If Cate Eaton’s life was a movie it would begin with the death of her father and end with an eating disorder.
In between there would be scenes with Cate leaning over the toilet, purging the food she’s just eaten, and the slow pan of the camera across her on a psychiatrist’s couch.
But we’re not in a movie: we’re in Wellington on a Monday morning, in a 1920s villa sandwiched between the ocean and a supermarket. It’s where Cate, 59, lives with her wife, Sue, whom she’s been with for 20 years, married for seven, and where she settles back into a squishy couch to talk about the disordered eating that has stalked her since she was a child.
Cate is softly spoken, articulate and bubbly, far from what I’d imagined someone who has to endure the double whammy of an ED and other assorted mental health issues would be like.
“Because I look okay and have kept my struggles to myself, people have no idea what I’m going through,” says Cate. “EDs are tricky things that are hard to spot and tough to treat. But the reality is they have one of the highest mortality rates of any mental illness.”
Not only is Cate a long-term ED sufferer, she’s also a member of that widely under-acknowledged cohort: mid-life disordered eaters. Because if your image of a woman with
