There’s an old saying that, according to the laws of physics, a bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly. Technically, that isn’t true. Scientists eventually figured out that the problem wasn’t the bumblebee. The problem was the way people were trying to understand how it flew.

Early calculations treated the bee too much like a tiny airplane. Its body seemed too heavy. Its wings seemed too small. The math didn’t add up. Except there was one fairly significant problem with the theory: the bumblebee was flying.

It wasn’t breaking the laws of physics. We simply didn’t understand the mathematics yet.

I think about that a lot because, for most of my life, I have felt a little like the bumblebee.

I grew up with a learning disability. Back then, I was diagnosed with ADD because apparently ADHD needed a rebrand sometime in the 2000s. I had an IEP, a 504, occupational therapy, extra help, accommodations—the whole academic alphabet soup. At some point I’m pretty sure I had more acronyms attached to my education than a government agency.

School was hard for me. Really hard.

I could study for six hours for a test and get a 70 while someone else studied for twenty minutes, somehow watched television at the same time, and got a 95. And when you are a kid, you don’t necessarily understand that your brain processes information differently. You just look around the classroom and think: Everyone else can do this. Why can’t I?

And slowly, “I learn differently” becomes “I’m stupid.”

That is a dangerous equation for a kid to start believing.

People saw the result. They didn’t always see how hard my wings were flapping underneath it.

I struggled with reading. Processing. Organization. Sitting still. Remembering things. Taking tests. Doing things in the exact format school had decided meant you were intelligent. Apparently intelligence could be accurately measured by how well you could sit under fluorescent lighting for seven hours and remember something someone told you three weeks earlier. Excellent system. No notes.

But put me somewhere creative? Put me in front of people? Give me an idea and tell me to build something? Ask me to improvise, connect dots, tell a story, or figure something out when there is no instruction manual?

Different kid.

Maybe I was never bad at learning.

Maybe people just didn’t understand the mathematics of how my brain learned.

That distinction matters because when we don’t understand something, humans have a terrible habit of deciding the thing itself is broken instead of considering that maybe our model is incomplete.

And lately, I keep thinking about this in relation to eating disorders.

For all that we know about eating disorders today, there is still an enormous amount we do not understand. We know they are complex illnesses involving biology, genetics, psychology, environment, culture, temperament, and countless factors that can look completely different from one person to another.

And yet sometimes we still talk about treatment as though we have solved the equation.

This method works.

That method doesn’t.

This is what recovery is supposed to look like.

This person responded to treatment, so this person should too.

But what if we don’t fully understand the mathematics yet?

What if two people can have the same diagnosis on paper and completely different things happening underneath? What if something that helps one person is ineffective—or even harmful—for another? What if neurodivergence matters more than we have historically recognized? What if trauma matters differently? What if genetics matter in ways we haven’t discovered yet? What if the questions we are asking are based on an incomplete understanding of the illness itself?

That doesn’t mean treatment doesn’t work.

It doesn’t mean science is wrong.

It means science is supposed to evolve.

The bumblebee wasn’t proof that physics was useless. The bumblebee was proof that the model being used to explain it wasn’t complete yet.

That is a very different thing.

And I think we need more humility like that in eating disorder treatment.

Because behind every treatment protocol is a human being. A human being whose brain, biology, environment, experiences, identity, family, learning style, fears, and history cannot possibly be reduced to one neat formula. Human beings are annoyingly complicated that way. We refuse to fit nicely into spreadsheets.

I spent years thinking something was wrong with my brain because it didn’t perform the way the educational system expected it to. I don’t want us making the same mistake with people who have eating disorders.

If someone isn’t responding the way we expected, maybe the first question shouldn’t always be: What is wrong with them?

Maybe sometimes it should be: What are we missing?

Maybe the treatment isn’t failing because the person is difficult.

Maybe the student isn’t failing because they aren’t intelligent.

Maybe the bumblebee isn’t flying incorrectly.

Maybe we haven’t completely understood how the wings work yet.

There is something incredibly hopeful about that to me, because “impossible” is a dead end.

But “we don’t understand it yet” is an invitation.

It tells researchers to keep researching. Clinicians to keep questioning. Educators to keep adapting. Parents to keep listening. And people who have spent their lives feeling like they don’t fit the equation to stop assuming that they are the mathematical error.

Sometimes the equation is incomplete.

Sometimes the measuring tool is wrong.

Sometimes the system was built around one type of brain, one type of body, one type of patient, or one definition of success.

And sometimes the little fuzzy creature everyone is analyzing has been flying the entire time.

Maybe we should stop telling the bumblebee what should be possible.

And start paying attention to how it actually flies.

And if you believe we need more conversations like this—ones that question old assumptions instead of forcing people into equations that don’t fit—consider supporting Align33 Media. Your donation helps fund workshops, educational resources, Roundtables, community outreach, and the media we create around eating disorders and mental health. It also supports the less glamorous necessities: production, technology, travel, and a truly unreasonable number of emails.

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I’ve always been drawn to butterflies. I know, I know. Very original. A woman who has been through some things feels spiritually connected to butterflies. Somewhere, a HomeGoods sign is being printed as we speak. But for me, butterflies have never just been pretty.

I’ve always believed that life—or the universe, or whatever you believe is out there—has a strange way of sending us little signs. Not giant flashing neon signs that say, “MORGAN, YOU ARE DEFINITELY MAKING THE RIGHT DECISION.” That would actually be extremely helpful, and if the universe is taking requests, I would like to formally submit one. Instead, the signs tend to be quieter. A song at the exact moment you need it. A person calling when you were just thinking about them. A sentence you randomly hear that somehow answers the question you’ve been obsessing over for three days. And for me, lately, it has been butterflies.

Years ago, when I was in eating disorder treatment, one of my therapists talked to me about the butterfly. She explained how a caterpillar goes into a cocoon and eventually emerges transformed. The process isn’t instant. It isn’t pretty. It isn’t comfortable. The caterpillar basically dissolves into goo—which feels like an important detail people leave out when they slap butterflies on inspirational mugs. But eventually, it becomes something entirely different. A butterfly.

She told me to think of it as a symbol of recovery. At the time, I’m not sure I fully appreciated it. I was young, angry, scared, and mostly interested in getting out of treatment. Inspirational metaphors were not exactly high on my priority list. But that image stayed with me.

Recovery really is a transformation. You don’t simply go back to who you were before your eating disorder. At least I didn’t. You go through something. You lose parts of yourself. You discover other parts. You learn how much you can survive. You rebuild. You change. And eventually, if you’re lucky, you start becoming someone you never could have imagined when you were stuck inside the cocoon.

Recently, as I’ve been building Align33 Media, I’ve found myself thinking about that butterfly again. This project means more to me than I can probably put into words. And because it means so much, I also question myself constantly. Am I doing enough? Is this going to work? Am I completely insane? Should I have picked a relaxing hobby like knitting?

There are days when I feel incredibly confident about what we’re building. And then there are days when I feel like every time I think I’ve finally figured one thing out—or I pay one bill—another one lands on my desk, and I’m right back in that feeling of being grounded, like I’m never actually going to get ahead. The amount of work, the uncertainty, the fundraising, the emails, the meetings, the ideas, the people I want to help, and the enormous gap between where we are and where I want us to be all start to feel heavier at once. And every time I seem to reach one of those moments lately, a butterfly appears. Outside my house. Near my car. While I’m walking. Sometimes at moments when I’m thinking very specifically about Align33 and wondering whether I’m actually capable of doing what I’ve set out to do.

Now, I am fully aware there is a scientific explanation for butterflies existing outside. Apparently, butterflies live outdoors. Groundbreaking information. But still, I notice them. And every time I do, something in me settles.

Maybe it’s coincidence. Maybe my brain is simply paying more attention to something that already means a lot to me. Or maybe there really are little reminders placed in our path when we need them. I don’t know. And strangely, I don’t need to know. Because the feeling they give me is real.

They remind me of that girl sitting in treatment who had absolutely no idea what her life would eventually become. She didn’t know she would become a mother. She didn’t know she would build something out of the experience she desperately wanted to forget. She didn’t know she would someday sit across from experts, advocates, families, and people in recovery trying to change the very system she once felt trapped inside. She definitely didn’t know she would voluntarily spend this much time on Zoom.

That girl was still in the cocoon. Maybe parts of me still are.

I think we have this idea that transformation happens once. That there is one giant cocoon moment, one dramatic breakthrough, one “before” and one “after,” and then congratulations, you are officially a butterfly and life is now soft lighting and personal growth. But I don’t think that is how it works.

To be honest, the idea of transformation and change has always scared me. I’ve often equated transformation with something negative, something disruptive or painful, rather than something good. I don’t really know why, especially because when I look back at the times in my life when real change did happen, it mostly ended up being positive.

I think we keep transforming.

We outgrow versions of ourselves. We enter new seasons. We become mothers, founders, partners, advocates, friends. We fail. We try again. We question everything. We shed identities we thought we needed. We build new ones. Sometimes we feel like we are flying, and sometimes we feel like we have somehow crawled directly back into the goo.

Maybe that is part of it too.

Maybe recovery was one cocoon. Motherhood was another. Building Align33 is another. Maybe life is just a series of becoming, over and over again. But then I wonder—if we are permanently changed by every season of life, where is the opportunity to keep learning and growing? And honestly, that thought is also a little annoying.

So when I see a butterfly now, I don’t necessarily take it as proof that everything is going to work out exactly the way I want it to. I wish I could. That would make fundraising significantly less stressful.

I take it as something smaller and maybe more useful: a reminder that I have changed before. I have survived uncertainty before. I have lived through versions of myself I thought I would never escape. And I have become things that the girl sitting in treatment could not have imagined.

Maybe the butterflies know something I don’t.

Or maybe they just remind me of something I already do.

Keep going.

Help us keep making the conversations nobody else seems willing to have. Donations also help fund my increasingly concerning relationship with Zoom

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I have been thinking a lot lately about identity. Specifically, what happens when an eating disorder goes from being something you have to something you start believing you are. Because eating disorders are sneaky little bastards. They don’t usually walk into your life wearing a name tag that says, “Hi, I’m here to completely hijack your personality, destroy your relationship with food, make going out to dinner feel like a hostage negotiation, and convince you this is all somehow helping.” That would at least be honest marketing.

Instead, they can show up disguised as discipline. Control. Achievement. Safety. Perfectionism. Health. Being “the good one.” Being the thin one. Being the athlete. Being the person who never needs anything. And somewhere along the way, the behaviors can become tangled up with who you think you are.

So I asked several people I deeply respect—people with lived experience and clinicians who have spent decades treating eating disorders—a question I’ve been sitting with: When you think back on your eating disorder, do you feel it became part of your identity, or was it a way of coping with something deeper? The answer, unsurprisingly, was not simple. Because apparently the human brain refuses to give us anything that can be wrapped up neatly in a three-slide Instagram carousel.

For Amy Kathleen Lee, suicide prevention speaker, educator, eating disorder recovery advocate, MSW candidate, and creator of Beneath the Surface, the answer was both. “What began as a way to cope with the loss, grief, and the pain of losing my ballet career quickly turned into a trap that I could not find my way out of,” she told me. On the surface, the eating disorder helped her manage stress, pressure, insecurity and self-doubt. Underneath all of that was something much deeper: safety.

Amy described painful experiences from childhood that left her feeling unsafe in her own body. Thinness began to represent protection. “If I could be thin enough, maybe no one would hurt me, or if I looked a certain way, I could be invisible.” That sentence stopped me. Because this is where our cultural obsession with reducing eating disorders to food and weight becomes so painfully inadequate. We see the behavior and assume the behavior is the whole story.

Why won’t she eat? Why does he exercise so much? Why can’t they just stop counting calories? Why can’t they see what everyone else sees? Meanwhile, underneath the behavior might be grief, trauma, fear, identity, anxiety, perfectionism, loneliness, neurobiology, control—or twenty-seven things happening simultaneously because apparently the brain enjoys running forty browser tabs at once.

