Podcast Transcript

Episode 72: The “Middle Place” of Recovery: Embracing Progress Over Perfection with Mallary Tenore Tarpley

[Bouncy theme music plays.]

Sam: Hey, I’m Sam.

Ashley: Hi, I’m Ashley, and you’re listening to All Bodies. All Foods. presented by The Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders. We want to create a space for all bodies to come together authentically and purposefully to discuss various areas that impact us on a cultural and relational level.

Sam: We believe that all bodies and all foods are welcome. We would love for you to join us on this journey. Let’s learn together.

What if recovery isn’t about being perfectly healed, but about learning to live fully in the messy in-between spaces? And what if the most honest version of recovery means letting go of who you thought you had to be to make room for who you really are?  Ashley and I sat down with Mallary Tenore Tarpley, a deeply thoughtful writer, journalist, and the author of her debut nonfiction book, Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery. In her book, she graciously shares her deeply personal recovery story while also including the under discussed complexities of eating disorders and the science behind them. Her book is equal parts memoir and journalism, and she so skillfully weaves together her own experience with insights from clinicians, researchers, and others with lived experience.  When we sat down with Mallary, she invited us into what she calls the middle place, a powerful and compassionate way to understand recovery, not as a finish line, but as an active  lifelong process of showing up, slipping, learning, and moving forward. It’s a space between acute illness and full recovery, where progress isn’t linear and perfection is not the goal.  From childhood all the way through motherhood, Mallary reflects on the grief that intertwined with her eating disorder, the challenges of relapsing, the pressures of perfectionism, and how she ultimately learned to find self-worth  and an identity beyond her symptoms. Her story is vulnerable, insightful, and so validating. Whether you’re in recovery yourself, supporting a loved one, or you’re simply curious about what it means to be in recovery. This conversation is here to remind you recovery is not about being perfect. It’s about learning and embracing the journey.  A little about our guest. Mallary Tenore Tarpley is an assistant professor of practice at University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches journalism classes in the Moody College of Communication and writing classes at the McCombs School of Business. Over the course of her career, Mallary has led journalism programs at institutions like UT Austin’s Knight Center and the Poynter Institute, and her work has focused on stories of resilience and healing. Her background brings not only personal depth, but professional insight to the conversation we’re having. Mallary’s articles and personal essays have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Dallas Morning News, the Tampa Bay Times, Teen Vogue, and Harvard University’s Nieman Storyboard, among many other publications. Mallary holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Providence College and a Master’s of Fine Arts in nonfiction writing from Goucher College. She lives in the Austin area with her husband and two children, Madeline and Tucker.  I hope you’ll join us. We’ll meet you in the middle place.

Hi everyone. Welcome back. This is All Bodies, All Foods. I’m Sam. I’m here with Ashley. I’m thrilled about our episode today because we’re meeting with the author of Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery, Mallary. Welcome to the show.

Mallary: Thank you so much for having me.

Sam: First of all, I want to thank you for writing this book because your vulnerability is really a gift to the eating disorder community.  You covered so many important topics about what it’s like to recover from an eating disorder  and to be in recovery, to navigate all the ups and downs. We hear all the time, recovery is not linear. You don’t, it doesn’t really land until you actually live it.  And I was curious, you know, I read through your book. It’s just wonderful. And I was wondering, you know, what, what ultimately inspired you to get this book out there?

Mallary: Well, first, thank you so much for your kind words about the book. It really means a lot because this book has been a lifelong process, I like to say, because I have always identified as a writer and I’ve always known I wanted to one day write a book. And so even when I was in the throws of my eating disorder as an adolescent, I kept very meticulous journals as if I one day knew that I would want to refer back to them, and in many ways, those journals ended up being like a gift to my present day self because I could refer to them and just conjure up all these memories, some of which I had long since forgotten.  And along the way, I wrote different iterations of this book, beginning when I think I was about 17 years old and then tried to write another iteration when I was in my early 20s and my late 20s. But it really wasn’t until about 2020 when I went back to get my master’s in fine arts and nonfiction writing, that I began to really conceive of the current version of the book.  And I’m so glad that those other iterations did not see the light of day because they weren’t as good as this latest iteration, but also because I had a lot more life to live when I wrote this book.  I wrote it from the perspective of someone who has been in recovery for now about 20 years and from the perspective of a mother and a wife. So writing this at age, you know, 35 to 40 was really special in that I was able to write it having had more lived experience and was also writing it from this really authentic place of wanting to be really honest about where I was at in my recovery. So rather than sort of telling this somewhat inauthentic narrative of the perfectionism of recovery and writing it from the perspective of someone who was fully recovered and completely over their disorder, I really wanted to explore these questions of what does it mean to live with the imprints of your disorder and to be better than you were, but not all better. So those were some driving questions that I was really keen on answering in the book. 

