Road To Legacy

  My name is Amanda and this is my story. Food and I have never really gotten along. In addition to being a severely picky eater, food was never really enjoyable for me. While the majority of the population treats food as a positive experience to spend time with friends and family, there are some people in the world who would rather avoid the hassle entirely. Guess which one I am? As I continued through high school and college, food got harder and my body image got worse. When my sophomore year of college came around, things were pretty rough. I had been diagnosed with anorexia and was seeing a therapist, dietician, and doctor. My friends and family knew I needed help, but they didn’t know what to do. The eating disorder voice was so loud. I spent the majority of each day thinking about food, or really how to avoid it. I stepped on a scale any chance I got, and couldn’t even think about my body without being disgusted. I had a goal weight in mind, and I was desperate to hit it. T...

Christmas is known for the time of year, the traditions, the family get together, and wearing the festive sweaters and trying to make them look cute- even when you know that they aren't. Christmas was a little different for me this year. I actually loved the food.  As a kid, I remember eating so much during Christmas. The pound cake, and the honey glazed ham. Like the ham that I ate until I literally was sick, wasn't my best move. But going through an eating disorder and relapsing, I lost the love for holiday food. Our holidays are built around food, the entire American Culture is. I remember in recent years that I would sometimes shy away from the food at gatherings, unless I would get smaller portions, or skip on what used to be my favorite foods. Those foods made me anxious and all I saw were the numbers, and not the memories. But now, they don't. I caught myself going for seconds, seconds . I never used to do that. But now I do, and my food anxiety is almost gone. Yes, ...

 Happy Mental Health Awareness Month everyone! As many of you (my readers) know, I am a survivor of Depression, Anxiety, and Anorexia. To pay tribute to this month and what I stand for, I have reached out to other titleholders across the nation and asked them to share their story with me so I can bring it to you. Last post, we had Miss Mile High, Shannon. This week, we have Miss Lancaster County, Kayla Myers! Her social impact Initiative is #choosehealth. She is vying for the job title of Miss Pennsylvania that will be held on June 17-19, 2021!  1: What made you choose your SII? I chose my social impact initiative #ChooseHealth as health and fitness has dramatically changed my life for the better and has allowed me to flourish as an individual. I believe a healthy lifestyle is important for everyone as there are innumerable benefits of living a healthy lifestyle, such as preventing disease, improving mental health, relieving stress, and creating a space for socialization. It i...

 As time moves on, I realize that I am not the only one who has suffered through the lonely road of mental and eating disorders, Shannon Hannaway, a fellow titleholder based out of Colorado, was generous enough to share her story with all of us! 1: how has mental and eating disorders affected you?   Besides seeing it from the outside watching loved ones struggle and die by suicide, I have been impacted by mental illness for as long as I can remember. Growing up I had anxiety with panic attacks, but due to a lack of education and awareness I didn’t know that was what I was experiencing. It took a head injury and Children’s Hospital Colorado for me to get the help and diagnosis I needed from their concussion team. With their help, medication, and therapy I was able to get my anxiety managed and actually came off all of it completely by the time I graduated high school. Unfortunately, my freshman year of college I experienced severe emotional trauma that led to PTSD, and unipolar...

 Good evening ladies and gents, this week has been so busy with all the sports getting underway, but now my attention lies on this next week: NEDA week, National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, and no better to kick this week off with a compelling and inspiring interview with a former colleague of mine who I hold in very high esteem, allow me to introduce Ms. Gabby Cox and her journey with Self Image, Body Positivity and EDs.  1: Which eating disorder(s) did you have? All of this basically started when I was 12 in 5th grade. I had stopped playing sports and had acquired some unhealthy habits. My parents eventually started making me play a sport of my choice so I could be active again. I chose to play soccer because I had played as a child, and my dad played professionally and was a well known coach for over 20 years. Well I quickly realized that I was not very good because I was not in good “soccer shape.” One summer, my dad and I trained everyday and from that training, I wa...

