Story Time.

My posts are few and very far between, I know. But I like to keep my little corner of the internet because I like writing and sometimes I like sharing; like today.

I want to share with you something that I wrote almost one year ago. My old ski buddy asked if I wanted to contribute to a blog that her and a friend were creating to help open the conversation about women in sport & mental health. I thought this could be very valuable and I definitely wanted to contribute to it. I think their blog is still in the works but I've decided to share this story on my own little platform as well. I recently went through (still going through...) a death of someone I loved very much that was a result of a mental illness. Among many things, it encouraged me even more to stand up against the stigma that continues to surround mental health.

So, grab a tea, sit back and settle in for a long story - one that I hope is worth the read. Here is what I wrote last November, copy & pasted.   

(Feel free to share this link - I don't have any social media to post it on, so if you think someone might find it interesting or helpful to read, please spread the support.)

_____________

My Story

When I graduated high school in 2010, I wasn’t sure of what I wanted to do. I had always been good at cross country skiing and it was something that I strongly identified with. While keeping skiing as a priority, I knew I could follow in either of my older siblings’ footsteps: go to university on a full ski scholarship, or pursue the sport full time. I applied for and got accepted into a university nursing program, but wasn’t 100% sure if that was what I wanted to do. The skiing life intrigued me, so I ended up trying my luck with the ‘full-time-athlete’ thing. I figured I would see how far the sport could take me once I dedicated my focus to it for a few years. I got accepted to the training center in Canmore, AB and at this time I was also representing the Canadian Junior National Ski Team.

Pumped to be wearing Team Canada attire!

When I was 18, I made the move to Canmore to start the new chapter in my life. I was excited and nervous, and ready to get stronger, fitter, and faster. The training curve was steep and I needed a daily nap for the first couple of months until I was up to speed with the rest of my team.  I also plugged away at a university course in between training and naps to keep my brain active. I’ve always valued an education and knew that I would eventually pursue a degree of some sort and figured I might as well take some general courses that could later transfer to any program.

I really enjoyed training, living in the mountains, making great friends with the same focus as me, and having a ‘job’ that allowed me to play outside twice a day. I trained well and raced well the first year on the team and enjoyed the downtime to stretch and recover. I trained well and raced well the second year too, but instead of enjoying the downtime in between training sessions, I started feeling unhappy.

My first trip to Europe. I was extremely nervous for the trip, but these girls made it unforgettable. Praz-de-Lys, France, 2009.

During my second year on the team, my downtime began to be something other than relaxing and recovery-esque. Instead, I felt unhappy with myself and coped with eating. The dopamine rush that I got from eating desserts made me feel better momentarily – and it didn’t help that I lived directly across the street from a bakery that sold huge muffins and brownies! At first, I thought I was having an imbalance of something in my diet that was causing me to crave carbs and simple sugars. I paid extra attention in our team’s nutritional meetings and I talked to a teammate of mine who had been seeing a personal nutritionist and tried to figure out what might be going on. I made some changes in my diet and experimented with certain things, but I still often found myself raiding the fridge, freezer, and cupboards for sweet things to eat. Of course, I started worrying about gaining weight at this point as I didn’t want to be ‘fat’ in my daily ski attire of spandex. So, I started making myself throw-up after these binges.

(I would consider myself "fat" (for an athlete/skier) when testing around 22% in our seasonal body fat composition testing.)

I remember feeling VERY self-conscious when having these photos taken (my BMI here was about 21%). You can see my coaches in the corner watching the assessment and I remember thinking keep a straight back, hold stomach in, don’t roll the shorts down too far because that makes my love handles pop out, look like an athlete, etc. I am looking at this now and thinking holy shit. A) I looked fit, strong and healthy, and B) it’s sad that I was too self-conscious to appreciate this and that I valued how I looked over how I felt. I guess hind-sight is 20/20.  

