​My Battle With Anorexia and How Lady Luck Helped Me find my ME Again. By Brii Schwenker

Three years ago my husband and I embarked on the most extraordinary journey together, parenthood.

Our beautiful, curious, vivacious daughter is the most incredible thing we have created and our lives are truly that much more wondrous every day because of her.

My pregnancy was not physically difficult in anyway, other than the general aches and pains and swollen feet. What was difficult about my pregnancy was the mental and emotional toll it took on me. I am a
recovering anorexic, at my worst I was 92 lbs at 5’4” and 20 years old that was terrifyingly underweight.

My battle with anorexia is constant and on-going because of it I have what is known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder or BDD, what that means is that what I see in the mirror is not a true reflection, what stares back at me is my perception of myself, and that can be a very scary thing sometimes. By the time my husband and I had decided on trying for a baby I was at 120 lbs and comfortable in my own skin.

My husband stoked my love for rockabilly and pin up culture, getting dressed up, doing my victory rolls and donning crazy high heels for a night out made me feel breath-taking and confidant, because that was how HE saw me. Pregnancy took all of that away, I gained roughly 70 lbs with my daughter, I went from 120lbs to 190lbs, none of my beautiful outfits fit, my shoes were now dangerous life-threatening objects I couldn’t go near, everything, including my own skin, felt strange and alien to me. I did everything right, I talked about my feelings, my fears of never being able to lose all this weight, I had an incredible support system in place…but that monkey on my back would have none of it.

After our daughter was born I avoided the full length mirror completely, I tried to lose weight in healthy ways and my husband was supportive through all of it. Every exercise routine was abandoned, and with every failure that distorted self-image got worse and worse. I did my best not to let it get to me, to remind myself that my body had done an amazing thing, of course it could never be the same again! By the time I went back to work I was in a deep depression. I felt completely foreign to myself, I didn’t know where Wife and Mum stopped and I began anymore, everyone around could me feel it, but then, a glimmer of hope!

My husband and I decided I was going to make the leap and go back to school, surely this would get me out of my head and back on my feet!

School was difficult, long days and nights, countless hours of study and research. But it helped, through the stress and anxiety I found bits and pieces of that resilient, confidant woman again. With every passing grade, with every re-booked clinic patient that monkey got smaller and smaller. My husband, seeing the insane amount of work I was putting in decided I need something special, I needed something for me, and he reached out to Jenn. He got me a package with her for mother’s day of 2016, between school, work and life it took me until December of 2016 to finally use it.

From the night of our first consult I knew the universe had put Jenn on my path for a reason, our “click” was instant. The day of can only be described as magical for me. People talk about “being a pin up for a day” their transformation so to speak, the moment Deanna spun me around in her chair to see the exquisite job she had done I didn’t feel transformed, I felt like ME again, that Me that I hadn’t seen in almost four years. That Me that got dressed up and wore insanely high heels to the grocery store on a Tuesday afternoon ‘cuz why the hell not!

​That me that felt effervescent in my own skin. I spent an entire day without hearing a single peep from that monkey on my back. It was freeing, every new pose, every snap of the flash, with every crazy ooooh and AAAHHHH that came out of Jenn I felt Brii coming back to me in waves. Since that day I might not put my face on everyday but that’s ok now, that fire in me has been rekindled. Thank you Jenn, and Deanna, and Lady Luck, thank you to all the likes and shares and lovely comments everyone had on all the photos she posted. I am ME again, and it feels wonderful!