Amy put it beautifully: “It was never really about weight or calories; that was the illusion.” Her mind, she explained, separated the truth from the illusion as a way of protecting her from experiences that were too painful to process at the time. “In some strange way, the eating disorder was how I survived, even though it ended up being my worst enemy.” That contradiction is incredibly important. Sometimes the thing destroying someone also once served a purpose. That does not make the eating disorder good. It makes understanding it necessary.

Sarina Deb described something entirely different—and equally important. As the child of immigrants, her eating disorder became tied to race, beauty, achievement, sacrifice and belonging. At eleven years old, she desperately wanted to be white because she had already absorbed the message that whiteness meant acceptance and beauty. During middle-school summers, she squeezed lemon juice into her thick black hair, hoping it would somehow lighten it into blonde. Spoiler alert: lemons are apparently excellent for salad dressing and significantly less effective at changing your ethnicity.

When whiteness wasn’t something she could attain, thinness became something she believed she could control. “Since being white wasn’t an option, being thin was the one fundamental for being beautiful that I could control when the others were inaccessible.” But there was another layer. Growing up as the child of immigrants meant understanding the enormous sacrifices her parents and grandparents had made. They had left communities, families, customs and pieces of home behind to create opportunity for their children. Achievement became a form of repayment. If they sacrificed for you, you succeeded for them.

She began to confuse suffering with selflessness—and self-punishment with discipline. Straight A’s weren’t enough. Sports weren’t enough. Music wasn’t enough. She could also be the person who didn’t need food. “I didn’t even need food to get through a fourteen-hour day as a twelve-year-old. I could starve my body and still push myself through hours of soccer games and cello practice. And I could do it all with a smile on my face.”

And here is where eating disorders can get particularly dangerous in achievement-driven environments: sometimes illness gets rewarded. You’re disciplined. You’re committed. You’re driven. You’re healthy. You’re dedicated. You’re so “good.” Meanwhile, your body is essentially waving an emergency flare while everyone applauds your work ethic.

“In an evolving world that felt increasingly like I was one step behind, anorexia was the one thing that I was always excelling at.” That line gets directly to the identity question. If the eating disorder becomes the thing you’re best at, giving it up can feel less like stopping a behavior and more like surrendering the one identity that made you feel successful.

I also asked Dr. Judith Brisman, who has spent decades working in the eating disorder field. Judith made an important distinction. She doesn’t necessarily think eating disorders create an identity disturbance. Instead, she believes our underlying traits and temperament affect how we respond to what happens around us. She gave me an example I loved: she has twin daughters, and they were completely different literally from day one—their sleeping, hunger, need for comfort and temperament. Same family. Same environment. Different humans. Imagine that. Parents everywhere can now stop pretending they have cracked the parenting algorithm.

Judith explained that someone with perfectionistic or obsessive-compulsive traits may naturally respond to overwhelming experiences through control. Then place that person inside a culture absolutely obsessed with controlling food, bodies, weight and appearance. You can see where things may go. “When we’re in a culture that emphasizes control over food and body, one’s identity traits… will find ways to use food and body as a means of controlling otherwise out-of-control feelings and experiences.”

And once an eating disorder becomes the primary coping mechanism, something else can happen: development gets interrupted. The person becomes isolated. The traits become more rigid. Instead of discovering five new ways of dealing with stress, relationships, uncertainty, failure and adulthood, the eating disorder keeps offering the same answer. Control harder. Eat less. Exercise more. Shrink. Perfect. Repeat.

Judith described it as the identity becoming “fixed.” The eating disorder can prevent someone from growing, changing and developing more flexible ways of being in the world. That framing really resonated with me. Maybe the eating disorder doesn’t become your identity because there was never an identity there. Maybe it prevents your identity from having room to evolve.

Then I asked Carolyn Costin. Carolyn has both lived experience and more than four decades of experience treating eating disorders. And her answer was immediate: both. Over time, she explained, the behaviors—and particularly thinness—became an identity.

She described it as an internal checklist that slowly turns into a sense of self: “I am a person who doesn’t eat breakfast.” “I count my calories.” “I eat as few carbs as possible.” “I am the thinnest one of my friends.” “I have control over my food.” “I run daily.” And on and on. At first, these sound like individual behaviors or rules—things you do. But when they are repeated over time, especially in moments of stress or uncertainty, they stop feeling like choices and start feeling like definitions. The behaviors become familiar, the familiarity becomes identity, and eventually it shifts into something like: this is who I am.

Then breaking a rule doesn’t simply feel uncomfortable. It feels like betraying yourself. “If you break the rules it feels so wrong, you lose cohesion, it feels like NOT you,” Carolyn explained. That is such an important concept for families to understand. Someone may intellectually understand that eating breakfast is good for them. But if they’ve spent years believing I am someone who doesn’t eat breakfast, that bowl of cereal can suddenly feel like an existential crisis. Which seems rather dramatic for cereal. But that’s the point. It isn’t actually about cereal.

Carolyn also emphasized what the disorder provided for her: control, self-discipline, anxiety relief and structure. There were biological, psychological and social factors underneath all of it. And after treating eating disorders for 46 years, she says she has watched this process happen over and over again. “Engage in a behavior long enough and it becomes part of your identity, therefore making it very hard to stop doing.”

She compared it to professional athletes who become injured. If you have spent your entire life thinking, I am a runner, I am a gymnast, I am a soccer player, and suddenly you cannot do that thing anymore, you can feel completely untethered. Who am I if I can’t do the thing that made me me?

This is part of why Carolyn stopped encouraging language such as: “I’m anorexic.” Instead: “I have anorexia.” One is an identity. The other is something you are experiencing. And if you can have something, there is also the possibility that someday you no longer have it.

Carolyn now puts it even more simply: “Anorexia or bulimia is something you do, and you can stop doing it.” She is not suggesting that stopping is easy. It is incredibly difficult. But she believes full recovery is possible. Eventually the old identity no longer fits. The behaviors lose their appeal. The disorder no longer gives you what you once believed it did. And that, Carolyn says, is being recovered.

When I look back at my own eating disorder, I can see how much of my identity became wrapped around it too. Not because I woke up one morning and announced, “Excellent. Today’s the day I’m going to build my entire personality around an eating disorder.” Again, terrible branding strategy.

It happened gradually. The rules become routines. The routines become proof. The proof becomes identity. I’m disciplined. I’m strong. I’m different. I’m in control. And the terrifying part is that other people can reinforce it without realizing it. Someone compliments your body. Someone praises your “willpower.” Someone asks what you’re doing because you “look amazing.” Meanwhile, the person receiving that compliment might be absolutely drowning.

This is why I think we need to stop asking only: “How do we get someone to stop the eating disorder behavior?” And start asking: “What did this behavior come to mean to them?” What did it provide? Safety? Belonging? Achievement? Control? Predictability? Numbness? Identity? Because if you take away someone’s primary coping mechanism without helping them build something underneath it, you’ve removed the life raft before teaching them how to swim.

I don’t think we talk enough about the fact that recovery can also be an identity crisis. Recovery isn’t only eating more food or stopping behaviors. Sometimes recovery asks: Who are you without this? Who are you if you’re not the thinnest person in the room? Who are you if you don’t run today? Who are you if you don’t know the calories? Who are you if you disappoint someone? Who are you if you’re average at something? Who are you if you need help? Who are you when your body changes? Who are you when control isn’t available?

Those questions are terrifying. But eventually they can become exciting.

Because maybe the goal isn’t to return to exactly who you were before the eating disorder. Maybe you get to discover someone you never had the chance to become. Someone funny. Messy. Creative. Opinionated. Compassionate. Annoying. Ambitious. Lazy on Sundays. Terrible at parallel parking. Excellent at trivia no one asked you to know. Someone whose identity contains hundreds of things rather than one shrinking set of rules.

The eating disorder may have once convinced you that it was keeping you together. But recovery gives you the opportunity to find out what else you’re made of.

And thankfully, you’re a hell of a lot more interesting than what you ate for breakfast.

Shout Out:

A huge thank you to the incredible contributors who shared their voices and expertise for this piece. Carolyn Costin has spent decades helping people understand that full recovery is possible, and through her work she also trains eating disorder recovery coaches through her Becoming Recovered approach. You can learn more about finding a coach through Carolyn Costin’s program and watch/listen to her work on Becoming Recovered here. Dr. Judith Brisman is a longtime eating disorder clinician whose work has helped shape how we understand identity, coping, relationships, and recovery. You can learn more about Dr. Judith Brisman and her work here. Amy Kathleen Lee is a speaker, suicide prevention educator, eating disorder recovery advocate, and creator of Beneath the Surface, using her lived experience to help others feel less alone. You can learn more about Amy and her speaking and advocacy work here. And a huge thank you to Sarina Deb for sharing such a personal and powerful perspective on culture, identity, achievement, belonging, and the complicated ways an eating disorder can become intertwined with all of them. I am so grateful to Carolyn, Judith, Amy, and Sarina for being willing to add their perspectives to this conversation and remind us that there is never just one story, one cause, or one path to recovery.

Episode 1: The Culture Detectives

Following the Clues Behind Body Image, Food & Identity

In the inaugural episode of the Align33 Media Roundtable, host Robyn Shumer is joined by historian and researcher Alice Weinreb, PhD, clinical psychologist Jennifer “Dr. Jen” Nardozzi, PsyD, and eating disorder dietitians Tammy Beasley, RDN, CEDS-C, and Debra Spector, MS, RDN, CDN, for a conversation that asks a deceptively simple question: If eating disorders aren’t simply about food, where do they begin?

Rather than beginning with diagnosis or treatment, the group looks further upstream, examining the cultural messages that shape our relationships with food, bodies, health, achievement, and self-worth long before someone ever meets criteria for an eating disorder. Together, they explore how ideas about beauty, perfectionism, morality, wellness, and “doing health correctly” become embedded in everyday life—and how difficult it can be to recognize those messages when they are presented as normal.

The conversation moves across generations and disciplines, looking at what has changed, what surprisingly hasn’t, and why today’s environment can feel uniquely intense. From the evolution of diet culture into wellness culture to the pressure to optimize our bodies, food choices, productivity, and identities, the panel considers how seemingly harmless messages can contribute to fear, shame, comparison, and disconnection from our own internal cues.

Most importantly, The Culture Detectives invites us to become more curious about the beliefs we have inherited rather than simply accepting them as facts. Which messages about food, weight, beauty, and success deserve to be questioned? Which ones should end with our generation? And what might happen if we replaced them with messages rooted in flexibility, trust, compassion, and a broader understanding of what it means to be healthy?

No debates to win. No PowerPoints. Just five curious people following the clues behind the stories our culture tells us—and asking whether it might be time to write some new ones.

At Align33 Media, we believe in connection and community over content. Each episode brings together 3–4 experts—including clinicians, researchers, authors, and people with lived experience—to explore eating disorders, mental health, body image, belonging, and well-being.

Our inaugural Roundtable features:

✨ Dr. Jennifer Nardozzi, Director of the FAB Program and eating disorder specialist.

✨ Deb Spector, MS, RDN, CDN, eating disorder dietitian and author of The Things I’ve Seen People Do With and Without Food. Available on Amazon

@debraspectormsrdncdn

✨ Dr. Alice Weinreb, Associate Professor at Loyola University Chicago whose research explores the global history of eating disorders and author of the forthcoming *Troubled Appetites*.

✨ Tammy Beasley, MS, RDN, CEDS-C, nationally recognized eating disorder dietitian, educator, author and National Director of Nutrition for Odyssey Eating Disorder Network. @tambeasrd

Hosted by @robyn_shumer Align33 Media’s Executive Producer of Storytelling & Podcasts and author of Bones: An, Anxiety and My Path to Self-Love

and produced by @mooreafriedmann TEDx speaker and host of @balancingact.podcast

These aren’t interviews—they’re real conversations designed to bring people together, challenge perspectives, and create meaningful change.

🗓️ The first episode premieres August 18. Pull up a chair—we saved you a seat.

