As a young girl, Lucy loved to draw dragons and run around dressed up like them. At 16, she’s found herself face to face with a different kind of beast: a deadly eating disorder that she’s nicknamed “Ed.”
Lucy was hospitalized in March. She weighed under 80 pounds, her pulse had slowed to 40 beats per minute, and she had to stay in bed or in a wheelchair.
She had been to counseling before, but she let her eating disorder talk.
Finally, after the hospital stay, Lucy made a decision to participate – with the help of HopeSparks and her family – in her recovery. Lucy worked with a therapist and a dietician in HopeSparks’ unique Eating Recovery program.
She wanted an instant cure. But in the months that followed her hospital stay, Lucy found recovery to have easy moments and moments when she ran out of the house, away from a slice of pizza. It took a lot more patience than she had expected, but as she worked, she began to find herself again.
“I had no room in my Ed driven mind for thoughts other than that of food, and fitness, and fear, and no imagination beyond schemes to avoid meals. Now I was beginning to free myself, and I found that I had a sudden hunger to feed my sense of wonder that I had cast aside as unimportant and nonsensical.”
Lucy is drawing again – cats, dragons, mountains and horses – and she notices the beauty around her and in her reflection. She recently drew a picture of her recovery; it is a girl walking toward a dragon.
She has discovered that she doesn’t have to be afraid of monsters like Ed, because she has found her wings.
“I know now that where I was and where I am is the difference between life and living. I know that I will live and I will soar.”