“I’d go days without eating, then spend a few days eating and purging everything in sight. Any unplanned food or meals resulted in needing to do an extra workout, self harming, purging, or intentionally making myself sick. It was like someone else was living in my mind dictating my every move and, though I hated following along, I ultimately had no control.”
‘No matter what new weight I hit, it wouldn’t stop until I was dead.’: Eating disorder survivor shares road to recovery
‘My mom said, ‘You can’t return to work. You need to get better.’: Woman shares journey to OCD diagnosis, managing symptoms
“I was experiencing multiple panic attacks a day and major sensory overload. I’d walk away mid-conversation from a customer because I couldn’t take any more information in and needed to shut my eyes as they were so sensitive to light. I had absolutely no awareness or concern about whether this came across as rude. To me, I was in survival mode.”
Autism Mom Guilt Is Real—Here Is What You Need To Know
“Because our children need so much from us, that feeling of ‘am I doing enough’ always seems to be at the forefront.”
‘I am more than my body.’: Eating disorder survivor talks road to recovery, embracing body outside societal expectations
“I’d cry every single day, unable to sleep out of fear of not being able to control my eating the next day. I was afraid to hang out with friends because of how I looked. I returned back to my younger self, inside her room struggling with food. I felt like a total failure.”
Dear Doctor: Google Didn’t Give Me Hope, You Should Have
“Please do not give us the most devastating information we could get, and then leave us in the dark. Learn to take the time to hold my hand and explain.”
5 Lessons I Never Really Paid Attention To Until My Life Flipped Upside Down
“When lying here in a hospital bed, I know the Ted Baker bag isn’t going to heal my brain, but the memories will help it feel a bit better.”
‘The neurologist said, ‘All girls your age have seizures. You’re fine, go live your life.’: EDS, epilepsy warrior shares struggles of navigating chronic illness as a black woman
“When the doctor came in, he spoke to me as if he didn’t believe I could possibly have my conditions. I told him my bones, particularly my patellas, needed support and I’d prefer if we didn’t check those, but he insisted. He pushed my kneecaps to the side and then said ‘oops’ as he easily dislocated one.”
‘You may have a medical certificate, but you don’t have a certificate in me.’: Woman with rare disease pleas for doctors’ compassion, trust
“There are so many conditions out there and it’s impossible to know how to respond to them all, but patience, kindness, compassion, and a belief in your patient is a good place to start.”
‘I’ve always felt like everyone else was given an instruction manual to life, but not me.’: Autistic student shares diagnosis, unmasking journey
“‘Why don’t you do something normal for once?’ They would pretend to be interested in what I was doing but then talk to me like a baby and leave to go laugh with their friends. All of this was really confusing at the time, and I’m only just starting to realize how awful some of these people actually were.”
‘She has her differences, but she is still our little girl.’: Mom shares daughter’s rare Nager Syndrome diagnosis journey
“How could this be happening when everything had been so normal for the last 34 weeks? Concerned. That word still haunts me. We were almost done with the pregnancy, and to just find out something was abnormal was tough to process.”