I know I haven't written in a while, so I wanted to
introduce myself a little to those who don't know me.

Not that I really know where to begin :) Maybe I'll
just take some excerpts from my web site. It’s kind
of long, but I hope you can identify and find strength
in my trials and triumphs.

I went on my first diet at 14 in 1989 with a friend
who suggested I do Weight Watchers with her. My
family didn't put any kind of an emphasis on body
size, so I hadn’t thought about my weight up to this
point. The time in my life, however, was key. My
father had just moved out of the house, and my mother
had just been released from a rehabilitation center,
where she was treated for alcoholism. It was typical
for me to feel little or no emotions when the world
around me was falling apart, and this time wasn't any
different.
I don't have many memories of what it was like having
an eating disorder in high school except that I passed
out a lot, and no one helped me. That may sound very
dramatic, but it is, unfortunately, the truth. I was
living at home, alone, with my father, and he would
purposely ignore what was going on. One time, he
actually stepped over me when I was passed out in the
kitchen, so he could get to his bedroom.

By the time I graduated from high school, I was thin
and very sick, and I decided to start eating again.
This became a cycle for me. I would become very
physically ill, and decide I should eat again. I’d
gain weight, freak out, and stop eating until I passed
out. And then I’d eat again. It was usually easy for
me to make the decision to eat. There was some shred
of sanity in me that wanted to survive, that figured
there must be a reason for me to be here, and that I
shouldn’t give up yet. But I still couldn’t find
enough reasons to stop the cycle. This cycle
continued through 2 years of college, 2 years of
medical leave, and the summer leading up to
transferring to a prestigious music school in Boston.
I ended up at New England Conservatory of Music in the
fall of 1997, many pounds below what was considered to
be my “healthy weight”.

I didn’t receive much help or confirmation from the
medical profession. Upon losing 40 lbs., I went to
the doctor who didn't believe me when I said I was
anorexic. “Seems dubious”, my chart read. That
doesn't surprise me; it just makes me really sad. No
one ever believed me. There I was standing in front
of the doctor at my lowest weight ever, and he didn't
believe me. I was thin, but not skeletal. Didn't
throw up, or take laxatives. Just didn't eat. Over
the course of my eating disorder, I would see 4
different therapists who were specialists in eating
disorders. I saw many doctors, dieticians,
nutritionists, nutrition therapists – the list goes on
and on. I tried group therapy, Overeaters Anonymous,
religion, “self-help”. I think I’ve owned 95% of the
books ever written on eating disorders. I did it all.
And it didn’t work. This became increasingly evident
when things culminated in the fall of 1998.
By this time, I was addicted to laxatives, up to 30 a
day. Sometimes I ate. My hair was falling out in
clumps. I think that's what really upset me; I had
waist-length hair at the time. My hair was visibly
thinner, and I was going bald. And I started getting
these cramps in my legs like no pain I had ever
experienced in my whole life. I found out later that
was from the laxatives. And I still I wasn’t ready to
end this journey. I did gain some weight, and my
friends no longer tried to get me hospitalized. But I
was sicker than ever. I just didn't let anyone know.
I was in L.A. at the end of December when things
begin to really change. I was enjoying the L.A.
"scene" because it fit into my vanity at the time. I
figured, "If I'm thin, I might as well flaunt it." I
wore the right clothes, makeup and nails done
perfectly - the works. I was walking down the street,
and I said to myself, "I could live the rest of my
life like this." Five minutes later, I was doubled
over in pain in the middle of a busy L.A. street
because the laxatives were eating away at my insides.
This happened to me all the time, but for some reason,
the absurdity of my thoughts just minutes before
really hit me. That's when I knew something was
seriously wrong. Not only would I not be alive for
long if I continued with my behavior, I had convinced
myself that what I was doing was OK. I was in trouble.
I decided I needed to do something. I would pray
before every meal. Pray that I could get through the
meal without freaking out, that I wouldn't immediately
take a handful of laxatives, that I would want to
recover. I decided I needed God's help, that I
couldn't do this by my own strength, that I had tried
- and it didn't work.
I had often wondered, during that ten years of
struggling, what I was really hungry for, what I was
trying to numb by starving. There was some hunger
within me that I could not satisfy WITH ANYTHING, no
matter how hard I tried. And I finally realized that
this hunger was for God. I was hungry for a love that
I couldn't find on this earth. I was hungry for a
relationship with Jesus.
I was raised going to a church that was more of a
community than a place to learn about God and Jesus.
When my parents divorced, my dad didn’t make me go to
church anymore. So I didn’t go. I said that I tried
religion as part of my recovery. Religion and
relationship are two different things. Religion
summons images of an angry god who punishes his
children for doing “bad” things, and rewards them for
doing “good” things. Relationship is completely
different. I figured out why I thought God had failed
me in the past. It wasn’t God who failed me; it was
my idea of God that completely fell short of who God
actually is. I couldn’t imagine that there was really
a God out there who loved ME, Brenna Kate Burrington,
that I could be worthy of love at all.
This is not to say that everyone needs to go through
a major spiritual experience in order to recover.
They don't. But I did. People recover all the time
without God, but not me. I had tried, and it didn't
work. It wasn't until I asked Jesus for healing that
I was healed. This is not to say that it isn't still
a struggle. I still have hard days, hard weeks. It's
just different. I am no longer alone.

A version of this testimony has been included in a
non-Christian anthology called "The Alternative Scares
Me: Expressions of Mental Illness" and a CD-ROM called
"Confident of This: Christian Testimony of Life and
Art". I'm also a Resource Person for ANAD, the
National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and
Associated Disorders. And I’m really blessed to be the
moderator of this community :)

=====
"No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his
love has been brought to full expression through us." 1 John 4:12

www.brennakate.com
www.livejournal.com/~brennakate

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