Support our table:

Robyn’s book: https://a.co/d/0ejXX3uc

Moorea’s Podcast:

Alice’s Book: https://a.co/d/05SKKEjm

Deb’s Book: https://a.co/d/034x0720

Dr. Jen:

https://fabprogram.com

Tammy:

https://tammybeasley.com

Support Align33 Media

If this conversation made you think, laugh, question something you’ve been told since approximately 1997, or yell “YES, EXACTLY” at your screen, consider supporting Align33 Media.

We are a nonprofit, which is the professional way of saying we have very big ideas and are always thrilled when someone helps us pay for them. Your donation helps us continue creating conversations, educational programming, workshops, documentaries, and resources designed to change the way we talk about eating disorders, body image, and mental health.

Support Align33 Media

Interested in sponsoring an episode, partnering with Align33 Media, or supporting our work in a bigger way? We’d love to hear from you.

Email morgan@align33media.org for sponsorship and partnership opportunities.

Because changing culture is a group project—and unfortunately, nobody gave us the answer key.

If you asked me what helped me most in recovery, you’d probably expect a profound answer. Maybe mindfulness. Meditation. Journaling. Some magical breathing technique where you inhale positivity and exhale childhood trauma. And while all of those things can absolutely help, one of the greatest forms of medicine I’ve ever found doesn’t come with a prescription. It’s laughter.

I honestly think laughter changes everything. It changes my mood, my perspective, and even the way I experience difficult moments. Recovery can be so heavy. There are doctor’s appointments, therapy sessions, fears, setbacks, uncomfortable conversations, and days where your brain feels like it’s working against you. If we’re not careful, recovery becomes so serious that we forget we’re still allowed to have fun. Somewhere along my own journey, I realized healing doesn’t have to mean walking around looking like you’re carrying the weight of the world. Sometimes healing looks like laughing so hard your stomach hurts.

One of the best things I ever did—and something I think every single person should try at least once—is take an improv class. Especially if you’re a control freak. Actually...especially if reading that sentence made you uncomfortable.

I grew up acting and eventually got into an elite acting conservatory. Looking back, I’m still not entirely sure how that happened. Apparently I had a talent for making up complete nonsense on the spot. The admissions people called it improvisation. My family probably just called it Morgan making things up again.

The beauty of improv is that you have absolutely no control. You can’t prepare. You can’t rehearse. You can’t predict what’s going to happen next. Someone points at you and suddenly you’re pretending to be a dentist treating a giraffe while riding a roller coaster. You don’t get to say, “Hang on, I’d like to prepare a PowerPoint presentation first.” You simply say, “Yes, and...” and keep going.

The funny thing is, recovery works a lot like improv. We spend so much of our lives trying to control every possible outcome. We want certainty. We want guarantees. We want to know exactly how everything is going to unfold before we take the first step. Recovery laughs at that idea. It asks us to move forward anyway. To trust ourselves. To tolerate uncertainty. To keep going even when we don’t know what comes next.

What I love most about improv is that mistakes don’t really exist. If someone forgets what they’re supposed to say, everyone builds on it. If something unexpected happens, it becomes part of the scene. Nobody stops and says, “Well, that’s over. You ruined the whole performance.” They simply adapt. Imagine if we treated ourselves with that same grace. Imagine if every mistake wasn’t proof we were failing but simply an invitation to keep creating.

I honestly think every entrepreneur, physician, therapist, parent, teacher, perfectionist, and recovering people-pleaser should be required to take an improv class. It should count as continuing education. Or therapy. Or at the very least, cardio, because you’ll laugh harder than you’ve laughed in years.

Comedy has always been one of my greatest teachers. Lucille Ball was an absolute badass. She wasn’t afraid to look ridiculous, fall flat on her face, or be the joke. At a time when women were expected to be poised and perfect, she showed the world that vulnerability and silliness could be a superpower. She made millions of people laugh simply by refusing to take herself too seriously.

Then there’s Joan Rivers. Whenever I’m having a bad day, she’s one of the first people I put on. She had this incredible ability to take life’s hardest moments and somehow find humor without pretending the pain wasn’t real. That takes courage. It’s easy to make jokes when life is easy. It’s much harder—and much more beautiful—to laugh while life is messy.

And then there’s what I consider one of the greatest gifts ever given to humanity: My Cousin Vinny. If that movie doesn’t make you laugh, I genuinely don’t know what to tell you. Joe Pesci, Marisa Tomei, the courtroom chaos...it’s perfection. Every time I watch it, I’m reminded that life is a lot more enjoyable when you stop trying to look perfect all the time.

The older I get, the more convinced I become that laughter isn’t the opposite of healing—it’s part of healing. It reminds us to stay present. It pulls us out of our heads and back into the moment. It creates connection. It softens fear. It gives us permission to breathe.

Recovery taught me many things, but one of the biggest lessons was this: don’t wait until everything is perfect before you let yourself laugh. Joy isn’t the reward you earn after you’ve healed. Joy is one of the things that helps you heal.

So take the improv class. Watch the comedy special. Go see stand-up. Be ridiculous. Laugh at yourself. Try something you’re terrible at. Let yourself look foolish every once in a while.

Recovery isn’t about becoming a perfect person.

It’s about becoming a fully alive one.

And if you can laugh along the way, I think you’re doing better than you realize.

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We live in the most connected time in human history. We can video chat with someone on the other side of the world, share a photo with half a million people in seconds, and know what a stranger had for breakfast before we know how our next-door neighbor is doing. We have more ways to communicate than any generation before us, yet loneliness continues to rise. Somewhere along the way, we confused connectedness with connection.

They’re not the same thing.

Getting 500,000 likes on a post isn’t the same as standing in a room with 50 people whose laughter you can hear, whose tears you can see, and whose hearts you can almost feel beating alongside yours. A notification can make you feel noticed for a moment. Genuine human connection can change the trajectory of your life.

Social media has given us incredible opportunities. I’ve met amazing people because of it, and it has allowed important stories to reach millions. This isn’t about blaming technology. It’s about remembering that technology was supposed to bring us closer together—not replace the experience of actually being together.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped teaching the skills that make connection possible.

We teach children algebra, chemistry, and how to find the area of a triangle. They can tell you the powerhouse of the cell but freeze when they’re asked to introduce themselves to someone new. We don’t teach kids how to walk into a room where they don’t know anyone. We don’t teach them how to disagree respectfully, how to apologize, how to navigate rejection, or how to sit in the discomfort of an awkward conversation instead of reaching for a phone to escape it.

Discomfort has become something we’re constantly trying to eliminate. But discomfort isn’t the enemy—it’s often the beginning of connection. Every meaningful friendship started with an awkward hello. Every great relationship began with uncertainty. Every courageous conversation required someone to risk being misunderstood.

We’ve become so good at avoiding discomfort that we’re accidentally avoiding intimacy.

And then there’s nature—the original social network.

Remember when kids disappeared outside for hours and came home only when someone yelled their name from the front porch? Today, many children can navigate an iPhone before they can identify a maple tree. They know how to swipe, scroll, and post, but many have never experienced the quiet confidence that comes from climbing a rock, sitting by a lake, or getting lost on a trail with friends.

Nature slows us down. It reminds us that not everything has to happen instantly. Trees don’t rush. Rivers don’t compare themselves to other rivers. Birds have somehow managed to survive for thousands of years without checking whether their latest nest got enough likes.

Honestly, if squirrels started posting on Instagram, we’d probably have influencers teaching us how to forage for acorns.

The irony is almost impossible to ignore. We’ve never had more ways to reach one another, yet many of us have never felt more unreachable. We spend hours communicating without ever feeling understood. We collect followers while struggling to find people we can call when life falls apart.

Maybe the answer isn’t creating another app. Maybe it’s creating another conversation.

Maybe it’s knocking on your neighbor’s door. Maybe it’s leaving your phone in your pocket during dinner. Maybe it’s introducing yourself to someone at the coffee shop instead of pretending to be fascinated by the nutritional label on your drink. Maybe it’s sitting with someone who’s hurting instead of sending a heart emoji and hoping it translates.

The moments that shape us rarely happen through a screen. They happen when we laugh so hard our stomach hurts, cry with someone who understands, hug someone we love, sit around a campfire, walk through the woods, or simply look another human being in the eye and remind them they’re not alone.

That’s the kind of connection I hope we never stop chasing.

Because at the end of our lives, no one will remember how many followers we had. They will remember who showed up, who listened, who stayed, and who made them feel seen.

I’d trade 500,000 likes for one room full of genuine connection every single time.

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Every few months, it happens again.

A celebrity loses a significant amount of weight, and suddenly social media turns into a slideshow of close-up photos analyzing their body from every possible angle. Headlines scream, “Fans are concerned,” while article after article zooms in on protruding bones, comparing old photos to new ones like a before-and-after science experiment. The intention may be concern. The impact is often something very different.

As someone in recovery from anorexia, I don’t need to see graphic images of someone else’s illness to understand that eating disorders are serious. I don’t need a side-by-side comparison or twenty reposts of the same photo. I certainly don’t need the internet debating someone’s body like it’s public property. I wish every person who is struggling nothing but healing, privacy, and compassionate care. But we have to ask ourselves a difficult question:

Who are these images actually helping?

If the goal is education, there are countless ways to educate without repeatedly circulating graphic photos of someone who is clearly unwell. If the goal is compassion, compassion doesn’t require zooming in on someone’s body. If the goal is awareness, I promise you—we’re aware. People often say, “But we’re trying to show how serious eating disorders are.”

The truth is, you don’t have to show me someone’s lowest weight to convince me that anorexia is deadly. You don’t need to publish photographs that many people with eating disorders will inevitably compare themselves to. You don’t need to turn another person’s illness into something that can be endlessly shared, analyzed, and consumed.

One of the cruelest parts of an eating disorder is that your brain doesn’t always see these images the way a healthy person does. What someone without an eating disorder sees as alarming, someone who is struggling may interpret very differently. That’s why repeatedly sharing graphic body images deserves thoughtful consideration.

We don’t usually educate people about depression by repeatedly showing someone at their absolute lowest moment. We don’t raise awareness about addiction by constantly circulating graphic images of people during the worst days of their illness. Yet somehow, when it comes to eating disorders, we continue to believe that putting someone’s body on display is the best way to start the conversation.

It isn’t.

Let’s have conversations about early warning signs. Let’s talk about the biology of eating disorders. Let’s discuss why early intervention matters, why treatment can be difficult to access, why families need support, and why recovery is possible.

Let’s share stories of hope. Let’s interview researchers. Let’s amplify people in recovery. Let’s teach people what these illnesses actually are. There are so many ways to increase awareness that don’t require another viral photo of someone at what appears to be one of the hardest moments of their life. I also can’t help but wonder what it must feel like to be that celebrity.

Imagine opening your phone and finding thousands of strangers dissecting your appearance, speculating about your health, and reposting your body over and over again. Whether they are living with an eating disorder, another illness, or something entirely different, they deserve the same dignity and privacy that any of us would hope for during a difficult time. Maybe it’s time we stop confusing concern with consumption. Awareness doesn’t have to be graphic. Education doesn’t have to be triggering. Compassion doesn’t require comparison.

We can acknowledge that someone appears unwell, hope they receive the care they deserve, and then shift the conversation toward something that actually helps people. Less body commentary. More education. Less speculation. More empathy. Less sharing of graphic images. More sharing of hope. I don’t want to remember another celebrity by the lowest weight they may have reached. I’d rather remember them by their talent, their humanity, and—when they’re ready—their recovery.

Help fund the rebellion against diet culture, bad mental-health advice, and PowerPoints created in 2004.

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People have a lot to say about the lives they never lived.

If you grew up in 2005, congratulations—you survived one of the strangest cultural moments in history. YouTube had just launched, which meant none of us realized we’d eventually spend hours watching strangers organize their refrigerators or pressure wash driveways. Reddit was born, Guitar Hero was ruining family relationships one missed note at a time, and Wedding Crashers, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith were dominating the box office. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were officially a couple, causing America to divide into Team Jen and Team Angelina as if we all personally knew them. Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, Ellen DeGeneres was raising money on national television, and somewhere in the middle of all of that, I was just trying to survive seventh grade.

