My Story

Growing up, I never really cared about how huge of an issue self-body image is. It never really affected me. I grew up with 3 brothers so when my mom told us she was having a girl, we were all overly-excited about finally having a little sister. I was always the closest to her as she grew up. I protected her and made sure she never got hurt. She has always been a beautiful girl from the inside out. She has the biggest heart and cares about everyone and everything. The day we found out she was having self-body image issues was a very hard day. My sister was 16 at the time that we found out. None of us had ever realized anything different about her. To us, she was always the same bubbly person she always was. She was always able to cover everything up; that is how we never noticed. I was the first to notice a change in her. One day, over the summer, I was getting ready to go swim with a couple of friends and I invited my sister and her friends to join. They gladly accepted and came down in their bathing suites ready to swim. When my sister walked outside I noticed how skinny she had gotten. My sister is very athletic so she has always had muscles and curves and she was beautiful that way. So, when I saw how skinny she had gotten I was surprised. I knew that she worked out all the time because she was in so many sports, so of course she was skinny. However, the skinny I saw was the unhealthy kind. It looked like she hadn't eaten in days. I was really concerned but decided not to mention anything because we were in front of all our friends. I told myself that I would ask her about it later. I was so caught up in everything going on that I completely forget to ask her and a couple of nights later we were out on the back porch with all our friends just talking and hanging out. One of our friends had challenged her to a race and she happily accepted. They began to run across the yard when all of a sudden my sister collapsed. No one knew what was happening. I quickly ran to her and realized how pale and fragile she looked. Her breathing was so shallow that I could barely tell if she was actually breathing or not. I was so scared that something bad had happened to her. One of my friends quickly called 911 and she was taken off to the hospital. This is when I learned about my sister's problem.