I was born and raised a non-denominational Christian with more of a traditional Pentecostal twist. I was raised on the mission field, I was raised with the thought that mental health was demon possession/ oppression. The bible does talk about people who were possessed by demons that did have similar symptoms to mental health disorders, but obviously, they are not the same thing.  As I have mentioned before, my depression didn't hit me until I was 13-14 years old, but I was mostly silent about it because of my upbringing. I remember when I told my mother that I had attempted to kill myself and she grabbed me and screamed a prayer over me. Now that I am older, I can understand the panic but as a thirteen year old child, I was scared out of my mind. Not only was I brought up in a Christian household that had conservative, traditionalist views on the matter, I was saved when I was six years old and have been a Christian my whole life. As a Christian, it's hard to understand why the...

As a child, I had a very good childhood growing up, and then everything changed once I moved from Peru to the United States again. The depression, anxiety and anorexia all set in and I was so, so along going through that. My parents didn't understand what I was going through and thought that I was demon possessed. They didn't believe in counseling but threatened to put me in a mental hospital. I went through this for years, by myself, putting on a brave face because I was terrified of being put in some mental ward.  This post is about support groups. Support in general, really. Being someone who didn't have that much support going through what I went through, I want to make sure that everyone I come across didn't feel like they were alone. Having support around you, helps you admit that you need help. That's what happened to me once I got to college and once I had a friend that is always there for me but will give me tough love to get me through the day and help me ...

 As the number of degrees lower throughout the beginning of December, so do the number of finals on my plate. Finals have always been a dreaded time for me... most of the time. This time of year meant being away from my routine, people who were my support system and diving back into passive aggressiveness, fights, and verbal punches from relatives that I stayed with for the month and a half because of how I handled myself.  This was the story of every one of my winter breaks. My family didn't approve of my boyfriend, my degree change, or just the overall any type of decision I made for myself. I dreaded breaks, because I knew what it meant. It meant sleepless nights, walking on eggshells, and waking up to have an almost daily debate match between me and my parents.  Everyone knows that suicide rates increase during the holidays. Another type of Depression is also brought on by the winter time: Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). It is seen to be brought on by decreasing da...

I know I have written about my past experiences with what is now my social impact initiative, but to fully understand the meaning of why I am running this blog, you must know the updates on the Miss Southeastern Pageant that I am competing in come January.    I have seventy eight days until the  Miss Southeastern 2021 pageant. That's it. 78.... At first it was eight months, than not knowing if it was going to happen, and now... we are in the double digits and beginning mandatory meetings. My talent has improved, my interview answers have become more concise, professional and articulate. My dresses are almost done. It's almost showtime here in Hammond, America, and Lily Cate is almost ready to take the stage.  There are fifteen contestants total.  One of them is one of my closest friends, I finally got her to compete. Competing with someone you know makes the experience so much better Which is nice. We had our first mandatory meeting on Friday, taking headsh...

 In my earlier posts, I spoke about my depression. I was never diagnosed with clinical depression, but I suffered from situational depression. You may be wondering what situational depression is, or why it's even called that.  According to Healthline.com, situational depression is defined as: " short-term, stress-related type of depression. It can develop after you experience a traumatic event or series of events. Situational Depression is a type of adjustment disorder. It can make it hard for you to adjust your everyday life following a traumatic event. It is also known as reactive depression."  Symptoms vary depending on age, gender, and situation. SD (situational depression) symptoms are:  1) hopelessness 2) lack of focus 3) regular crying 4) feeling overwhelmed 5) Avoiding usual social interaction with people 6) the biggest one being thoughts and/or attempts of suicide The list goes on for every, but there are few symptoms that many people-including myself- have ...

 Beauty. In 14 year old Lily's mind, that word meant skinny, thigh gap, negative calories, ribs, and so many other words. I thought that thin meant beautiful and any amount of fat was a bad thing, and extra small and double zero were the only acceptable sizes. While I lived in South America, the food had no additives, very organic and we didn't have access to fast food so at thirteen I was TINY. Then I moved back to the States, everyone wanted to feed us, and American food is NOT healthy, and I loved every bit of it. Slowly, my weight went up and I had gained over forty pounds. I was out-eating everyone in my house, even my dad. Then one day, the words started to come that would put me into a battle for my sanity, and my health.  "Chunky." "You shouldn't eat that much." "Put that food back." "Why don't you go and run around the neighborhood?" This was their motivation for me, but little did they know that I was going to use those ...