Introduction

I'm writing a book. For you, dear mother! I'd like to share the Introduction with you. I hope you'll get inspired to take good care of yourself, at every level. I'm curious if you'll buy the book. And if you have any wishes you'd like to read about, let me know!

Rock bottom

I'm sitting on a terrace in Cape Town with my daughter. A week ago, I took her to a clinic for a follow-up treatment, and today she has the afternoon off so we can say goodbye. We don't know how long we'll be apart. I've had a rough week. I'd imagined having a week to myself between the drop-off and the goodbye. I could see myself taking long walks, reading, writing, watching movies, absorbing the culture, recharging. But unfortunately, it was none of that. I felt rushed, couldn't find peace, even though I walked, got massages, and found Cape Town beautiful. After three days, I had a migraine that lasted four days—horror—and that was my week.

Wait, I forgot something. On the plane, I met a young woman, I'd guess her early thirties, and I'd been chatting with her in the restroom. She was originally from Belgium but had been living in Cape Town for a while. She thought it would be fun to show me around, so we exchanged numbers. We kept in touch via WhatsApp, but because of that migraine, we didn't manage to meet up until my last evening.

We went out for dinner together, and it soon became clear we'd found each other for a reason. She, like my daughter, had also been in a clinic for an eating disorder and drug addiction. She told me that the turning point for her had come when her sister had set a firm boundary: if you don't commit to treatment, I don't want to see you anymore.

I remember thinking that would never work for my daughter. She would end her life. That was my greatest fear. And it wasn't unfounded; three months before Cape Town, I found her after a suicide attempt, and she spent a day in a coma in intensive care, unsure if she'd make it. So no, a beautiful and inspiring story, but not for us.

Apparently a seed had been planted after all.

From the moment my daughter and I arrived on that terrace, she began: the clinic was terrible, the people weren't nice, the shower was small, it was cold, they didn't understand her, the food wasn't good, she didn't want this at all, what was she even doing here, her complaints were endless. And then came the moment; I broke down completely. I couldn't take it anymore; I didn't want to hear anything more. The words tumbled out of my mouth, a deeply felt truth, but one I had been so afraid of:

I can't do it for you!

I've tried everything, supported you unconditionally, for years my life has revolved around how you're doing, and what has it achieved? You want to die. You've already been through months, years, of treatment, and you haven't even really started yet!

I felt down to my toes that I couldn't save her.

That I had to let go of her process and leave it with her. It wasn't her fault that she had an eating disorder. Disruptive events in her childhood, unresolved pain from me, from her father, possibly even pain from previous generations, all converged in the development of the eating disorder. Not her fault, but her responsibility. A responsibility I had longed to bear for her for years. And had. But it didn't achieve anything. Perhaps it even perpetuated everything; the eating disorder, but also my own patterns. I had to deal with the wreckage within myself, the deferred maintenance of myself. I had to accept my loss. I was her mother, but I couldn't save her; that was the bitter truth. And the strange thing was, that realization also brought me relief. Now we could move on. She on her path of recovery, not alone, but by herself. And I on mine.

I didn't spare her there on the terrace. I was completely honest. Everything came out. Tears, screams, and when I was done, she was silent. We were both silent. And then she said, "You're right, it's true. I actually thought you could do it for me, too. I haven't really started yet either." The rest of the afternoon was so real, so pure, so magical. We both felt something had broken through. Something big and important. I felt peace and space when we said goodbye. We had both moved on.

The following week, I spoke with her therapist via Zoom. She said, "Your intervention on that terrace has been more effective than all the interventions of the past three months. She's committed, she's cooperating, she's in recovery!"

However, I want to qualify this immediately. This book isn't a hallelujah story with an easy-going happy ending. No, it certainly wasn't my intervention that helped my daughter recover. The ground was fertile thanks to the previous treatments, and apparently, she had reached the point where she truly wanted to recover. Because she did all the hard work herself; that credit goes to no one else. Recovery was so difficult that for that reason alone, she never wants to relapse, she never wants to have to walk that path again. And she hasn't relapsed; she's been recovered for years, 100%.

It took me a long time to recover from those agonizing years. My daughter suffered from anorexia from age twelve to eighteen. And I suffered with her all that time. In my own way. Of course, I suffered as a mother, but I perhaps suffered even more from my own patterns of coping with the fear, sadness, and anger.

Fear, sadness, anger. These are perfectly normal emotions when your child is so ill. What made it even more intense was that these emotions also touched upon old wounds, my own pain that was separate from the eating disorder. This caused me to fall back on the same coping strategies I'd used all my life to keep my head above water. Breaking those patterns was what my journey was all about.

It's been a long road for both of us, in our own ways. Perhaps that's the essence of this book. That you and your child have a different path to follow, a separate one. We can't do it for her [1] . That was a huge revelation.

When I discovered my daughter wasn't eating, I initially thought I could fix it if I just tried hard enough. I was completely blown away! From my background as a psychologist, I knew a fair amount about eating disorders. I'd also had an eating disorder myself, and from that experience, I knew it wasn't a matter of eating or not eating, but rather dealing with feelings, dealing with life. About self-esteem. About having a grip. With this knowledge, my own experience, and the right support, I thought I could help my daughter get over it.

And that is a normal response to stress, that we initially fight (fix).

In the case of an eating disorder, however, it's not a sustainable response. An eating disorder often lasts too long for that. It becomes a chronic source of stress. When it comes to dealing with chronic stressors, we need something else to stay healthy. We have to get back to ourselves, often forced by physical and/or mental health issues. And we have to take responsibility for our own process. A process that is essentially about healing our own wounds and learning new, healthy coping strategies and loving self-care.

Because, very importantly, we can't do it for her, but she can't do it for us either.

It's incredibly difficult; our child is trapped in an eating disorder, and we're trapped in our preoccupation with our child, both literally and figuratively. It's called codependency. Our child is dependent on the eating disorder, and we've become dependent on our preoccupation with our child. Our child is ill, and we start thinking, feeling, and acting ill too. We lose our clarity, our own space, and our strength. We lose our connection with ourselves.

If we're not careful, we'll put our mental, emotional, and physical health in the hands of our child. If she's better, then I'll be better, we think. But our child cannot and should not be the source of our well-being. So, just as our child faces the difficult task of breaking free from the eating disorder, we face the difficult task of breaking free from fixing and controlling our child. Just like our child, we must make the journey within to feel better and achieve lasting recovery.

I wrote this book as a guide in that process, as a guide on the inner journey. A guide has experience in the area, knows the obstacles, the steep slopes, but also the resting places, bright spots, and highlights. A guide can point the way, show possibilities, but we must walk it ourselves. It is our path, and we choose, moment by moment, which turn we take. It helps to view your inner journey as an adventure. And to realize that a difficult or exciting journey can also be a beautiful and valuable one.

[1] Where I write her, I also mean his and them . This is to increase readability.