![]() Always a string bean, under the 20th percentile for weight and above the 90th percentile for height her entire childhood, she hadn’t lost weight, she’d just failed to fill out as she hit adolescence.īut she’d been skipping lunch, ducking into the bathroom while her friends ate, or arriving as they put their bags away to say she’d eaten during break. Her weight hadn’t offered a clue, either, or at least not an obvious one. Serena ate fine in front of me - she powered through pizza and chicken burritos just as she always had, laughing on the couch with us over a favorite episode of Veronica Mars or Gilmore Girls. There were answers, of course, answers that made sense later, when I learned more about how eating disorders work, and how they thrive in secrecy. Yet when the counselor finally put her on the phone, she was choked by sobs. Serena had seemed fine that morning, heading off to school with her usual goofy cheer, reminding me about a drama rehearsal after school. Around me I saw a typical 15-year-old’s room, festooned with colorful posters, a rainbow bead curtain, light-up butterflies dangling over the bed. How could this be true, and how had I not noticed? I asked myself, slumped on the stool in my daughter’s bedroom, where I’d instinctively gone the minute I heard the counselor say her name over the phone. ![]() In it, Serena described in stark terms her deep despair over a battle with anorexia that had been going on for more than a year, since well before the start of high school. Instead, the phone call came from the school psychologist, reading from an email Serena had written to a friend. I wish I could say that it was I who made that call to the doctor or therapist, asking for help the minute things began to go wrong.īut that’s not how it happened. I wish I could describe a wake-up moment - at the beach, or in a department store dressing room - when I suddenly noticed my daughter’s stick-thin arms, her shoulder blades jutting out unnaturally beneath the straps of her tank top. I WISH I COULD start this story in a way that would make me look good - the watchful mother, aware and attuned to the fact that her daughter was in danger.
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