A Body of Work: Anatomy of an Eating Disorder

Abstract from Introduction:
How do you recover a broken body?
"In the spring of my junior year, this question sparked the flame that became my thesis. I did not
know the answer to my question or what form my answer might take. I did not know where I
would begin or where, and with what, I intended to end. Like a child running away from home,
all I had attached to the stick over my shoulder was the will to write and a story to tell. I wanted
to share my own experience with an eating disorder. I wanted to use my struggle and the lessons
I learned to help others who are also struggling. “What if my thesis had the power to inspire
desire?” I wrote to myself at the beginning of the project. “What if someone who was struggling
with an eating disorder read it and found herself in the words, found a flame in the words to
warm her hands by?”

With this question to guide me, I set off on my research: “How do you recover a broken
body?” I began by interviewing other writers. To poets, novelists, and memoirists, I asked how
you create a narrative arc, how you articulate pain through language, and how you find the
bravery to share your work. I asked if they were recovering in any way. I also interviewed
medical professionals including doctors, therapists, researchers, and nutritionists. We spoke
about the challenges and rewards of working with adolescents with eating disorders, and they
shared their stories and their definitions of recovery. Having spent so long in a hospital bed,
during these interviews I had an understanding for the first time of what it might be like to stand
over the bed, read the charts, make the diagnosis, and witness the struggle."