How disability can impact one’s body image – and what you can do

Yvie: [00:00:00] This podcast is recorded and produced on the land of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people of the Eastern Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to their elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who may be listening.

Welcome to another episode of Let’s Talk a Podcast from Butterfly Foundation. I’m your host, Yvie Jones, and today we’re exploring an often overlooked topic, the experience of body image, and people living with disabilities. I will be talking to Juliette McAleer, a writer, researcher, and disability advocate from regional Queensland.

Juliette shares how she navigates the complexities of living with physical and psychological disabilities, all while recovering from an eating disorder. We’ll discuss how ongoing medical issues the system of care and prejudice around difference [00:01:00] can impact body image and how Juliette learned to challenge societal standards and cultivate body kindness even when feeling good about her body was especially challenging.

We’ll also hear how allies can better support disabled bodies with genuine inclusivity, understanding and respect. Juliette is a remarkable person. We are so lucky to have her with us today. Now to start, could you please introduce yourself? Tell us about your personal experience with a disability.

Juliette: So my name is Juliette.
I live on Butler country in regional Queensland with my partner and our blended family. I’m a mom to three. Wonderful children and a stepmom to two great kids, and a couple of those are now adults who’ve moved out of home and they’re now forging lives of their own out in the big world. I do also want to maybe make it clear that I don’t speak for all people with a disability, and that my experience of disability is [00:02:00] quite different from many others, and I don’t want anyone to assume that I’m attempting to speak on behalf of all people with disabilities.

I’m only here representing my experience. Which is of a person with a feeding tube and some psychosocial impairments that, uh, follow me through life. And I’ve learned how to juggle those, um, alongside an eating disorder. But I want to make it really clear that I don’t speak for everyone, and I’d like to make sure that we amplify the voices of as many people as possible with diverse experiences, especially the voices that we don’t.

Often here. Beautifully said, I’m a researcher, a writer, a disability advocate, and um, I guess someone now living with both a physical disability and also psychosocial disability, and that was acquired in the wake of just a catastrophic injury that left me missing 90% of my small bowel and most of my stomach.

I live with [00:03:00] PTSD as a result of the medical trauma and also anorexia nervosa. A condition that I’m now saying is taken more of a backseat, thanks to some excellent therapy along my recovery journey. I’m not sure that I’ll ever be able to say that I’m completely free of it due to this complex interaction.

Between my physical disability and my eating disorder, but I’ve certainly found a way to work around it with the kind of support that I am very, very lucky to have. I’m also a tube fed endurance athlete, so I have a gastrostomy feeding tube for nutrition. It’s a surgically implanted device that sits through the skin into my abdomen and directly into my stomach.
And I guess I wanted to clear up any confusion for your listeners. My feeding tube is not related to my eating disorder. I simply just lost the ability to eat enough food orally to support my body because my anatomy is permanently altered now because I’m missing most of my small balanced stomach, so I can [00:04:00] eat small amounts of food.

But most of my background nutrition comes from my tube feed. My tube feeding keeps me alive. It’s something that I manage every day. And it can be quite the logistical and mental challenge, especially I think when you have an eating disorder that doesn’t want you to connect your tube to the nutrition that you know you need to remain healthy.

And I try, I guess to lean into this idea of feel the fear and do it anyway. But despite, I guess my generally sort of resilient and positive. Mindset that I, I try to develop and embody. I still developed anorexia, and that’s the tension I guess, that I wanna talk about today, is that, you know, it’s not one thing causing the other, but what happens when survival and control and trauma and disability and this need inexplicable need to disappear? Just all start speaking at once.

Yvie: Can I ask the eating disorder, when did that start and when did you [00:05:00] have. Your injury.
Juliette: So I had an eating disorder in my early twenties. I had lots of therapy for that recovered, and then I went on to live my life without the eating disorder. It was in a state of remission, I suppose you might call it.

I think sometimes, I dunno what people’s view is on this, but I, I feel like. Often, once you’ve had an eating disorder, there’s always this kind of dormant susceptibility in your mind. But I had learned all of the skills I needed to live a healthy life, to prioritize nutrition, to give birth to three babies, healthy babies, look after them.