Sam: Your book is, I think, really wonderful no matter what age you are, because you cover so much ground,  so much developmentally, because as we know, eating disorders can affect anyone at any age, but you really cover what it’s like, what it was like as a little girl, and then even into  being pregnant, being a mother,  romantic relationships.  I really feel like there’s so many people out there that would be able to get many things out of your book, no matter where they are really in their journey.

Mallary: Thank you. That was my hope, is that people would find different entry points in it.

Ashley: Mallary, I think it’s cool first just to hear you say that you started journaling because you’ve always identified as a writer and now you can go back and kind of use that material and see your young self and that helped you even come up with this book. I think that’s so neat.  What a gift.

Mallary: Yes, it was so fortuitous too because I thought I had lost those journals, but my father ended up finding them in the attic of my childhood home right around the time when I was starting to really work on this book, and so that was just incredibly helpful. And in some ways, it felt like this emotional Mount Everest, just reading through those journals, especially the ones from when I was acutely sick. But they also helped me to appreciate and recognize how far I have come from that time of life. 

Ashley: Absolutely; so okay, so I have a question about the title of your book. So “the middle of eating disorder recovery. Can you share with us what “the middle” means to you?

Mallary: Yes, so “the middle place” is essentially this name I’ve given to this liminal space between acute sickness and full recovery.  And it’s rooted in the belief that recovery is possible, but imperfect. And there are going to be times when we have slips and setbacks, and when that happens, we have to give ourselves grace and not believe that we have to be perfect at recovery. And for a long time, I thought that I did have to be perfect at recovery. And that was partly because I was trying to achieve full recovery and didn’t really even know what that meant.  And in my mind, I thought that it meant that I would never have a bad body image day. I would never have issues with food, that I would be getting all A’s when I was in high school and doing all the extracurriculars and, in many ways, ended up becoming this poster child for eating disorder recovery and yet ended up  struggling with relapse in college. And I felt like I was both failing at anorexia and failing at recovery. And so during that time, it was really difficult for me because I thought, oh, I’m supposed to be fully recovered. And I told everyone that I was.  But if you had pulled back the curtain on my life, you would have seen that I was very much struggling. And it wasn’t until many years later that I began to really try to reshape my thinking around recovery and to recognize that slips didn’t have to always turn into uncontrollable slides, but that they could be part of the process and that I could use them not as grounds for failure, but really as opportunity for growth.  And I thought, what if I, instead of trying to, in my mind, achieve the perfection of recovery, what if I looked at it as this middle place where recovery is perfect, but it’s ongoing and it’s something at least for me that takes effort. And I will just say too, for a long time, I thought that I was alone in this middle place because so many of the books that I read and just literature I consumed was written from the perspective of people who were fully recovered. And I totally believe that full recovery can be possible, and I interviewed people from my book who consider themselves to be fully recovered. But for me personally, that hasn’t been my own experience or lived reality. And so I thought, hmm, is anyone else in this middle place? And when I started to do interviews for my book, I surveyed over 700 people and interviewed 175 people for this book. And 85% of the people I surveyed said that they could relate to this idea of the middle place. So I thought, huh, there’s something here. And I really wanted to be able to make people in this space feel seen and heard, and, for me, I think that’s been really powerful. And I think being able to expand the language we use around recovery is so important. And to also recognize that the middle place is not about giving up on recovery, nor is it quasi-recovery or pseudo-recovery. I think sometimes when I look back at my life and think about the period where I told everyone I was fully recovered, but actually wasn’t. That in my mind was more so kind of pseudo- or quasi-recovery, if you will, but the middle place isn’t, right? It’s just about recognizing that this is sort of an ongoing process and maybe you don’t necessarily finish that race or cross that finish line, but you can keep moving forward in meaningful ways.

Ashley: Mallary, I feel like I want to do a mic drop. And actually, you’re like giving me full like Brené Brown vibes right now by like doing all this research and sharing like it like just how she kind of, you know, talked about the power of vulnerability for you to come out here and say you’ve interviewed over 700 people you’ve done or connected with that many people done so many interviews and to say that 85% of them find themselves in this place, and then to talk about this place from a place of true existence. Like this is where we are and it’s okay, and this isn’t pseudo-recovery, right?  Like I just feel like that is going to give so many people, and likely that 85%, so much freedom in how they continue to live and walk through their recovery. So I’m really thankful that you’ve just put voice to this. So thank you for that.

Mallary: Oh, thank you so much.

Sam: Yeah, I think also it really, to me, breaks down the shame around, you know,  you know, being in recovery and experiencing slips, which are part of the territory. Slips, you know, we often teach that, you know, slips are inevitable and they are opportunities to learn.  But that there can be a sense of, I think you can even feel proud about being at middle place, because it’s a constant state of growing and learning and evolving. Would you say that that’s does that ring true for you?