Seventh grade was my first year of middle school, and overnight my tiny elementary school of about two hundred students exploded into seven hundred. It felt like someone had taken all the awkward preteens in the county, shaken them up in a snow globe, and said, “Good luck figuring yourselves out.” Everyone was desperately trying to reinvent themselves. Girls formed cliques overnight, boys suddenly discovered cologne—which they applied by emptying the entire bottle onto their bodies—and somehow dating became the most important thing in the world. I use the word “dating” loosely because middle school dating usually consisted of holding hands in the hallway, sitting next to each other at the movies, and then having your best friend break up with them for you three days later.

Meanwhile, I looked exactly like someone who had absolutely no business dating anybody. I was awkward, painfully shy, tall before being tall was cool, had giant curly hair that behaved like it paid taxes and lived independently of me, and braces that caught the light from approximately three zip codes away. The thought of kissing a boy didn’t excite me; it sounded like something I’d need to mentally prepare for six to eight business months in advance.

Then there was my best friend Jay. Jay experienced what can only be described as the greatest puberty glow-up of the early 2000s. She went into summer vacation as the nerdy girl with braces and acne and came back looking like she’d signed a contract with Disney Channel. The braces disappeared, the acne vanished, she suddenly had boobs, flawless makeup, perfectly straight hair, and enough confidence to power a small city. Every boy wanted to date Jay, and honestly, who could blame them? Even I wanted whatever magical self-esteem potion she’d apparently been drinking all summer.

“You know, Morgan,” she’d tell me, “you’re beautiful too.”

“Stop lying,” I’d answer, rolling my eyes so dramatically they almost got stuck.

“No, seriously. Your problem isn’t how you look. It’s how you talk to yourself. Guys are dumb. Do you really think they’re analyzing your eyeliner?”

Jay became my unofficial life coach. She taught me how to straighten my hair without accidentally burning off my bangs, what products to use, how to apply makeup, and even how to talk to boys. She also introduced me to the concept of “bases,” which confused me because I couldn’t understand why baseball had suddenly become so sexually involved. She carefully explained each one while I sat there nodding politely, silently thinking, I’m still trying to make eye contact with boys without passing out. We’re talking about entirely different sports.

The thing I admired most about Jay wasn’t that she was pretty. It was that she never made me feel stupid. She was a straight-A student who would patiently re-explain homework without making me feel like a burden. She was only one month older than me, but emotionally she felt about twelve years ahead. While everyone else seemed to be sprinting toward adulthood, I still felt like I was waiting for recess.

Middle school fashion wasn’t exactly helping anyone’s self-esteem either. Girls traded Limited Too for Hollister, Abercrombie, and Juicy Couture. Everyone suddenly owned a velour Juicy tracksuit, UGG boots regardless of the weather, denim mini skirts over leggings, oversized polo shirts, chunky highlights, glitter lip gloss, and a gold Juicy charm bracelet that jingled every time you raised your hand in class. Looking back, I kind of love how ridiculous it all was. Before Instagram and celebrity stylists, people actually experimented. Some outfits were iconic. Others looked like we got dressed in the dark after losing a fight with Claire’s Boutique. It was chaotic, but at least it was original.

Academically, though, I still carried something that felt impossible to hide.

I still had my IEP.

I was still in reading support.

I was still in resource room.

Unlike everyone else, I couldn’t even take electives because my schedule was packed with special education services. While my classmates were learning to cook grilled cheese in Home Economics, I was learning reading strategies I wasn’t even convinced I needed. The frustrating part was my grades had climbed from mostly Ds and Cs in elementary school to Bs and As. I loved writing. If I enjoyed a book, I’d often read ahead of the class. I genuinely couldn’t understand why I was still sitting in reading support.

Then I met Mrs. F.

Every great superhero has an origin story.

Every great villain has one too.

Mrs. F was mine.

From the very beginning, we clashed. Looking back, I wasn’t exactly an angel. I challenged authority, asked a lot of questions, and wasn’t afraid to point out when something didn’t make sense. Mrs. F, however, seemed personally offended by my existence.

One day I crossed my arms and asked, “I honestly don’t know why I’m in this class.”

Without missing a beat she looked at me and replied, “Because you can’t read.”

I blinked.

“Then how exactly do you think I made it to seventh grade?”

Silence.

Another day I confidently announced, “I’m going to make honor roll.”

She laughed.

“That would be a shock.”

That’s the thing about adults. Kids believe them. Even when we pretend we don’t.

Mrs. F constantly reminded me that standardized tests were pointless because, according to her, everyone already knew I’d fail them. Another time, after a student knocked on the classroom door, I asked if he was one of her students.

She laughed.

“Don’t be silly. He’s much too smart to be in this class.”

I wanted to scream.

Instead, I studied.

I realized something important that year: arguing with her wouldn’t change her mind. Success would.

So I threw every ounce of frustration into school. I studied before school, during lunch, after school, and sometimes until midnight. Looking back, I wasn’t studying because I loved learning anymore. I was studying because I thought if I could just become successful enough, maybe people would stop seeing “special ed” before they saw Morgan.

Ironically, the harder everyone questioned my abilities, the harder I worked. Somewhere along the way, proving people wrong quietly became my favorite hobby—and unfortunately, perfectionism wasn’t far behind.

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Every week, I hear from parents who say some version of the same thing:

“Something just doesn’t seem right, but I don’t know if I’m overreacting.”

Maybe their teenager has become increasingly preoccupied with food. Maybe they’re exercising more than ever before. Maybe they’ve stopped wanting to eat with the family or seem consumed by body image and appearance.

The challenge is that eating disorders don’t typically begin overnight. They often start with subtle changes—many of which can easily be mistaken for “healthy habits,” especially during adolescence and young adulthood.

And that’s exactly why research like this matters.

A Study Designed to Reach Teens Earlier

The ACCESS Lab at Washington University in St. Louis, led by Dr. Ellen Fitzsimmons-Craft, is conducting the EMBody Study—a national research study designed to test a brief digital tool to support teens and young adults experiencing concerns about body image, eating, and emotional well-being.

Adolescence is the period when many eating disorders and body image concerns first emerge. Unfortunately, it’s also a time when many young people don’t have access to specialized support, and social media often adds to the pressure rather than relieving it.

The ACCESS Lab is working to change that by developing accessible, evidence-based digital tools that can reach teens and young adults wherever they are.

Who Can Participate?

Your teen or young adult may be eligible if they:

• Are 13–19 years old

• Live in the United States

• Speak English

• Have access to a smartphone

• Have body image or eating concerns

If eligible, participants will:

• Complete three online surveys

• Receive access to the digital tool

• Earn up to $45 for participating

The eligibility screening takes approximately 10–15 minutes.

Why Studies Like This Matter

One of the biggest challenges in eating disorder prevention is that many young people never receive support until symptoms have become severe.

Researchers are increasingly exploring whether digital interventions can help identify concerns earlier, improve body image, and provide support before problems become more serious.

Participating in research like this contributes to developing better prevention and early intervention strategies for future generations.

Interested?

You can learn more and complete the eligibility screening here:

EMBody Study Screening:
https://washu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0PX2BXw3bYrT1rM?Source=Align33

Questions?

ACCESS Lab – Washington University in St. Louis

📧 accesslab@wustl.edu

📞 (314) 626-0245

Why I’m Sharing This

At Align33 Media, one of our goals is to connect families with credible resources, research opportunities, and organizations working to improve eating disorder prevention and treatment.

I’m grateful to the team at Washington University in St. Louis for the work they’re doing to better understand how we can support young people before eating disorders take hold.

If you’re a parent, coach, educator, healthcare provider, or know a teen or young adult who may be interested in participating please consider sharing this opportunity. Sometimes the most meaningful advances in healthcare begin with people who choose to participate.

Because earlier conversations lead to earlier intervention, and intervention should be accessible to all

The older I get, the more I realize our brains are like old computers. We don’t remember downloading half the software that’s running in the background. Somewhere along the way, someone installed programs called You’re not enough, Pretty matters more than smart, and People will like you more if you’re smaller. The scary part? Most of us never clicked “Accept.” We were just kids sitting in classrooms, watching TV, listening to adults talk in kitchens, and absorbing everything around us.

Welcome to 2002.

Eminem’s The Eminem Show was the biggest-selling album of the year. Apple released the second-generation iPod with a mind-blowing 20 gigabytes of storage, and everyone collectively asked, “Who on earth needs twenty gigabytes?” (Answer: apparently all of us, plus 87,000 blurry photos of our dogs.) The first camera phone hit the United States, unknowingly beginning humanity’s long, complicated relationship with taking 47 photos before deciding we “hate every single one.” American Idol premiered. Halle Berry made history at the Oscars. Rosie O’Donnell publicly came out. Michael Jackson made headlines after dangling his son over a hotel balcony. The world felt different, but somehow simpler.

And then there was Jennifer Lopez. Or, as we respectfully called her back then... J.Lo.

Every girl wanted the low-rise jeans, giant hoop earrings, shiny cargo pants, and the newsboy hat. Looking back, I still don’t understand how we all collectively agreed that jeans should sit approximately one centimeter above your pubic bone. It was a fashion choice that required the confidence of a Navy SEAL and the abdominal muscles of an Olympic gymnast.

Everywhere you went, Jenny from the Block was playing.

“Don’t be fooled by the rocks that I got...”

Jennifer Lopez was basically telling us she was still just like us, despite being one of the biggest celebrities on Earth. It was oddly comforting.

That year my fourth-grade teacher assigned us a report on an influential person from New York. Most of my classmates chose Eleanor Roosevelt, Alexander Hamilton, John D. Rockefeller, or Aaron Copland. My mother looked at me and said, “You should do Jennifer Lopez.”

Honestly? Iconic parenting.

While everyone else was presenting historical figures who shaped America, I showed up interpreting the lyrics to If You Had My Love wearing enough pink glitter to violate several fire safety codes. I even glued together my own custom pink diamond ring because... commitment to the bit. Fortunately, my teacher happened to be from the Bronx.

Know your audience.

I got an A.

Even as a kid, though, I noticed something strange. People didn’t just talk about Jennifer Lopez’s music. Or her acting. Or the fact that she somehow sang, danced, acted, and looked like she had eight extra hours in every day. They talked about... her butt. Constantly.

I remember sitting there genuinely confused.

“Why is everyone talking about Jennifer Lopez’s butt?”

It seemed like such an odd thing to become internationally famous for. Here was this incredibly talented woman, and somehow the headline always came back to one body part.

I asked my mom and one of her friends why everyone cared so much. My mom’s friend looked at me and said something I’ve never forgotten.

“You know, Morgan, sometimes people place more value on what someone looks like than on what they can do.”

I remember feeling angry. Not because I understood beauty standards. I didn’t. I was ten. I was angry because it felt unfair. Why should appearance matter more than talent? Why did someone’s body get more attention than their work?

At ten years old, I thought adults had this all figured out.

Spoiler alert... they did not.

Looking back, I realize something important. Nobody sat me down and said, “Morgan, your appearance determines your worth.” Nobody handed me a rulebook. Nobody gave a lecture. Instead, I learned through thousands of tiny moments: the conversations adults had when they thought kids weren’t listening, magazine covers in the grocery store checkout line, television interviews, fashion trends, celebrity gossip, comments about dieting, comments about “good” foods, and comments about “bad” bodies. None of it felt dangerous. It just felt... normal.

That’s the thing about culture. It doesn’t usually scream. It whispers. And when enough whispers happen over enough years, they become your inner voice. For me, those whispers didn’t create my eating disorder by themselves, but they absolutely helped write the code my brain would eventually run. The eating disorder didn’t invent those beliefs—it simply found them already waiting.

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I can’t wait to see you ther

e

When people think about eating disorders, they usually imagine they begin with someone wanting to lose weight. I wish it were that simple. Mine didn’t begin with a diet, a scale, or a mirror. It began much more quietly—with wanting to belong. Looking back, there wasn’t one defining moment where everything changed. There were hundreds of tiny moments that seemed completely innocent at the time. Alone, none of them looked dangerous. Together, they slowly shaped the way I viewed myself and the world around me.

