I live with Binge Eating Disorder, and my experience with it has been lifelong.

Over a lifetime there can be many influencing factors, and for many of us they start when we are young. We get different messages from different places, and some of those relationships are very important in shaping who we become. What we learn early about our bodies and our worth can stay with us for a very long time, and that has been true for me.

What I do know for certain is that across my adult life, my weight has varied by over 70 kilograms from its highest to lowest point, and neither end reflected good mental health.

Over time, these experiences shaped my relationship with food and my body in ways I did not fully understand until much later. I am still, at times, unravelling this, as it continues to show up in my life. I found it difficult to start or pursue anything without feeling that I first needed to be at a "perfect" weight.

I did not believe that self worth and success could exist alongside being overweight.

Understanding what actually happens in real situations with eating, built on a lifetime of coping and adaptation, is a foundation of my peer support and lived experience work. It defines the purpose behind what I do, and the value I bring comes from having lived it.

I would get my eating under control, restrict or diet, then lose that control and move into emotional eating, before trying again to regain it. This cycle repeated across my lifetime.

For many years I managed my mental health on my own, using what I describe as "an affordable" homemade band aid approach. I researched, I read, I reflected, and I built personal systems to cope. Some of these did sustain me for a time, but during major life transitions it proved insufficient.

At 47, several changes occurred at the same time. My children were leaving home, and my role as a mother was changing as they moved into adulthood. All I could see was a future of loneliness. Work pressures increased, and I found myself in a toxic and unmanageable work environment. This period was the first time in my professional career that I experienced how much workplace relationship dynamics can affect health and wellbeing.

I was completely under prepared for perimenopause and the impact it would have on my body, my energy, and my mood.

During this period, all of my binge eating behaviours returned with a level of intensity and frequency that was the most severe I had ever experienced. I did not have the tools or knowledge needed to improve my health.

I reached a point where managing it on my own was no longer possible.

When I disclosed my experience to a doctor, I was told that someone my age should have had a better plan in place and should be over an eating disorder. That response, followed by many others, delayed my help seeking and reinforced how stigma and misunderstanding can limit access to care.

Eventually, I found an informed and respectful response, and that interaction changed the direction of my recovery. It also clarified something important. Many people navigating disordered eating experience fragmented care, dismissal or oversimplified advice, and self-guided recovery is often explored out of necessity.

Life in Person was created in response to that gap. I do not believe anyone should have to experience disordered eating in the way that I have, and I will provide that same clear and confident support for anyone who needs it, until they no longer do.

I could not accept that other people were going through what I went through trying to get help and feeling okay about it.

So I asked myself whether I had the skills, the knowledge and the want to do this better. Whether I could make it so that somebody else did not have to feel the way I did.

The answer was yes, and Life in Person is now growing into a community that works together to build recovery based on hope and connection. This community grows from what each of us brings, and your story is important.