Dearest Lorelei, Forget the World and Find Your Tribe
Lorelei splashed in the tub as I gently washed the shampoo from her curly hair. She is the first born of one of my dearest and oldest friends, Katherine. I spent the week with them during my Chattanooga speaking tour. “My curls are tiny!” Five-year old Lorelei exclaimed. “Some people have bigger curls and some people […]
Feeling Fat on International Women’s Day
Today is International Women’s Day. And I feel fat. Gasp. How could McCall Manning Dempsey, a positive body image speaker, feel fat? Oh the horror! Well, folks. We all have our days. But here is the difference. I know that fat isn’t a feeling and that when I start thinking and having anxiety about my […]
Leaping Once Again
My current state of mind is similar to that of six years ago when I leaping from treatment back out into the ‘real’ world… Journal entry (2.23.2016) “I am feeling lots of things. I am worried about work. I am kind of angry. I want to cry. I want to fall apart. I want to […]
Ten Years Later: Love & Laughter Reign
For the last ten years, February 2nd has been a bittersweet day for me. While I wish our wedding day, conjured feelings of love and joy, my heart pulls the opposite way. My day was lost stolen by my eating disorder. This is a notion not many can understand or relate to, even my own […]
Comparison: The Thief of Recovery
Today, December 14, marks six years in recovery for me. I’ll say that again…SIX freaking YEARS. It seems so hard to believe because it feels like yesterday I walked stumbled through the Carolina House doors. I walked through hopeless, broken and tired. I no longer had the energy to fight the monster in my head, much […]
My Birthday Gift of Darkness
Tomorrow, December 7, is my birthday. However, I will not be with my family and friends. Rather, I will be surrounded with love, pain, joy, sadness, hope and courage. I will spend my birthday with the brave men and women at Castlewood Treatment Center in St. Louis, Missouri. I truly cannot think of anywhere else I would […]
Gone Too Soon
Cancer, prayer requests, pediatric cancer, GoFundMe pages, accidents, untimely death. Facebook is often filled with such heartache. I’ve almost become immuned to seeing tragedy between the political rants and the latest Rodan + Fields product. What I will NEVER adjust to seeing is another life lost to an eating disorder, a TREATABLE illness that does […]
Carolina: Forever & Always In My Mind
December 2010 “McCall, breathe with me. Breathe in 2…3…4…out…2…3…4” I could hear the words being spoken to me, but couldn’t catch my breath. I sobbed and shook uncontrollably, my body curled tightly in a ball on the stiff therapy couch. I was in treatment and having my first panic/anxiety/emotional tidal wave attack. Without my eating disorder […]
Detoxing from a Weekend Binge
Here is what my former eating disordered life looked like: Monday-Thursday: restrict, calorie rules, weighing in 20-40 times per day, diet pills, low fat, no fat, sugar free, fat free Friday-Saturday: Dinner and going out with friends, events, Mardi Gras balls, football games, excessive drinking and eating Sunday: Close the blinds, self-loath, binge, purge, more self-hate […]
Why a New Year Does Not Mean a New You
So there I was in 2010, feeling like a loser who had failed at life. My hands held knitting needles instead of a champagne glass (FYI: learning to knit is like a rite of passage in treatment). Instead of partying with friends, someone was supervising my trips to the bathroom. Rather than kissing my husband at midnight, I was going to sleep in a twin bed alone.