When the dark times become a gift

When the dark times become a gift

“Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.”

The Uses of Sorrow, American poet, Mary Oliver (1935-2019)

“Life is not fair. Don’t expect it to be.”
I was sitting in the psychiatrist’s consulting suite, feeling upset and angry about how someone was treating me. It was the 1990s, and I wanted justice. I wanted “fair”.
It wasn’t going to happen. As time went on, I began to realise the psychiatrist was right. He was trying to help me see that the trick to easing my anxiety was to make the most of what was under my control and let the rest go. I could not control other people, but I could control myself—my thoughts and feelings. This was one of many significant lessons on the long path to recovery from an eating disorder.
When life became covered in dark clouds of depression and despair, I learned to look for and focus on the sliver of light that I knew was there, somewhere.
Such insights, years later in 2025, enable me to reflect and feel gratitude for all my experiences, even the horrible black decades lost in my eating disorder. The depth of those dark times, searching for my lost identity and rebuilding a healthy self, is long gone but never forgotten. Those dark times make today’s good times infinitely brighter and more meaningful.

I think life is simply ‘life’ and is just made up of numerous events. You may not like an event, you may rant and rave about it, but when we take time to reflect, with the clarity of hindsight, we see most of what we considered bad or unfair has actually worked in our favour. (Rick, reader)

Rick’s observation set me thinking. I delved into my laptop and clicked on an early, early draft of A Girl Called Tim. The chapter I clicked on was titled No Turning Back and was a transcript of totally raw diary entries in 1986, when I was 35 years old (and in the second year of treatment for an eating disorder — recovery of ‘me’ would involve much slip/slide hard slog but, as my diaries would document over the next 20 years…I would get there!). These 1986 diary excerpts illustrate the struggles of a wife-mother-career woman who brain is riddled with an eating disorder:
January 1: The start of a new year and, for me, new ways.  I will be strict with myself, being extremely careful about avoiding stress. No more will I push myself over the ‘enough’ limit. What doesn’t get done, doesn’t get done. By the end of this year, I hope this approach will have succeeded in taking me over the threshold, in helping me get well, and perhaps even off all medication.
Start three weeks of holiday on Jan. 3…the six of us will have two weeks at Merimbula…
January 9: My life is transformed from today: I am embarking on a new eating program, the xxxx calorie and fibre diet plan, and I know this is just right for me — for healthy me. I weigh xxx, aim to be xxx for our 15th wedding anniversary! My allowance is xxxx calories, xxgm fibre daily.
Next day: This holiday is giving me the breather I need to alter my direction in life. I am hoping to ‘get normal’ this year so that I don’t need prescriptive drugs any more. I shall be ever so careful not to take on ‘too much’ … the dividing line between enough and too much will be the feeling that to do that extra job will require food intake. That feeling will signal the job can wait.
January 15: Hurrah, I’ve made it — I’ve completed the first week of my diet and I don’t feel hungry — but I do feel very confident and determined that this really will be a most marvellous year for me — I’m going to ‘kick’ that stupid anorexia ….. out of my head for ever. And I’m going to have FUN!
January 19: Home. I’m really delighted with myself: have  lost xxlbs in 10 days! Will stay on xxxx cals a day until I weigh xxx, and I’m past half way mark.
January 29: Day 20. Went off diet yesterday, but back on track today. Have been to see Prof. B — he’ll let me ‘go on’ as is, for another four weeks. I’ll try to weigh less than xxx by then. I’ll try.
February 14: Another 37 deg. C. day — I am worn out and full of icecream and bread, watermelon and oranges, and all in all I wish this heat would go away. I don’t like it at all. I want the temp. to drop, and I want to get my role at work straightened out, and I want to know if I am doing my study or not and I want to know [my husband has arrived home —  hot and flustered and oh why does he keep working such stupid hours]. He doesn’t care and I think I will resign and complete my studies and work full-time after that — if I want to. I want 2 years to do my studies, write if I want to, have time to relax and ride my bike and be involved with the children and the community.
February 17: At last I’ve halted my slide; at last I am feeling positive, and at last the weather is cooler. Oh, I did have a bad weekend. Like a nightmare. Slowly shook it off at work today.
March 14: I didn’t go to sleep until after midnight last night — cried and cried in total despair — so locked in — have to work full-time, and yet, to get anywhere, I need my BA — need it, to get a position a man might get without a BA. And then I feel lost/unhappy at not ‘going out’; not having fun. I cried and cried. So despaired. George finally convinced me I must do my study and that I can manage it and work as well — so I arose feeling yuk, but brighter.
April 7: I’ve dropped /deferred my studies. My children are more important.
April 23: I saw Prof. B. Told him I’m still adding weight and feel fed up with myself — feel as if a cloud is sitting upon me — if only I could lift it off, life would become carefree, easy, light and springy. The opposite to my present feelings. The aggravating part is, I don’t know why I feel this way.
May 5: I’m proud of myself — have eaten nothing yet today and I weighed xxx this morn, so have lost xxlbs, still atrocious I know, but boy, I am determined to reach xxx this time, and no sidetracking along the way. My fourth day. I’m counting calories all the way: I have to do so — no chemistry in me to say ‘You’re full’ or ‘You’re empty’.
June 5: I am determined to keep going one way only; henceforth, and that’s forward. I am keeping a devout pledge to myself — I don’t think I could take another relapse without going totally to pieces, and that is unthinkable. Prof. B can’t fathom me out. I am determined to show myself, and Prof., that I can be fathomed, that I can cure myself — with help….

Hold onto hope and reach out for help

Ah yes, fast forward 20 years to 2006 when, indeed, I did cure myself with help. You can be free from the clutches of your eating disorder, too. And believe me, it’s magic. Hold on to hope and reach out for help.
* In 2024, the National Library of Australia acquired my 1986 private diary and all others penned yearly since 1963 (see this post). The diaries, which formed the leading resource for my PhD that explores the usefulness of diary writing as a therapy in healing from an eating disorder, are available for research.
* Keep watching this space for details soon about the release of two new books–My Kid is Back Second Edition, by Prof. Daniel Le Grange and myself, and My Family is Back, by Prof. Ivan Eisler, Dr Julian Baudinet and myself. I thank all families who generously share their stories in these two important additions to eating disorder literature.