Mallary: Oh, most definitely. I do think that it really empowers people to be able to think about recovery as being something that they can actively engage in as opposed to something that maybe they achieved and now they never have to think of it. I think so much about the middle place is recognizing that recovery is active and something that we may always need to work at, but in some ways that also helps us to just recognize  small victories and moments where we have chosen recovery over the eating disorder.  And I remember when I was talking about the title of this book, Slip, there was a clinician who had said, well, I wouldn’t title it slip because that word has a really negative connotation. And I thought, well, that’s precisely the point, right? I want to try to remove the stigma around that word, and show that slips are normal. And I think that when we can talk about that and speak truth to that, it can be empowering. It can also help us to really just forgive ourselves when we might have slips or setbacks. And so that has been really healing for me in my own recovery  and has really helped me to continue to want to work at recovery with as much vigor and energy as I can. 

Sam: I love this.  You know, Mallary, on this podcast, we talk a lot about the fact that eating disorders are emotional disorders.  And I think that sometimes surprises a lot of people. You know, I think there’s this misconception that eating disorders are all about food and weight, and that really couldn’t be further from the truth.  But you wrote that your eating disorder started after your mom passed away in ‘97 from metastatic breast cancer. You were only 11 years old at the time. As a young girl thinking back, what was the connection there between your grief and the development of the eating disorder?

Mallary: Yeah, so for me,  I really thought that I needed to be strong in the aftermath of my mother’s death. And that was partly because my family believed that if we were strong, my mom would somehow get better. And so for the three years that she was sick with metastatic breast cancer, we very much held on to hope that she was going to be fine. We would equate her to a soldier in a battle and the little engine that could. And we said, she’s going to win this battle. She’s going to get over that mountain. And when she didn’t, it felt like my whole world had fallen apart, and  I did not know what to do with that, so I did what I and my family had always done, which was try to be strong.  Although in my mind, I thought as an 11-year-old, that meant not shedding any tears, and and trying to pretend that I was okay. So I remember going to school the day after my mom died and not telling anyone that she had passed.  I read her eulogy at her funeral and did not cry- at points I even smiled.  And so I was putting up this happy facade, but behind that facade, it felt like I had lost so much control. And I felt farther and farther away from my mother as more time passed. And so I began to conjure up this idea that maybe if I stayed the same size my mother was when she was alive, I could somehow be closer to her.  And so food restriction became this warped form of time travel. And for me, it was not about trying to be skinny or lose weight but was really about trying to stay small and feel closer to my mother. And at the same time, I had also been in a health class where we were learning about eating disorders and learning about how to label foods as quote unquote good and bad. So I was exposed to this idea that what we put into our bodies could change the way we look. And so that helped me to kind of think of this idea of, well, what could I do? How could food restriction help me? And of course, the great irony of eating disorders is that we think that they will give us one thing, but they end up really stripping us from that completely.  So while I thought the eating disorder would help me feel closer to my mother, for a time it did, but ultimately it left me feeling farther away from her and more out of control than ever.

Sam: Mallary, was that awareness, I mean, that is incredible insight that  the eating disorder was really driven by this desire to be closer to your mom. Did you know that as a child or did that take time to figure that out?

Mallary: So it was interesting because as I looked back at my journals, I did have entries that got at this idea of wanting to stop time and wanting to stay small.  And I remember writing about that and thinking about it. And I couldn’t articulate it quite as well as I just did a minute ago, but that idea was certainly there. And as I went back at my journal entries and as I looked back at old therapy workbooks, I was able to really piece together that narrative even more.  And so I think I really was so intent on finding any way that I could to stay close to her. And to be honest, my mom was in and out of the hospital so often, that I also thought, well, maybe if I’m sick, I could somehow be closer to her too, because so many of my most accessible memories of my mother from when I was age 8 to 11 were of her as a sick cancer patient in the hospital. And so there are all these just really sad ties and connections that I made to my own body and my disorder and her illness. And over time, as I went back and looked at all that I’d written and looked at old medical records and therapy workbooks, it became clear and clear that that was really at play there when I was a child.

Sam: I think there’s so many people out there where grief is a part of their eating disorder story as well. And you talked in your book about your dad also and kind of looking to him for direction on how to grieve. I was hoping you could say more about that.

Mallary: Sure. So my father is someone who always tries to be strong. He is not someone who cries when he’s sad, but he does cry when he watches Hallmark movies and when he’s really proud of me, so it’s interesting because I never really saw him cry after my mother passed away. And for a long time, I had lot of feelings of anger around that, especially when I got older, because I would look back and I would think,  well, why didn’t he cry in front of me? Or why didn’t he encourage me to cry?  Didn’t he think it was odd that I wasn’t crying after my mom passed? And I remember journaling about that and kind of putting the anger down on the page.  But I knew that to write my book, I couldn’t write it from a place of blame or anger. And I’m close with my dad, but I had never really talked with him about some of these hard truths around  just his stoicism in the aftermath of my mom’s passing.  But I knew to get at a deeper truth, I had to talk with him for the book.  So I ended up interviewing him about this. And he said, “I thought that if I cried, then you would start crying and that you wouldn’t think that I was strong enough for you in that moment.” And he said, “looking back, maybe that wasn’t the best choice, but I suddenly had to become not only a father, but a mother and the sole caretaker.” And he said, “I was trying the best that I could,” right?  But for him, his definition of strength differs from mine. And as an adult, I’ve come to really appreciate just openness around difficult and painful truths.  And so as a memoirist, I wanted to be able to really showcase that and, in the book, I do include some dialogue with me and my dad talking about the different ways in which we grieved  and the different ways in which we define strength.  So I was able to write about it from a place of understanding instead of a place of blame or anger.