In third grade, I met my best friend, Allison. Allison was outgoing, funny, confident, and smart. Everyone loved her. She had the kind of personality that could walk into a room and somehow know everyone within five minutes. I, on the other hand, would rather have disappeared into the wallpaper. If Allison was Batman, I was Robin. Actually, I might not have even been Robin. I was probably Batman’s utility belt—always there, but nobody really noticed.

One of the things I loved most about Allison was that she somehow always knew what I was thinking. I could give her one look from across the room, and she’d answer a question for me or explain what I was trying to say before I even opened my mouth. For a kid with anxiety, it was like having a built-in translator. Being around her made life feel easier, and before long I became completely dependent on her. She was my safe place.

As the year went on, people started referring to us as if we were one person. “Where’s Allison?” usually meant, “Where’s Morgan?” At first, I loved it. Then I didn’t. Because once everyone started comparing us, I started comparing us too. The problem was that in my mind, Allison always won.

She was the teacher’s favorite. She answered questions with confidence. Kids wanted to sit next to her. Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out why everyone else seemed to understand multiplication after hearing it once while I needed someone to explain it five different ways before my brain reluctantly agreed to cooperate. I desperately wanted to be smart, but my brain didn’t seem interested in participating in that plan.

School became the place where I felt most different. I had an IEP before most people even knew what those letters meant. I was constantly being pulled out of class for reading support, occupational therapy, resource room, or meetings with the school social worker. Ironically, leaving class to get help often meant missing the lesson everyone else had just learned. Then I’d spend recess or evenings trying to catch up on the lesson I missed because I was getting help. Looking back, it’s almost funny in the most frustrating way possible.

I also had an aide named Mrs. M who sat with me in class and re-explained lessons after the teacher had already explained them. She was incredibly patient, but as an eight-year-old, all I could think was, Please don’t sit next to me today. I didn’t want another reminder that I was different. Kids notice everything, and unfortunately, they’re not always known for their subtlety.

Some classmates called me stupid. Others called me dumb. A few used the r-word. What hurt the most wasn’t necessarily the words themselves. It was that I didn’t feel like I had any evidence to prove them wrong. Whenever I earned a good grade, someone would inevitably say, “Well, you got the easy test,” or, “That was the special ed version.” They’d clap sarcastically as if I’d somehow cheated my way into passing. It became hard to separate their voices from my own.

Tests were my personal version of a horror movie. I didn’t worry about disappointing my parents because they knew how hard I worked. I worried that if I failed another test, I’d need even more support services, which meant even more time away from my classmates and even more proof that I wasn’t like everyone else. I cried through more tests than I can count. Mrs. M would patiently sit beside me and say, “Morgan, you know this.” I’d cry back, “No, I don’t! I’m dumb! Everyone knows I’m dumb!” She’d calmly read the questions out loud while I tried to remember how breathing worked. Looking back, she deserved hazard pay.

Lunch became my favorite part of the day because for thirty whole minutes nobody expected anything from me except to eat. No worksheets. No spelling tests. No scantrons. No reminders that I learned differently. Just a lunch tray and my best friend.

One afternoon Allison pulled out a salad instead of her usual sandwich.

“Where’s your sandwich?” I asked.

“My mom put me on a diet,” she replied.

I knew the word “diet” because my mom, like many moms in the ‘90s, was either on one or talking about one. I knew Jenny Craig wasn’t actually someone coming over for dinner. I knew Oprah did Weight Watchers. SlimFast commercials practically raised my generation. But I didn’t really understand what dieting meant.

“Why?”

“She says I don’t have a fast metabolism... like you.”

“A meta...what?”

“A metabolism,” Allison laughed. “It means you’re skinny and can eat whatever you want.”

Then she looked at my turkey hero like it was the greatest meal she’d ever seen.

Without thinking, I offered to switch lunches.

She lit up.

“Really?”

“Sure. I like salads.”

The truth was, I didn’t care what I ate. I just didn’t want Allison to feel bad. She was my best friend, and if trading sandwiches made her happy, then it seemed like an easy decision.

Before long, switching lunches became our routine.

A few days later I proudly pulled out whole wheat chips.

“They’re healthy!” I announced, as if I’d personally developed the recipe.

Allison immediately flipped over the bag.

“Let’s see how many calories.”

“What’s a calorie?”

“It’s how much fat is in food. The higher the number, the worse it is.”

She pointed to the nutrition label.

“Two hundred.”

Seconds earlier I had been excited to eat those chips. Now all I could think was that they were somehow... bad. Nobody told me not to eat them. Nobody took them away. But that little seed had quietly been planted.

After school one day, Allison came over to my house. My mom had left cookies, cupcakes, and chips on the kitchen table. Allison practically sprinted into the kitchen.

“My mom never lets me eat this stuff!”

She grabbed cookies, then chips, then cupcakes as if she was competing in an Olympic event called Competitive Snacking.

I watched her, completely confused.

“Weren’t you not supposed to eat that?”

She shrugged and kept going.

“We never have junk food.”

My family was different. Even though dieting was something I saw at home, food was never forbidden for me. We always had vegetables, but we also had cookies. We had chips and fruit. Nobody assigned morality to food. It was just... food.

A little while later there was a knock at the door.

It was Allison’s mom.

She immediately spotted the wrappers on the table.

“Allison,” she said. “Have you been eating this?”

Allison quietly nodded.

“Honey, I told you. No junk food. Morgan has a fast metabolism. You have to watch what you eat.”

Then they left.

I stood there thinking about what she had just said.

For the first time in my life, I felt like maybe I was actually good at something.

I wasn’t the smartest kid.

I wasn’t the fastest learner.

I wasn’t the teacher’s favorite.

But maybe... just maybe... I was the skinny one.

And for a little girl who spent every day believing she wasn’t enough, that felt like winning.

I had no idea that one innocent conversation in a third-grade cafeteria would become one of the first stepping stones toward an eating disorder.

It didn’t begin with wanting to be thin.

It began with comparison.

It began with believing my worth had to come from somewhere.

And for the first time in my young life, I thought I had finally found the thing that made me enough.

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Everyone, I need your attention.

Please stop what you’re doing.

Pause the Netflix episode.

Put down your Stanley Cup.

Tell your cousin to come in here. Text the family group chat. Start a book club if you have to. This is an official public service announcement because we, as a society, need an emergency meeting.

If someone tells you they have—or had—an eating disorder, congratulations! They trusted you with something incredibly personal. That means you’ve been handed a gift. It also means this is not the time to suddenly audition for “America’s Next Top Eating Disorder Investigator.”

Over the years, I’ve heard some truly unbelievable responses after telling people I had anorexia. Some of them were well-intentioned. Some were just wildly inappropriate. All of them made me wonder if everyone skipped the same chapter on human interaction.

So, for the love of all things holy, let’s retire a few phrases.

“But you look fine.”

Perfect. We’ve solved it. Cancel the psychiatrists. Alert the researchers. Apparently mental illnesses now disappear if someone thinks you look okay.

Here’s the thing: eating disorders are mental illnesses, not fashion statements. You cannot diagnose recovery by looking at someone’s body any more than you can diagnose anxiety because someone smiled during a meeting. Someone can be medically stable and still struggling. Someone can be in a larger body and have a severe eating disorder. Someone can be weight restored and fighting obsessive thoughts every single day. “You look fine” usually tells the person that you believe appearances are more important than what they’re actually experiencing.

“Have you tried eating three meals and three snacks?”

Oh my goodness.

No.

In all my years of treatment, countless doctors, therapists, dietitians, and researchers, not one person ever thought to mention eating consistently.

Revolutionary.

In reality, recovery isn’t difficult because people don’t know they’re supposed to eat. Recovery is difficult because the illness convinces your brain that eating feels terrifying. If it were as simple as writing “breakfast” on a sticky note, eating disorders wouldn’t have one of the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric illness.

“Do you have pictures from when you had anorexia?”

Yes.

And while we’re at it, would you also like to see my colonoscopy?

This actually happened to me.

I know curiosity is human, but asking someone to show you photos from one of the darkest periods of their life is like asking someone recovering from alcoholism if they have pictures from their worst blackout because you’d love to compare.

Some memories aren’t souvenirs.

“What was your lowest weight?”

Let’s not do this.

Eating disorders thrive on comparison. Numbers become part of the illness. For someone in recovery, discussing weights can be triggering. For someone currently struggling, it can become a benchmark their illness latches onto. Either way, nobody wins.

The correct response is not, “How sick were you?”

The correct response is, “How are you doing now?”

“Did you have a thigh gap?”

I genuinely cannot believe this is a question people ask.

Somewhere along the way, social media convinced people that body parts are personality traits.

They’re not.

And no, recovery interviews should not sound like an episode of CSI: Body Checking Unit.

“So... did you just not eat?”

Eating disorders are not diets with commitment issues.

They’re complex psychiatric illnesses involving genetics, neurobiology, personality traits, environmental influences, and psychological factors. They affect how people think, feel, perceive themselves, and relate to food. Reducing all of that to “So... you just didn’t eat?” is like asking someone with depression, “So... were you just kind of sad?”

“Can you teach me how?”

I wish I were making this one up.

No.

Absolutely not.

What looks like control from the outside is usually fear, obsession, isolation, and suffering on the inside. There is nothing glamorous about watching your world become smaller because an illness has taken over your life.

“How many calories did you eat?”

Here’s an easy rule.

If your question sounds like it belongs in a nutrition tracking app, don’t ask it.

Specific numbers are rarely helpful and can be incredibly harmful. Recovery isn’t built by revisiting the details of the illness. It’s built by moving beyond them.

And then there’s my personal favorite.

“Your weight wasn’t even that low.”

I have actually had someone say this to me.

Imagine saying to someone with cancer, “Well... it wasn’t that much cancer.”

Eating disorders are not diagnosed by who weighs the least. Many people with severe eating disorders never become medically underweight. Others become critically ill at higher weights. Severity is measured by the impact of the illness, not by winning some imaginary suffering competition.

Here’s what I wish people understood.

When someone tells you they have an eating disorder, they’re usually not looking for you to solve it, investigate it, compare it, or fact-check it.

They’re looking to be heard.

Instead of asking about calories, ask how they’re doing.

Instead of commenting on their body, tell them you’re glad they shared with you.

Instead of trying to understand every detail of the illness, try understanding the person living with it.

Sometimes the most healing response in the world is also the simplest.

“I’m really glad you told me.”

“I’m here for you.”

The internet has given us a lot over the years. Dog videos. “Girl math.” People somehow convincing us that waking up at 5:00 a.m. to journal with a $14 matcha latte is a personality trait. It has also given us Girl Dinner, which, if you’ve somehow avoided the trend, is essentially opening your refrigerator, staring into the abyss for fifteen minutes, and assembling whatever random foods happen to be within arm’s reach. Three crackers, half an avocado, four olives, two bites of leftover pasta, a pickle, chocolate chips directly from the bag, and maybe a Diet Coke if you’re feeling particularly sophisticated. Suddenly you’ve got dinner, and TikTok tells you you’re thriving.

I completely understand why the trend exploded. Most adults don’t finish a full day of work thinking, “You know what sounds relaxing? Deboning a chicken.” By the time you’ve answered emails, sat in traffic, folded laundry, cleaned the kitchen you just cleaned yesterday, and questioned why groceries now require a small business loan, the thought of preparing a balanced meal feels like an Olympic event. Somewhere between adulthood, inflation, and pure exhaustion, cereal quietly became an acceptable dinner choice, and somehow we all collectively agreed that standing over the sink eating shredded cheese counts as self-care.

The problem is that I don’t actually think the Girl Dinner trend is funny. I think it’s concerning. Not because every person posting a plate of crackers and grapes has an eating disorder—they absolutely don’t—but because we’ve started normalizing under-fueling ourselves as a quirky personality trait. We took something that often reflects burnout, chronic stress, financial strain, or a complicated relationship with food and packaged it with cute music, aesthetic lighting, and captions about “girlhood.” Somewhere along the way, surviving became aspirational.

