Spiritual Crisis in an Eating Disorder

by Cai Quirk
Ithaca Meeting

When I was 13, I heard the word ‘transgender’ for the first time and it immediately resonated to my core, but I was too scared back then to live into this truth. When I was 14, I developed an eating disorder; my mind tried to starve this truth out of me. I didn’t realize that my desire for a ‘male athletic body type’ was really more rooted in being genderqueer than it was in my size. When I was 15, I rediscovered that I was trans and I began to heal more quickly.

I never understood how I could possibly forget about being trans for a year, but recently I found an answer in the book Singing the Soul Back Home. This book described how people who resist deep spiritual calls can develop serious illnesses until they listen to the call and follow Spirit faithfully. Again, I immediately saw the connection to my own life. For years I have understood my gender fluidity and spirituality to be deeply intertwined. Only now, 12 years later, do I see the role of an eating disorder in the spiritual crisis of my mid-teens.

Back then, I saw a therapist and a nutritionist, but both tried to solve the symptoms rather than find a cause. They got me out of immediate crisis, but I couldn’t fully heal. Neither was spiritual, and I wasn’t open about my eating disorder in my Quaker meeting. I didn’t have words for how dissonant the ‘therapy’ felt, how it forced me into other problematic eating habits, and how reaching a ‘healthy weight’ did not in any way mean that I had reached a healthy mental or spiritual state of being.

Nine years later I joined the NYYM Mentoring Program and connected with a mentor who is well versed in the 12-step program. I finally began to fully heal. I finally began to fully trust myself. I finally had the kind of support that helped me release the last insidious roots of the eating disorder.

At a recent extended family dinner, we were asked to share memories of similar dinners from years past. I was glad that the circle never got around to me, because the memories that stood out most were of the years I would do hundreds of push-ups, crunches, and jumping jacks in the basement on either side of dinner, and eat as little as I could get away with. This year, I had no idea how many calories were on my plate… not only did I not even try to count, but I don’t have the nutritional data of hundreds of foods memorized anymore. I could truly enjoy a meal with my family.

In the past few years, I have found several food intolerances. Physical pain develops throughout my body if I eat gluten, dairy, caffeine, or large amounts of sugar. The spiritual mindfulness around eating that grew with the 12-step program helped me find the causes of low-level chronic pains that I didn’t know were there until they were gone. I never knew my body could feel this good. I don’t remember what it was like to eat normally — that was half my lifetime ago — but I’m building those memories now.

I have wondered if this is a different manifestation of the eating disorder, and yet I can feel deep within me how much more connected to Spirit I am than I was all those years ago. I can feel how much more I listen to my body now. Sometimes that listening even includes potato chips, and I can eat them guilt-free. And still, in writing this article, I wonder… is my lactose intolerance a symptom that I am resisting a new spiritual call?

If you are in crisis, the National Eating Disorder Hotline is +1 (800) 931-2237.