To the girl who wishes She were smaller. A post for #EDAW2025

I have spent so much of my young life trying to stay small.

And really, I don't have to go on - I know that any woman who reads that line already knows what I'm talking about.

I learned from a young age how to master the manipulation of my food, movement, and behaviours, in order to maintain the "cute" and "tiny" physical body that I was praised for. I learned the philosophy that as a woman, especially a thin woman, the most important, most meaningful thing I can do for myself is stay small.

So small, to the point where I could assure I would always be smaller than everyone else around me, at any time, in any place.

So small that people knew it took effort to stay that small, that girls I met at school would ask for my 'workout routine' or the types of foods I ate for dinner, because as a woman there is value in that, there is praise that comes with maintaining that achievement.

So small that people started - or people seemed - to care about me! Sure, they were either concerned for the obvious frailty of my limbs, or attracted to my petite, boyish, easily controllable stature - but it didn't matter, because they were finally noticing me.

It doesn't matter. I did it. I stayed small.

But wait. Did you catch that?

No, back there - I think you missed it.

The part where I fell so in love with staying small, that I fell out of love with everything else.

The part where I prioritized smallness over happiness, where my great achievement of staying small became just that: my greatest achievement.

The part where, sure, people paid more attention to me, but I didn't realize until it was too late that they weren't the good kind of people, or the kind that you should want in your life.

The part where staying small didn't solve all of my problems, or even a single one of them.

All it did was create one, big, overwhelming new problem:

that I no longer knew a life where I did anything more than stay small.

I stayed small, yes, but that was all I did.

I didn't become prettier, or smarter, or richer, or happier, because I lost the ability to be anything other than just.. small.

I guess I only realize now that with being small, with staying small, a life can only stay small too.

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Eating disorders are a serious, addictive, unglamorous, dangerous mental illness. Like so many others who have experienced an eating disorder, I did not enter into it willingly - or even with any intention of being "small." Rather, I befriended the behaviours that I learned could provide a dopamine-inducing effect that made me feel calm, in control, at peace, for even just a few moments - similar to that of someone who uses substances or engages in other problematic, addictive behaviours.

I didn't write this piece for the person with an eating disorder, because I know it will take a lot - like, a lot, more than a poem - to disentangle you from the deadly web that the disorder has spun around you.

Instead, I wrote this piece for the person who is willingly engaging in weight loss. I wrote it as an attempt to warn you that losing weight is more dangerous than the celebrity who is proudly touting Ozempic makes it seem.

Many people pursue weight loss without the preventative awareness that a change in your physical body, or even the pursuit of a change in your physical body, becomes all consuming. The attention you direct towards manipulating your body means attention directed away from other, more important areas of your life.

Before you know it, as you are losing weight, you risk also losing your passions, your personality, your purpose for life, and your body becomes, to you and unfortunately even to those around you, the most important thing about you.

With staying small, you risk everything around you staying small as well.

Again, many who develop eating disorders do not intentionally pursue weight loss, it's more a result of the perfect cocktail of genetic predispositions, personality traits, and pre existing mental illnesses that might leave one more susceptible. So, I know this post won't do much for those with an eating disorder already.

What I hope it does do is cause one person who is reading this, who is in active pursuit of weight loss (because I know, you're there) to just be careful. Losing weight puts you in an extremely vulnerable position, due to the perceived societal gain, as well as, well, the plain decrease in nutrients to your brain.

If you take one thing away from this post, I hope it is the courage to de-center your body from its position as the most important thing in your life.

I hope it is the trust that when you prioritize enriching and improving your life, your real life that exists outside of this physical vessel you are in, you will start to realize that there really is so much more out there worth doing than just staying small.

Being in recovery is the hardest thing I have ever done, and not much can take that away - there is no way out of it, only through it. But, as I do the work, and I discover all of the things that I can offer the world other than staying small, I realize that my body really is the least important thing about me.

I am starting to believe that there is a lot more I can do in my life than stay small.

~

P.S. I will be hosting a free meditation class at SOL Yoga Niagara at 5:30 PM on Sunday March 9, and in lieu of a class fee will be accepting donations to Body Brave Canada. You can register here!: https://www.solniagara.com/book-online

Sincerely, the girl who really does not care what your body looks like,

Julia 🌞

#EDAW2025