Advice About Finding Your True Beauty

I have been feeling very stressed lately. EVERYONE at school teases me about how fat I am. I come home and cry for hours every day. This has been going on for awhile and I have been diagnosed with clinical depression. And I have a big complex about my weight - I won't eat. My mom tries to make me eat but I totally refuse because if I get any fatter I don't know - I just might kill myself because I get teased about it so much. It upsets me so much...one girl asked me if I was pregnant - that was the last straw. I don't know what to do. Do you have any advice for me?

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Hi - I am so glad you emailed me to tell me what's going on with you!

You know, I can really relate to how you feel right now. I often share when I'm speaking to young adults that my peers (my so-called friends when I was in middle & high school) were INCREDIBLY cruel and mean to me - their comments and criticisms of how I looked played a huge part in my developing anorexia and bulimia. And it wasn't until years later when I looked back that I realized that they wouldn't have ever said anything to me if they'd realized how much I would take it to heart and that it would almost kill me. Most people do not mean to be mean. They are mean for one of two reasons:

1. They are hurting within themselves and their own meanness to themselves just spills out onto others.

2. They are genuinely mean-spirited (this kind of meanness is pretty rare and I'd guess very few if any of your schoolmates fall into this category).

Your peers cannot see you. They don't see you for who you are and the beauty that you have. And that is because they are hurting too. Don't let them determine your experience of yourself and your beauty and your worth as a person and your preciousness. Only surround yourself with friends you can trust who are healthy enough not to have to be mean because they don't know how to be nice to themselves, let alone care for a friend. Just because they say mean things doesn't mean you have to believe them!

I don't believe them, for one. It is obvious to me that you have the potential to become an incredible role model to so many other young women who are dying from eating disorders - if you will choose to overcome what you are facing now. Don't give up on the beauty and power for your own life to listen to lies that are more about the person saying them than about the recipient of them. Listen to me when I tell you that you are beautiful just the way you are. If you have to listen to someone, listen to someone like me who can really see you and who isn't afraid to tell the truth, who isn't afraid to share this world with other beautiful women who have the power to change people's lives for the better.

I often talk to youth groups about how I learned to find and experience my own inner and outer beauty. My story of healing from an eating disorder (and years of depression, by the way) is something I can now use to encourage other young people that they can heal. If I can get better, anyone can get better. And as far as what you are facing right now, you may not know until later on why you needed these exact experiences to strengthen you for your future life, relationships and work. If you will willingly enter into the process of treatment and make proactive efforts to heal from your depression and do everything you can to heal, you will find out that it was all for a purpose and maybe, like me, you will even say 'I wouldn't trade one day of what I went through because of the wonderful life and friends my pain has led me to!'

But...you will never get there until you stand up and decide you and your life, your potential and your future, are worth it. Understand that this is YOUR CHOICE. Your parents are not doing this to you. Your peers are not doing this to you. If you decide to pursue your eating disorder instead of your life, it is totally your choice and no one else can or will stop you. Decide what you want your life to stand for and what you want to be all about. Then make a choice from there. I am here to support you and encourage you if you are willing to choose life.

Hang in there. This is a tough time for you - I know exactly what you are going through and I know exactly how you feel. I have been in your shoes and I can tell you it is worth leaving those shoes behind….but you are going to have to decide how you are going to handle what life is throwing at you right now. You have the power to overcome - if I could heal you can too.

So just answer one question for me - Do you want to overcome?

much love & blessings -

Shannon