Here is a new blog post from Leanne Waters author of My Secret Life


Knowing what’s left to say about my eating disorder is as definitive as a tide washing up on the shore. Some days, I feel as if I have talked myself dry of all feeling, all history and all connections to who I was when I suffered with bulimia nervosa. And then there always comes a point when past and present get confused again and who I was then by contrast to who I suppose myself to be now become uncomfortably mingled with one another. I suppose this is the difficulty when you’re “post-recovery” from an eating disorder; always pushing to escape it and yet still living in fear that if you get complacent, it will undoubtedly make a vicious return once more. Or maybe I’m just too scared to accept that I’m fully recovered. If I do, it means I’ve let go of an intricate – albeit horrid and destructive – part of who I am. I’m scared to do that, mostly because I’m still searching for the person who was hidden beneath my bulimia for so long. That, or else I’m not looking to resurrect myself; I’m looking to create myself all over again.

My bulimia consumed me to a point where reality and illusion had become a toxic concoction that guided my life and the decisions I made. Everything I did – the fasting, the binging, the purging, the seclusion, the constant self-condemnation – had a goal, a purpose. That purpose was to fuel the psychological leech that was my illness. Now, objective is mine alone to create. The purpose my life has now is whatever I give it. Reassuringly – thank God – though this is a daunting realisation, it’s also a liberal one. The choice of deciding what gives my life meaning and how to productively accomplish that meaning is more liberating than my bulimia ever was. Whereas, I sought relief via purging and fasting, that same need is now catered to in the form of overcoming daily challenges, accomplishing life-long goals, stabilising the self I had denied for so long up until this point. More than any of this, relief comes in the faces of loved ones. The guilt that once burdened me, as a result of all the pain I caused them, has subsided and nearly disappeared. They know the truth. I know the truth. And miraculously, life has gone on. The past is our tool to work towards a better future. As humans, I guess that’s all we can do.

This is all terribly simple isn’t it? Get sick, get help and get better. Then you’ll be happy. Well, not quite. For me, it was more than just getting help. What a lot of my own recovery came down to was a conscious investment in myself. I invested in my emotions with the ambition of taking care of them, being sensible with them and sensitive to them. I invested in my thought-processes; how I interpreted the world, broke information down and consequently what about that process had to be changed to bring me to a new point of understanding and a new method of coping with it all. I invested in my past and brought to light old wounds that had been previously buried beneath years of unbearable rubble. Only in doing so could I finally be free of them and the pain such memories caused. What all this sums up to is essentially this notion of redirection. I didn’t change myself. I redirected myself. My bulimia had been a coping mechanism by which I could feel normal. Today, I would probably say that normality is an idealistic horizon line that, as we approach it, gets further and further away. Surely, the dynamics that conduct our multi-faceted society are too rigorous for such a word to even exist anymore?

Yet here so many of us still are, starving ourselves, purging ourselves of illusionistic sin and abusing the natural order of our own birth right. It’s not our fault. This, I maintain fervently. The conscious evolution of society has strayed from the unconscious evolution of nature. Whereas once the celebration of the feminine figure was dominant in our glorious culture, now the average woman is bombarded with skeletal images and apparent ideals. And let’s not even get into the steroid-pumped, must-see-every-muscle pressures that men are faced with. Personally, I’d take a love-handled Jason Segel or Vince Vaughn any day. But hey, each to their own. The point I’m making here is that we have surely gone starkly against the natural order. What our biology determines as attractiveness and what contemporary fashion industries are trying to convince us is the ideal are two very different things. On this matter, I’m finally starting to give the ‘beauty’ machine a kick up the backside and trust what Mother Nature has herself ordained.

All a bit too heavy for you? Well, yes, sometimes it gets a bit heavy for me too. At the end of the day, I’m a 21-year-old girl living just outside Dublin. To say that I’ve done a 180 degree flip from bulimia to entirely embracing who I am would be a lie. So let’s just skip the facade and get down to the nitty-gritty. Nothing has called my confidence in how I look, how much I weigh and the value of my own self worth more into question than the publication of my eating disorder in my memoir My Secret Life. Indeed, there were nights writing that book when I thought I could surely never escape the trap of regression. I don’t believe I have ever cried so much in my life as when I had to document every dark and perhaps even disgusting crevice of the life I have lived. Yet, I feel it was necessary. If not for my own mental well-being, then just for the sake of someone somewhere putting a face and voice to bulimia and thereafter being convinced that it’s not in fact something to be ashamed of.

