Invisible Chains: A Journey with Bulimea

By Stefania Leone

This novel is designed to help those who have found themselves in the grips of binge eating and purging as a method to control weight. During peak times of societies when food is abundant, up to 25% of society suffers from Bulimea. This book illustrates how the problem can start and accelerate. You are not alone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stefania Leone
• Release date: May 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798890741899

Stefania Leone

Stefania is passionate about increasing awareness of Vedic Astrology in the west. She was a western astrologer for ten years before realizing the deeper truth of this ancient wisdom is to be found in the vedic texts of ancient India. Stefania is a yogini, and trained in several of the sister vedic sciences, and has studied with many Indian Masters.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

When it is raining, I love being inside and looking out of the window. At those times, a purple candle burns beside me in an ornate cast iron holder. I love the cast iron frying pan sizzling on the stove. I love nature and candles.

I love being happy.

Many ingredients composed my recipe for happiness-mornings with sunshine, walks in the forest with my dog, homemade cinnamon buns, sharing laughter with my family. Unfortunately, during my formative years, from three to nine, circumstances tragically altered my lifestyle.

By the time I started grade one, my home had already been uprooted five times. My twenty-six-year-old father was still searching for his vocational niche; during the early stages of my character formation, this constant shuffle created instability. Mother’s ill health was also a disturbing factor for both my younger brother and myself.

My parents’ progressive marital discord was detrimental to what is usually considered a normal childhood. As a result, the children we were constantly in a state of imbalance, trapped in a doorless room— to my eventual shame and disgust this room was the pantry.

I soon discovered the antidote for my stressful home life-food! In food, I found a constant nurturer.

At age six, my life began a series of dramatic changes and unusual happenings. Our family made still another move from a comparative wilderness to the largest town in the Yukon, Whitehorse; population ten thousand. To a six-year-old, the transition was traumatic yet exciting.

I don’t remember the trip to Whitehorse, but I do recall the exhilaration I felt mixing with the other kids in the school yard and, somewhat apart, the black robed nuns standing on guard like silent sharp-eye sentinels, the shepherdesses watching the flock.

School quickly became a retreat, another new completely enjoyable world of adventure and learning. Here, in these classrooms, my insatiable desire to learn took full and firm roots and school became a place separate from the turmoil at home that kept me in a constant state of confusion and bewilderment. That was the good part; the bad part soon developed into an incredible horror. I suddenly found myself surrounded by forbidden goodies such as delicious chocolate bars, smooth savory ice cream and heavily iced chocolate cake.

The mere sight of all this available and eye-pleasing plenty served to arouse my curiosity rather than my appetite. I decided instinctively to sample every one of the available goodies.

Mother tabooed candy in our home. The only exceptions to that rule were special occasions like Easter, Christmas, Halloween and birthdays. At these glorious times my brother would hoard his precious booty and savor it a piece at a time; I, on the other hand, did the exact and disgusting opposite- I pigged out.

My eating habits, particularly for a six-year-old child, although I and everyone else were unaware of them, were the forerunners of a tragic situation. During mealtimes, anticipation of a second helping added considerable to the enjoyment of the food. This pleased my mother, who believed that her daughter had a normal, healthy appetite. She was totally unaware that she was encouraging a child trapped in early stage of what would become an uncontrollable need for incredible amounts of food=monumental amounts of food!

At this time, and until I attended university, this increasing obsession with food abuse did not interfere with my studies or school attendance. This was to come later.

Due to Mom’s progressive crippling attacks from Multiple Sclerosis, by eleven, meal preparation became my responsibility.

Rather than playing with the other kids, much of my time was spent in the kitchen. This constant proximity to food provoked an inability to resist sampling and savoring.

Due to my innocence, I had no idea whatsoever that the joy I experienced from this overindulgence in food was an insidious preface to a total breakdown of a normal and reasonable control regarding anything edible. Also, due to my complete lack of knowledge regarding overindulgences of any kind it never occurred to me that I might have an addictive nature.

By the time I became aware of the meaning of Bulimia, at the age of sixteen, it was already producing a distinctly adverse motivating factor in my life.

At this time I exhausted all the literature in the library dealing with food addiction. To my dismay, the information was limited to a single volume. The available facts on Anorexia Nervosa were presented lucidly and thoroughly. However due probably to the then current and still lacking knowledge of Bulimia, the author’s comments on that disease were limited to a few short paragraphs.

What added to my dilemma was that, for want of an acceptable medical definition, both diseases were usually lumped together and treated as one. All this contributed immeasurably to my state of confusion and distress. But, whatever Bulimia was, I evidently was stuck with it.

The problem was that to do about it.

At the point I vividly remembered my first real binge.

The Frist Binge.

I was ALONE in the kitchen preparing the family dinner. I was twelve.

For several moments my attention had been leap frogging between the aromatic sizzling meat and the package of butterscotch pudding intended for dessert. I was feeling burdened with imposed household duties. At the same time, I also felt an over-serious adolescent sends of responsibility towards my time-consuming chores. I somehow believed that I was responsible of the management of the home and family. I felt more like a housekeeper than daughter.

The lack of emotional contentment combined with a strong need to receive recognition for a job well done were the smoldering coals that ignited into an internal emotional inferno. The blaze became all-consuming and out of control. I often wished that my mother would give up valium in favor of coming to grips with the reality of a hopeless marital situation. Too I wished that my father would honor his family responsibility and realize that materialistically he was a good provider but that things would have been happier if he had lavished his attention on his wife and family rather than his girlfriends.

The sorry fact was: Mother, my younger brother and I continually felt neglected. I very often had to resist screaming at him: Forget about your damned girlfriends and love my sick mother and me!.

My interest switched from the stove and the dinner. I was preparing back to the butterscotch pudding. With neither thought nor intention I grabbed the box, added the canned mild and turned the burner on full blast.

Whatever semblance of self-control I might have had fell apart like a toppled house of cards. I had now entered into the never-never land of compulsive food abuse. This was the major turning point in my life. The butterscotch pudding was the key that opened the door. I had crossed the