As someone who recovered from anorexia, I’ve spent years thinking about the messages our culture sends about food. Eating disorders are incredibly good at disguising themselves as socially acceptable behaviors. “I’m just busy.” “I’m trying to eat clean.” “I already ate.” “I’m being healthy.” They rarely introduce themselves as illnesses. They quietly blend into wellness culture, productivity culture, and now internet culture. That’s why trends like Girl Dinner make me uneasy. They don’t create eating disorders, but they can normalize behaviors that look remarkably similar to them.

What’s fascinating isn’t really the food itself. It’s what the trend says about the world we’re living in. We’re exhausted. We’re overwhelmed. Many of us are working full-time while raising children, taking care of aging parents, trying to exercise, trying to save money, trying to answer emails that somehow reproduce overnight, and trying to remember whether we left the laundry in the washing machine for the third day in a row. Cooking becomes one more responsibility on an already impossible list, and instead of asking why so many people feel too depleted to nourish themselves, we’ve turned the solution into an aesthetic.

Let’s also talk about groceries because... what exactly is happening? Every time I walk into the grocery store I feel like I’m entering a luxury boutique. Blueberries now cost approximately the same as a Broadway ticket. Eggs seem to fluctuate based on the emotional wellbeing of the chickens. Don’t even mention raspberries. At this point they should come with monthly payment plans. I don’t even react when the cashier gives me the total anymore because I’ve accepted that buying fresh produce now feels like making a down payment on a vacation home.

Then we have the complete opposite extreme: social media meal prep. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Someone spends six hours every Sunday chopping precisely 487 vegetables into matching glass containers while soft piano music plays in the background. Every chicken breast is identical. Every grain of rice has purpose. Their refrigerator looks like NASA designed it. Meanwhile, I once put leftover pizza directly on top of yogurt because there wasn’t enough room on the shelf. We are living very different lives.

The truth is we don’t need either extreme. We don’t need Pinterest perfection, and we shouldn’t be celebrating chronic under-fueling either. Nutrition doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be consistent. Recovery taught me that taking care of yourself isn’t about making beautiful meals worthy of Instagram. It’s about asking yourself a very simple question: “Have I actually given my body what it needs today?” Sometimes that’s roasted vegetables and salmon. Sometimes it’s scrambled eggs and toast. Sometimes it’s rotisserie chicken, frozen vegetables, and microwavable rice because life is chaotic. All of those are real meals.

I actually think we need a new trend. Not Girl Dinner. Not meal-prep Olympics. Just Real Life Dinner. The kind where frozen vegetables absolutely count, rotisserie chicken deserves a standing ovation, bagged salad is one of humanity’s greatest inventions, breakfast for dinner happens because adulthood is exhausting, and leftovers become tomorrow’s lunch without anyone pretending they’re participating in some revolutionary wellness movement.

After speaking with dietitians, therapists, physicians, and people recovering from eating disorders, one lesson keeps coming back to me. Food is so much more than calories. Every meal sends a message to your body that says, “I’ve got you.” Every time you nourish yourself, you’re telling your brain that it has the energy to think, your muscles that they have the energy to move, and your heart that it has what it needs to keep doing its job. That’s not indulgent. That’s survival.

Maybe instead of celebrating how little we can get by on, we should celebrate taking care of ourselves. Because your body has been working around the clock for you since the day you were born. The least we can do is stop treating nourishment like it’s optional and start treating it like the act of self-respect it has always been.

Yesterday, Align33 Media had the privilege of speaking at Northeastern University with the women's soccer team, coaches, and staff about eating disorders, body image, mental health, and early intervention.

These conversations matter. Student-athletes face unique pressures, and creating spaces where they can ask honest questions, learn from experts, and leave with practical resources is one of the most meaningful parts of our work.

At Align33 Media, we don't just create media—we provide educational workshops for universities, schools, athletic programs, healthcare organizations, nonprofits, and businesses. Our goal is simple: bring lived experience together with clinical expertise to change the conversation around eating disorders and mental health before a crisis occurs.

A special thank you to Paula A. Quatromoni, DSc, RDN, LDN, for sharing your incredible expertise and passion with the students. Your ability to connect science with compassion is truly inspiring.

Thank you as well to Sydney Appelbaum from MEDA and the Gaudiani Clinic for providing outstanding educational resources that students and coaches can continue to use long after the workshop ended. Having trusted, evidence-based tools available is an essential part of supporting recovery and prevention.

Thank you to Northeastern University for trusting us with this important conversation. Every workshop is another opportunity to reduce stigma, increase awareness, and remind people that help is available and recovery is possible.

If your university, school district, athletic department, healthcare organization, or company is interested in bringing an evidence-based eating disorder and mental health workshop to your community, we'd love to connect.

#MentalHealth #EatingDisorders #StudentAthletes #HigherEducation #Prevention #HealthEducation #Recovery #Leadership #Workshop #Align33Media

One of the biggest things I’ve learned after interviewing more than 400 clinicians, researchers, physicians, treatment providers, and people with lived experience is this: eating disorders might be one of the most misunderstood illnesses in medicine. And I’m not just talking about the general public. I’m talking about healthcare professionals, too.

Before anyone gets defensive, let me explain.

When I was struggling with anorexia, I went to see a psychiatrist hoping for guidance. I was expecting questions about my anxiety, obsessive thoughts, perfectionism, fear of weight gain, or maybe even how I had gotten to the point where my entire world revolved around food while simultaneously being terrified of it. Instead, after listening to me, he confidently suggested the cure to my anorexia was... smoothies.

Smoothies.

That’s it. Years of starvation, obsessive thoughts, distorted body image, crippling anxiety, genetics, neurobiology, and a brain literally being altered by malnutrition—all apparently waiting for my strawberries to meet a blender.

Ah yes. Years of suffering were apparently just one Jamba Juice away from a breakthrough. Somebody call the National Institutes of Health immediately. Forget decades of research. We’ve cracked the code.

Looking back, I can laugh. At the time? Not so much.

And while we’re making a list, the number of people who told me to “just try yoga” is honestly alarming. Apparently somewhere out there is a secret meeting where people decide yoga is the answer to every human problem. Anxiety? Yoga. Stress? Yoga. Eating disorder? Obviously yoga. So I figured I’d give it a shot.

It was exactly as terrible as you might imagine.

I signed up for a class that was so overcrowded I couldn’t tell where my yoga mat ended and someone else’s began. By some cruel twist of fate, I ended up next to the sweatiest man on planet Earth. Every inhale sounded like he was preparing to climb Mount Everest. Every exhale felt like it was being launched directly into my personal space. There I was, trying to “connect with my breath,” while this guy sounded like a malfunctioning leaf blower. The instructor kept saying things like, “Release all your thoughts,” while my only thought was, if this man breathes on me one more time, I’m leaving.

Spoiler alert: I left.

I walked out somehow more overstimulated, more anxious, and with an irrational amount of hatred toward absolutely everyone in that room. Naturally, I did what any emotionally regulated adult would do. I called my best friend Jenna and complained for the next twenty minutes.

Poor Jenna had absolutely nothing to do with suggesting yoga.

She just happened to answer the phone.

Jenna is a therapist, and after listening to my dramatic reenactment of what I still consider a hostage situation disguised as self-care, she laughed so hard she could barely breathe. Which, ironically, was the one person breathing that didn’t bother me that day.

Yoga wasn’t the cure.

Neither were smoothies.

As shocking as this may sound, complex psychiatric illnesses rarely disappear because someone recommends the latest wellness trend.

The smoothie comment wasn’t funny because it was so absurd. It was painful because it revealed something much bigger. It wasn’t that this psychiatrist didn’t care. I believe he did. He simply didn’t understand eating disorders.

And that’s the problem.

People reduce eating disorders to food all the time.

“If you just ate...”

“If you just stopped exercising...”

“If you just loved yourself...”

“If you just drank a smoothie...”

“If you just tried yoga...”

If it were really that simple, eating disorder treatment wouldn’t exist. Parents wouldn’t spend years desperately searching for specialized care. Recovery wouldn’t require physicians, therapists, dietitians, psychiatrists, nurses, families, and support systems working together. No one would relapse. We’d all just grab a green smoothie, roll out a yoga mat, and call it a day.

Food matters. Nutrition matters. Medical stabilization matters. But eating disorders are never just about food.

One clinician I interviewed said something I’ll never forget. Asking someone with anorexia to “just eat” is like asking someone having a panic attack to “just relax.” The words sound logical if you don’t understand what’s happening inside the brain. They become almost meaningless once you do.

That’s what makes these illnesses so difficult. The behaviors are visible, but the illness driving them often isn’t.

The irony is that eating disorders are among the deadliest psychiatric illnesses, yet many healthcare professionals receive surprisingly little formal education about recognizing or treating them. This isn’t about blaming individual providers. It’s a systems problem. If medical schools, residency programs, and continuing education don’t adequately prepare clinicians, how can we expect them to recognize the early signs or know when specialized treatment is needed?

That knowledge gap has real consequences.

People are told they’re “not sick enough.”

They’re congratulated on weight loss that’s actually a symptom of illness.

They’re reassured because their lab work is “normal.”

They’re told to come back if things get worse.

Or, if you’re particularly lucky...

You’re told to drink a smoothie.

The more people I interview, the more I realize something profound: almost everyone working in this field remembers a moment when they realized how much they didn’t know. The best clinicians aren’t the ones who claim to have all the answers. They’re the ones who stay curious, ask questions, listen to patients, and continue learning.

Humility saves lives.

Assumptions don’t.

There are still so many myths surrounding eating disorders. That you can tell who has one by looking at them. That they’re about vanity. That they’re a lifestyle choice. That only teenage girls develop them. That recovery is simply deciding to eat.

None of those things are true.

I’ve met people in larger bodies with severe eating disorders who were encouraged to continue dieting. I’ve met athletes praised for behaviors that were actually warning signs. I’ve met parents who knew something was terribly wrong only to be told they were overreacting—until their child ended up hospitalized.

The issue isn’t a lack of compassion.

It’s a lack of education.

And unlike genetics or biology, education is something we can change.

So yes, today I can joke about being prescribed smoothies for anorexia. I can laugh about my traumatic yoga experience and the poor unsuspecting man who was simply trying to breathe through Warrior II while I contemplated filing a restraining order against his lungs. Humor has a way of softening memories that once hurt.

But underneath the jokes is a question I can’t stop thinking about.

If one psychiatrist could misunderstand eating disorders so profoundly, how many people are walking into appointments today hoping to be understood... and walking out feeling even more alone?

Maybe instead of asking someone with an eating disorder whether they’ve tried a smoothie or recommending yoga because it worked for your cousin’s neighbor’s roommate, we should ask whether we’ve done enough to ensure the people treating eating disorders truly understand them.

Because eating disorders deserve more than simplistic advice. They deserve informed clinicians, evidence-based care, compassionate conversations, and a healthcare system that recognizes these illnesses early instead of waiting until someone becomes “sick enough.”

No one should have to blend their way through an illness that requires so much more understanding than that. If we can educate one more clinician, one more parent, one more coach, or one more friend, maybe the next person who reaches out for help won’t leave feeling dismissed.

Maybe they’ll leave feeling seen.

And that can change everything.

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It was 1998. The Goo Goo Dolls released Iris, Britney Spears debuted ...Baby One More Time, Geri Halliwell shocked the world by leaving the Spice Girls, Google was founded, President Bill Clinton was impeached, the final episode of Seinfeld aired, everyone wanted “The Rachel” haircut, and Apple introduced the colorful iMac. I was five years old, blissfully unaware of politics and technology but suddenly fascinated by pop culture. It felt like the whole world had become louder, brighter, and more glamorous overnight, and I wanted to be part of every second of it.

Like every elementary school friend group in America, my friends and I each claimed a Spice Girl as our identity. There was never any debate about mine. I was Posh Spice. Of course I was. Posh wore tiny designer dresses, carried herself like she owned every room she entered, and even had a runway inside the tour bus in Spice World. I knew every line of that movie by heart. “It’s always the same. I never know what to wear... the little Gucci dress, the little Gucci dress, or the little Gucci dress.” I quoted it constantly while twirling around my house in dresses of my own. The only real disappointment in my life at five years old was that my mother insisted I was too young for high heels. Frankly, I thought she lacked vision.