Sam: I just want to validate how hard it can be for families to sit with each other with really big feelings. And my hope is that if there are parents or caregivers who read your book, they can see how valuable it is to be able to express your emotions and have tough conversations and how valuable that can be for your children.

Mallary: Yes. Yeah. And it definitely leads to just more empathy and a greater understanding of why we make the choices that we do as families, right? And acceptance of each other’s flaws too.

Ashley: I think that, on that same line, I want to validate, Mallary, how when we are young  and our brains are not fully  formed and developed, how we can  kind of create this narrative of what’s happening or what we think is happening and then how we  think we will best connect with it or we can keep  ourselves safe, essentially. And so for your brain to take it to, if I stay kind of small and in this space, I will be more connected to my mom.  I think that that like, just essentially that like as a young brain, we make these connections that, you know, maybe as an adult, we could tell the difference. We may not, we might look back and say, oh, I don’t know that that was true, right? But when we’re a kid, it feels that, it literally feels like our truth and so it sticks with us. You know, we hold it with everything that we do.  So just thinking about your mom and your story, you shared that you had this aha moment where I think you had a therapist ask you what the differences and similarities were between your mother and your eating disorder.  And I’m curious if you could talk more about that  and what helped you discover your true hunger?

Mallary: That’s such a great question.  And this was something that I was just really intrigued by as I thought about this question of what was it that really helped me in treatment.  And certainly it was a confluence of different factors that led me to make progress in treatment. But my therapist did ask me to make a list of the differences and similarities between my eating disorder and my mom.  And the differences were pretty hard to come up with. And I actually had kept my therapy journal with this exercise in it, so I was able to quote directly from it.  And in the list of differences, there were only two. So I had said that my mom and I like to eat together and anorexia is about not eating. And then I said, my mom is real, but the things anorexia tells me are fake. So those were the differences. But the similarities, interestingly, were easier to come up with. So I talked about how both my mom and anorexia were related to a disease. They were both controlling in some ways because sometimes my mother could be controlling.  They both, in times, gave me negative attention. They both gave me positive attention at times. They were both related to dying, right, as I think about my mother’s death and also how anorexia can potentially lead to death. I talked about how they were both used to punish because sometimes my mother would punish me like all mothers do, right? Or, you know, scold me for things that I did. And then I said that I didn’t want to let go of either one. I also said that both were related to body image because sometimes my mom would focus on her body, especially the ways in which it had changed when she developed cancer. But what was really helpful for me about this exercise was that when I revealed those similarities, I began to see that my disorder was actually reflective of some of the worst memories of my mother. So things like her controlling temper, her sickness, her death, and all along I had been trying to cling to the best memories, but in reality, when I was sick, I was living out the most terrible ones of all. And  I again had thought, oh, the eating disorder is going to make me feel closer to her.  But actually it didn’t. And it made me sort of embody the worst memories I had of her.  And so in order to really start to get better, I had to start separating myself from my perfectionism and from the disorder and really learn to grieve finally, and also recognize my mother for who she was,  right? Someone who was beautiful, but flawed.  And so in recognizing my mom’s own imperfections, I also could then give myself permission to not have to be perfect either.  And so being able to grieve and think about those connections between my mom and the disorder was really healing for me because, for so long, I had just really connected the disorder to my mother and not really  taken time to think through what does that actually mean and how might that be keeping me stuck in the disorder.

Sam: Wow. You know, when I read that part in the book where the therapist, you know, gave you this assignment, I was thinking to myself, where is she going with this? I really didn’t know what, you know, what she was trying to help you discover.  And I really thought it was brilliant to have you think about the similarities, and how it really helped you in the grieving process because the eating disorder was, it seems like it was serving that function to help you  hold on to the things you haven’t integrated yet. 

Mallary: Yes. That’s such a good way of putting it.  And yes, I remember too, being a little perplexed as to why I had to do this exercise, but it helped so much. And the more I mulled over it in the weeks that followed, the more it began to crystallize for me as to why she had me do this and how it could be helpful.

Sam: You mentioned perfectionism. I was hoping we can talk more about this because again, perfectionism is such a common experience for people with eating disorders.  And I was wondering if you could say more about how perfectionism played out for you and maybe even how you were able to shift out of that perfectionistic mindset.