 
Yes, I did binge eat and I did make myself throw-up, which is not normal, but I think it came from a place that a lot of people can relate to. Remember how bad your stomach feels, almost painful, after eating a huge turkey dinner? That feeling kind of becomes a regular after binges. I didn’t start binging and purging because I thought I was fat. Instead, I ate because it helped me feel less-unhappy for a bit, and I purged because I felt so full and uncomfortable and didn’t want the binge to result in weight gain. At some point, purging turned into a punishment for binging. Sticking your fingers down your throat until you throw up isn’t particularly enjoyable and this made it an efficient ‘kill two birds with one stone’ action: reversing the binge and punishing myself for binging in the first place. How efficient of me! (insert eye-roll here)

Some of my teammates and lifelong friends 😊

Things went from bad to worse over the next year and a half. One night, it was a teammate’s birthday and I was making chocolate cupcakes with a surprise marshmallow inside to bring to the party. It’s funny, because if any of my teammates read this they will probably remember exactly what night it was and this might surprise them. I was having a particularly bad day and I remember feeling an overwhelming burst of frustration with myself and I took the serrated knife that was in my hand and pressed it into my right ‘love handle’. It didn’t cut the skin, but I remember wishing it had. I was so mad, I just wanted to literally cut my fat off. I had been eating all of the cupcake supplies while baking them and had already had a couple of binge/purges that afternoon. But later, when I showed up with the cupcakes at the birthday party, I was all smiles and a happy girl. It wasn’t a façade like you might be thinking though, it was genuine. When I was with my friends, I was happy. When I was working out with the girls, I was happy. When I was outside training, I was happy. It was only when I was alone that I became miserable and self-defeating.

All smiles on The Road to the Sun. Whitefish, Montana 2012

When the 2012-13 ski season started, I had moved into a new place and I was looking forward to the change. I was now living with two other girls who were also ski racers. We had similar focuses, got along well, and made sure we had the occasional family dinner or breakfast together. Although I enjoyed my living situation, my mental health during my downtime was beginning to decline again, quite quickly. I was starting to really question the full-time-athlete thing and I often found myself making lists of what I might want to be when I grew up. (…grew up more, I guess I should say.)

I felt as though I wasn’t making any progress in my life and I was scared of getting ‘stuck’ in the athlete lifestyle like I have seen many skiers do. No matter how many years you devote to ski racing, as a Canadian x-c ski racer, it is almost impossible to find long term success. From what I learned, any success that you achieve will inevitably be short lived and rarely (I want to say never?) can Canadian ski racing provide financial security and/or a reliable career. Personally, this uncertainty scared me because I couldn’t see myself becoming a coach afterwards or being content with starting university in my thirties. The fear that my real career (whatever it was going to be) was getting pushed further and further back started to overpower the successes and victories I was getting through skiing. I spent a lot of my time trying to decide what I wanted to do, what I wanted to take in school, how much longer I wanted to ski for, etc. Feeling unsure of what I was doing with my life made my downtime that much more of a bummer-time. I went through periods of insomnia, irritability, etc., the typical signs and symptoms of mild depression. I was never diagnosed with anything and I am by no means claiming that I had clinical depression, but I could recognize myself feeling unhappy more often than happy. Automatically, I would find myself with my head in the fridge or just standing there eating scoops of peanut-butter and jam.     

The 3 Musketeers. A foggy training day in Finland, 2011. 

This was when bad went to worst. I would drive down to the grocery store and buy a whole whack of treats and eat them in the car, then drive up to the Nordic Center and get rid of everything, wait for the redness in my eyes to go away, and head back home. Other times I would lay in bed and eat the whole supply of Cliff bars that I got for training. Needless to say, I wasn’t very happy. I remember one week in particular where I was binge/purging three times a day. That was my lowest point and thankfully it didn’t last very long.

Then, to add to my misery, I developed compartment syndrome in my shins and needed surgery if I wanted to continue racing. Typically, this surgery has a 4-6 week recovery period. I had my surgery in October with the hopes that, if all went according to plan, I could fit in the last few races of the season. However, I was lucky enough to acquire intra-operative infections in both of the lower incisions and ended up enduring a lengthy 5.5 month recovery period. These months were filled with daily visits to the hospital for antibiotics, dressing changes, and debridement done on my legs. This whole process gave me a step back from the ski world, something that I could later reflect on and appreciate greatly.