Our babysitter, Elizabeth, lived across the street and was in high school, which automatically made her the coolest person I knew. She was completely obsessed with the Backstreet Boys. The late ‘90s required allegiance to a boy band. You were either Team *NSYNC or Team Backstreet Boys, although 98 Degrees, Hanson, and Dream Street were all worthy honorable mentions. One afternoon Elizabeth held up a Backstreet Boys CD and asked, “Morgan, who’s your favorite?” I studied the cover for a moment before pointing directly at Nick Carter. “That one.” Elizabeth immediately started teasing me. “Ooooh... you like Nick.” Without missing a beat I looked at her and replied, “No. You like Nick.” My logic was simple. If Elizabeth thought he was the best one, then obviously he was the correct answer. I wasn’t choosing a favorite. I was outsourcing the decision to someone infinitely cooler than me.

Most afternoons I disappeared into my room with my Barbies, where entire television dramas unfolded on my bedroom floor. My Barbies had careers, friendships, dramatic love triangles, and occasional mysterious disappearances whenever one rolled underneath the dresser. I could spend hours building imaginary worlds where anything was possible. I was old enough to know unicorns and talking animals probably weren’t real, but I still believed wholeheartedly in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. You know... the important magical creatures. Personally, I have always believed in anything that arrives bearing gifts or cash. When was the last time a unicorn left twenty dollars under your pillow?

Barbie fascinated me because she represented perfection. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, flawless clothes, and every commercial revolved around her. Meanwhile I was a brunette with brown eyes who usually looked like she’d recently survived an aggressive arts-and-crafts project. I genuinely wanted to grow up looking like Barbie. Years later I learned that if Barbie were an actual woman, her proportions would be so unrealistic that she would struggle to stand upright. She would have a 39-inch bust, an 18-inch waist, tiny feet, and proportions that simply couldn’t exist naturally. Ironically, the body I spent years admiring was biologically impossible. Sadly, part of my childhood wish eventually came true—not the blonde hair or blue eyes, but the relentless pursuit of an impossible body.

Even then I noticed something that stayed with me. Barbie was always the star. Theresa, the brunette friend, was usually standing quietly in the background. I remember wondering why the brunette never got to drive the convertible or headline the commercial. Couldn’t Theresa have one big moment? Even as a child, I recognized who got the spotlight and who didn’t.

Then Britney Spears arrived, and suddenly every girl wanted to look like her. I remember seeing the ...Baby One More Time music video and being mesmerized. The school uniform, the braided pigtails, the pink pom-poms, the rolled-up shirt, and those impossibly toned abs all became iconic overnight. Somewhere I heard that Britney did one hundred crunches every evening to achieve that stomach, and somehow, at only five years old, I filed that information away. I didn’t realize it then, but I was already learning that beauty required work, that bodies were projects, and that flat stomachs were something to earn rather than simply have.

The late ‘90s quietly became an era where impossibly thin wasn’t just accepted—it became aspirational. Adults openly discussed SlimFast, Weight Watchers, Atkins, calories, carbs, and the newest exercise tapes promising flatter abs, tighter thighs, and a happier life, all for the low price of $19.99 plus shipping and handling. Looking back, the advertisements almost sound like comedy sketches. Apparently thirty minutes and a VHS tape could transform your entire existence. As a child, though, none of it seemed unusual. It felt like everywhere I looked, women were trying a new diet, and I honestly believed adulthood simply meant being perpetually dissatisfied with your body. It seemed as ordinary as paying taxes or complaining about Mondays.

At home I would roll my shirt up, put on music, and strut around the living room pretending I was Britney Spears or Posh Spice. “Dad, get the video camera!” I would yell. The second that camera turned on, my personality completely changed. I was painfully shy around strangers, but somehow the camera erased every ounce of self-consciousness. “Hi camera! I’m a movie star!” I’d announce before launching into a completely improvised dance routine. Looking back, it makes perfect sense that I eventually found my way into television. I didn’t just love performing. I loved storytelling. Movies transported me somewhere my anxious thoughts couldn’t follow. For two hours I could become Sandy from Grease, Annie singing Hard Knock Life, or Maria from The Sound of Music. Julie Andrews somehow convinced me that cream-colored ponies, crisp apple strudels, and schnitzel with noodles could solve almost any emotional crisis, and honestly, I’m still willing to test that theory.

My parents enrolled me in dance class because they assumed I’d enjoy performing. They were right, although choreography and I had a very complicated relationship. During my very first recital every child dutifully performed the routine exactly as rehearsed. I, on the other hand, decided artistic interpretation was the better choice. I invented my own dance on the spot. When the audience applauded at the end, I naturally assumed the applause was entirely for me. While the other dancers exited the stage, I stayed behind, smiling and waving like I had just accepted an Academy Award. The audience laughed even harder, which only reinforced my confidence. Eventually my dance teacher walked back onto the stage, took my hand, and gently said, “Come on, Morgan. Your time is up.” I remember thinking she ended my encore far too soon.

Every afternoon my mom and I also watched Rosie O’Donnell. I loved that she interviewed celebrities as though they were old friends and somehow made the biggest stars in Hollywood seem completely human. She handed toys to the audience, made everyone laugh, and created a world that looked joyful. One afternoon I confidently announced, “Rosie is going to interview me someday.” My mom smiled the way only mothers can smile when they aren’t entirely sure whether to encourage your dreams or laugh at them. Years later, while working in television, I met Rosie. I never told her that story, but maybe in some strange way my five-year-old self knew something the adult version of me hadn’t figured out yet.

Looking back now, I realize that while culture was quietly teaching me that beauty determined my worth, childhood was teaching me something much more valuable. It taught me to imagine. To create. To believe that impossible things could happen. Before life handed me disappointment, rejection, heartbreak, and self-doubt, I didn’t think in terms of “if.” I thought in terms of “when.” When I become a movie star. When Rosie interviews me. When my dreams come true. Children naturally believe in possibility until the world slowly teaches them limitation.

Sometimes I wish I could borrow that little girl’s perspective for just one day. The version of me who believed magic was everywhere, who thought dreams were simply future memories waiting to happen, and who hadn’t yet learned to question whether she was enough. I think recovery is, in many ways, returning to her. Not because childhood was perfect, but because somewhere beneath all the messages about beauty, perfection, and worthiness, she already knew the truth. She believed in wonder before she believed in comparison. She believed in possibility before she believed in fear. Maybe that innocent faith wasn’t childish after all. Maybe it was wisdom we spend the rest of our lives trying to remember.

Motherhood has taught me a lot of things. It’s taught me that toddlers can survive on three blueberries and pure chaos, that sleep is apparently a luxury reserved for people without children, and that everyone—absolutely everyone—suddenly becomes an expert on a woman’s body the moment she gets pregnant. It’s fascinating, really. Somewhere along the way, growing another human became an open invitation for strangers, acquaintances, and occasionally that one guy who hasn’t seen his own feet in a decade to weigh in on whether you’ve “bounced back.” Bounced back to what exactly? The version of me that had never spent ten months building an entire human from scratch? Of course she looked different. She’d never built a brain, a heart, lungs, kidneys, fingernails, and a tiny person who now thinks socks belong in the refrigerator.

What amazes me most is how confident people can be talking about pregnancy and postpartum bodies despite never experiencing either. Some people watch one Instagram Reel, hear one celebrity talk about “snapping back,” and suddenly they’re board-certified in women’s health. Sir, with all due respect, if carrying two grocery bags from the car without making a second trip is your version of endurance training, I don’t think you’re qualified to critique what a woman’s abdomen should look like after growing an entire nervous system.

Can we also talk about the number of people who congratulate men when their partner gets pregnant? It always makes me laugh. “Congratulations, buddy! You did it!” Did what exactly? Listen, I understand biology. Everyone played an important role. But let’s not pretend this was an Olympic event. Someone has to catch. Meanwhile, the woman is over there creating an entire human from scratch while trying not to throw up because someone opened a container of Greek yogurt across the room, and Dad is getting high-fives like he just won the Super Bowl. Again, I love dads—I married one—but the distribution of congratulations has always amused me.

Speaking of dads, can we also talk about doctor’s appointments? I made my husband come to every single one. Every. Single. One. People would ask, “He’s coming again?” Absolutely he’s coming again. We did this together. I took “we’re pregnant” very seriously. If I had to hear about glucose tests, blood work, swollen ankles, cervical checks, and all the glamorous things no one tells you about pregnancy, then congratulations, pal—you get front-row seats too. If I’m waddling into an appointment wondering what fresh symptom pregnancy unlocked this week, you’re sitting right next to me. You’re hearing the heartbeat, asking questions, celebrating the good news, and holding my hand when I’m nervous. Pregnancy shouldn’t be a solo sport where Mom carries the entire team and Dad shows up in the fourth quarter holding balloons. Show up. End of story.

While we’re talking about things that should stop immediately, can we discuss the strange phenomenon of people touching pregnant women’s stomachs? Why does pregnancy suddenly turn your body into a community petting zoo? Complete strangers lose every sense of personal space. They’ll walk over, put both hands on your stomach, smile, and start rubbing like they’re checking whether a watermelon is ripe. Excuse me... what are we doing here? If I walked up to you at Costco, gently rubbed your stomach, looked into your eyes, and whispered, “Wow... look at this,” security would escort me out before I reached the frozen food aisle. Pregnancy does not erase personal boundaries. The baby may be in there, but I’m still attached.

Somewhere we’ve created this bizarre expectation that women should spend ten months growing a human being, have every organ relocate like they’re moving into a new apartment, survive labor, recover from childbirth, function on almost no sleep, keep another tiny human alive, and then emerge looking like they just got back from a Pilates retreat and a juice cleanse. I’m sorry... the same body that literally manufactured a brain is now being judged because my jeans fit differently? The math isn’t mathing.

Then somehow becoming a dad gives men an automatic image upgrade. Gray hair? Distinguished. A belly? Dad bod. Falling asleep on the couch at 7:45? He’s exhausted because he’s such a devoted father. A woman has stretch marks, wider hips, loose skin, or a softer stomach after creating life and people immediately ask if she’s “getting her body back.” Excuse me... where exactly did it go? Did someone check the Lost and Found? I’m pretty sure it’s right here. It just has a few souvenirs from creating an entire person.

One of the greatest gifts motherhood has given me is perspective. Before becoming a mom, I obsessed over every flaw. I worried about every change. I still catch myself doing it sometimes because I’m human, but now there’s something much stronger than criticism: gratitude. This body carried my son. It stretched, adapted, healed, and became his very first home. That’s a pretty incredible résumé.

My son has never once looked at me and thought, “Mom really should work on her core.” He doesn’t care about the size of my jeans, my stretch marks, or whether my stomach is flat. He cares that I chase him around the backyard, that I somehow always know where his dinosaur disappeared to, that I’ll read the same bedtime story for the eighteenth time without negotiating a new ending, and that my hugs still fix almost everything. Children have a funny way of reminding us what actually matters. The people who love us the most aren’t grading our bodies. Adults are. Which, when you really think about it, is kind of embarrassing.

So here’s my humble suggestion. Before commenting on a mother’s body, ask yourself one simple question: Have I ever grown another human being inside my body? If the answer is no, maybe this conversation isn’t yours to lead. Because my body isn’t proof that I’ve “let myself go.” It’s proof that I carried someone I love more than I ever imagined possible. These days I’m much less interested in fitting into my old jeans than I am in keeping up with a toddler who appears to survive exclusively on blueberries, couch crackers, and unlimited confidence. Honestly, I think that’s a pretty good trade.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was eight years old and in the third grade.

Like most eight-year-olds, my biggest concerns that morning were probably what we’d have for lunch, whether I’d get homework, and what game we’d play at recess. It started like any other school day.

Until it didn’t.

Looking back, I realize the adults knew long before we did.

Our teachers kept stepping into the hallway. The classroom phone rang more than usual. There were whispered conversations behind partially closed doors. Every time a teacher returned, their face looked a little different. A little paler. A little quieter.

We weren’t told what was happening.