And it wasn’t until the, uh, 2020 when I had a twisted bowel. Just a random medical emergency out of nowhere. Right. And I presented to the emergency department in my local regional hospital here, and it. Took some time to diagnose the condition and to respond to it, and by that time my bowel was in a, what they called a state of hemorrhagic necrosis and couldn’t be [00:06:00] saved, so they res resected some of my bowel.

I required resuscitation in the ICUA few times. I had two surgeries in Harvey Bay. Then my family was told that I’d likely not survive, so they were brought to the chopper pad. I was going to be transferred from Harvey Bay to Brisbane for further surgeries. In the hope that they could save my life, but they knew there was no guarantee.

So that was a very traumatic time for my family to have had to come and say goodbye to me on the chopper pad. But clearly this is a story of success and I’m here alive talking to you today. Yeah. But obviously that was a very difficult time for my family, but that is how I acquired the disability that I now live with. Is just, uh, now I had spent six months in a hospital. I also have an acquired brain injury as a result of the resuscitation attempts to, um, save my life. So it’s a hypoxic injury, which is a little different to a traumatic brain injury. It’s a bit more diffuse. It affects my memory and my executive functioning.
My emotional [00:07:00] dysregulation, I guess, is that. Oxygen not getting to the brain. It is, yeah. So hypoxia refers to the lack of oxygen to the brain and it will cause a diffuse kind of injury as opposed to when you have a traumatic injury, it might be in one very specific part of the brain, whereas hypoxia can sort of be distributed throughout, throughout, and you don’t always know what impact until some years later.

Oh wow.

Yvie: So you had a double whammy after that first initial, then you found out that there was also a brain injury.
Juliette: Yes, and also diagnosed with PTSD and then the eating disorder developed after that. So I spent five months in hospital on TPN total parenteral nutrition. So that is a nutrition through your veins.

There’s a little vein that sits just above your heart. And because my, uh, digestive system had completely given up the ghost, I had to be fed. Via my veins that way. So that was a very difficult time for someone who had previously had an [00:08:00] eating disorder. All of a sudden, I’m nil by mouth. I can’t eat much.

When I did attempt to eat, it would come straight back up. I was being weighed on the ward. All of the TPN calories were being discussed around me on the ward, which wow is appropriate, you know, because obviously as a person on a surgical ward, you wanna be as involved as you can in your care. But in the back of my mind, this little eating disorder voice started becoming louder and louder.

Yeah.

Yvie: Very triggering, isn’t it? Those little things.

Juliette: Very triggering. I was offered a feeding tube very early in the piece because they thought when I came off TPN, that I might require enteral feeding through a, initially a nasogastric tube and then potentially the the gastrostomy feeding tube that I now have. But because I felt like that might be a triggering thing for me, I said no initially and I went home attempting to try and meet all of my nutritional needs. Orally myself. And unfortunately I didn’t succeed in being able to do that. I’m anatomically unable to sustain my body based on what I can consume [00:09:00] orally.

So over time, I became sicker and sicker and the decision was made by me and my treating team that we would place a feeding tube. I lived for a couple of months, uh, going to work with a NG tube on my face, which was a bit confronting for people, I think. But yeah. As soon as that NG tube was placed, I felt such a relief because I knew at that point I could meet my needs without causing myself pain and nausea.

Whereas prior to that, trying to meet all my needs orally, I was feeling like I was failing on all fronts. So it was initially a great thing to have the feeding tube option, and I know many people might regard that decision as. One of, you know, a tragic, difficult decision, and it was difficult to make, but I’m grateful for the feeding tube because it means that I now have the ability to nourish my body in a way that doesn’t hurt me.

But unfortunately, because of all of the experiences that I’d had after the gastrostomy feeding tube was placed, I did [00:10:00] develop the eating disorder, whether we call it a relapse or a new. Eating disorder altogether is semantics, but it was driven very much by the knowledge that I would never have a normal relationship with food that I physically can never have or hope to have A normal relationship with food and food is so central to our lives.