Mallary: Yeah. As a child, I often thought that my mom wanted me to be perfect. She never came out and said that, but there were often these moments where I would come home with an A minus and she would ask, well, why didn’t you get an A?  And there were other things that I would do like making my bed. And if there was a little wrinkle in the comforter, she would point out that one wrinkle.  And so I know my mom loved me dearly, but I always felt like she wanted me to be perfect. And I found that when I got sick with anorexia,  it in many ways triggered me to become more perfectionistic. I would say that I’ve always been a perfectionist, but certainly the eating disorder exacerbated those perfectionistic tendencies.  And when I was really sick, I had a lot of warped thoughts and I thought, well, I  am going to be the most perfect anorexic that I can be because I think maybe that will make my mom proud. And looking back, I have so much empathy for my younger self because I wish I could go back and say, that’s not true, Mallary. But at the time, that’s what I believed. And I thought again, that maybe if I was more and more perfect, I would make her proud because even though she’d passed away, I still had this yearning as a daughter to make her proud and believed the eating disorder could help with that. And so in my recovery, I had to, again, recognize that my mother was imperfect.  And I didn’t have to think of her as perfect, nor did I have to think of myself as being perfect.  And for me, recovery wasn’t so much about letting go of my perfectionism, because I think a perfectionism is a trait, right? And it’s one that I still carry with me.  But a lot of it was more so about how do I express my perfectionism in a way that is more productive rather than destructive. And so I really had to think through that, both in terms of the eating disorder, but also my recovery. Because in the early stages of my recovery, again, I thought I had to be perfect at this, right? I can’t make any mistakes.  And so part of my ongoing recovery and my work in the middle place has been really trying to kind of analyze that perfectionism and recognize that that line of thinking can be harmful and can be an impediment to progress and recovery.  So I think perfectionism has helped me in a lot of ways. And in some ways it helped me write this book and it’s helped me to be hardworking, but I have to recognize the moments where it ends up being destructive and try to then change course.

Sam: The concept of the perfect patient comes up a lot, you know, as a therapist who has been in this field for over 10 years, it’s such a common experience where I think some people come into treatment and they have this mindset of, I have to do this perfectly. And it’s this all or nothing thinking, you know, either I am a perfect patient or I’m back deep in my eating disorder.  And your concept of the middle place, can really help people see that being in the middle is actually a really healthy place to be  because you can never be a perfect patient. Recovery is really about, it’s an ongoing process and you’re always learning. There’s always going to be triggers. There’s always going to be life stressors to navigate. And the middle place is I think where most people exist in recovery. 

Mallary: Yeah. Yes. It’s so refreshing to hear you say that because I remember thinking that it seemed a little scary to even present the idea of the middle place because I thought, well, people are going to think that I am saying that recovery is not possible or that I’m suggesting that people should just settle for the stagnancy. But the more that I talk about the middle place, the more I think that people really appreciate it because it ends up challenging this idea of black and white views on sickness and recovery, because, I really for a long time thought if I mastered the art of full recovery, I would never get sick again. And if I didn’t make any mistakes, I would be safe.  And really living in those extremes was so exhausting.  And sometimes I wondered, you know, is this hurting me more than protecting me?  But for so long, I didn’t trust that there was actually a space in between. And I worried if I made just one wrong move, I would fall into dangerous territory. But of course I’ve come to realize that there is this space in between and sometimes being able to embrace the gray spaces in life can be really beautiful and can open up so many opportunities for learning and growth.

Ashley: One of my favorite phrases or words to use in the therapy room is “embracing the tension” and just so that you can, you know, you can move back and forth and, well, that is okay you know, and learning how to kind of exist in that can be so freeing, exist in the gray, can be so much more freeing.  Mallary, so another kind of theme that you discussed was this idea that the eating disorder  helps you to feel both safe and special.  And this is a belief really that we see a lot in the eating disorder community.  I’m just curious, how were you able to ultimately  challenge this belief and overcome it in the work that you’ve done?

Mallary: Yes. So I definitely believed that the eating disorder made me special. And I held onto that for a really long time. And that word special in some ways almost seemed like this childlike way of describing perfectionism, but  I thought that  the eating disorder would keep me safe. It would keep me special.  And really, for me, so much of recovery was learning to recognize that I was actually special in a lot of other ways. I remember there was a nurse who treated me when I was in residential treatment. And she said, Mallary, you will always be special. And you are so special, even without your disorder. And just to have somebody tell me that was really meaningful because I felt like after my mother passed away, I lost that sense of being special. And I thought that eating disorder would give it to me.  And I had to, in recovery, really learn that I was so much more than my eating disorder.  Even though my mom had died, I was still a daughter. And I was a writer and I was a friend and I was someone who loved reading. And I, for a long time, had lost touch of all those other things because I was so intent on being the special patient with anorexia. And I distinctly remember this moment when I was sick where it was sort of a period more than a moment, but I moved from saying I have anorexia to I am anorexic as though it were a huge part of my identity. And so it really, for a long time, was so much of how I saw myself and how I lived in the world.  And now I think of myself as so much more.  I think the eating disorder identity is still there in some ways. If I think about my identity as a pie, all of those slices of the pie used to be taken up by anorexia. But now I would say it’s a very small piece, right? I mean, can’t deny it’s still there, but there’s so many other slices, right? I’m a mom now. I’m a professor. I’m an author. I’m a wife. All these other things that I feel make me special. And so I really try to focus on those other aspects of my identity while still just holding space for the fact that the eating disorder is still there in some ways, but it doesn’t define who I am anymore.

