Over the past few days, as change in the air and circumstances collide, I've found myself pouring over Michelle Stewart's blog "Bess, I Am A Blogger Now" and feeling called to return to this space (my own blog) in some form.
If you don't know who Michelle was (as I didn't for a very long time), I encourage you to explore her words as she documented the final months of her life. A radio journalist for 10 years, she moved into communications with the Ministry of Health in B.C. and regional health authorities such as Vancouver Coastal Health and Island Health. She worked in this field for 17 years, earning respect and a reputation of kindness along the way. Michelle also battled an eating disorder which would eventually take her life. In May 2013 she started a blog to document her experience through the end stages of renal disease (due to her eating disorder) and with an understanding of the healthcare system that gave her words power and presence. Michelle passed away in May of 2014. She was 49.
I don't know how to occupy this space - my own blog - in a meaningful way... I don't even quite know who I'm letting define "meaningful." Still, with the recent changes to outpatient eating disorder services for adults in Victoria, B.C. - my community and the community where Michelle lived, breathed, and wrote her story - I feel called to speak, even if no one is listening. None of this is to say that I haven't been speaking for a long time, through art, through relationships and connection-building, through my own advocacy project, Vancouver Island Voices for Eating Disorders. Still, I feel the need to speak a little louder right now even though my voice is shaky and I've been trying to find it again over the past year and a half.
COVID-19 has been devastating to so many people in so many ways. Perhaps selfishly, I know its impacts most acutely in the ways that it relates to myself and my interests. What has been most relevant to me over the past year and a bit (almost two years now...) is how much those struggling with eating disorders and related mental health conditions, particularly adults, have lost and continue to suffer. I will get into that (and my own challenges over this past while) soon enough.
What I want to say here and now, is that we are facing yet another devastating loss to services for adults struggling with eating disorders in my community. This is why I've been drawn back to Michelle's blog, back to my own space here to write freely albeit with some level of the fear of being judged. I don't know what to say, but I am hoping at least to speak. It won't be composed and I need to allow that room for messiness. Perhaps it won't even be read and that's okay, this space is mainly for me to process. I suppose my ultimate hope is that it could be something more, something like Michelle did to raise awareness for those struggling: to speak out about the limitations in the system for people like us, limitations that just keep getting worse.
What I'm most inspired by in Michelle's writing is that it was more than just her struggles, it was a life told in balance (where that could be found), exploring her as a whole person who had suffered a great deal but refused to simply be reduced to that. Those who know me will remember that I often come back to the phrase "we must imagine others and ourselves complexly." This idea is not my own (though I've come to my own phrasing of it), but inspired by those I've learned from in my life (especially Hank and John Green's discussions about honouring complexity.) It seems crucial when we are discussing struggle, to ensure that these are always framed within the context of a person. No one is just what their worst or best moments are, people are much more complicated than that. As a nurse and mental health advocate, I find my most important work is in exploring how I might recognize and attend to suffering while never reducing anyone to just that.
I am terrible with punctuation and what I write will likely not follow a neat and tidy narrative, but this space is unlike a news article or Twitter feed. I have the space here to talk openly, beyond a certain character count, to explore complexity, and to focus less on selling a story with a hook that will shock people into caring. Here I can try to honour complexity as Michelle did. There's no topic for this blog, just my messy thoughts on my life, on advocacy for eating disorders and mental health/illness, and whatever else comes to mind.
If you're here and reading these words, thank you.
- S.
Shaely, your words are honey. I'm only one of few who think so. These things are incredibly difficult to talk about but it's so needed. I am so proud of you.