It’s something that glues together, you know, families and social events, and even when I plan my own. Birthday events. I still plan dinners because that’s what all my friends like to do, and even though I can’t properly participate in a dinner and I’m sitting there with my tube feed running, I can still nibble little bits and pieces, but I’ve had to find other ways.

Yvie: To be included in the food rituals that we’re all just so used to in life and take for granted. It’s just a given, isn’t it? That, you know, we eat and celebrate and if you can’t do that… We live in a food centric world. We do. And when you lose the ability to eat in a typical way, I can’t describe how that feels.

Juliette: It’s a visceral feeling of, uh, exclusion in lots of ways. And I was 41 when everything changed for me, so it. Emotionally and psychologically and physically affected so much of my life, it shifted my sense of identity completely. Who am I in this new body?

Yvie: Yeah. Well, that’s what I wanted to ask you, Juliette. In what ways has your disability impacted. Did your body image?

Juliette: I’m gonna be honest, I hate the term body image. Okay. Personally. Yeah, that’s okay. It makes something really complex. Sound superficial in my view, as if what I’m dealing with is kind of like a ma matter of mirrors and angles and as if that’s, it’s about what I see, but it’s really not, the battle hasn’t been in the mirror for me. It’s been inside my mind, inside my body, inside the feeding [00:12:00] pump and the medical interventions that I now rely on, and it’s in the absence of ordinary hunger cues. It’s in moments that I’ve screamed at the sky because even basic nourishment causes me pain and nausea and requires negotiation with what?

I describe as a self at war, so I guess instead, I’ll say this, my disabilities impacted how I experience my body rather than how I see it and what it means to live in it and what it means to rely on it to carry me through the world and what it means when that reliance. Kind of becomes betrayal in a way.

My body’s sort of failed me in ways that have made me quite angry with it, as you might imagine. And having a feeding tube itself has changed me because it an topically physically sort of changes me. I have this button in my stomach as well, and so emotionally as well. Uh, I guess a feeding tube could be seen as a symbol of survival for sure, and I try to see it that way.
But it’s [00:13:00] also a symbol of loss. And a reminder that I don’t eat the way that others do because of my disability, and also that pleasure and food are no longer tightly linked in the way they were before I got sick. And that social connection over meals like we were just talking about, that often leaves me feeling like I’m on the outside looking in. Coming to terms with the idea that my recovery from an eating disorder can never hope to aim for a good or a typical relationship with food, it’s just not going to be possible. And I try to lean into the routines of family life that revolve around food as best I can. I have a rule about always attending my family dinners.

I’ll sit down and I will attempt to eat a little bit of whatever my family’s eating because that element of participation and connection is really important to me and to my family. So I’ve tried to retain as much ritual around those important moments of family life as I can. But I can’t help but feel very sad when I [00:14:00] can’t properly join in with meal times.

Even though I want to model for my children the most appropriate relationship with food I can, it’s, it’s almost impossible when you just can’t. Physically eat anything, and I feel like on the body image issue, this eating disorder didn’t emerge because I hated how I looked. It emerged because I hated how I felt in this body, and it felt like it wasn’t mine anymore. It emerged because I was angry at the world and I didn’t know how to express this in a way that wasn’t kind of self-destructive as an eating disorder is at its core, it felt like. I guess my body had turned on me, and so I turned on it back. My eating disorder was not a cry for help, I guess, as some people might interpret it to be, but it was in some ways a form of protest. It was a rebellion against the helplessness and the loss of control of this life that I once. Largely felt comfortable with, and you do get [00:15:00] comfortable, like you were saying before, you take things for granted and, and I was as guilty of that as anyone, and then all of a sudden the rug was pulled out from under me.

And I realized I could no longer have a healthy relationship or a normal relationship with food or that I would have to redefine nourishment in a way that allowed me to live in a world that is so food centric.

