This is a tribute to two people who just plain “get it.”  And, you know, it can be hard to get.  I certainly know many professionals who deeply do not get it, and some who claim they do and yet who really only give it lip service.

The two people I am referring to are mothers of children with eating disorders; they are F.E.A.S.T. mamas, and they are filmmakers.  I am referring, of course, to Charlotte Bevans and Mary Gutteridge, the Bobbsey twins of enlightened animation.

And what exactly is “it”?  Watch this.  And this.  Or this.

More specifically:

1. they get how hard it is

2. but also that it is do-able (help us out there and recovery is possible!)

3. they get that families are the core of treatment, no matter who the provider(s)

4. they get that enough food is a non-negotiable essential of healing

5. and that there will be resistance… And that you can learn how to deal with it

And Charlotte, in particular, spends her time cajoling, propping up, encouraging and brain-storming for parents from all over the world on the F.E.A.S.T.’s Around the Dinner Table forum, whose children are being engulfed by their eating disorder.  She fights the good fight for science and evidence, slugging it out alongside the innovators.

One day, driving to work, it struck me that, as much as I am a full time pediatric eating disorder physician and Charlotte a full time mom, I believe that she has saved more lives from her desktop in the countryside in England than I have in my clinic.

Saved more lives.  Do you hear that, Charlotte?  And may others one day get it as you and Mary do so that all children can be a lot safer.