Ashley: Yes, I love that. You bring in the “and,” right? Like, that’s the biggest thing. Like, two things can be true at once, right? There can still be a little bit of that space there, and there’s so much more of the pie to be had and seen and experienced. 

Mallary: Yes, I love thinking about the ampersand. That’s my favorite situation because I love the idea of and right, just holding to seemingly opposing truths in the palm of one hand and recognizing both can be true. So I’m much more of the mindset of thinking through the and as opposed to only thinking in terms of either or. 

Sam: And that question comes up for so many people in recovery. The question, who am I without my eating disorder? And it is a scary thought. And it can really get in the way of recovery. You know, I think there are many people who are so afraid that if they don’t have their eating disorder, they will not know who they are.  And for you, you know, discovering all these other parts of your identity, did that take a long time or do you remember what helped with that? 

Mallary: Yeah, it did take a while. I think for me, I just was so entrenched in the idea of the eating disorder defining me, that it took a really long time to step outside of that.  And I think too that it was also difficult in recovery because I had sort of taken on this identity of someone who was fully recovered and no longer had my eating disorder.  And yet in many ways that felt inauthentic because the eating disorder was still part of me.  And so it wasn’t until later in life, once I really started to think more in terms of the middle place, that I could really begin to more fully embrace the different parts of my identity, because no longer was I trying to just pretend that the eating disorder was no longer part of the identity. I could instead recognize that, yes, it was still there, and I could be so many other things. And I think as I got older and as I met my partner, who’s now my husband, as I became a mom, those two things in particular really expanded my sense of self and helped give me a sense of purpose beyond the eating disorder and motivated me to keep doing better and to keep trying to  aim for more recovery. Right? And so I think it was this combination of living more life and adopting more roles and also being able to hold space still for the reality that the eating disorder is still there, but it’s kind of more in the background, right? I can still see it when I look in the rear view, it’s still there, but it’s not the driving force in my life.

Sam: It took courage, I think, to take some risks to expand your world. As we know, eating disorders can make your world very small, and it takes some bravery to try new things and put yourself out there. And I just want to give you credit for that, because I know that probably wasn’t easy. 

Mallary: No, it definitely wasn’t. I mean, I think about just how I was really scared in some ways to write this book. But I also think it’s the most honest piece of writing that I’ve ever put out into the world, because I wrote a lot of essays prior to this book that I felt like were, in some ways, half true. I mean, as a journalist, I pride myself on telling true and accurate stories. But as I look back at some of these personal essays that I published, I felt like I wasn’t really talking about the messiness of recovery and was really sort of writing these pieces as someone who called myself fully recovered. But I wasn’t really, right. I still was grappling in some ways with different setbacks or slips along the way. And so I think to write this book and to really be honest about where I’m at in my recovery has been so refreshing. It’s been scary at times, no doubt, but part of what’s been helpful for me and healing for me is just interviewing so many other people who also say, “yes. I’m in that space and there have been times where I felt like I couldn’t really talk about it because I thought maybe I would be stigmatized and I felt shame around admitting I’m not fully recovered.” And so every time I interviewed someone who would say that, it motivated me to say, okay, I’m going to keep working on this book and there’s power in being able to talk about the imperfections of recovery. 

Sam: Yes. Helping so many people feel seen. It’s, you know, it’s like, thank goodness there’s, you know, a book now out there that can really help people feel understood in that middle place. There was a quote that really stood out to me. It was so quotable. I was hoping you could say more about it. I could just see it sort of like as like an Instagram post or something. You wrote, “I found that recovery is less about the eradication of one’s disorder and more about the elucidation of it.” What did you mean by that?

Mallary: Yeah, thank you. I really like that line as well. And for me, I thought about the fact that there are a lot of recovery narratives that are rooted in this idea of removal. So the tumor is excised or the stitches are taken out, for instance. But for people with eating disorders, there’s no easy remedy or removal. I remember interviewing someone and she said, “well, I don’t think I could ever get better unless I had a brain transplant,” right? Because she felt like her brain was just so distorted, right? And she thought I’ve got to remove that in order to get better. And I really understood what she meant, even though it was so sad to hear that, because I think a lot of times we think of removal when we think of recovery.  And I think it’s why a lot of us in the middle place kind of feel like we’re recovering but not completely removed from our eating disorder. And it’s hard to grapple with that.  And so as I’ve unpacked the word recovery and thought about the multitude of meanings that it holds in the eating disorder space, I have found that it really is less about this eradication of the disorder and more about the elucidation of it. And so by that I mean that it’s really about kind of developing a clear understanding of the parts of ourselves that may have contributed to the disorder, and turning those into strengths rather than dismissing them as weaknesses. So instead of diminishing who we are, we really learn to expand our sense of self. And so that gets back to this idea that rather than saying, okay, the eating disorder is no longer part of me, I never have an disorder thought anymore, I never have any eating disorder behaviors, I can recognize that the eating disorder in some ways is still there, but I’ve expanded myself so far beyond that as well.  And so I think for me, that’s been really helpful to think through that and to recognize that, yes, the sort of young Mallary who was struggling, she’s still in there. She’s still part of me. And she still made me who I am today.  But I’m also so much more than that at this point. 