Yvie: So well said. You know, there are people with eating disorders and disabilities and this is, you know, why we wanted to do this episode. You’ve just explained exact so well and succinctly how it would feel to have. That happened and you’ve lost control of something that you had control over the protest. Really struck me that you know, the way you said it turned on you, so you turned on it. It’s just something so relatable about that, that you explained is really something that I understood [00:16:00] immediately, even though I’m not going through what you are going through. It’s amazing that you’ve explained it that well. Thank you so much for that because I know that there we have listeners who would just be going, yes. It’s exactly how I feel and I’ve never really been able to vocalize it or verbalize it.

Juliette: And I often describe my eating disorder as my ransom note to grief and having been held hostage in this body that no longer works. And the only way I could express how that felt or to to request some sort of release was to say, you know. Here’s my ransom note.

Yvie: Mm,

Juliette: I’m done. If I can’t have a healthy relationship with food, I won’t have one at all. Was my, um, vibe there for a while?

Yvie: And we’re such complex creatures, aren’t we? That these things that they go through and we have to go through them to, I guess, come out the other side one way or the other. Whether it’s negative or [00:17:00] positive or good or bad, or survival or not.

Juliette: On that though, I wanna say that resilience is the rule rather than the exception. I lived on a medical surgical ward for six months and saw a lot of things. I’ve obviously been involved in eating disorder treatment settings, and people are way more resilient than they know. And it you, you never find out until you’re put under pressure like I have been. And I never would’ve thought that I would’ve got through all of this or that I would be talking to you today about this. And so I guess if anyone out there is thinking, gosh, I could never have got through that, or This is all too hard. I promise you, you are stronger than you think.

Yvie: To help the able-bodied world to be more aware. Can you share some difficulties those with disability, commonly experience in relation to the way other people perceive and treat disabled bodies?

Juliette: I guess again, I would challenge what [00:18:00] we mean by able bodied because it is one of those things that’s poorly defined, and it’s a phrase that I struggle with because it imagines this neat dividing line between people who can and people who can’t. But ability is just so layered and it’s fluid and it’s contextual. I run marathon. I’m also tube fed, and some days rendered unable to do anything. So what am I? Am I able or am I not able? So I guess that binary, what I wanna say is that that binary doesn’t serve us. It creates this kind of false sense of who belongs in which category and who’s seen as inspirational or tragic or inconvenient, when in fact we’re all just human beings trying to navigate this messy, messy human world.

And I guess I felt all three, you know, inspirational. Tragic, inconvenient. I’ve had people call me brave just for existing in this body and existing in public with my feeding tube. Some people are fine and ask me curious questions about it, and I quite like it when people [00:19:00] do that because that’s an opportunity for me to share what I know and also to connect with them on a human level because I think curiosity is a great connector of people.

I guess some of the hardest moments have been where I’ve been excluded because of my disability, and that’s not. Often by strangers, but. More often than not, it’s been by the very systems that have meant to support me as a person struggling with an eating disorder. In particular, when my eating disorder showed visible signs of medical complexity due to my disability and not due to my eating disorder mind due, my support was just withdrawn suddenly without wanting because the fact that I require a feeding tube and live with the physical effects of this disability that’s unrelated to my eating disorder was treated in that situation as too risky. I was too much of a risk to continue to support, but I wasn’t being difficult. I wasn’t disengaged. I was just someone whose body didn’t fit the mold.

And instead of asking what adjustments could [00:20:00] be made, they chose at that time to step away. And for me, that made me wonder. What it means when we say we accept all bodies, or that all bodies are okay, what does that really mean? You know, you are welcome here until you’re not. Yeah, all bodies are welcome until yours deviates from a norm that we are comfortable with or we don’t feel is too risky for us.

I have also had experiences in public hospital settings where it’s. It’s no different to this. So I’ve been told that I can’t access particular acute psychiatric facilities for my mental health because my continuous tube feeds and pump pose a risk to other patients. So this is the way that I eat, but it’s being seen as a risk to others.

And I understand that risk on one level, and I wouldn’t want to represent a risk to anyone. That’s the last thing I would want. But that also leaves me feeling as if, where do I turn for help? If my body doesn’t, [00:21:00] and my disability doesn’t fit the mold here in an acute setting where you know, all the nurses are trained to administer feeding tube feeds and things like that. But I’m seen as a risk in this setting. So where does that leave me? When the way that I stay alive is seen as a threat to the safety of others and I’m shut out. Not because I don’t need help, but because the system doesn’t know how to include someone like me. And that’s, I guess, the harm that we don’t talk about enough. The kind where services say, your body is welcome here until it isn’t.