Irish people have been historicised terribly, haven’t we? Our mothers told us as children not to ‘air our dirty laundry out in public’ and worse still, good old Sigmund Freud even went as far to declare that ‘this is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever’. Well sorry Doc, but I beg to differ. Two things, my dear reader: firstly, psychoanalysis has been key in my battle against bulimia and without it, I would surely have been weapon-less; secondly, ‘airing my dirty laundry out in public’ has set me free. I am no longer under the burdening constraint of secrecy. I no longer deny all that I am – for better or worse. In short, I am at liberty to be post-bulimic and as much woman, daughter, sister, friend, student, lover and writer as I ever was. Even more so than before, I daresay. Knowing, accepting and loving everything about yourself is quite possibly our most powerful means of surviving the matrix of life and what’s more, enjoying the bloody thing.

And so, the big question: with the secrecy and shame of an eating disorder and being mentally unwell finally lifted, how do people treat me differently? They don’t. End of. While I fretted over the relationships and social impressions that would surely change forever, they haven’t and I am who I have always been to them. Nothing more, nothing less. If anything, my heart has been filled with words of utter encouragement, support and at times admiration, which you can imagine has humbled me tremendously. The people who have shared their own stories with me since the time of that publication have reminded me that we are all one and the same; all flawed, all wounded and all merely looking for that divine happiness in our own lives.

This kind of search is never-ending and now that I no longer consider myself defined solely under my own bulimia, it continues forthright. I am not a bulimic writer, bulimic student or bulimic woman. I am a person who has suffered with bulimia, may suffer with it again and stands audacious in the face of anything that dares threaten my mighty pursuit of happiness. We are all darkness, we are all light, we are all failure, we are all success, we are all weakness and we are all strength. Without these things, we are not all-human. My bulimia is who I was and my recovery is who I am. I am as I am and I’m not ashamed. Nothing could be more beautiful.

Wanting more this Christmas

Since the release of My Secret Life: A Memoir of Bulimia, I have been graced with words from various people around the world. It shocks me still to know that there are so many others currently enduring that which I have detailed in my aforementioned title. My perceptions on my past are ever-changing as time goes on and as I grow. Some days, I find myself frustrated and angry with the issues that plagued my young life. Other days, I feel ready to reconcile both with the past and the person that has been formed as a result of it. But neither is a permanent fixture and I can only push as hard as possible for the latter.

While writing this book, I had hoped to touch into more than just what an eating disorder is; I sought to understand myself and analyze the facets that have proved so monumental in my life: bullying, self-worth, my relationship with God, humiliation, body-image, romantic relationships and the idiosyncrasies of my childhood.

Along with these things, I hoped to touch on the presence of the western media. While I have found liberation on a personal level with so many things in my life, this remains something I simply cannot escape. None of us can apparently. It’s on our television screens 24/7 and proving a worrying powerful force in our everyday lives. It’s shoved down our throats in music videos, magazines, newspapers, advertisements, fashion and all the everyday TV shows telling us how to ‘dress to impress’, ‘beat the bulge’ and ‘make an impression with show-stopping make-up’.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I’m all for looking my best and what’s more, being the best me I can possibly be. But is this really what the media are asking of us? It seems not lately. The size zero culture has not only gripped our contemporary society but is steering it down a detrimental path. I worry for future youths as exposure to such ‘ideals’ becomes more and more ostentatious. All it can surely succeed in creating is a generation of anorexics, bulimics and people doubting who they are against the might of the beauty machine of western culture.

In the face of prescribed perfection – and by perfection, I mean that 10% of individuals who strut catwalks and are thus determined to be the epitome of what we should look like and how we should behave – I wonder if we are risking the magnificence of the individual for a now unattainable status-quo? With so much importance being placed on aesthetics, we could well be losing sight of the best parts of the human condition: passions, creativity, a need to explore and learn and teach, kindness, ambition, empathy and understanding.

Okay, I’m sure I sound like I’m preaching now. But as we approach the holiday season and we’ll soon all be contending with our belts getting that bit tighter, perhaps it couldn’t do any harm just to bear these things in mind. I may be a recovering bulimic, but I am still a 21-year-old woman. And like all women my age, I feel the pressure of keeping up appearances and not over-indulging during the holidays. And like all women my age, I probably will do so anyway, promising myself that the New Year will bring some form of reformation and redemption.

Pre-New Year’s resolution? Relax, Leanne. You’d rather be indulgent and jolly than dieting and miserable. I have been blessed this season. I’ve had the opportunity to document my struggles in a memoir, thus emancipating myself from the pain they carry (Apparently it took bulimia and going to hell and back just to get me to enjoy my Christmas turkey and be comfortable with all my own wobbly bits and curves). What’s more, I’m spending this Christmas doing what I love: writing. The novel takes its turns – sometimes slow and sometimes practically writing itself. Nevertheless, as the snow starts hitting, I am grateful to be working from home, enjoying the company of the people who make me most happy and more than anything else, I’m grateful to be at liberty to truly enjoy the indulgent nature of this time of year and quite simply…. switch my blasted television OFF. Sorry size zero, you’re not on the Christmas card list. I want more than you this Christmas and more for myself forever.

