And this was after they had just been on two above-average dates together, one to the opera and the other to some Italian place located on Grand Avenue. It was the group that knew he was the one, with one member telling her that she was completely different with this guy. She told him that she told the group everything and that if he did not like it, they should stop right now. She told John, now her husband, that she was in group therapy after they had been on their fourth date.

She has a tendency to cling to things that used to work for her instead of just letting herself grow into new things. Thus, when something does not work for her, when it does not make her happy or it has outlived its usefulness, she has a tough time evolving. The deadly purging was lifted after she admitted what she was doing and allowed the other people in the meeting share their tales with her and help her through the beginning weeks of recovery.Ĭhristie says that her tendency to be very rigid about processes and schedules interferes with her serenity. It was then that she admitted to this room of strangers that she had been purging, and felt relief of the compulsion to purge. She’d been binging purging close to every day for months, and then she attended her first 12-step meeting for recovering bulimics and anorexics. Any bravery that people see in Christie’s own writing can be traced to Lidia’s book.Ĭhristie believes that her initial recovery from active bulimia had a lightning bolt effect. It turns out Lidia teaches online classes through her own organization and Christie was able to study with her and meet some other writers that also loved her book. After she read the book, she was so overcome with emotion about what she gives the reader on the page that she sought her out in order to pen a fan letter. She was so blown away by Lidia’s storytelling, feeling like she had stuck her finger into an electrical socket. “Chronology of Water” by Lidia Yuknavitch is a book that changed her life.

She would only learn later that she had a lot to learn. At this time in her life, she believed that if she was thin enough and just made good enough grades, she would be happy. When she was just eighteen, one thing she did not know was that happiness was one thing that she would need to work at understanding for herself and that she would need to untangle a bunch of old messages, toxic stuff from culture, about what happiness required. Her work’s been published in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Pithead Chapel, The Chicago Tribune, McSweeney’s, Entropy Magazine, Motherwell, A Perfect Wedding, Brain, Child,, and others.

Tate is a Chicago-based essayist and writer.

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