Yvie: And do you see that changing?

Juliette: I haven’t seen it.

Yvie: Change is the answer. Do you think it will?

Juliette: I’d like to think everything is possible. Mm-hmm. And it will require a type of deep listening that I’m not seeing happening at the moment, but that I think is possible. I would like to see everybody who needs that kind of eating disorder treatment, have access to it no matter what their body looks like or how it functions. Because I [00:22:00] eat in a different way than many people who are undergoing eating disorder treatment. Does that mean I should be excluded from. The same care that everybody else can access ’cause that is the current state of affairs.

Yvie: What impact do you think social and medical misperceptions and biases may have on a person with disabilities body image?

Juliette: I think they can be devastating and I think especially as most people are innately driven to want to connect with others. When your disability is the thing that seems to be the barrier to people truly seeing you as a person and connecting with you, this can be really, really confronting. I think when you live in a body that doesn’t conform, you’re already. Navigating in a way, invisibility, discomfort, pity, and all of the things that come with that. And when that same body becomes the reason that you’re excluded from either social situations or representation in [00:23:00] media or even. Care settings, as I’ve described before, it creates this kind of double bind for us, and it makes it more difficult for us to reconcile our identities and our images of ourselves in the world when we’re perceived in this way.

And I know it’s not intentional, which makes it, I think, even harder. To deal with because you know that people mean well on the whole, and I genuinely believe that I’m quite optimistic about human nature. Mm-hmm. But I was told pretty clearly that my body made me incompatible with certain types of eating disorder, treatment and support, and the kind of support that other people without my kind of disability can access freely.

And that needing my continuous feeds via a feeding pump made me too complex, too risky, too far outside the frame. All of that messaging is damaging to my sense of self. And this is what happens, I think, when eating disorders are still sometimes framed [00:24:00] around aesthetics and image related issues. I know that that does play a role, so I’m not discounting that.
And I don’t want you to think I don’t understand the nuance. I genuinely do, but for me, um, it’s not about thinness. Or you know, visibility it. And sometimes these concepts that we hold onto and emphasize and amplify in our discourse about eating disorders end up erasing some of the issues that people face whose eating disorders are rooted in trauma, in grief, in control, or in disability or chronic illness.

And the result, I guess, of these experiences that. For me, I suppose I talk about myself is that I have internalized those messages and I have started to believe that my pain doesn’t count, and you know that your body disqualifies you from belonging in some. Inexplicable way, and that healing is something that’s reserved for people who fit the treatment mold.
And likewise with [00:25:00] social settings, it’s often the unspoken reactions of people to your disability that can leave the most significant mark on your soul, if you like.

Yvie: Yeah. Oh, well said. There’s so many more people that have eating disorders because of those things you listed rather than thinness. It’s such a miss. Conception and it’s a massive myth that’s out there that that’s the only thing that is, the reason.

Juliette: one of the difficulties is that eating disorder cognitions can lead to those obsessions. And you know, I was very fixated on a number, on a scale, on, you know, all things that. My normal self would not be particularly obsessed or worried about. And body image does come into the way eating disorder cognitions play out in people’s lives, but it’s often not the cause or the root of the issue. In my experience or in the the experiences of other people that I have spoken to with eating [00:26:00] disorders.

Yvie: Can you share an experience of an encounter? With a person that made you feel seen and supported?

