Heather

Heather calls herself Loyal, fun, loving, hilarious and engaging. In her early thirties, she had just moved out to the country with her two dogs, to keep farm animals and grow the dog boarding business she built after some very hard years. She holds a degree in history, which gets no use but kind of expected with a history degree haha. She is a feminist and an atheist. If people want to help her, she would rather they drive me to therapy or listen to me vent than pray for her.

She calls her defining moments more so periods oh my life. Her childhood was traumatic, and she learned much of it only as an adult, which caused a massive mental breakdown that lasted for 5 years. Before that came a moment she is proud of. With a bipolar diagnosis and a heavy course load, she graduated alongside her brother: no one thought I could do it so it was a really big deal to me that I proved everyone wrong. Feminism, she writes, also changed how she saw her own sexual assaults, which she had once blamed herself for. Then therapy, her business and her dream house: I kind of clawed my way out of hell but I did it with a lot of support. One reading is that, for her, being the underdog and leaning on others are not opposites; she names both as the way out.

Food in her family is tied to bodies. In her family, she writes, as long as you are skinny, you are rewarded with praise and love, and her own eating disorder is the fat kind, so they all think I’m the only one with the issues. A grandparent once told her, at a time she was happy and doing well, that appearances are everything and you really need to get it together and lose weight. She is fair to her mother, who has been really great about modifying the things she says to me if I express that it’s unhelpful or hurtful. Her own view is plain: all food is fuel for our bodies.

She likes making spinach lasagna roll ups and basil Parmesan salmon. She is candid about cravings: I’ll literally choose for the healthy food in my fridge to spoil just so I can fulfill that craving. Sweets and fast food comfort her, I think part of it is that I wasn’t allowed a lot of it growing up. Her community idea is free cooking lessons in a food desert, with recipes easy and safe enough for kids to prepare on their own, for parents working shifts.

Her superpower is that people underestimate me and I’m really quite strong mentally and emotionally. She cries and is not ashamed of it, then reaches for her support system: Now a bad day is just a bad day, nothing more than that. Humor carries her: honestly I think my trauma made me funny haha. She once did stand-up and spoke on stage about her time in hospital, because if we don’t laugh about it, it’s too depressing lol. Her 2 a.m. person is her mom; for a full panic attack, her brother or her best friend.

On Day 5 she wants to change my bad decisions with food, starting with the healthy choice once or twice a week. What stands in the way: Definitely myself. Using food as a coping skill is my biggest struggle. Her letter calls her a majestic Phoenix.