Riptide: Struggling with and Resurfacing from a Daughter's Eating Disorder

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More About This Book

Overview

A young girl’s fatal, decade-long struggle with anorexia and bulimia is chronicled from her mother’s perspective in this heartbreaking memoir. Barbara Hale-Seubert tried to cope with grief, fear, and powerlessness as her daughter suffered through these diseases, and she kept a journal of their experiences as a form of therapy. These entries are the basis for a raw and revealing narrative, meant to offer other parents the comfort that comes with knowing they are not alone, the strength to help their children through the agony of eating disorders, and the grace to learn to surrender what is out of their control.

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Kirkus Reviews

Hale-Seubert tells the story of a mother's worst nightmare—a daughter's struggle against and ultimate defeat by anorexia and bulimia.

The author, a practicing psychotherapist, candidly recounts daughter Erin's slow death at age 23 from the ravages of self-induced starvation. When Erin was 13, a simple school assignment in her Life Skills class became a jarring moment. Erin was asked to list what she had eaten that day, and the author was startled by Erin's answer: very little. Her condition worsened to include bulimia, resulting in many hospitalizations and treatments during the next decade. Erin lied, stole and even spent the night in jail, all so she could buy food to eat and purge. Hale-Seubert lays bare her guilt and frustrations as a mother, admitting to feeling detached, even relieved at times, and her humanity is on display here as she agonizes over the possible causes of her daughter's disease. Was it her parenting style or negative body image? Her ex-husband's anger? Perhaps it was because Erin suffered from Sydenham's chorea as a child, an illness that has been linked to obsessive disorders. There are no clear-cut answers here, nor should there be.

Readers may find Hale-Seubert's book painful to read, but they will have a hard time turning away from the author's stark, candid, courageous voice.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781550229950
  • Publisher: ECW Press
  • Publication date: 5/1/2011
  • Pages: 200
  • Sales rank: 1,166,029
  • Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 8.90 (h) x 0.70 (d)

Meet the Author

Barbara Hale-Seubert is a psychotherapist. She lives in Mansfield, Pennsylvania.

Read an Excerpt

As I opened the door of Erin’s apartment on a bright summer afternoon in 1999, I took a deep breath. My 22–year–old daughter lay on the daybed in her living room, bird–like legs stretched out over rumpled sheets. She was propped up on one elbow, drawing in a sketch pad, and her ankles were wrapped in thick white gauze and bandages. I tried not to grimace.

I was used to scanning my daughter’s body for signs of deterioration, though it seemed impossible to imagine her more emaciated than she was. Functional starvation, if there was such a term, best described her condition. And now the meager flesh that remained on her ankles had been scalded a week ago when she’d dropped a pot of boiling water on the floor — undoubtedly because her arms no longer had the strength to lift it off the stove. I hadn’t realized it was quite this bad.

Erin looked up at me. “They’re just not healing as fast as they should,” she said, her tone resigned.

I glimpsed the edge of a raw open wound on one spindly leg. Erin was five feet tall and weighed about 60 pounds. How could her starving little body sustain the shock of these deep burns, much less keep her alive? Were painkillers at least softening the agony?

The burns were bad, but I could handle that. Injuries heal. It was the rest of her that, over the past decade of brutal anorexia and depression, left me limp. I felt as though I’d washed up on the beach after alternately struggling to pull my daughter to shore and trying to free myself from a stranglehold that threatened to pull me under along with her.

Close friends knew our family’s private pain, but the community at large could only guess at what was wrong when they saw Erin walk up Main Street, her skeletal frame somewhat disguised by baggy clothes, each step an obvious effort. She was a familiar sight in town. Weighed down by her ever–present tote bag stuffed with artificial sweetener packets, herbal tea, sketch pad and colored pencils, she would stop in at the espresso shop and ask for hot water for her tea, or perhaps meet an unemployed friend at Mister Donut. She identified with those whose lives were on the periphery of the 9–to–5 world. Once a gifted student, dancer, and artist, Erin now qualified for Social Security Disability benefits. Instead of anticipating graduate school or a challenging job, she hoped for an apartment in the housing program for the disabled, and underwent partial hospitalization three days a week.

