Why do I support First Steps ED?

My story is a historical tale and my perspective from growing up in the seventies and a family member who I loved, suffering from an eating disorder. It’s an abridged story, with my memory fading of some aspects, spanning some forty plus years. Sadly the story doesn’t have a happy ending, so if you stop reading now I’ll understand.  I share these parts of my journey in the hope that nobody has to go through what my sister and my wider family went through. If you are reading this and have a difficult relationship with food or are affected by an eating disorder in your family, please seek support and help.

Growing up in the seventies seemed really exciting at the time. My family comprised mum, dad, and two older sisters, plus me. We were an ordinary middle class family. In 1976 my middle sister Alexandra, or Alex as we called her, was breaking new ground by going to university to study law, the first family member ever to go to university. I remember the whole family being so proud of her. Alex was a vibrant, studious, outgoing teenager, Sunday school teacher, horse-loving, food loving, popular. Despite the usual teenager sister and younger brother arguments, deep down she was a wonderful loving sister.

In her second year of law studies, she rented a house with four other students. I visited on several weekends and as well as ‘Make it Legal’ law society sweatshirts and the smell of boiled cabbage, I remember Alex seemingly very happy and full of life. That all changed mid course with a ‘phone call from the university student health service to my parents, where they stated Alex had lost a lot of weight and that they thought she was suffering from Anorexia Nervosa.
None of us had ever heard of this condition or indeed eating disorders before. Alex and her university girl friends had decided to go on a diet. The others had stopped dieting after a week or so. Alex had carried on and seemingly couldn’t stop losing weight.

Alex came home to complete her final year law studies. I remember the dreadful arguments over food, Alex hiding food up her sleeve over Sunday lunch, thinking nobody had spotted her doing it. Mum and dad skeptically attended a meeting of a group of parents wanting to set up a self-help group. “Why would anybody want to support something that is self-inflicted?” was my dad’s response, sadly typical thinking of the times. Mental health was never discussed, you got on with it, a British, stiff upper lip attitude. With no internet and only GP services available, I don’t know what additional emotional or information support Alex or my parents were given at that time, if any. Certainly I was never offered any.

Miraculously Alex successfully completed her law degree in 1979. What do I remember of that time? Every proud parent loves the graduation photograph, I know I do my own boys’ graduations’ prints. I remember Alex’s graduation photo and her wrist watch hanging from a painfully thin wrist, the skin of her face drawn over her cheek bones. Alex’s graduation photograph was never hung up in mum and dad’s house. Over the next thirty years Alex’s physical and mental health fluctuated. It went downhill following the deaths of our parents. Occasionally we saw glimpses of her former self. Occasionally she self-harmed, she certainly became more reclusive. On one occasion she was sectioned and had a two week stay in hospital. Whilst none of us understood what she was going through, we all tried to help her, in different ways. Often I felt she didn’t really want our help, obstacles appearing on why a particular path or solution wasn’t the right one for her. Other than a short spell working as a solicitor for the CPS soon after graduation, I don’t think she really worked again, until her untimely death in 2011 from heart failure, at just 53 years old. She died on her own and we didn’t find her for nearly a week.

Whilst many of those awful moments are still vivid in my memories, I should try to finish on a positive note.

It is wonderful that in 2024 there is a much greater understanding and acceptance of mental health, improved knowledge, treatments and therapies to help those with eating disorders and those around them. I’m reassured that there are now support groups and information readily available for individuals and their families and friends, who may be going through what we went through nearly fifty years ago.

This is my journey story. This is why I support First Steps ED.