a story about having anorexia and how I personally overcame it. These two excerpts are from the book I am writing about eating disorders and possibilities for the cause of having anorexia.
LIAM FOWLER
After a few years farming in the mountains of Vermont and studying sustainable agriculture at Middlebury College, Liam decided to uproot from the fields and head into the kitchen where he cultivated a care for nourishing bodies and sharing meals with loved ones and strangers alike. These habits fall in line with fueling the active lifestyle that Liam pursues in trying to become amphibious in his co-habitance of the McGill pool and Jeanne-Mance tennis courts. His most recent interests pull him into the world of dietetic counselling, seeking to reduce the distinction between physical and mental well-being and instead promote their integration in treating holistic-health via social services
RESOURCE PAGE DESIGNED BY OLIVIA FENG
Awareness Mindset
by Liam Fowler
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