    

Surgery day was Oct 12, 2012. 

This is what two of the four incisions looked like two weeks post-op.

Things just got uglier after that, but I’ll spare you those photos. 

I spent time at home (in Whitehorse) during my recovery where I was able to focus on being healthy and getting back to my activities of daily living. When I could walk again, I returned to Canmore and went to the gym almost every day doing weights, spinning, and rowing. I actually got quite strong and trim again and I think this boosted my confidence. By this time, I had the hang of changing my own dressings, which allowed some freedom from the hospital. In February, I was also able to use my accumulated flying points (athlete perk) to book a trip with my best friend. We went to Boston and New York and visited/stayed with friends at Harvard, MIT, Wellesley College, and Columbia (such smart friends!). This and gave me a glimpse of the university life: the fun these students were having, the education they were receiving, and the life experiences they were gaining. My eyes were opened to life outside of skiing! This trip made me realize that life can still be great without revolving around the sport – a concept that I had always been unsure of. It excited me and inspired me to go to school soon.

Finally, my legs recovered and I was on the snow again. Only now I was faced with another decision: to ski for another year or not?

Blurry big city lights. New York, February 2013.

I decided to enroll for another year. I had the stubborn mentality of I better ski another year to make the surgery worth it. I started the season and I loved working out with the girls again, I loved being outside training in the sun and rain again, and I loved the feeling of getting fit again. That’s when I realized that I can still do all of these things no matter what my surroundings are. I can do these things while going to school or working! I didn’t know why I hadn’t realized this earlier. I came home for a week in July and a family friend had set up a backyard obstacle ski race with snow that he had stock-piled from the winter. People wore crazy race suits, used their worst skis, had some drinks, and raced their hardest around the melting, winding 100m loop. People were laughing and cheering everyone on, and I thought to myself This is what it’s about! This is why I love the ski community and the sport. What I love most about skiing is right here in this backyard, not the lifestyle I have in Canmore. And right then and there, I decided that I was quitting the team. As soon as I announced it to myself I couldn’t help but smile. I was up next to race around the loop. I raced my hardest and laughed the whole way around…and won! I stood on top of the makeshift podium in between two current multi-Olympians, popped a bottle of champagne, and celebrated my ‘international victory’.

But even more, I celebrated knowing that I had just won my personal battle of being a full-time athlete. 

Perianne Jones, Myself, Kristin Steira. JP Grand Prix, July 2013.

I have no regrets about my ski racing career. I accomplished representing Canada at three World Junior Championships in France 2009, Estonia 2011, and Turkey 2012. Two of these trips I was able to spend alongside my brother (he was also racing). I placed top Canadian in four of these races and top North American in two. I traveled a lot for the sport and got to see parts of the world that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I have made amazing friends that I will be keeping in touch with for the long run. I am proud of my ski accomplishments. And, I am also proud that I decided to stop when I did.

This is the start of the quarter finals. I’m in the middle, adjusting my pole. Otepää, Estonia, 2011.

This is the quarter finals in Erzurum, Turkey, 2012. I was stoked to see my name on the board!

A little summary of me now: I am now on the last stretch of my nursing degree (I decided that maybe it was for me after all). I love learning about the body and mind and appreciate how it challenges me mentally. I feel secure and excited about the career that it will provide me with while also allowing me to give back to my community. Exercise is still important to me and I run and workout regularly (…I made a pact with myself to never lose the chin-up strength that I gained while ski training!). Skiing is still my sport and it offers me a peace of mind when I am out on the trails. I still consider many of my old teammates as my close friends and embrace the opportunities when I get to visit them in Canmore. I appreciate my body for all that it does for me and I don’t take my health for granted!  (Que Jessica's daily affirmations 😊)

_____________________________________

…So why tell my story now?

When my friend told me about this blog, I thought it was super awesome. I wanted to contribute to it, but I wasn’t sure of how much I wanted to share. I recently went through my first mental health rotation in school and I learned a lot about daily struggles that people secretly go through. It doesn’t have to be a secret though! So, after reflecting on how important (but often ignored) mental health is, I figured I might as well tell everything.

