Appetite for Change

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Hello beloveds. Sometimes wonderful things happen as the result of the magical parts that make up a person.

Lumen Gorrie is a clinical psychologist. Before you say “ew” let me reassure you, they’re a goodie not a scary. Queer, trans, multiply neurodivergent, chronically ill, Covid conscious psychologist and advocate, board certified supervisor and all round champ, Lumen had a dream for a conference years ago. They wrote it on a post it note and carried it around for years. Last week it all came together.

I can not imagine the sheer volume of work and deep thought it took. From the website:

“Appetite for Change is the first of its kind: a two-day event exploring eating, feeding, and body at the intersections of neurodivergence, queerness, transness, chronic illness, disability, and other marginalised identities.

For too long, mainstream systems and services have shaped how we understand and respond to eating disorders, differences, and difficulties, and relationship with body. This conference exists to centre and uplift the voices, needs, and experiences of those so often overlooked, dismissed, or harmed by them.

Appetite for Change is for clinicians, people with lived or living experience, carers, support workers, researchers, educators, allies, and those who are many of these at once.

Presented live, held virtually, and accessible globally - with recordings also available for 90 days post-live event - this isn’t your typical eating disorder conference, but there’s room for everyone at the (proverbial) table.”

I’ve never attended such an accessible event in all my life. I’m still processing it all. What the world could be under the care and direction of Lumen! With so much help because no one person can do it all. But in those two days, the world was kind and fun, informative and brilliant.

I haven’t spoken publicly about my eating stuff. I was, how you say, shitting myself. I read selections of my work in progress mosaic memoir, about a lifetime of disordered eating and my mentally ill and physically disabled body. About snake oil merchants and trauma and the harm that occurs in the healthcare system. Mostly about identity and how landing in my gender at last was the healthiest thing I’ve ever done.

Presenting at this conference was one of those transformative experiences where the neural pathways in your brain change to create embodied safety. Following my presentation my inbox exploded with positive feedback that closed the loop in my brain and welded it to my nervous system. It really happened.

What a feeling! Visual description: Jennifer Beals in Flashdance, welding shit like a badass.

I find it a bit ick sometimes when people are talking about why they’re good at what they do and point to “this person told me I’m cool!” So I’m cringing a bit writing this. And I want to remember the methodology. Like so:

1. lived my life such as it is

2. thought about it and what happened and why

3. got to the point where I could write about it

4. after a long time, got to the next point where I could share it

5. felt very safe and received confirmation that we’re all in this together

6. processing (in progress) but very clearly understanding that storytelling is medicine

7. Remembering that this is something I always knew, but this knowing was overtaken by louder, crueller voices

8. I really need to finish my book..

In my presentation I promised to put a reading list on Substack, and to that end I share this stack o’ books and a short list that I’ve accessed electronically.

Reading list for disordered eating recovery: Hunger by Roxane Gay, big beautiful female theory by Eloise Grills, Happy Fat by Sofie Hagen, I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy, Shrill - Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West and Fat Girl Dancing by Kris Kneen.

Leah Vernon, Kelsey Blackwell, Virgie Tovar, Clare Bowditch also.

The conference is all recorded and online, you can still access it here. I was big time changed in a positive way by it and I haven’t even seen half the sessions I wanted to yet. Relevant to trans, queer, ED folk, mentally ill, kinksters, any kind of health care provider, disabled, chronically fully sick and neurodivergent folks.

I want to go back in time and tell my child self that I am going to keep finding my people. Over and over and over and over. More and more. There are so many people I will align with, who will like the person I am.

What a dream. Thank you, Lumen. You are very, very good at everything.