We had exiled Erin to this small apartment several months after she returned from her final failed long–term treatment. She was 21, and after years of having her alternating every few months between living with her father and with me, it was intolerable for either of us to have her in our home. The chronic stealing, bingeing, and purging that ruled her life made living with her a nightmare of missing money, discarded food containers, and clogged drains. Holiday celebrations and family birthday dinners were strained by our tense, surreptitious monitoring. Would the festive meal be flushed down the toilet once again, after she’d filled her shrunken stomach with turkey, mashed potatoes, and homemade rolls? Or would we feel equally frustrated and powerless as her bony jaw chewed, trance–like, on unadorned salad and naked vegetables? She either gorged or fasted, and we’d long since learned that there was nothing we could do. The happiness and well–being of my three younger daughters helped to redeem my motherhood and cushion my despair. Yet I was Erin’s mother, too, and I feared I had failed her.

I walked across the room and sat down on the daybed, the weight of my body pulling her closer to me. Gently, I stroked her head.

“I’ve thought of so many ways to commit suicide,” she said flatly. “But each one I’ve either already tried, or known someone where it didn’t work or was even worse afterwards. I’m not going to try anymore.”

I flashed back to the night she’d swallowed half a bottle of pills. Why was she telling me this now? Did she think I would be relieved, or did she want me to know how desperate she still felt? I didn’t say anything. All my words had been used up, my heart frayed by the fear, sadness, and frustration that had consumed me for a decade. I continued to stroke her hair. That I could do.

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Sort by: Showing all of 2 Customer Reviews

  • Posted June 23, 2011

    A must-read for all families struggling with a child's mental illness.

    Barbara Hale-Seubert writes a deeply moving memoir of her journey through her daughter Erin's 10-year struggle with an eating disorder. Erin is the oldest of Hale-Seubert's four daughters. The outward sign of the beginning of her battle begins at age 12 with a school assignment's diary of everything she eats. Although she is shocked at how little Erin had listed as eating for the day, Hale-Seubert doesn't push, knowing that her daughter would only push back harder. That caution quickly fades, as Erin first stops growing, and then turns into a skeletal version of herself from eating less and less. But Riptide is far more than a chronicle of a daughter's serious illness; it is a voyage into the heart and soul of Hale-Seubert herself. Although parents can seldom be held responsible directly for the course of their children's lives, we all carry our own baggage that affects them. As Hale-Seubert examines her own life and how to live it in the context of Erin's disease, she discovers her own views on food and body image, and that of her mother and grandmother. She learns how she had subconsciously absorbed the attitudes of generations before her, not seeing at the time how her family's outlook on food shaped her own. Hale-Seubert's view of herself, and her relationships with her parents, her first husband, and later her second husband, also shape the lives of her daughters, as does the girls' father's behavior toward them. The struggles Hale-Seubert writes about are with herself as much as with Erin. Over the years, she discovers her true inner self and learns the importance of being true to herself even as she makes all the traditional sacrifices mothers make for their children. In the end, Hale-Seubert's memoir brings parents a message of hope amid the tragedy of not being able to save her daughter. As she learns, the only one who can save Erin is Erin herself. And the only one who can save Hale-Seubert is herself. We suffer with her, and rejoice with her. We grieve with her, and celebrate with her. As painful as this journey is, it ends with self-discovery that provides Hale-Seubert with forgiveness and redemption. Hale-Seubert bares open her heart and soul first to herself, and then to the readers, with harsh honesty. I couldn't help but be moved by her pain and then peace. She gives hope to all parents who ride the roller coaster of feeling they're not doing enough for their children, yet facing the need to authentically live their own lives. I recommend this book not only for parents who are struggling with a child's serious mental illness, but for all parents who wonder and worry that they are not doing enough for their children, including sacrificing living their own lives. And in reality, isn't that all of us?

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 23, 2011

    EXCELLENT JUST READ B on Opra if she still Had show.

    JUST READ B on Opra if she still Had show.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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