I can honestly say that everyone (EVERYONE!!!) has a mental health that fluctuates up and down, just like your physical health. I considered writing this anonymously, but then thought that that would only perpetuate the negative stigma around mental health, which we should be trying to break. I’m hoping that, by me openly sharing my story with you, you will find your own courage to either seek help or, if needed, change the way you view mental health issues.

It’s very common for people to have periods of anxiety, panic disorders, depression, body dysmorphia, substance abuse, eating disorders, psychosis, and many more mental health injuries (if we’re speaking like athletes). It doesn’t have to be extreme to be present. For example: have you ever heard your phone beep but there is no message when you check it? Your brain produced the illusion that it beeped and this is an example of very mild psychosis. If you are experiencing any of these, you are not alone and you should not feel embarrassed, different, weird, or crazy. Most importantly, seeking help doesn’t make you weak; it makes you smart and proves that you can make valuable decisions. Without calling any of my teammates out, I can guarantee that I was not the only one struggling on the inside. There have been countless men and women who battle their mental health in sport and countless more to come. But you don’t have to be one of them.

Consider this: would you feel differently of a friend who was just diagnosed with diabetes and now needs to take insulin injections to regulate his/her body’s endogenous hormones? Probably not. So why might you feel differently of a friend who was just diagnosed with depression and who now needs to take antidepressants to regulate his/her brain’s hormones?  It’s the same thing!

Hormones can get out of whack anywhere in your body and cause changes: hypothyroidism (high TSH) = weight gain, menstruation cycle = mood changes, low serotonin in the brain = depression, decreased insulin production from pancreas = diabetes, high cortisol levels from a hyperactive pituitary gland = Cushing’s Disease, not enough dopamine in the brain = Parkinson’s Disease. These often happen for reasons out of our control, so we shouldn’t feel ashamed to talk to someone about it.

Mental health illnesses don’t define who you are. I was not a depressed or bulimic person, I was a skier, a girl, a daughter, a sister, an athlete, a friend, an artist, who felt unhappy sometimes and found an unhealthy way to cope with it. Mental health issues also don’t discriminate. Anyone can develop a mental health issue whether it be a phase or something that sticks with you for life. They may affect anyone despite socioeconomic status, education level, personality, or reputation. I am a pretty laid back person who is good with rolling with the punches and it still managed to affect me. I’m just glad that I was able to recognize the unhealthy behaviour and looked for ways to help myself.

I am also a bit stubborn, and that’s why I kept quiet about my struggles. I didn’t want to feel anyone’s pity or sympathy. I didn’t want people to see me eat a piece of birthday cake and think Oh she’s probably going to go throw that up right away. That wasn’t the case. I didn’t want people to not understand the whole picture. However, I also didn’t want to have to sit down and explain everything to everyone, over and over again…how exhausting.

Here are a few things that may be helpful for you (or someone you know):

1.     Talking to a psychologist or therapist.

2.     Talk to a friend, family member, or even a stranger. As long as they’re trustworthy…

3.     Join an anonymous support group. At one point, I created a twitter account and joined the anonymous #fitfam #healthyeating #supporteachother family. After finding the right role models to follow and correspond with, I found this quite helpful.

4.     Journaling. Sounds hokey-pokey but it helps to understand and sort out what’s going on in your head.

5.     Art. Coloring, painting, drawing. Both of these are very relaxing and can help decrease internal stimuli.

6.     If you’re musical, get into it! Play your instrument!

Hopefully my story will provide you with a glimpse of what can go on inside peoples’ heads and acknowledge that it’s not weird, stupid, crazy, or uncommon.

What’s life if you can’t enjoy it, right?

Cheers for being dorks 😎

Hakuna-Matata!

Janelle

P.S. Just because the full-time athlete lifestyle wasn’t for me, doesn’t mean it can’t be for you. Pursue whatever goals you have and be the happiest and healthiest that you can be - this means both physically and mentally 😊