But children are incredibly perceptive. We notice changes in tone before we understand the words.

The entire school day felt...off.

No one could explain why.

When the dismissal bell finally rang, I ran outside like I always did to find my mom waiting in the pickup area. Usually there was the familiar chaos of parents waving, kids laughing, backpacks flying, and buses pulling away.

That afternoon, it was almost silent.

Parents weren’t chatting.

Nobody seemed to be in a hurry.

Everyone looked like they were carrying something invisible.

“Hi, Mom!” I said.

She looked at me, but she didn’t smile.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She didn’t answer.

My brother Tyler and I climbed into the car, and for what felt like forever, nobody spoke.

Finally, she broke the silence.

“A plane hit the Twin Towers this morning.”

I remember my stomach dropping.

“What?”

I couldn’t quite process what she had said.

“Was it an accident?”

“No.”

Just one word.

No.

And suddenly my mind jumped somewhere else.

My dad worked in New York City.

“Where’s Dad?”

“He’s okay,” she said. “He’s on his way home.”

I don’t think I’ve ever felt relief wash over me so quickly.

When we got home, the television was already on.

That’s when childhood ended.

I remember seeing smoke pouring from buildings that had always defined the New York City skyline. I remember firefighters covered in ash. First responders running toward danger while everyone else was running away. I remember people crying, holding missing-person flyers, wrapped in blankets, wearing oxygen masks, trying to make sense of something that made no sense at all.

I remember asking the question that children have been asking since the beginning of humanity.

“Why?”

Why would someone do this?

Why are there people who want to hurt other people?

Why does something this terrible happen?

As adults, we know the facts. Nineteen terrorists associated with al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial airplanes. Two were deliberately flown into the Twin Towers. One struck the Pentagon. The fourth crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back. Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives that day, along with countless first responders who would later suffer illnesses related to their rescue and recovery efforts.

But eight-year-old me didn’t understand geopolitics.

I understood fear.

I understood seeing my mom’s face.

I understood wondering if my dad was coming home.

I understood hugging him tighter than I ever had when he finally walked through the front door.

The next day at school felt different.

Not just sad.

Different.

There were empty desks in classrooms across our region because some families had been directly affected. Teachers spoke more softly. Parents lingered a little longer at drop-off. Nobody really knew what to say, but everyone understood that life had divided itself into two categories: before September 11th and after September 11th.

When people talk about generations, they often define us by the technology we grew up with, the music we listened to, or the television shows we watched.

Millennials remember dial-up internet.

We remember Blockbuster.

We remember floppy disks.

But I think one of the defining experiences of our generation was this: we were children when we realized the world wasn’t as safe as we believed it was.

Developmental psychologists tell us that around eight years old, children begin developing a deeper capacity for empathy. They start to understand another person’s perspective. They recognize that other people have fears, hopes, and emotions just like they do. It’s also around this age that children begin forming a more stable sense of identity—trying to understand not only who they are, but what kind of world they belong to.

That’s why timing matters.

We weren’t toddlers.

We weren’t adults.

We were old enough to remember, but too young to understand.

For many of us, September 11th became the first moment we realized history wasn’t something that only happened in textbooks. It could happen while you were sitting in math class. It could interrupt an ordinary Tuesday. It could change your understanding of safety before you even knew what the word “terrorism” meant.

I often think about my grandmother telling me stories of living through World War II. Those stories always felt impossibly distant, like chapters from another lifetime.

I never imagined that one day I’d have my own story to tell.

That I’d be able to say, “I remember where I was.”

Every generation has moments that shape them.

Moments they carry long after the headlines disappear.

For my grandparents, it was Pearl Harbor and World War II.

For my parents, perhaps it was the Cold War or the Challenger disaster.

For many Millennials, it was September 11, 2001.

Not because we fully understood it.

But because it was the day many of us first learned that the world could change in a single morning.

And perhaps that’s why, twenty-five years later, so many of us can still remember exactly where we were.

I’ve been thinking about that quote a lot lately because I’m starting to wonder if my generation was ever really taught how to feel. We became experts at achieving, performing, pleasing, fixing, distracting, and pretending. Feelings? Those were inconvenient. We learned to outrun them. Looking back, I’m not sure that lesson came from the people around us as much as it came from the culture we were raised in. And if you grew up in the ‘90s like I did, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

The 1990s were honestly a weird and wonderful time to be alive. Beanie Babies were somehow considered a legitimate financial investment. Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake were the royal couple of our generation before celebrity relationships started ending via Notes app apologies. Thursday nights belonged to Friends and Seinfeld. The box office gave us Jurassic Park, Mrs. Doubtfire, Good Will Hunting, Edward Scissorhands, The Shawshank Redemption, Clueless, and Pulp Fiction. Nickelodeon practically raised us. If you weren’t watching Rugrats, Hey Arnold!, Arthur, All That, or The Wild Thornberrys after school, were you even a child? We rode bikes until the streetlights came on, survived dial-up internet, and thought nothing of drinking out of the garden hose. Simpler times...or so it seemed.

Can we talk about board games for a second? Candy Land made sense. Operation taught us that surgeons apparently needed the steady hands of bomb technicians. Girl Talk somehow convinced us that asking embarrassing questions was entertainment. Pretty Pretty Princess taught us that life was all about collecting jewelry. But then there was Perfection. Seriously...who came up with that game? You’re a six-year-old child, happily trying to shove tiny plastic shapes into matching holes while a timer counts down your inevitable failure. Then, if you’re not “perfect” in the allotted amount of time, the entire game violently explodes in your face. Plastic pieces launch across the room like shrapnel while your heart rate spikes to levels usually reserved for hostage negotiations. Honestly, maybe that’s where my perfectionism started. Kidding. Mostly.

The funny part is that we laugh about Perfection because it sounds ridiculous, but in hindsight, it feels like an accidental metaphor for the world we were growing up in. The timer never actually disappeared. It just got bigger. Instead of racing to fit little plastic puzzle pieces into place, we started racing to fit ourselves into impossible expectations. Be the smartest. The nicest. The prettiest. The thinnest. The most accomplished. The most productive. The most put together. We stopped playing the board game, but somehow we never stopped playing the game.

While we were busy memorizing every word to “...Baby One More Time” and arguing about whether Tommy Pickles or Chuckie was cooler, something much bigger was happening culturally. Most people think body image issues and eating disorders exploded because of social media, but Instagram didn’t invent these messages. It inherited them. The seeds were planted decades earlier.

During the 1980s, America became obsessed with fitness. Jane Fonda workouts, aerobics classes, neon leotards, leg warmers, and home exercise videos were everywhere. The beauty ideal reflected that movement. Models like Brooke Shields and Elle Macpherson represented a healthy, athletic, toned body. There was certainly pressure to look a certain way, but strength and vitality were still part of the conversation.

Then the 1990s arrived, and everything shifted. The United States entered a recession. Generation X faced a difficult job market and growing skepticism about institutions. Optimism gave way to cynicism. Grunge replaced glamour. Punk and Riot Grrrl movements rejected polished perfection and the materialism of the 1980s. Fashion followed suit. Photographers began embracing something known as “dirty realism,” an aesthetic that highlighted rawness, exhaustion, poverty, self-destruction, and emotional emptiness instead of glossy luxury. In 1993, photographer Corinne Day photographed Kate Moss for British Vogue in a series that looked stripped down, underfed, and almost haunting. It became one of the defining moments of what would later become known as “heroin chic.”

Let’s just pause for one second and appreciate how absolutely insane that phrase is. “Heroin chic.” Imagine pitching that in a marketing meeting today. “We’re thinking exhausted, sleep deprived, vaguely malnourished, emotionally unavailable...but make it fashion.” Somewhere, someone heard that idea and said, “Brilliant. Put it on the cover.” It’s almost unbelievable looking back, yet it became one of the most influential beauty standards of the decade.

Fashion wasn’t the only place where this fascination with self-destruction appeared. Hollywood reflected it too. Movies like The Basketball Diaries, Trainspotting, and even parts of Pulp Fiction explored addiction and nihilism in ways that often blurred the line between cautionary tale and cultural fascination. By 1997, President Bill Clinton publicly criticized the fashion industry, saying it had glamorized addiction by making it appear sexy and desirable. Critics argued that fashion was simply becoming a convenient scapegoat for much larger societal problems. They’re probably right. Eating disorders are incredibly complex illnesses with biological, psychological, environmental, and social contributors. No magazine cover causes an eating disorder. But culture absolutely teaches us what gets rewarded, admired, and celebrated. Those messages matter.

At exactly the same time this beauty ideal was becoming thinner and thinner, the diet industry was exploding. Americans were spending roughly fifty-one billion dollars on weight-loss products. Grocery stores became filled with low-fat, fat-free, sugar-free, and whatever-other-free products manufacturers could invent. Apparently if food tasted like cardboard, it was considered healthy. SlimFast shakes became kitchen staples. The Atkins Diet, South Beach Diet, Zone Diet, grapefruit diet, cabbage soup diet, liquid diets, and countless others promised the same thing: happiness disguised as weight loss. Then there was Fen-Phen, a prescription weight-loss medication that was eventually pulled from the market after causing serious heart valve problems and pulmonary hypertension. Looking back, it’s astonishing how willing we were to gamble with our health in pursuit of being smaller.

As a child, I didn’t understand any of the economics or sociology behind these cultural shifts. I wasn’t reading fashion theory or analyzing media trends. I was simply watching. SlimFast shakes were everywhere. Zone bars became household staples. Conversations about carbs, calories, fat grams, and the newest miracle diet seemed as common as talking about the weather. No one was trying to teach harmful lessons. These ideas had simply become part of everyday life. Children, however, are incredible observers. We don’t always listen to what adults tell us. We watch what the world celebrates.

No one ever sat me down and said, “Morgan, your worth depends on your weight.” No one said, “Being skinny is the most important thing you’ll ever accomplish.” They didn’t have to. I watched people celebrate weight loss. I watched magazines praise thinness. I watched commercials promise happiness in exchange for shrinking your body. My brain quietly connected the dots all by itself. Being skinny made people happy. Being skinny earned compliments. Being skinny seemed normal. Those messages were repeated so consistently that they stopped feeling like opinions and started feeling like facts.

What I don’t remember hearing was anyone asking where the line was. When does dieting become dangerous? When does discipline become obsession? When does “healthy eating” become fear? Was there such a thing as being too skinny? Those conversations rarely happened. Instead, I flipped through fashion magazines looking at impossibly thin women and assumed that was simply what beauty looked like. Restricting food didn’t seem strange because the culture around me had normalized it. Nobody intentionally handed me an eating disorder. But culture handed me thousands of tiny messages, and like every child, I absorbed them.

Looking back now, I don’t feel angry so much as fascinated. An entire generation inherited the same messages without stopping to question them. Shrinking your body was considered self-improvement. Hunger was discipline. Exhaustion was productivity. Perfection was the goal. Somewhere along the way, many of us learned that controlling ourselves felt safer than feeling ourselves.

Maybe that’s why that opening quote resonates so deeply. We learned to run from discomfort. We learned to outrun fear, sadness, uncertainty, grief, and vulnerability by controlling something we believed we could control. For some people, that became food. For others, it became work, perfectionism, achievement, exercise, alcohol, productivity, or people-pleasing. The coping strategy changes. The purpose is often the same. Feel less. Control more.

The irony, of course, is that feelings don’t disappear just because we ignore them. They wait. They show up as anxiety, depression, perfectionism, burnout, addiction, eating disorders, panic attacks, or the quiet feeling that no matter how much you accomplish, it’s never enough. You can outrun your emotions for years, but eventually they become faster than you.

Healing, I’ve learned, isn’t pretending those cultural messages never existed. It’s recognizing them, questioning them, and deciding which ones deserve to end with us. The little girl flipping through fashion magazines wasn’t broken. She was paying attention. She was doing exactly what children are wired to do—learning from the world around her. The beautiful part is that now, as adults, we get to decide what messages the next generation inherits. Maybe they don’t need another game of Perfection. Maybe they just need adults who show them that being human was always more valuable than being perfect

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