~Leanne

My Secret Life: A Memoir of Bulimia is available now in the Kindle store.

Public Email: leannefwaters@gmail.com

On-wards and Upwards

My story has been one of repeated triumph and failure. Each has been as prominent in my life as the other, serving to produce a concoction of highs and lows, laughter and tears and the scariest roller-coaster ride that has spanned these last four years. In four years, I have gone from being a high-achiever, who was well liked and had everything going for her to a depressed, suicidal and seemingly hopeless bulimic. From there, my life became all work in the form of university studies, my personal development and writing a memoir. This was my personal hibernation. And now that I am here – published, happy and pushing on towards the future – I realise that I have come full circle. If you are one of those lucky people in the world who fortune has graced, perhaps you have arrived to this place without much turmoil. In this case, I am so thoroughly happy for you. But if, like me, you have done loops and turns over and over again just to get here, let’s congratulate ourselves on simply surviving it all. I am not writing to boost my own ego or that of anyone else; I write now instead merely to mark a new phase in the chronology of my life and my ongoing story. I am alive and what’s more, I’m actually living.

The launch of my book, My Secret Life: A Memoir of Bulimia took place on Tuesday last, November 1st 2011 in the Dublin Book shop on Grafton Street. For me, to say it was a success was an understatement. The night was a pleasant array of old faces and new. I was more nervous than I can say. When the time came to say a few words to all who attended, my knees were clattering off one another and a lump formed in my throat at the sight of their ever-supporting eyes. That is to say, I was moved beyond all recognition. My life – and in particular, my life of the last four years – had always been leading to that point (no matter how many diversions I seemed to take!). And I can only say how extraordinarily happy I was to be able to share it with people who have graced my very existence with their mere presence.

I am a lucky person in a great many ways, more than I could ever express. And as I move on-wards and upwards in my professional and personal pursuits, I do so with the utmost humility, humbleness and irrevocable gratitude. I have taken a leave of absence from my studies and have routed myself on a highway of what I hope is full of creativity and growth. I have begun my first fiction novel and already – as with all things we undertake in life – my perceptions of this complicated world are changing yet again. Good Lord, I don’t think the learning curb is ever meant to stop. Let’s hope not.

The issue of destiny is a complicated one, like everything else apparently. Whether it is something set out for us or something we create and build ourselves is completely yours to decide. It makes no difference to me either way, because regardless of whether I chose this path or it was given to me, I’m just happy to be on it. And what’s more, I can see it now clearer than ever before. My path is set. And while I begin the closing down process of this chapter in my life, naturally I start a new one with full hope, ambition, determination and unrestrained gusto! I can only see so far ahead and to be honest, I don’t think I’d like to see much more. For now, I am happy and that’s enough.

Huge thank you to Maverick House Publishers, John Mooney, Fiona Lacey, my family, my friends, everyone who has bought my memoir, everyone who has inspired me over the years and of course, to all the media outlets who have taken heed of my story and sought to spread its message. And to all still suffering, you’re always in my prayers. I have one message to you: hope.

~ Leanne

My Secret Life: A Memoir of Bulimia is now available to buy in all leading bookshops in Ireland. It is also available on Ebook all around the world or to order from Amazon.

'My Secret Life' book launch November 1st

Maverick author Leanne Waters talks about her new book 'My Secret Life: A Memoir of Bulimia' in her latest video blog here.

My body had never felt so small or so fragile. In one sense, it was a moment of ecstasy and I was comforted with soft, almost compassionate, encouragement. Delicate, she said. The word imprinted on me like the cold before it. I was weak and going numb, but I was delicate. This is what I had wanted. I wanted to lose weight and retain some ounce of delicacy to resemble that of the spider-figured women I had seen in all those flashing images. Suddenly, the lack of strength displayed by my body was counterbalanced with a surging lease of mental satisfaction and might. As I lay in bed, buried under all my layers of clothes and bed sheets, the warmth still could not reach me. It was too late for that now and I didn’t care. I just wanted to sleep, basking in my success and enduring the cold until I could finally slip into a forgetful slumber.

‘My Secret Life: A Memoir of Bulimia’ by Leanne Waters will be available on Kindle next week.

Leanne's book will be launched on Tuesday November 1st in the Dublin Bookshop on Grafton street. All are welcome!

You can follow Leanne on twitter, facebook and tumblr.

RSVP to the launch of My Secret Life: A Memoir of Bulimia by clicking here!

The book launch of 'My Secret Life: A memoir of Bulimia' by Leanne Waters will take place on November 1st at 6.30pm in the Dublin Bookshop on Grafton Street. All are welcome, we'd love to see you there!




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