A Siblings Perspective

         Hello, I’m Hannah. I’m Becky’s sister. As you probably know, Becky has recently been recovering from anorexia. A few months ago she asked me to write an article about eating disorders from a sibling’s point of view and I thought it would be easy. It turns out it’s not that easy. Finding words for it has been a challenge, hence the delay, but here goes…
There is a picture of me holding Becky soon after she’d been born; the first time I ever met her. I was two years old and the look on my face is one of overwhelming love and awe. That feeling of overwhelming love and awe has never left me. Seeing the beautiful sister that I am in awe of filled with the self-hatred that anorexia brings has been heart breaking.
 

        I think that a lot of people see eating disorders as a trivial and somewhat glamorous illness. If you are the sibling of someone suffering with one you will quickly learn how far from reality that is. Eating disorders are like vicious parasites and they will try to destroy every area of the sufferer’s life. One of the most important things to me has been that anorexia could not to destroy my relationship with Becky. It could push me as far and as hard as it wanted and I wasn’t going anywhere. My relationship with her was simply not for sale and it never will be.
 

        We often joke that we have a kind of sixth sense about each other. It’s not just that I can read her like a book, I feel what she feels. When she smiles, I smile. When she hurts, I hurt. This made watching her suffering from anorexia really painful. There was a time when I was really scared that I was going to lose Becky to the anorexia. I would often watch her when she was asleep to make sure she was breathing. I wanted so much to be able to wave a magic wand and make the hurt go away, but all I could do was just hold her and make sure she knew I was there for her, any time any day.
 

          One of my hardest battles was with my own feelings of guilt about her eating disorder. As her sister, it is in me to want to protect her. I’d frequently ask myself why I hadn’t been able to stop the eating disorder developing and think that I should have been able to protect her from it, after all; I know her better than anyone. I’d been concerned for her self-esteem for years; so surely if anybody was to blame, it was me. As well as blaming myself for not being able to stop it, I’d sometimes even think that I’d caused the anorexia. The thing is, thinking like that is not going to help anyone. It didn’t help me and it certainly wasn’t going to help Becky. I think feeling guilty is common for siblings, but what we’ve got to remember is that eating disorders are illnesses; complex illnesses. A sibling can’t cause that. Our job is to focus on the fact that we can help them to recover.
 

        As a sibling supervising snacks and meal times, spending time together doing fun stuff was really important as snacks and meal times can be stressful. Making time to just hang out helped us to stay close as sisters throughout the difficult times. Even if it was just curling up to watch Downton Abbey together; it was important. The advice I’d give to any sibling is to remember who your brother or sister is. Underneath the eating disorder, they are in there and you need to remember who they are so that you can help them to remember too. To me; Becky isn’t the girl who had anorexia. She’s Bexy boo; my caring, doctor who loving, funny and sometimes downright cheeky little sister.
 

        We’ve always had jokes that only we find funny and come up with silly stories and scenarios that are hilarious to us. When she was at her most unwell there was less of that, though I’d still tell her silly jokes. As she started to recover, more of that came back and gradually we started driving our parents crazy with our hysterical giggling over ridiculous things again. I can’t even begin to describe how happy those first rounds of banter and silly stories made me. To have her laughing and joking again was an amazing feeling. 
 

        Watching Becky kick anorexia’s butt has made me so proud that I could burst. It’s not easy; eating disorders don’t leave without a fight but she fought and now she’s helping other people to do the same. Her courage is so inspiring.
Recovery is a long journey. Things like times of high stress and stomach bugs can be really difficult for people recovering from eating disorders so as a sibling I think it’s best to be mindful of that. Don’t panic, just be there for them.
As a sibling I found that there wasn’t much support or practical guidance so while I’m by no means an expert or a qualified professional, with Becky’s help I will follow this article up with a list of basic things for a sibling to bear in mind.

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Also, if you ever want someone to talk to please feel free contact me through the contact page of the website (if you put ‘For Hannah’ Becky will know to pass it onto me) or find me on twitter @hannaahkaty.