In May 2024 our incredible daughter Flo was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. An eating disorder; a serious mental illness. 

Suffering from anorexia during adolescence not only disrupts a young person’s normal growth and development, but brings with it a terrifying list of longer-term related health issues including bone density loss, heart problems and organ failure. Flo was fifteen when she became seriously ill. We watched her disappear.

Like so many mental illnesses, anorexia is all too often misunderstood and surrounded by stigma. Anorexia is not a choice, or a cry for help - it is not simply choosing not to eat - it is a serious, life limiting illness with a complex psychological underpinning. It takes over a life and makes living it extraordinarily lonely. It can make a child not want to live any more. Beat, the UK's eating disorder charity, works to break down these barriers.  Beat helps people to better understand the terror of eating disorders. Beat educates, supports, and saves lives.

I turned to the Beat website in the early days before diagnosis when we needed to learn - fast - what best to do. Now, nearly a year into treatment and Flo’s initial stages of recovery, we can fully appreciate the incredible support Beat provides sufferers of eating disorders, and those who care for them: which is why I am fundraising for the charity.  

I have committed to training for and running my first marathon - my body already wishes I’d done it twenty years earlier - but I am determined to make it to the starting line on 25th May. I hope you might support me, on behalf of Beat, and the amazing work they do for families like ours who have been through, or are going through, the hell of fighting an eating disorder.