Juliette: I guess I do remember a moment that made me feel seen in this body, the one that I now live in. And it came from a friend who knew me before I became disabled, who’s walked the journey of recovery with me along the way. And it was after a, a run. I hadn’t run very fast, but it was a finish line that I didn’t think I would cross.
’cause I’d had some medical and physical issues in the lead up. And the friend looked at me and she said. You know, Juliette, your finished time literally doesn’t matter. ’cause of course I was berating myself for not being as fast as I knew I could be. And I’m perfectionist and like to hold myself to a high standard even though I’m not an elite athlete. But she said, look, Juliette, it literally doesn’t matter. Look at what your body can do. It’s been through so much. It just carried you [00:27:00] across a finish line when you weren’t even expected to live. Wow. Yeah. And I don’t know why, but that just stayed with me. ’cause it, and, and I shouldn’t have been surprised, but so much of my life in the last few years has been lived in this fight against my body in resistance in defiance. And that moment just felt like a bridge, like someone had noticed, not my strength or my struggle, but kind of the space in between those things. The messy space in between those things. And I wasn’t an object of pity, but I also wasn’t a romanticized inspiration.

She was bringing me down to earth. I was someone who had been through a lot. And whose body has repeatedly refused to quit. And I felt at that moment like maybe I should be kinder to it. And it changed the course of my recovery trajectory from my eating disorder.

Yvie: Wow. Yeah. Amazing how such a [00:28:00] simple thing that someone says, pointing out the obvious can be an incredibly healing thing to do. Yes. It stays with you and they don’t even know it at the time, do they? It’s these little simple things that people don’t even know when they’re saying that.

Juliette: It’s just reminding you sometimes of who you. And especially when you have somebody who’s known you for a very long time through some very difficult and dark times, to have them point out the obvious, look at what your body can do.
It’s very simple thing to say, but it shifted my focus even just momentarily from how much I weighed or how many calories I just burned to this was quite an incredible feat, and I’m going to sit with that just for a moment.

Yvie: Yes. What tips or advice would you give someone with a disability who is struggling with their body image?

Juliette: You don’t have to love your body to survive it, at least initially. You don’t need to [00:29:00] post affirmations or perform gratitude or wrap your grief in a bow. You’re allowed to be angry. You’re allowed to mourn what was lost or, or maybe even what you’ve never had. A lot of people. Don’t acquire disability in the same dramatic way that I have. They’re born with it and they live with the life a a as onlookers wishing that they could have had experiences that their bodies don’t allow them to have. And so I feel like we are often told to be positive, but what we need is time and space. And to be allowed to be angry, to mourn what we’ve lost, like I said before, or what we’ve never had, and to say, this just isn’t what I wanted for my life. To have those little moments of those small tantrums where you just wanna say, look. This sucks. Yeah, and to have people not try to change the narrative into something positive all the time. I don’t think we should dwell in negativity either. I’m not suggesting that at all, but make [00:30:00] space for those very real feelings.

I have hated my body. I have punished it. I’ve tried to shrink it out of rage and not because of how it looked, but because of everything it. Took from me or everything that it failed to do for me, or all of the ways that it no longer functions as it should or as I had come to expect. It would always, and I feel like if that’s where you are at now and you’re angry and you’re hating your body, you’re not broken.

You’re grieving and grief deserves to be witnessed, not corrected, not punished. Just to have someone sit with you and say, yeah, this sucks, can be sometimes the most powerful moments in influencing your recovery. I guess what helped me wasn’t body positivity or even neutrality. It was curiosity. I think curiosity is such an underestimated [00:31:00] tool in recovery. Could I be kinder just for a moment, not an expectation that I will be, but just ponder, could I be, could I listen even when I don’t like what I’ve heard? Could I stay just for a moment? All of those questions that lean into curiosity that are not about absolutes, that are not about forcing positivity or forcing. Anything that is a commitment to anything other than being curious and taking a curious stance, and some days that is enough.

Yvie: So well said. What tips or advice can you share with the world about how to be body kind and supportive to people with disabilities and their bodies?

Juliette: I would start by asking questions. But instead of putting the onus on the person though by asking, how can I support you? ’cause that then puts the onus on them to come up with everything and have the imagination to know exactly what they need [00:32:00] and what they want. I think we try and avoid that, but things like curiously asking, what assumptions am I making about your body? That I haven’t even noticed? Have you noticed that? Or does it help when I offer to do X or would you prefer that I do something different? You know, how do you describe your disability and how would you like me to refer to it? When we talk about these things, I think we need to also assume or refrain from assuming that all disabled people want to be fixed, or that kindness is the same as inclusion because it is not. Don’t tell me that I’m inspiring unless you plan to stand beside me when the hospital refuses me care. When the NGO shuts its door, when I’m actually suffering the social impact of exclusion in my life because of my disability.

