I love this video. I love this speech. For me, it is one of the most inspiring talks I have heard.
When I started my blog, wrote my first post and revealed it publicly, inside my head I kept saying to myself the exact phrase ‘It feels like coming out the closet’. However I never explained my feelings aloud using those words for fear of being judged as melodramatic. I felt perhaps it could have been interpreted as derogatory towards all the men and women in the world who have struggled being open about their sexuality. Surely the turmoil and risks they take to be honest about themselves are far greater than mine.
Then I watched Ash Beckham. Her wonderful speech made me smile, put a lump in my throat but most importantly – made me feel empowered.
We do all have closets and she is right: they are scary, they’re horrible but we need to talk about them. I haven’t touched my blog for over 2 months because deep down a part of me still wanted to run away. I could feel myself slowly backing into the closet that took me so much bravery to walk out of. Why? – because it was safer. I wouldn’t need to continue this ongoing hard conversation with myself and the people who read my writing. Yet thanks to this video I’m refusing to do that anymore. I want to keep this dialogue going and be the best role model I can be.
There’s a lot of awareness on the existence anorexia and bulimia (still not enough done about it in my opinion but that’s a whole other issue for a separate occasion) but for me, a real problem lay in fact that there is little said about Binge Eating Disorder (BED) – to the point I didn’t even know it existed which put me through 3 and a half years of hell and confusion of what was actually going on inside my mind and body. More than anything else I desperately wanted to know that someone else currently was or had gone through what I was experiencing. I didn’t want to feel like a freak anymore, I wanted the relief and comfort that came along with knowing I wasn’t alone.
Although now, I no longer want to wait for someone else to go first, I want to be that person. I want to step up and be unapologetic about my own truthful experiences. Following Ash Beckham’s wise words I’m going to break out my own closet and in return I can only hope that in a small way it might help others breaking out their own closets that little bit less scary.
Danielle Stewart
My name is Danielle Stewart and for almost 10 years I have suffered on and off with eating disorders. It is a subject I am extremely passionate about, especially living in such a body conscious and appearance obsessed world which I believe is very dangerous to how we view and think about ourselves. I feel that eating disorders are an epidemic waiting to happen and possibly already begun. Since they are incredibly secretive and isolating disorders, it is difficult to ever know the true number of people affected. Therefore my blog is dedicated to sharing my own personal thoughts and experiences, discussing the psychology behind eating disorders and spreading the word on articles of interest. The more we start talking more openly and frequently about eating disorders, the more help and action will be generated as well as reducing the fear of admitting and seeking help for this mental illness. If nothing else, I want you to know that you are not alone in what you're going through.
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