“We look exactly the same as we did thirty years ago,” Cameron said. “Don’t you think?”
We sat on a Zoom call on a Friday afternoon. She reclined on a couch in her New York home, her brown shoulder-length hair swinging, while I sat in a sunroom, trying to pretend the cold Midwest is warmer than it really is in March.
“Maybe?” I replied, trying to recall images of us in college. I saw the two of us huddled with other freshman girls in a Bible study, nervous, shy and hopeful. During our sophomore year, five of us became roommates who chattered daily in a corner of a rowdy dorm. Throughout college, Cameron offered a safe, nonjudgmental space for me to confide my struggles with eating disorder recovery, with parents, with boys. She loved to give little gifts: a beautifully decorated card, a mix of favorite songs, a vibrant blue mug for my tea obsession. With Cameron, I cried freely and laughed with abandon. During our senior year, I spent as much time in her sorority as my own. The sage green bridesmaid dress from her wedding hung in my closet for decades, because she was thoughtful enough to give us a versatile dress and also because I liked the reminder of her.
A few years after we were both established in marriages, jobs and communities, our communication slowed. We talked every couple of years, often for an hour. But Cameron’s place in my heart never changed.
In January 2021, when I texted Cameron to ask how she was doing, she replied with her usual bluntness, “Do you want the real story?”
Soon, we discovered that we were living the same nightmare with our firstborn teenage daughters. Both girls were in the throes of an uncontrollable eating disorder and debilitating depression. Ironically, our daughters’ mental health breakdowns revived our friendship.
Over the next few weeks, you’ll hear Cameron’s story of discovering her daughter Rachel’s mental health struggles and the revolving door of hospitalizations, until she finally found a path of healing. You’ll hear how Cameron’s faith evolved, the crucial ways her friends supported her, her decision to choose sobriety during her daughter’s crisis, and her self-care tips for parents.
Before diving in, I’ll give you some background. Roy and Cameron1 have been married twenty-six years. They both grew up on the West Coast but now live in a small city on the East Coast where Cameron works as an educational consultant, Roy as a teacher. Their daughters Rachel and Zoe are now seventeen and twelve. Rachel is a competitive gymnast and diver. Her athleticism and grit have won medals and offers from college recruiters.
Cameron’s Story
Me: It’s been so good to reconnect.
Cameron: Yeah, connecting over this has been really safe for me, because you knew me as me being me, not as a parent. You know my heart, what I care about. I think it would have felt a lot more threatening if you had only known me as a parent. It just kind of solidified that this can happen to anybody.
Me: I remember in the beginning, you wondered if Rachel’s struggles were your fault.
Cameron: Rachel’s first therapist - not my favorite person - said that the lens through which she thinks about eating disorders is family systems. Like, how daughters experience things is because of the mothering they receive. Immediately I was like, oh great, this is gonna be all on me.
Me: I remember you being devastated by that session. You were already feeling awful about Rachel’s bulimia and then she’s saying that it’s on you. [Side note: I believe that family systems theory is a great concept, but I think it’s a misapplication to use it to assign blame, especially in parenting teens with mental health issues].
Cameron: That therapist lives in town and you know what, I can’t even look at her. It was so painful. And those words didn’t really help anything. When Rachel went to partial hospitalization, we stopped working with her. Eventually we found the root causes of Rachel’s illness. But talking with you made me realize that it's a crap shoot. Like, kids have anxiety. I didn't do anything to make her anxious. It just happens.
Me: You said Roy has also blamed himself?
Cameron: He’s worried that he gave this to her, that it was in his DNA. Roy was adopted. He doesn’t know much about his birth parents except that his mom had schizophrenia, and she took her life three days after he was born.
Me: How have you both reconciled with those questions?
Cameron: Now we’re at this point of saying, there is no one to blame. This just is. You have to accept that something is broken, and it just might be broken. Roy and I remind each other that Rachel manages the world differently; her brain is different. I loved your article about expectations - I have to accept things as they are, even if I don’t want them to be that way.
First Signs of Mental Health Issues
Me: When did you first notice Rachel’s mental health challenges?
Cameron: Since this all happened, Roy and I have spent a lot of time thinking and wondering about Rachel’s childhood. She had this quality of, like, defiance. When we did her sleep training, she would scream for hours. Nothing that she was doing seemed the same as other kids. Plus she had so much energy. We got her enrolled in gymnastics in first grade, and she needed all that time there to calm down. In first grade, they would play spelling bingo, like hop, hop your spelling. She would do back walkover spelling. Her second grade teacher told us, “Sometimes I let her stand up because she just has so much energy.”
Me: Sounds like maybe ADHD?
Cameron: Yeah, as a teenager they finally tested her for ADHD and she has it. But we didn’t know that then.
Me: So jumping ahead to adolescence…when she was a freshman in high school, you found out she was purging. I remember you saying that you could hear her throwing up in the bathroom, and you didn’t know what to do.
Cameron: Right. We got her that therapist, but it didn’t help her stop purging. So a few months later, she went to an eating disorders treatment center for five weeks, partial hospitalization. But she still wasn’t eating and couldn’t stop purging. Had residential programs been available, they would have sent her, but we couldn’t get in. It was still the pandemic, and every place was full. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Did I tell you about when Child Protective Services came?
Me: You hinted at something, but you never told me.
Cameron: Just before she started PHP, Rachel’s therapist called CPS. I had grabbed Rachel on the arm, you know the way moms get mad at kids and are like, “Stop it!” Rachel took a picture because there were marks. She saved it on her Snapchat and showed her therapist. Then she made up a story, something like Roy got mad and pinned her on the bed with his hands around her neck.
Me: I can’t imagine Roy doing anything like that! He’s so gentle!
Cameron: Exactly. So the therapist calls Roy at ten AM to say that she’s making this report and CPS is at our house by three. They interview Roy, then Zoe. By the time they get to me, they realize this is not an abusive household, and they leave.
Right afterwards, Rachel called a friend to hang out. Roy and I were still in shock, saying, “I can't believe this is happening, I can't believe this is happening.” But Rachel was high as a kite. She was behaving so weirdly, erratically.
We were trying to tell her, “You don't understand, if they decide that this is serious, you guys might be taken away from us. Your dad could lose his job.”
She was like, glassy-eyed weird.
That was when we realized that something wasn't right with our daughter.
Next week, we’ll continue Cameron’s story. We’ll hear about the lowest points of her daughter’s illness and how she found hope in those dark moments.
I’ve changed the names of Cameron’s family for privacy