When I’m [00:33:00] excluded, not for what I’ve done, but for how my body shows up in the world. And I think one of the most powerful acts of support in moments like that is refusing to disappear. That’s true allyship. And so that is probably the biggest piece of advice that I could share with people who want to support someone living in a, a disabled body. And I guess also please don’t assume that the goal is normality. I will never have a normal relationship with food, and I’m not aiming for normal. I’m aiming for honest, for sustainable, for as much peace as I can find with that. And that starts with letting disabled people tell. The truths about our bodies in our language, even when it’s not pretty and even when it’s hard to hear, to just bear witness, I think is probably one of the most powerful ways a [00:34:00] person can demonstrate their allyship with somebody with a disability, particularly somebody who is struggling with their sense of identity and self, and perhaps engaging in eating disorder behaviors in order to cope with. How they show up in the world.

Yvie: I loved that. I’m glad you speak so beautifully, Juliette, and I love the way your brain, it works. Like it’s really, thank you. You’re interesting, you’re fascinating. I love your curiosity. I think at the, at the end of all of this, what I’ve taken away is how curious you are, and I think that’s a really contagious thing.

Juliette: and I can’t claim to have acquired this curiosity on my own. I think it’s the sum of all the people that I’ve interacted with over my life. Yeah. But in particular also my current eating disorder psychiatrist, who I’ve been now working with [00:35:00] for probably almost three years now. And one of her big things is curiosity. And here I am today, far more recovered than I was three years ago, and I’m now using curiosity, referring to it as one of the key cornerstones of my recovery trajectory to date.

Yvie: She sounds amazing. The two things also that I took away from everything that you’ve said, connection, you know, that we hear for connection and everyone is everyone.

Juliette: That’s what we all have in common. All of us. Doesn’t matter what your body looks like, as I said earlier. In the piece. I don’t represent the views of all people with disabilities. There are people out there living with disability, living with all kinds of impairments, all kinds of bodily difference, all kinds of psychosocial impairment, and their experiences are important. And what we need to [00:36:00] do now is to amplify and listen to those that are not routinely invited to the table. So sometimes people. Difficult to hear because of the impact of their impairments or because of the life circumstances that they’re in, but we need to actively seek out those people and hear them in a way that truly amplifies their voices in this conversation.
I’m a person who lives with considerable. Privilege and I do get to speak on a podcast here with you today, and I’m very grateful for that opportunity and I have shared as much I as I can of my experiences here. But I would love to. Be a part of a movement that supports other voices that are not routinely heard, and those that find it difficult to find and engage in these kinds of opportunities because there are different ways of listening and there are different ways of seeking out those voices, and I want a commitment to that because that’s how we actually change [00:37:00] systems, not by hearing the same voices recycled over and over again, but by actively going out and listening to those who are harder to hear.

Yvie: Juliette, thank you so much for joining us.

Juliette: Thanks for having me.

A huge thank you to Juliette for sharing her personal experience and wisdom with us today. If you are concerned about an eating disorder for yourself or someone that you care about, please reach out to the Butterfly National Helpline. At 1 803 3 4 6 7 3. That’s one 800 Ed. Hope for a free confidential conversation with one of our specialist counselors. Alternatively, you can chat online by visiting butterfly.org au and following the prompts at the top of the page. To find out more about today’s episode, check out the helpful link. In the show notes and on the Butterfly website, [00:38:00] just head to butterfly.org au slash podcast and click through to this episode

There’s also a fascinating blog about research supported by Butterfly and conducted by wise, that’s W-H-I-S-E, women’s Health in the southeast that looked at body image in women living with disabilities. The link is in the show notes as well. Let’s Talk is produced for Butterfly Foundation by Yvie Jones and Sam Blacker from the podcast Butler.

With the support of the Waratah Education Foundation. Our executive producer is Camilla Becket, with support from Melissa Wilton and Kate Mulray.