Disorder Victim Tells Her Story

North Shore News by Sue Carr

February 10, 2002 — To the outside world, Holly Whalen seemed to have it all.

As a certified management accountant, Whalen had worked for Fortune 1000 companies in the high technology sector for the past 14 years. By the age of 30, she had traveled the world, earned a professional degree, and was earning a six-figure income.

But for 20 years she had also been hiding a severe eating disorder from her friends, and her family, and even her husband.

Now, after four years of being fully recovered from anorexia nervosa and bulimia, Whalen has published her traumatic story during Eating Disorder Awareness Week. The book is called Silence the Judge, Release the Victim, and chronicles her upbringing through her journey to the self-confident point she is at now. She stresses that the book is as much for parents as it is for people with a lack of self-esteem.

“I want to show that there are lots of different faces to eating disorders,” says Whalen. “They are people in every kind of profession, young and old. We're looking for solutions to prevent and help our young people, and we're forgetting that we as parents and adults need to get healthy.”

Silence the Judge, Release the Victim tells of Whalen's childhood, in which she constantly strove for her parents' love and affection, and had little open discussion about important instances in her life, including her rape at the age of six.

“I spent my entire childhood being told who I was supposed to be, what I was supposed to be, how I interpret the world, what was deemed beautiful and what was deemed ugly,” says Whalen. “What I had to do was get in touch with who I was. That process isn't available out there in a lot of books.”

Silence the Judge, Release the Victim discusses the healing process Whalen went through to recover from what she calls her “coping mechanism.” After years of unsuccessful therapy, Whalen met a spiritual guide in Vancouver who changed her life.

“She just spent a very short three months with me, and in that period I walked away from the eating disorder,” says Whalen. “We spent no time at all talking about eating and not eating, we spent time getting in touch with ourselves. I learned how important we all are, how we play a significant role. We can start making the choices to own our own scripts.”

Whalen's book documents her story and her healing process, but also deals with prevention of eating disorders, and the benefits of promoting self-worth in children.

“I wanted my daughter to know when it is the appropriate time, this is who her mother was. Her mother's life wasn't perfect, there isn't an expectation for her own life, for her to be anybody but who she is,” says Whalen, whose daughter Sydney is six years old. “Four out of five children between seven and 10 worry about being fat. This is a self-esteem issue, and we as parents can prevent this from becoming a part of our child's reality. If parent's aren't satisfied with themselves, and have no self-esteem, if their life is under labels, chances are their kids will have self-esteem issues too.”

“I think it's an important story to show that you're not alone,” says Gordon Keast, president of Chalice Communications Inc., the marketer of the book. “It's a very personal story, not so much statistics. It's a very real, human side to this and what happens to people, real people.”

Silence the Judge, Release the Victim is available in bookstores nationwide.