Ashley: I love that. That makes me think of the book, No Bad Parts. Is that right? Is that the IFS book? Yeah, that she can be a part of you and you can love on her and embrace her and let her be with you, you know?  Okay, Mallary, I want to ask you about something else in your book.  You mentioned two important issues in recovery.  One is that relapse can be a part of recovery, right? And then the other one is that eating disorder symptoms can potentially morph into other types of eating disorder symptoms, right? So I’m curious if there might be something that you would love to say to our listeners today who may be experiencing that. Maybe they’ve had that relapse once, twice, three times, or maybe they’ve overcome one set of symptoms and then something else has shown up. What might be something that you would want to share with them today?

Mallary: Yeah, so I think it’s really important to recognize that eating disorder symptoms do change over time. And I think that that’s something that we need to be talking more about, because I think treatment has certainly improved a lot since the days when I was in inpatient treatment in the late ‘90s, but at the time, I did not know that that could happen. And so when I was stuck in that binge restrict cycle in college and beyond, I had no idea really what was going on. And I was not familiar with diagnostic crossover, this idea that eating disorder symptoms can change and morph.  And many people who struggle with anorexia may end up developing binge or purge behaviors. And so I think being able to have conversations with that and preparing people for that potential is important, even though it can be a really scary conversation to have. And I think being able to still seek help in those moments is so important because when I was struggling with that relapse, I thought, well, I’m supposed to be better. I am beyond needing help, right? Like I’m past that. I was in treatment. I got the help that I needed. I’m not supposed to need any more help. And that was a really harmful mentality to have. But I was too afraid to ask for help because I thought that I was supposed to be better than that.  And I think I would encourage anyone who’s in that space of relapse or who may find that their symptoms are changing to seek help again, right? Even if you’ve had help or even if you haven’t, especially if you haven’t, to go back and to seek help and to really be open about your struggles, because I have found that secrecy and silence really do keep us sick and stuck.  And I wish that earlier on when I had a relapse that I had actually just sought help and that I had been able to talk about it, because since I didn’t and since I kept it secret, those behaviors lasted for a really long time and that relapse lasted for far longer than I would have liked.  So that would be my advice. 

Ashley: Can I just say too that I think this is beautiful advice for somebody experiencing this.  I also think this is so incredibly important for us as professionals to hear this too.  Because sometimes I think that we can place expectations on our clients, and then when our clients are not meeting those expectations, when they’re not, you know, quote, getting better,  it can really damage them, you know, or cause more of that shame or yuckiness to come up. So I just want to say, I think it’s also a really important thing for us as clinicians to hear, too.

Mallary: Yes, I know. Looking back, I really never remembered a provider talking with me about the possibility of relapse or about diagnostic crossover. And again, treatment has really improved since those years. And I think I was getting probably the best treatment I could have at the time. But man, if I had been sort of warned that relapses can happen and that symptoms can change, I think I would have potentially been in a much better position and my relapse probably wouldn’t have lasted quite as long.

Sam: Mm-hmm. Being prepared and just having that knowledge can make all the difference. In your book, Mallary, you take us through pregnancy, motherhood, in the middle place.  What have you discovered about yourself and about recovery through these experiences?

Mallary: Yeah, I’m so glad you asked that because now my kids are seven and nine, but when I was pregnant, I really thought in some ways that becoming a mom would help me to just completely get better. The writer in me liked this idea of thinking about these beautiful bookends to my story. And I thought, well, my mother’s death is what led to my eating disorder, and so then becoming a mom is going to help me to fully recover from it.  But it turns out that that ending was a little too premature, a little too tidy. It’s not sort of the silver bullet that just made me all better.  But it has helped me to grow in my recovery.  And I will say that for me, pregnancy, was a really beautiful time. I thought that it would be more difficult than it was, but it did motivate me in a lot of ways to take better care of my body and to listen to my body’s needs in terms of food, partly because I felt this maternal sense of responsibility for recovery. And I wanted to kind of protect my children even from within the womb. So I was quite honestly afraid of binging or restricting or engaging in any behaviors because I didn’t want to kind of just to have my children be exposed to that, right, even from within me.  And so pregnancy was a bright spot in my recovery.  But I will say that postpartum, I experienced challenges that I hadn’t anticipated.  And so when I was acutely sick with anorexia as a teenager, at the time I had also been diagnosed with severe obsessive compulsive disorder. And in recovery,  I really had  gotten better from that and I hadn’t experienced OCD behaviors. But postpartum, I did find that unexpectedly I became obsessive around pumping breast milk and that ended up turning into a disordered behavior for me. And so that was really challenging because I found myself engaging in this pattern of behaviors that were rooted in kind of restriction. And  I wasn’t taking care of my body in the ways that I needed to. And I was kind of developing these obsessive tendencies.  And looking back, I wish I had known that pregnancy and the postpartum stages can be a trigger for people who have had OCD.  I’ve since learned that in writing my book, but I had no idea at the time. And no one had warned me of that. I did not have an OB who was aware of that, even though I had mentioned that I’d struggled with anorexia and OCD in the past. And so that was something that I had to work through. And at the time, I wasn’t seeing a therapist, so I was sort of working through it on my own and recognizing, okay,  this is certainly a slip. I don’t want this to lead to a relapse. And so I was able to stop pumping once my children were off of breast milk and then get back in a better path  in my recovery.  But I mentioned that just because I do think it’s really important for us to recognize that there may be these triggers, especially around life changes involving our body and changes to our body, whether that’s pregnancy or the postpartum stages or menopause.  And I wish looking back, I had really thought more about that or had somebody who could tell me more about that. And so I write about that a lot in the book because I want other mothers to be aware that this can happen and we just need to be aware of it so that we can take steps to protect ourselves and make sure that we are really trying to choose recovery over the eating disorder.  And so now as a mom of a seven and a nine year old, I really think of them as some of my greatest motivators to continue to be better and do better. And again, I still sometimes have slips and setbacks and I’m not perfect when it comes to mothering my children, but I do really try to set good examples for them. And I make sure not to criticize my body in front of my children. Even when I’m having bad body image days, I don’t critique my body in front of them, because I want them to recognize that all bodies are worthy of respect. And I always tell them that. I say all bodies are worthy of respect no matter how short or tall, no matter how big or small, because I want them to recognize that about themselves and also about other people.  And I also make a real point not to ascribe those moral values to foods.  As I mentioned, I had a health teacher who had done that and that was harmful for me. My children, even in school today, mean, they they’ve had these experiences of teachers  doing the same thing, right? They’ve had classroom exercises where they’ve had to label foods as good or bad or healthy or unhealthy.  But they know at home that we don’t ascribe those values to food.  And they’re not, quote unquote, bad if they eat what others might consider to be a quote unquote bad food.  And so it’s been really important for me to have those conversations with my kids and I’ve been trying to be more open with them about my own experiences with an eating disorder. They’re young, so I speak about it in relatively general terms, but that’s important for me as I think about just the age that they are and how they’ll soon be the same age that I was when I developed an eating disorder.  So it’s something that I’ve been grappling with, especially at this point in my life, because just a few days ago I turned 40, which was the age my mom was when she passed away. And so I’ve been thinking a lot about what does it mean to outlive your mother and  what does it look like to live this next phase of life that my mother never got to experience. So being able to move forward in my recovery and set good examples for my children is a big part of that next phase for me. 

Sam: Thank you so much, Mallary.

Mallary: Yes, thank you.

Sam: So I know we’re just about out of time. But I was wondering if there was one takeaway for our audience, what would it be?

Mallary: Yeah, so it’s always hard to distill it down into one takeaway.  I will say that I want people to know that recovery is possible, but it is not perfect.  And I would encourage everyone listening to really try to celebrate small victories and to always try to aim for more recovery. So for me, sometimes thinking about full recovery can be  a little overwhelming. And so I’ve changed my language to say, I’m just always aiming for more recovery.  Maybe that more recovery ends up looking like 10% one day. Maybe it ends up looking like 20% another day.  And sometimes it can be hard to quantify.  But I think every choice we make in service of recovery is getting at this idea of embracing more recovery. And so I think that can sometimes feel more achievable than trying to reach Full Recovery with a capital F and a capital R. And so as I look back over sort of this long distance that I’ve traveled, sometimes I wonder, how is it possible that I still have so far to go? But on days like that, I remind myself that even though I haven’t reached full recovery, I’m in full progress.  And for me and for many of us, I think that’s a really good place to be. 

Sam: Oh, I love it. Full progress and more recovery. That might be the title of this episode. I don’t know.

Ashley: Love it. 

Sam: Mallary, thank you so much for joining us.  Your book  is a gift. You joining our show today is a gift. Thank you so much.  And maybe there’ll be a sequel to your book one day. I hope so. 

Mallary: Yes, I hope so too. I love that idea.

Ashley: Thank you for listening with us today on All Bodies, All Foods, presented by the Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders. 

Sam: We’re looking forward to you joining us next time as we continue these conversations.

Ashley: Thank you for listening with us today on All Bodies. All Foods. presented by the Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders.

Sam: We’re looking forward to you joining us next time as we continue these conversations.

[Bouncy theme music plays.]